Intro: Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hair stylist? Like you got into this industry to make big things happen?
Maybe you’re struggling to build a solid base and want some stability. Maybe you know social media is important, but it feels like a waste of time because you aren’t seeing any results. Maybe you’ve already had some amazing success but are craving more. Maybe you’re ready to truly enjoy the freedom and flexibility this industry has to offer.
Cutting and coloring skills will only get you so far, but to build a lifelong career as a wealthy stylist, it takes business skills and a serious marketing strategy. When you’re ready to quit just working in your business and start working on it, join us here where we share real success stories from real stylists.
I’m Britt Seva, social media and marketing strategist just for hair stylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
Britt Seva: What is up and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host Britt Seva, excited to answer an email from a listener today.
So I always share that one of the best ways to get a topic to me is to leave me a rating or review in iTunes. And if you go through our iTunes rating and reviews, what you’ll see is a lot of people will rate the show, give a little feedback and then ask a question. That’s where I pull a lot of the content for the podcast. So if you have a specific question, that’s definitely a place to get it in.
Now, Carrie emailed me and Carrie’s a member of my Thriver Society program and she sent me the most incredible message, and Carrie, I just want to thank you so much for reaching out because this is such a good question.
It’s something nobody’s talking about and I think this is so timely, so thank you for reaching out. I want to actually share her message in full because she said her question so eloquently and I want to be sure I do it justice.
Carrie said, “Hi Britt. I like so many other Thrivers are experiencing a flood of new clients. You warned us this would happen, and it’s great, and I see my fellow Thrivers raising their prices 25 to $30 at a time multiple times in hopes of making room on their schedule just to be able to accommodate the demand.”
Let me go back and dissect that first part for just a second. I warned my Thrivers in probably May of 2020, so just a few months into the pandemic of 2020, I said, “Listen, this is what is going to happen when businesses start to resume to normal a little bit, and some of the restrictions start to shift, and salons essentially at large are opening back up.”
I was like, “This is what’s going to happen.” And I told them, I said, “Thrivers Society members. and those who use that method are going to see the most massive influx of clients they’ve ever seen before,” because I knew consumer behavior would change.
I knew consumer behavior would change because I always say the reason I’m able to be an effective business coach is I study business and marketing at large, not just our industry. I look at like multi-million dollar Fortune 500 companies, and I’m like, “What’s going on? What are the trends? What is the stock market doing?” Right?
I look at all the factors and I say, “Okay, how will this affect us specifically as our industry?” But I use all the data. What I could see is there was a shift in consumer behavior and we could see it pretty early in the pandemic that showed the consumer fear was high, which makes sense.
When money gets tight, we get a little bit more nervous, so it makes sense. What I realized was those who run an effective system like Thrivers Society, the cream is going to rise to the top in such a big way.
Have you heard people talk about this? This is not a Britt-ism. This is like an economic knowledge-ism. That what the pandemic did is it sped up consumer trends by a decade, like really fast. Like when you look at economists, that’s what they’ll tell you was that was the part we couldn’t have expected is that consumer behavior changed so rapidly that it literally pushed us a decade ahead.
So what happens with consumer behavior…consumer behavior is always changing. When I say “consumer behavior,” it means where people want to spend money people’s values: when they invest in a business, how they choose a service provider, where they do their research, if referrals matter, all that kind of stuff, okay? So how consumers choose where to be consumers at.
What we couldn’t have expected is the speed that things would change coming out of the pandemic. Consumer behaviors usually changing very slowly and incrementally, so we can say, “Ooh, I see this shift,” be reactive. This hit us like a punch to the face of my gosh. Consumer expectation has changed so dramatically that we have to level up.
Well, lucky for my Thrivers Society members, they were preparing for this. So when consumer behavior changed, my Thrivers didn’t have to change anything. They just got to keep on keeping on, and now they’re seeing this massive influx of clients, and I told them that. I said, because consumers are really finally going to be picky and they’re going to see what you have to offer. And even a stylist or salon they’d been loyal to for a decade, if they’re not running a Thriver Society type of system, clients have a wandering eye right now.
That’s not just a me thing. That is consumers of all businesses, all industries, all of everything, it just happened. I told my Thrivers 18 months ago now, “Listen, this is going to happen for you guys,” and they got excited, but they were also a little like, “Whoa, we’ll see.”
So Carrie is saying, you warned us, you were right, it’s happening. She’s right: now we have Thrivers who are doing these huge price increases and still seeing massive demand on their books.
