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, really stoked to talk about what happens when you blew the cut, so now what?
This is a great one and this is when that came in from a listener. She left a rating and review on iTunes with a question and I’m going to read the rating and review.
The title is “Thrivers for the win! Britt has changed my life, both personally and professionally. She’s given me the knowledge and competence to run a successful business behind the chair. I’ve been a member of Thrivers since 2018 and all I can say is she’s stuck with me for life. I recommend her to everyone I know. She’s incredible. I can’t say enough wonderful things. If you want confidence, financial freedom, and to be able to run a successful business while living the life you always dreamed of, Britt’s your girl.”
Thank you so much. That just makes my heart so freaking happy. Next we have a question and this is such a great one because this is so relatable.
No matter how perfect you are, no matter if you are the most talented stylist ever and you do the best consultations in the world, we are also human, and we’re all gonna make mistakes. And this was such a great one.
The question is “Today, I did a color and cut on a regular client of mine. I cut her hair too short. She asked for it to graze her shoulder when she curled it with an iron.” Such a cute length, right? “And I went about just an inch above that. I misjudged how much her hair would shrink.” I mean, we’ve been there, right? “She wasn’t too thrilled. I ended up owning it and apologizing because it was my fault and I didn’t charge her for the haircut. If it wasn’t my fault, I would have charged, no emotional discounting.”
Good. I get—this is the Thrivers mindset. I see it. I see you. I thank you.
“LOL. My question is with a situation like this, was not charging the right thing to do? With coloring, it can be fixed, but with cutting, once again, once it’s gone, it’s gone.”
Right, totally and completely. And even with coloring—even when we make a mistake with coloring, step two is fix the color. Step one is rebuild the trust, right?
That’s the thing about redos all the time. I’d done some podcast episodes on this show about redoing. We have two or three on this show. If you head to thrivingstylist.com, you can search the podcast bank there and find the show numbers.
But that’s the thing about redos, always. If somebody gives you the grace to even try again, they’re essentially saying, “Can we continue to rebuild trust?”
Because how many of you have had a client walk in and say, “I can’t believe the stylist I was seeing did this to my hair. Fix it.” You’ve definitely inherited clients from other guests who decided they could no longer trust their stylists to do their cut properly, do their color properly.
I’ve shared the story before we had a stylist who received a breakup letter from their client, right? It said, “You know, these last,”—it was something like eight years—“the last eight years have been amazing. I decided I need a fresh perspective.”
What? Why isn’t your existing stylist giving you fresh perspective? That’s a perception thing, right? They felt like the relationship had become stale.
I’m certain that the trust was there. It wasn’t a trust thing. It was just like, “Well, this relationship’s run its course.” That’s why relationships are important. The nurture level of our retention funnel is so important, all of those things.
But if anybody ever even has the courage to tell you, “Listen, this is not right,” they’re building a trust bridge with you and it’s our job to continue that build so we can reach the other side.
The first thing we do if we mess up—let’s talk about haircuts specifically. ‘Cause like I said, I’ve done some redo episodes, but let’s talk about haircuts specifically in this one.
So what do you do when you first mess up a haircut? Could be a clipper cut, could be a long cut, could be anything, right? We had a client come in who had very, very long hair by mid-back and said she wanted a trim one inch off.
And I saw the client come in because she had such long hair that it was almost like, oh my goodness, your hair so beautiful. It was very memorable. And when she walked out, she had very long hair, very memorable, and she was livid because she had convinced herself that the stylist cut, it was something outrageous like six inches off. There’s no way. If it was an inch and a half, I would’ve been surprised, truly. And she could have used more, but you know, when you’re growing your hair out, all the emotional things.
So when we mess up hair cuts—it’s not always a precision fade or as a short pixie or something like that. It can happen anytime, right? A client’s just unhappy with the haircut.
The first thing that we do whenever we can is we own their feelings and acknowledge that we hear them. Do you know that? So I learned, and this goes way back. If you’ve been listening to the show for a while, you’ve heard me talk about this.
My first job out of high school was at the Ritz Carlton Hotel company, which is life training on another level. You get to experience so much guest experience and they have a really good methodology and ideology there. One of the things—and the Ritz Carlton is all about guest service, all about it—and one of the things they teach us is when you make a mistake, you don’t say “I’m so sorry.”
