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 and I’m really excited to dive into this week’s topic because somehow this is something I’ve never talked about before.
I think I talk a lot about how to make a hundred thousand dollars as a stylist or salon owner, because to me, when people come to me or they hit me up in the DMs, the question is always like, “How do I build more clientele? How do I always make more money?” So, because it’s the loudest voice in the room, I generally speak through that filter.
But I was actually having a really powerful conversation on my son’s Little League field the other day that made me realize I had this blind spot and there was a great opportunity to talk about the magic of this industry and how we do have the opportunity to make a great living for ourselves while living our most robust life.
I think often we can get caught up in the idea of, I need to make as much money as I can, that hustle lifestyle mentality, and one of the greatest blessings that I think has been gifted to all of us in the last couple of years is that fresh perspective on what is this really all about? Why did I choose this career? What does life balance mean to me and how can I really have it all?
And this incredible mother I was talking to really put it into perspective for me. So this is, uh, a mama and my son’s little league team and she and I got to talking. It’s the first year our kids have played together and we’ve really gotten to connect. We’re both team moms.
So we’re talking about what we do and a little bit about our backstory. We actually both grew up in the same small town. I happen to live in a community where most people are born and raised there and stay. It’s certainly my story there. And a lot of us who live there share the same story.
She’s a few years younger than me, so we hadn’t really connected before, and it got to come up that she happens to be a hair stylist. So of course my ears perk up a little bit and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t know that.” She was talking about how she went to cosmetology school. So I immediately said, “Well, that’s my backstory too. I went to a cosmetology school as well.” And she was like, “Well, get outta here. What the heck is it that you do?” And so of course I told her a little bit about what I do. And I said, “Now tell me, do you still do hair?” Because this incredible woman is a mother of four and she’s a mother of four under seven with her youngest being just six months old. So she’s got a full plate. I deeply relate. And I was asking her, “Are you doing hair currently?” And she was like, “Yes, but what my career looks like today is very different than what I thought it was going to look like when I first became licensed.”
She was licensed before she had kids and now she’s got four little ones and she’s their primary caregiver, right? She has three that aren’t even in school yet, so she’s juggling all these moving pieces.
And I said, “So are you taking time off work?” And she said, “No, I’m actually taking clients right now but my schedule’s very limited.” She’s able to work when her husband is home, so that gives her weeknights, maybe some weekends.
But the other thing that she’s balancing too is she’s like, “I don’t want to be the mom who’s gone all the time.” Like she didn’t want to miss baseball games. She doesn’t want to be doing bridal hair every weekend, which she does some bridal styling. She does makeup, but she’s in that balance of like, “How do I have this career that supports my family without giving up my family in the process?”
As she was talking, I just so deeply related because I remember so many of her reasons why she joined the industry were my why as well. It’s that quest to have it all, like to be greedy and to have this beautiful family and to be there for them while making good money.
So it brought up the questions of like, well, what is good money? And what does it look like to have that balance? So I wanted to dedicate this episode to the idea of making a really big, beautiful income, like maybe still even outearning your partner, even if you can only work part-time. Or what about for those of you who live in a community where it’s not Manhattan? You’re not going to be able to ever charge a hundred dollars for a haircut. Like what if you’re capped out at more like the $20, $25, $35 range? Does that mean that you’ll never really make a great living? Absolutely not.
What I thought we would do today is talk through some scenarios about what it looks like to make really good money, even if you’re working super part-time. Even if you’re working at a small price point and I’m going to talk real numbers in this episode, I think this is going to be a really inspiring one. So even if you’re not like the incredible mother I just described, and you’re not juggling kids, and you don’t want to be super part-time or even if you’re not in a small community where you can’t make a lot of money, no matter what your situation is, I think this episode is going to make you think about your career and its potential really, really differently. This is going to be a good one for everybody, so ears open and tune in.
Before we dive into the numbers and the what and the how, I really want to talk about my definition of wealth. I think it’s really important to remember.
So whenever I say the word “wealth,” I’m not just talking about money.
One of the things that I coach to in Thrivers Society and in all of my programs is my idea of the four areas of wealth. If you talk to different coaches, some people have six areas, some people have five, some people have three. I happen to have four.
The areas of wealth that I think are most critical for human beings today are going to be time wealth, love wealth, money wealth, and then the little known health wealth, which is so ironic because if our health goes, we have nothing, right?
How many of you, do you know that have back problems or neck problems or shoulder issues working in this industry? They develop an allergy, right?