So her question is, “My red flags are going up. How long will this flood last? Is this artificial?” Meaning inflation, right? When we use the word inflation, it’s an artificial growth of something.
And you know the whole saying: what goes up must come down. It’s true to a degree, but we’re going to talk about that in a bigger sense in a moment.
She says, “How long will this flood last? Is this artificial? If we raise prices at that rate, will we price ourselves out of our market? When this bubble bursts, am I missing the boat by not raising at a drastic rate? Having lived in, struggled in business through 2008, it makes me very nervous, especially with inflation soaring right now. We live tight on the hog and then it all came crashing down.”
We’re going to talk about 2008. I lived through 2008 as well in the industry. I joined in 2007 and it was so wild. I know a lot of people joined right around the same time as I did. We joined at this boom with everything just felt like easy and cash was flowing and big houses and extravagant everything.
And then within like 18 months of me joining the industry, it was like the coupon clipping TV shows were trending. It was like overnight, everything changed.
I saw the radical shifts she talked about, and Carrie, what I want to say is I think a lot of is the emotional memory of 2008, but I want to talk to you about the statistical analysis of what actually happened because that’s going to be the answer to this question.
So often we can look to the past to know what to do with our future actions and we’re going to do a little bit of that today.
Then she says, “I want to show appreciation for the clients that stuck with me, supported me in unbelievable ways during the last 18 months by not trying to weed them out of my books, but I don’t want to make a dumb business decision based on emotion. I’d love your thoughts on the long-term of what we are seeing right now and the smartest way to navigate it.”
And then she says, “Thanks for always being a compass for us.”
Carrie, it’s absolutely my pleasure. Like I said, thank you for writing in.
I have to dissect this last paragraph because something you said is a limiting belief. It’s not the truth. What you said is you want to “show appreciation for the clients that stuck with me and supported me in unbelievable ways during the last 18 months by not trying to weed them out of my books.” So when we have a price increase, the goal is not to weed the clients who have supported our business out of our books ever. Let’s look at that for a second.
But I’m not going back on what I say either, so when I talk about price increases, I say, “When you raise your prices, not everybody is going to take that journey with you and that’s okay.” But generally speaking, and those who have had price increases will tell you this, your best clients like your ride or dies. They do stay. And when we raise our prices in Thrivers Society, there is no “the cost of my business has gone up so I’m doing a raise.” That is so risky.
So when we’re like, “Well, owner increased my rent, I guess I better raise my rates,” that’s spooky. Yikes.
Because we have to remember that consumer behavior today especially is based on perception. So if to the client, nothing has changed, their experience is exactly the same, it feels just the same in the salon as it did three months ago, and now I have to pay more, they’re going to be confused.
So we have to make sure that the perception is right, or you could end up losing really good guests and weeding out people that you don’t want to. That’s actually not the point. But when you say you don’t want to make a dumb business decision based on emotion, I don’t want you to do that either. But if you follow the system that we talk about, that’s not going to happen.
I want you to look at something like, let’s talk about Apple cell phones, iPhone. Let’s talk about that for a second or smartphones in general. Do you think then when they release a new phone, Samsung or Apple or anything, they say “Let’s raise the prices and weed some people out of here?” Do you think that’s at all what they’re thinking?
And I know that we’re service providers, not a volume-based business and that’s totally fine, but I want you to think is that the mindset?
No, it’s that “We haven’t released a phone in a year, things have changed around here in that time. Let’s take a look at what needs to hit the market to meet the market.”
So let’s talk about Apple iPhones for a second. I’m an Apple user. Listen, I know Samsung is better. I would be the first to admit it, but I happen to be an Apple user, and so I also happen to be the parent of a teenager who breaks cell phones.
Does anybody else have a teenager who’s like a professional cell phone breaker? It’s insane. So up until this point, we had never bought her her own phone. She would just get my husband’s or I’s hand-me-down phones when we upgraded every couple of years or whatever. And she broke one of the phones we had passed down to her and she wanted a new one.
We made a really sweated out and we decided if you want a new one, you’re going to have to earn to get it. What we found in doing that is not all iPhones are crazy expensive. There are some that are still ridiculously expensive, but they’re a few hundred bucks. So when you go buy a new iPhone, you drop what? $1,200, $1,500, $1,600.
Well, you can also buy a new iPhone for $400 today. My daughter did ‘cause that was what she could save out to invest for them. But we don’t talk about it as much. Nobody talks about the $400 iPhone and guess what? It works great. She’s kept it nice for a year. Shocking.