That is part of our training. We have two days called orientation before you even step on the hotel floor. You go through orientation before you even train for your job, anything.
And in those first two days, part of our core training is you never say, “I am sorry.” That’s not our job is to be sorry. Our job is to listen and understand because as humans, we want to be heard, we don’t want to be placated. We don’t want to be pushed to the side. We don’t want, “Yeah, yeah, here’s your money back, bye.”
We want to be heard and valued and understood, period, right? Your clients do too.
Let’s say that guest where I’m telling you, there is no way she had six inches cut off her hair. It was an inch and a half, an inch at most, and she felt like my stylist had really done her wrong. The first job was to sit there and listen and say, “I understand.”
“I understand.” That is a key phrase. Not “I acknowledge that,” or “You’re right.” Or “I’m sorry.” Or “I agree.” You don’t have to say any of those things. What you need to say is “I understand,” because in those initial first stages, we’re looking for understanding, right?
So “I understand.” “I understand why you feel that way.” You don’t just say “I hear you, but you’re wrong.” “I understand.” “I understand,” and let them talk it out until they say “So…” and they’ll put you in the position where it’s your turn to talk.
It’ll be very obvious. “So…” or you’ll see them staring blankly at the mirror and you can tell that there’s a story going on in their brain, but they’re not speaking. It’s okay to say, “All right, talk to me. What’s going on? What are we feeling?”
Or maybe you noticed it’s a little shorter. So what I would do if I was doing a cut and I noticed it was too short, I’d turn off my dryer, put a hand on the shoulder—hand on the shoulder. It’s a comforting thing, but it’s not crossing a line.
Hand on the shoulder, standing behind them and say, “This is a little too short, huh?” I’ll acknowledge it. I never tried to fake it. Sometimes the guests would say, “Well, maybe, but I actually kind of love it.” Awesome.
But again, even as I acknowledged something that I think might be wrong, I’m building trust. Acknowledging that something isn’t exactly as planned doesn’t have to be negative. Things don’t go to plan all the time. It doesn’t have to be embarrassing even.
What’s embarrassing is when you mess up and try and cover it up. That’s never, never a good move. So instead acknowledge it and take it from there.
If they say, “Yeah, this is way shorter than I expected,” or maybe they’ll say “Maybe, but I kind of love it.” Or maybe there’ll be like, “No, this is exactly what I wanted.”
Either way, acknowledge it. If you don’t notice it and you feel like they’re just feeling it, sit there, listen, let them talk it out. If you feel like—again, we’ve talked about this in the redo episodes. Most redos are the fault of poor consultation.
But if you feel like the consultation went well, maybe you just messed up or the consultation went okay, but you just didn’t answer enough questions and that’s why you’re in this boat. Or the consultation went great but you forgot to put a guard on your clipper, which speaking from personal experience, that was a sad day, and you shaved a bald spot on the side of somebody’s head. Literally maybe mess something up.
In those situations we own it. And we say, “Well, this is unfortunate and unacceptable. I want to make this right.”
Again, I still didn’t say, “I am sorry.” I say more of what I’m feeling like. This situation is unfortunate because it was I’m not taking any blame or passing any blame. Like the situation is unfortunate. This is unfortunate and I want to make it right, because those are true intentions. I’m acknowledging what is and where I want to go.
Then usually what we do is we make a long-term plan, and a long-term plan for some people is three weeks so they can get through their upcoming job interview. For some people, it’s a year because you cut off way too much or they decide that you gave them exactly what they asked for, but they’re like, “Oh my goodness, why did I just chop off nine inches? That was crazy,” right?
It could happen for a lot of reasons, but we acknowledge the feelings. We acknowledge the situation and then always make a long-term plan. And the long-term plan is as long as you need to get to the happy place again.
At this crossroads, you have to have another consultation and say, “Okay, here we are. Where are we going?” You have to. This is now consultation part two of the day with this guest.
You might know where we’re going, but it doesn’t mean you don’t sit and talk it out and listen, and then you get a chance to talk as well. But this time to reconsult and make a long-term plan so that they know again, building the trust.