As soon as your health goes, it doesn’t really matter how much else you’ve built. If you can’t sustain your career behind the chair, you’re at this real crossroads, right? So we have to be looking at sustaining our health wealth. What does that look like? How do we manage that?
Time wealth. For me, I’m most greedy with time wealth. I have lived a life that has taught me from a very young age that time is finite. It is the one resource that we can’t get back and it’s very precious. So for me, I’m always fighting for as much time wealth as I can. When we look at what it means to be wealthy in time, it’s basically time freedom. No one tells you where to go, where to be. You don’t miss out on a lot of things. You never use the B word. Like when people say, “How are you?” And you say “busy,” that means you are broke in time wealth. You are flatlining, you’re running in the red, you’re in debt in time because you don’t have enough time to feel like it’s in abundance, right? So we look at that time wealth factor.
So this mom I was talking to, obviously she’s somebody who’s prioritizing that time wealth. She’s like, “Time with my kids is number one. I’ll figure out the career, but I gotta be there for my babies.” For her, she’s prioritizing that time wealth too.
It’s okay if that’s not important to you. When I was young in my career—I talk about this all the time. I missed one of my daughter’s birthday parties to be at work instead because money wealth was so important to me at that time. You can judge me based on that. I’m fine with it. You can say my priorities are all jacked up. I totally get it. But when I was a teenage mother, so when at 20 years old, you’re like, “How am I going to keep putting food on this kid’s table?” Yeah. Sometimes it meant missing a birthday party.
So when I talk about time wealth, now, I definitely sacrificed a lot of time and I empathize when money wealth is number one. So there doesn’t have to be a shame in your game if like money wealth is what you’re after right now. I see you. I get you. I’ve been there deeply. And I understand.
Then we’ve got the love wealth. So when I talk about love wealth, that’s going to be relationships. Doesn’t have to be romantic, Valentine’s Day hearts and flowers. It’s love as far as healthy relationships with your family, with your friends, with your coworkers.
Part of healthy relationships is boundaries. Some of my healthiest relationships are with people I don’t talk to anymore because having them in my life was not healthy. Do you see what I’m saying? So it doesn’t mean that everything’s rainbows and sunshine, but it means that you are wealthy in that relationship and that love area because that’s popping off for you. That’s going really, really well.
When I talk about wealth, that’s what I’m referring to is all four areas, feeling solid, whatever that means to you. Like some of you, somebody I love and admire deeply shout out to you, Caitlin, is training for a bikini modeling competition right now. I look at her in awe, like she is prime health right now and she’s building a booming business. That’s what’s important for her and her being her healthiest and her being in is only going to be beneficial to her behind the chair because our bodies are going to give out if we don’t stay healthy, right?
We look at prioritizing all of those areas of wealth as a whole. So that being said, I want you to ask yourself right now, what is most important? Do you wish you had more time to train for a bikini competition or just to lose some weight or to feel spiritually healthier? Like some of you haven’t been to church in years and you miss it, right? So it could be emotional health. It could be physical health. It could be mental health, anything, right? How’s that health checking in? Do you need more time to devote to those areas? So maybe you do need a little more time wealth. Maybe you’re working so damn hard and the financial wealth is good, but you’re sacrificing so much to make it happen that it’s not really worth it. Okay, we gotta reprioritize and this episode’s going to help you to do that, so don’t worry about it.
And then we look at the relationships, right? How many of you who have partners who say, “Can you just get off the damn phone? Can you not live a life on Instagram and just be here present with me for a minute? Which of your clients is texting you right now? Can you put the laptop away and just focus,” right? “Do you have to work nights and weekends forever?”
We have to look at all of those things and really evaluate our life as we step into these topics.
The other thing I want to be 100 about in this episode—and I promise we’re about to get into it—is that I don’t believe in the idea of having passive income. I’ve not found passive income. So if anybody looks at my business and they’re like, “Well, Britt’s unlocked it,” there is nothing about my income that feels even remotely passive. I have a massive team and a massive payroll that makes anything that happens here possible. We all work exceptionally hard. I’ve not unlocked passive.
When I talk to other financial experts and they talk about passive income, that’s like stocks and investments. That’s money that truly you just put somewhere and it grows. But when we say like, “Well, retail’s passive income,” no, it’s not. How many of you have bought retail that sits on the shelves and it doesn’t sell? There’s nothing passive about it. Energy has to be put into it.