The reason I bring that up is when you raise your prices, it’s not to weed people out. It’s because you’re making a shift in your business.
Let’s say you raise your prices and your client, Molly, who’s been seeing you forever, can no longer afford to come in and see you for her full highlight, haircut, treatment, everything she’s been doing. Maybe you become her treat stylist and she sees you for blending once a year, I don’t know, but that’s going to be her choice.
Life is all about choices like that. It doesn’t mean you’re being mean to Molly when you raise your prices. But we have to think about what are we doing this job for.
I want you to think when you go into the salon, you’re choosing. When you say yes to anything, you’re inevitably saying no to something else, right? So when you chose to go into the salon, you’re saying no to taking a walk on the beach, taking your kids to school, going out to lunch with your partner, going on a girls’ weekend that you were invited to go on, that you now have to miss going to the science fair, going to a concert.
When you choose to be in the salon, you’re always saying no to something else. Sitting at home and watching Netflix, right? Anything. There’s a cost for that. And that’s how business works.
We can still be good to our clients as good service providers and take care of ourselves at the same time. Those two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
Now there is price-gouging; it’s is not cute and I’m not here for that. I don’t believe that we should be taking advantage of people at all. But our industry especially is supply and demand. If people are demanding your services at the rates that you’re offering, the demand is there. You’re not gouging. People are begging to see you. In what way are you gouging? If you’re saying you have so many referrals, you can’t even handle them, how could you then also be gouging if people are lined up out the door to get in with you?
Can we think about the people that we’re cheating by not allowing them to come in, right? By allowing our emotions of getting in the way? You’re never forcing somebody out the door. Life is all about choices whenever we raise our prices.
Okay. Off the soapbox. Let’s talk about the boom.
For some of you, maybe you haven’t felt the boom in the last year, 18 months, six months, depending on how long your salon’s been open. It is happening in the industry at large and for a lot of reasons, one, unfortunately—and this really broke my heart, and the reason why I tried to continue showing up so big when the world’s shut down, as hard as it was, is because I didn’t want stylists to leave our industry. I felt like it was fairly inevitable and it made me sad.
I looked at statistics of how many people walked away from trades in 2008 and it was massive. I mean, hundreds of thousands of people walked away from their careers in 2008 because things just felt too hard and I didn’t want that for our industry.
So I showed up and did podcasts and live videos talking about my best guesses and who knows what, even as I was going through my own pain and suffering, like we all were because I didn’t want our industry to lose service providers. Unfortunately, inevitably, it did. We saw salon after salon having to shut down. We saw stylists getting exhausted mentally, physically, emotionally, and walking away.
For one, that unfortunately happened, meaning all of those guests need somebody else to see. So we have a surplus of clients and we have a low amount of service providers. You guys know that when you go to restaurants, there are low service providers.
That’s not just restaurants: hotel, hospitality, that’s everywhere, our industry included. here are clients who are looking for stylists in a big way. There’s a huge demand.
Also, like I said, because consumer behavior shifted, today’s consumer is more particular. Have your values changed after 2020? Mine have. Most people’s have. Not everybody, but a lot of people.
So as your values change. Where you want to spend your money, time, and service dollars changes as well. So people are looking for new stylists right now.
If you’re not experiencing the boom, I’m just going to say it: you’re missing the boat. It’s there. It comes back to the old adage of like, it’s the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, hoping for a different result. You should have radically changed your business coming out of 2020 and continue to level up in the way that consumers are demanding today, right?
The boom is here. The question is, will it last? Couple of things. One, we know this to be true, nothing in life is permanent. Nothing, literally nothing. I’ll be a day older tomorrow than I am today. What I had for lunch today, even if I make the exact same lunch today, as I made yesterday, I’ll use a little bit more peanut butter for my apple and peanut butter, right? I’ll use a little bit less mayo on my sandwich. It just is what it is. Nothing is forever. Everything always changes.
So will the market change? Yeah, inevitably, absolutely. The market will change. What will it change to? I don’t know. We’ll have to see when we get there. What I will say is you brought up 2008 and I was there for 2008 as well, and I remember those dark days. So believe me, I’m not saying it was better than you thought. It was terrible. It was absolutely horrendous.