“All right, this is how I’m going to get you back to where we need to be” Then we want to give them the tools to make that happen. So if they need help with styling, maybe they need product. Maybe it’s a men’s cut that went too short and they need to be taught how to—maybe they’d never styled their hair before or anybody’s hair that went too short. Maybe they need some styling product to help get them through. That’s great. Maybe it’s a good style for them, it’s just a little shorter than expected. That’s fine. Teach them to embrace it. Show them how to work with what they have so that they can go home and be confident and comfortable.
That’s the most important thing.
I’ll never forget there was a kid who came in—he wasn’t a kid. He was a few years younger than me. It was his senior prom and I was probably 24 at the time, and he was so sad because he had his dream date and he’d gone to another stylist. It might’ve even been a beauty school, but he went to a stylist who just was not experienced to get a fade, which even today I can’t, like I bow down to those who could do great fades. It is such a work of art and the person just wasn’t qualified.
And it was his prom and he was so excited and I so deeply remember that feeling and it was really bad. It was the back—if the barber had used a guard, I would have been surprised. It was basically to the skin and then a really poor fade at the ear level and then uneven on top. I mean, bad.
My options were so limited because the back was so short, it almost would have been like, “Well, if we shave your head, that’s the most even we can get,” but he didn’t want that. So I said to him, “The plan right now is to get you to prom, okay? I want to have you look as confident as we possibly can for today. That’s going to be our goal.”
And I said, “You know what? It’s not going to be perfect. It’s not going to be what we had thought it was going to be, but we’re going to get as close as we can and my goal is to make you feel more confident so you can look back at the pictures with a smile.”
I said, “And then what’s going to happen is you’re going to come back here in three weeks and you’re going to see me every three weeks for nine weeks. By the end of the nine weeks, you’re going to feel good again”.
But you could see just him breathe easier, like, okay, today’s not going to be as planned, but she’s going to take good care of me, and in nine weeks, I’ll feel better. He didn’t feel great, but he had a plan. Okay, so that was huge.
So how are we going to fix it today? Where are we going to go from here? A lot of times, whether it be color, cut, anything, leaving them with some retail support can help as well. A styling product, maybe a mask or a growth treatment, like minoxidil is one of those things where it’s not always appropriate, but it could be a scalp stimulator. Even if it’s something that just psychologically makes them feel better. Even if you know in your mind, like “I’m going to give you a scalp stimulator, but honestly you won’t see the results for 12 months,” that’s okay.
If psychologically, they feel like they’re doing something to push them forward, that’s what we’re looking for in those instances.
Sometimes a little retail support helps and then we can really look at short term fixes. This is where you get to a crossroads. So everything that I talked about, even if you did all of that, that would be enough. The empathy, the understanding, the trust building, the planning of today and the future, the reconsultation, all of that is good. That’s a really good start to trust.
Now the question becomes, how far do you want to take it? And with everything else, the sky is the limit.
When the question was, “Should I have done the haircut for free? Yes. My stance is when we as service providers know that we’re the ones that messed up, it’s for free.
When the client changed their mind, they pay. That’s not for free. But when we made a mistake, we made a mistake and the guest entrusted us with their business.
When you say, “While I do my best, it was the cost of my time,” well, kind of, but you promised them at the consultation you’d get somewhere, and if you miss the mark, that’s on you.
Whenever we look at the value of the client, we never look at the value of their ticket today. We think about the value of their tickets for life. For life. That’s why retention is so important, right? For life. That’s what we’re looking at with that.
I’m willing to sacrifice a free haircut if you’ll stay with me for the next seven years, like I’m foolish not to. That’s like saying would you invest $5 into the stock market if you’re certain that the return in seven years would be 7,000? Yes. What am I thinking? Of course!
It’s an investment like that. So yes on the free haircut sometimes. A free gel or a scalp treatment or mask or something makes a difference too.
Again, it’s like if I give you a $20 retail gift, will help to build the trust? Then yes. That’s a judgment call, but again, it’s one of those things. How far do you want to go?
Then we get really down the rabbit hole and we start to think about things like wow factor.
Like I said, I’m, Ritz Carlton-trained and I always try—and take this with a grain of salt because none of us listening to this podcast have that Ritz Carlton money, right? I don’t know how much money that hotel company makes, but it is much more than any of us do, so they’re able to do a lot of things because they have the profit margin to cover it.