I want to talk about our industry for what it is. We are service providers. You can call it something fancy. You can try to wrap it with a bow. We provide a service. Somebody has a need. They come into us expecting a result. The only way to deliver that result is by providing a service, period. Yes, there’s additional layers to that service. There’s the emotional component and we have to build the relationship. Retail can be a part of it. That’s certainly an add-on, but most of you aren’t about to stop doing hair and start just selling shampoo. Am I right? So retail is like a secondary lever that you can pull.
Even when I talk about retail—for me, retail’s not so much about the monetary gain. Retail equals retention. Retail equals referrals. Retail is buying into you, your brand, and your business.
So even when we look at retail, I don’t necessarily count that as a secondary stream of income. That’s more like support income that supports the primary.
So owning the fact that we are service providers, call it whatever you want to, at the end of the day, people are coming to us with a service expectation.
There are only two ways to make more money. Two ways. See more guests, right? More butts in the chair, higher volume, or charge more money, higher ticket. There is nothing else. That is it. As soon as you look at other opportunities, you’re looking at starting other businesses or other layers to the service providership. But we are service providers at the end of the day and I need you to keep that frame in mind as I run some numbers by you.
Next I want to ask you a question and just think about this. If you’re driving in the car, walking the dog, I want you to ponder this for a second: What would you consider to be a solid hourly wage? Very often when we talk about potential in our industry, we talk about it in price points. Almost always. It’s funny. That’s how you hear the conversation go, like, “Oh, well, Sally charges a hundred bucks a haircut,” or “My extension application is $1,200.” Or “My highlights are now $450,” or “You can’t sit in my chair for less than $200.”
We talk about it in that way, but just ask yourself for a second, what is a solid hourly wage? Because I have news for you and I talk about this in the podcast. You can charge session-based. You can charge a la carte. You can charge hourly. It all comes down to hourly in the end.
No matter how we have these huge debates about what price point is the best, it doesn’t matter. They’re all the same. It’s just about the way it’s being positioned and different positioning does better with different clientele. It’s not going to radically change anything in your business. Some clientele do better with different pricing methods than others, definitely, but it’s like slicing the same cake in different ways. You can slice it in triangles. You can slice it in chunks. You can use a spoon and scoop it out. It doesn’t matter. It’s the same chocolate cake.
I want you to think for a second and ask yourself, “What is a solid hourly wage?” My first job—I’m in my mid thirties—at my very first job, I made $8 an hour. That was minimum wage when I started working. It was a lot of work for a really sad little paycheck, right? And then I felt like I was actually starting to make some good money when I was a young person.
When I was making 18 bucks an hour, I was able to afford an apartment by myself. But now this was in the early two thousands, so this was very different times, right? But 18 bucks an hour got me places. When I start to look at numbers like 25 bucks an hour, 30 bucks an hour, 50 bucks an hour, 60 bucks an hour, you start to talk about making some money.
So when my husband, when he was working for the San Francisco fire department, he was an hourly employee and the man made bank. So what? A lot of times we think about hourly, we think like, “Well, that’s weak.” Not always. Really think to yourself what is the value of my time? If someone was willing to pay you 50 bucks an hour to do something, would that sound pretty good? Would 25 bucks an hour sound pretty good? Would a hundred bucks an hour sound pretty good? Just think about that number for a second and the context and what it means.
Let’s run through some scenarios. Let’s imagine we have a stylist and her name is Ashley and Ashley lives in a smaller, more rural community or community that’s just not big city. It’s not flashy. It’s not fancy. They’re not rolling in the dough. And maybe she’s new in the community or maybe she’s in a bigger community, but she’s just a new stylist. But for whatever reason, Ashley can only really charge 20 bucks a cut and $30 for a root touch up, and that’s where she’s at. There she’s really priced appropriately. That’s what the demand commands. That’s where she’s at.
Ashley’s working five days a week. So 20 bucks a cut, 30 bucks for a root touch up. Now some of you, when I said those price points, you immediately went, “Oh good luck, Ashley.” I wouldn’t say that at all. Ashley’s potential’s actually pretty damn good. Wait until I rattle these numbers off to you.
So Ashley’s working, full-time really, full-time, she’s working five days a week, eight hours a day, which to me is like max load. Please don’t be working more than 40 hours a week. That’s a lot for a physically demanding job like ours.
So let’s assume that a color and cut client takes 90 minutes of chair time. That’s on average, right? And that Ashley doesn’t double book. She single stacks. She takes a 30-minute lunch every day. Making those assumptions, she’s able to see five guests a day, five days a week. So that’s 25 clients and let’s make the assumption that she’s not doing any highlights, nothing fancy, just cuts and cut/colors. But if we’re talking about maximizing our potential, which is what this episode is about, Ashley, to you girl, your best bet is to have everybody getting a cut color blowout. That is your max capacity and that’s what we want to leverage.