However, I want you to remember what happened. The economy tanked, we were in what was called a recession for 18 months-ish from in a span from 2007 to 2009, right? And what happened was we saw this huge—I describe it like a tsunami. If you know what happens in a tsunami at first, the ocean sucks itself in so the beach gets huge as the ocean sucks itself in, and then a wave comes crashing onto the shore. That’s what happened with our business. It happened in the pandemic too. Salons straight up [sucking sound] and then you had demand like you’d never seen before. Suddenly you were everybody’s best friend. And all anybody wanted to do was see their stylist, right? Crash onto the shore.
It happened in 2008. It’s happening again right now, eventually the crash onto the shore will recede and it will just be a healthy ocean, which is what we want, right? The suck it in, spit it out is that. That is really difficult on that ebb and flow of business. We’d rather have the steady ocean.
The steady ocean will come back, but let’s talk about what the steady ocean looks like. When we look at what happened in the recession, there was this pretty significant dip into unemployment for about eight years coming out of it. So while the economy recovered due to stimulus, which we’re going through right now and all that kind of stuff, it doesn’t mean that we were out of a recession in 18 months. It sure as heck was not like that. And there was residual effect that we’ll see some subtle shifts in this boom of clients as well, but it takes time.
When we looked at what happened in 2008, unemployment was up pretty significantly, about 5%, which is pretty significant for a period of eight years, and it slowly over time leveled back out to where unemployment was pre-pre-recession, which is what we were looking for. That would be considered more of an economic recovery.
But what happened during that time is business still grew and some businesses blew up. That’s what I want for you. That time for some people was crippling. And when I say “people,” I should say, “businesses.”
Let’s talk small business right now. Let’s not talk people for a second because we’re talking stylist and salon owner, which means we’re talking small business. Some small businesses closed their doors in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and will never open them again. Some businesses are now making millions and billions of dollars after starting up in 2007, 2008, 2009.
It depended if you saw that time as a period of opportunity or that tsunami crushed, and you couldn’t find the air again, but for those who said, “I’m going to doggy paddle until I get my way out of this thing,” and they were able to do so, some of them are experiencing success like they never even dreamed was possible. The proof of that is what we look at what happened to something like minimum wage.
I’ll speak to California specifically. In California, minimum wage pre-2008 was $8 an hour and I’m talking state, okay. So then there’s also county and all that stuff. I’m not going to get into that right now. When you look at what minimum wage is now, it’s increased by 65%.
We’re always in the sphere of like, “Oh my gosh, everything is terrible. What if I do something wrong? What if I raise my prices? And we never go back. When you look at things like the fact that minimum wage has gone up 65%, since that recession had anybody said, I’m going to keep my prices what they were back then, because they don’t want to upset any clients.
What if this boom doesn’t last? Oh my gosh, they’d be living in a world today where they’re charging decade-old prices. And why do we do things like that? Because we’re scared and it’s scary.
Change is hard, but friends, change is inevitable. We just talked about that. We know that I tell my, again, my teenage daughter, bless her heart, she always makes this show and she doesn’t even know it. She pays $4.50 for a gallon of gas right now. I paid a $1.50 and I was a young mom. That wasn’t even that long ago. That’s how fast industry changes. That fast.
So will this boom last forever? No. Ultimately the ocean will go back to just being a healthy ocean, right? It won’t always be the tsunami where the suck it up, dump it out. No, the boom is going to subside.
But when it’s a healthy ocean, your price point will still be there and the demand will still be there because consumers aren’t going to say, “Oh, forget it. You know what? I want budget haircuts.”
Some clients want that. My husband? Happy with the budget haircut, not a problem, right? But the client who chooses you now for luxury more than likely in five years isn’t going to say, “Actually, now I just want the quickest, easiest, lowest-cost solution I can find, thanks.” Because it’s based on values, right? And even if those values do change, and maybe you’re more of an eco-conscious salon in five years, that might be what they’re looking for. You can’t do things to safe-proof your business now. Consumer behavior will always change. Everything is always changing.
All you can do is be responsive to the market at hand, take the most advantage of what you have, and then in a few years, when things change, I’ll be there for you, friend.
I was here to predict this boom. I do an annual prediction show every single year and without a doubt, like 85% of my predictions end up being right, because I can see the market trends.
We’re always going to look to the future, but you need to react to the now and in the now, if your business is booming, you need to be responsive. Playing small is not going to get you the big results in the big life that you’re looking for.
Go big friends. You can do this.
All right, to Carrie, thank you again so much for writing in this week, and to y’all, so much love, happy business building. I’ll see you on the next one.