But what was interesting is where I’m going with this as we were all—it was called empowerment. We were all empowered to spend $50 on the guest of our choosing on any day.
That’s a hint. If a guest was celebrating their anniversary, I could just, if I caught wind of it, I could choose to use my empowerment to send them two glasses of champagne with their lunch. But did I do that for every anniversary? Well, no, because like with everything else, the more something becomes standard, the less it becomes special. We knew that, so we didn’t standardize giving stuff away.
It’s like when—first, I’m a Disney fanatic, so a lot of stuff goes back to Disney for me. You can go to Disneyland and get a button that says It’s My Birthday, and they’ll write your name on with a Sharpie. You can just get it when you check in. There’s a little customer service area. I think they might actually be charging for the buttons now, but for a long time, you could get them for free and be acknowledged that it’s my birthday.
But what happens is the park members—or the cast members, I should say—would say, “Happy birthday,” “Happy birthday,” when you’re going on all the rides. That was part of their service experience and it’s great.
But when I, as a person, see somebody walking with that button through the park, I’m like, “Oh yeah, yeah, that’s that free button you get up at the front.” I don’t think to myself like,
“Wow, that’s one of the coolest things Disney does.” Like that’s not Disney magic to me. Anybody could get that. What’s magical about it?
So what we did is we wanted our empowerment at the Ritz Carlton to feel magical. We were very well aware of that. We weren’t just blowing 50 bucks a day. None of us were. I didn’t see anybody do that, but it was always an option and we used it in really cool circumstances.
Like there was this couple that checked in and they were expecting their first baby and they were really overdue and they were joking at the front. They were like, “Well, this baby hasn’t come out any other way. We’re hoping that if we walk around the bluffs here at the hotel and we get a really good night’s sleep, that we’ll go into labor and we get this on the road.” It was so cute and such a fun story, so what we ended up doing is using empowerment. We sent them up a spicy pregnancy pizza, ice cream. We were so moved by their story, and we were like, let’s get this baby out. We’ll do it all together.
That’s a memory they’ll never forget. That’s how you use empowerment.
If this is a guest where you’re like, “Man, this guest has always been good to me, how can I empower myself or this business to go above and beyond?”
When I think about a guest where the cut was an inch longer than it should have been, part of me thinks to myself, “Do you order her some quick clip-in extensions?” Like you can get some good clip-in extensions for, depending on the length, a hundred bucks. Enough to get her through. I’m not saying that’s a set that’s going to last for six months, but she doesn’t need six months to grow an inch of hair. She needs two months, right?
A set of clip-in extensions and you say, “Listen, come back in a week and let me show you how we can do this.” It wouldn’t even need to be that long. You’re giving her an inch of length. You would look like a superhero.
There’s always the opportunity to go above and beyond. Or I think back to like my prom friend, my guy at prom, and that feeling of high school where you’re like, “Oh, I just had the worst haircut. This is not how I want to show up to school on Monday.”
I know that feeling and if I could go as the adult I am now, could go back in time, I probably would have sent him like a sports cap from his favorite baseball team and been like, “Well, haircuts aren’t always perfect. But the San Francisco Giants, sure. Go Giants! Hope this hat helps to get you through these next nine weeks. We’ll get there, buddy.”
I would have just wanted to do something and it would have shown that I had his back for a $20 investment. I mean, who does that? That’s always what I think of when we make a mistake.
Sometimes it’s just a person’s not right for your business anymore. Sometimes the consultation goes wrong. Sometimes it’s just you don’t need to send them a hat or an extension or a retail product or anything else like that. But I wanted to give you a range of opportunities because when we think about the guest relationship, when we make a mistake, when they no-show on us, every blip in the roadmap is an opportunity to either make or break a relationship.
I want you, when you’re at these crossroads, to really ask yourself, “How invested am I in this relationship? How do I want my reputation with this guest to look and feel like?”
My gosh, can you imagine if I had sent that kid a hat, he would have told so many people, right? So how can I make this guest feel like a million bucks and help my brand and business?
Every mistake is more of an opportunity than it is anything else. So look at these opportunities, ask yourself, “How can I make this right? How could I build the trust?” and the answer will appear.
So, so much love, happy business building. I’ll see you on the next one.