So knowing that cut color styles is basically going to be Ashley’s max capacity. That’s what she’s got cooking. Maybe in her area, people don’t even really get highlights. Nobody’s getting extensions. So that’s kind of gotta be her bread and butter. Friend, that’s your target market. So that’s the angle. You gotta work cuz that’s where most of your potential is.
So we look at those 25 clients you’re going to see in a week, right? Five a day, times five, a week, 25 clients in a week. And they’re each paying 50 bucks a piece, right? 20 for the cut, 30 for the color. Friends, Ashley’s making $1,250 a week.
Do the math on that. If Ashley takes two weeks vacation a year, friends, Ashley’s making 62 grand this year. Ashley’s making $31 an hour with her $20 cuts and her $30 root touch ups. That’s not bad. Like that’s some real money in a lot of places in this country. I’m living in the San Francisco Bay Area. If my daughter was making this kind of money, she’d be able to live out on her own, like she’d do okay. She wouldn’t be rolling in it, but she’d do all right. She could survive and build on that. I’m not saying like, “Oh, if that’s max potential, you’re set for life,” but that’s a real place you can build from.
And so when I see stylists who are making like 25 grand a year, 30 grand a year, and they’re like, “Well, sorry, my market’s just capped out,” I always have to do like the eye squint and the head tilt. And I’m like, “But no, but they’re not.” Because when we look at the potential of Ashley, Ashley’s at a really low price point and let’s say Ashley’s a booth renter, and so a part of this goes towards renting her booth and buying her color. That’s fine. This is still a business you can build on. And so when we’re looking at service totals below that, we really have to look at like, “Am I working the maximum potential of my business? Am I looking at my business shortsighted?” And often when we’re like, “I’m at such a low price point, I can’t even make good money,” our spirit gets so crushed that we stop fighting to make what our actual potential is.
I want you to run the numbers for yourself. Look at your cut/colors. Let’s actually go into another example and I’m going to lead you to an exercise and an end here.
So let’s look at another example. Let’s imagine we have a stylist named Nate and Nate has a couple kids at home and maybe Nate’s a single dad. And what Nate needs to do is he actually needs to be home during the day to take care of the kids. He’s able to work in the evenings and on Saturdays only. So Nate’s availability is four days a week and he’s able to do three evenings a week for three hours a night, maybe like 5 to 8 PM on like Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or something like that, and then he’s able to do all day Saturday. So Nate’s got 17 hours a week available to work.
Now let’s say Nate’s in a market where he’s charging 40 bucks a cut, 60 bucks for root touch ups, and maybe he does do some highlights. So 75 bucks for highlights, okay, this is nothing wild. This is reasonable, kind of mid-range for a lot of people. So Nate’s potential is only 11 guests a week. Ashley was able to see 25. Nate’s only able to see 11 ‘cause remember he’s only got three evenings a week, three hours an evening, and then he is able to do a full Saturday. 17 hours a week of availability. Guess how much our man Nate would make working 17 hours a week? 55 grand a year. Isn’t that interesting? 17 hours a week at 55 grand a year.
People would kill for a job like that. That is a dream opportunity. And this man’s only working three hours a night, three days a week and eight hours on Saturdays. That’s not an income to shake a stick out. That’s really good. That works out to 55 grand a year. And that’s giving Nate two weeks vacation a year as well. If he does work 52 weeks and does not take two weeks vacation, it goes up even higher.
Guess what Nate’s hourly rate is? He’s making less per week than Ashley, right? He’s only making $1100. Ashley was making over 12. Nate’s making $64 an hour. Do I just drop the mic right here? Working 17 hours a week.
And so we look at like, “Well, based on my circumstances, I can only do this. I can only do that. These things are not possible to me,” it’s all possible, my friends. This is why we joined this industry.
So for those of you who can work more or your price point’s higher, if this is possible for Ashley and for Nate, what is possible for you? Really look at your wealth, really look at what you want. Really look at what you want your life to look like and start asking yourself, “Am I maximizing my potential? Do I like the schedule I’m working? Am I seeking every opportunity? Is my target market honed in? Am I going all the way in on my business? What blind spots am I leaving that aren’t allowing me to live to my maximum potential?”
So I hope this one’s been inspiring for you. It was a really fun one for me. As I always like to say, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
