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 thought this week we would talk about the beautiful world of assisting.
Now when I joined the industry, I did join as an assistant. When I was in cosmetology school, I was naive as I’ll get out, and I really thought I would go to cosmetology school, rent a booth, make six figures and be happy. I really thought that’s what it looked like.
And then it became pretty apparent to me, probably about halfway through cosmetology school of like, “Oh, I’m not going to know everything there is to know about doing hair once I leave this joint.” I think that all of us who are seasoned or have been in the industry for a minute know that. We’ve been around. It’s like you say it tongue and cheek, like, “Well, obviously,” but when you’re first going to school, like, remember how we all thought it was going to be so much easier and so different than it was?
That’s a note to anybody who’s in cosmetology school, listening to this in barbering school, in esthetician school, only in the industry for three months. Those of us who have been around for a minute know that it takes time and work, and it doesn’t have to take years and years, but there is this learning curve of jumping into the industry that wasn’t anticipated for most of us when we first went to school.
So I saw some salon owners come in and present at our school and a couple in particular had these really great assisting programs. I decided that was going to be the path for me. I wanted to be as successful as possible, and to me, it was like getting your bachelor’s degree, right? So you can get an associate’s, you can get a bachelor’s, you can get a master’s, and I felt like I really wanted to take my basic cosmetology school education and really refine it and I wanted to be mentored.
Now here’s where things turn. So when I was at that place in space in 2007, I was really willing to put in the work and put in the time and put in the reps and put in the hours and dedicate. One of the assisting programs I considered was two years long and it was a departmentalized salon. I was like, “Well, maybe that’s for me.” I ended up not choosing there, not for any specific reason. It just wasn’t for me.
Those days have really died and I want to talk about the new wave of assisting, what the next generation is looking for in assisting programs, and what I believe working with assistants will look like.
Now, before anybody waves the flag and says, “Oh no, she’s going to say things, and it’s going to change the what assistants ask for,” like, “based on what Britt says, assistants are going to now start expecting something different.” No, no. I’m reporting this based on what I’ve seen over the last couple of years. I have had the chance to talk to some cosmetology school students and this is their perception of what assisting looks like.
Here’s what we often do when we’ve been in the industry for a while: we say things like, “Well, they just don’t understand,” or “It’s just because they’re new,” or “Well, we can show them the way,” and to a degree, yes. But on the flip side of things, we also have to understand, like I talked about in a podcast episode a few weeks back, the newer generations don’t want what us millennials wanted. They don’t want what Gen X wanted. They don’t want what boomers wanted. They want something different.
Remember how growing up you were like, “Well, that’s my parents’ way of doing things.” For anybody who’s my age, like mid-thirties and up, we are those people now and so you have to at some point, start saying like, “Okay, but what is up and coming?” right? “What does that look like?”
So let’s talk about if you want to mentor assistants. If you’re currently working with assistants, if you feel like it’s become harder to get assistants, or if you just want to make sure that you’re bringing on the best and the brightest and delivering what they’re looking for, this episode is for you.
Starting right at the top of what assistants are looking for, they feel the need, the need for speed. I can’t iterate that enough. They want things very timely.
I talk about the four areas of wealth, right? There’s financial wealth, which is money. And then I talk about health and I talk about love wealth, which is just the relationship wealth in all forms. And then time wealth. Okay, well, those who are going to be entering the assistant pool are, generally speaking, going to be like our Gen Zs, millennials, maybe, but wildly gen Z. They are time wealth people. They value time so big.
Now the other thing is they are on a race for success. So I’m a millennial and we were raised to think like, well, pay your dues, do your time, success will come. It that’s very much of the previous generations. Gen Z was not raised in that same kind of world. You have to remember, they watched YouTube stars rise to fame overnight. That social media really tainted their impression of what success looks like. And so for a lot of us, we say, “Well, that’s not real.” No, no, it is real, like that really did happen for people and so this generation is like, “Well, why would I spend six years learning something when I could make half a million dollars in six months on TikTok?” That’s literally their mindset. So you’re competing against TikTok when you’re hiring an assistant. I’m not kidding. They’re looking at you and they’re like, “Why would I shampoo people for you for a year when I could make viral content and blow up in five seconds?”
Have you guys seen the trend of people going on TikTok or Instagram, any social platform really, and sharing transparently their salaries. That’s such a big trend right now and they’re talking about like, “Well, I left this job ‘cause they were paying me this much and now I’m here. I negotiated this salary”—and these are young people, like people in their twenties.
You have to understand people who are assisting are watching that stuff and they’re like, “Wait a second. I could go be an executive assistant somewhere and make $75,000. Why am I here sweeping the floor?” In our mind, we’re like, “Because you’re working towards something, you’re getting somewhere. This is going to be so much better than being an executive assistant one day.” But remember, their wealth is time. They’re not worried about one day. They’re worried about right this second, and so as we develop these new assistant programs, we have to keep that in mind.
Like I said, they feel the need, the need for speed. That’s going to start from the moment they’re considering application. They’re not going to spend days and days, and weeks and weeks, and hours and hours looking for a great salon to assist for. They’re looking for a salon that has a great reputation, which to them, reputation is going to be the Interest level of a marketing funnel, so social media, online reviews. They are going to look for a really badass website because they’re particular. This is a technology generation, okay. This is what they’re looking for. They want to see culture, they want to see energy. They don’t just want to see beautiful hair. They want to see a team that they can relate to, right? Salons that offer diverse salon menus is really important for this next generation up and coming, right? Really thinking about am I offering what this generation is looking for.
Next, when we get to, “I feel the need, the need for speed,” they want to apply on your website. Here’s the ringer: don’t make them upload a resume. Don’t. First of all, a lot of ’em don’t even know how to do a resume. Second, resumes are becoming a little bit passé. It’s like not a thing that is normally done anyway.
What I would do is create a digital application form right on your website. They should be able to do it on mobile. That’s critical, and that’s why attaching the website or attaching the resume is something we want to phase out because not everybody has it on their phone. So we want to make this as easy as possible.
If you start saying, “Well, I want them to jump through the hoops. I want them to attach the resume,” that’s fine. You’re just not going to get the best and the brightest, because those who are hungry and eager feel the need, the need for speed, and they want to just get it going.
So you want the form on your website. They enter in their information and you can ask poignant questions, like “What related work experience have you had?”. Let them type it in.
I’m not saying that those questions are irrelevant. I’m saying that the concept of asking an assistant to upload a resume is a dated way of doing things.
They should apply on your website, then you should respond to them within 24 hours. If more time than that passes, they’re going to go somewhere else. They’re going to move on. Their attention span is quick, and like I said, they want to get this ball rolling. Okay, great.
So where are these people applying? Like I said, they’re going to look at you on social, going to look at your website, and they’re looking for places they can see themselves and they feel like they can learn.
Now, what does learning look like for them? This is where it really changes. In-depth in-person, hands-in type of mentorship that is delivered regularly, often and fast. Again, going back to fast. When I was an assistant, we had six hours a week of dedicated education time, which a lot of you are like, “Whoa, that’s a lot.” I know in a lot of salons, somebody assists and they’re learning as they go, or they do a one eight-hour day, a month or something like that. We had six hours a week. It was a ton. It still took us a year to get through. You’d be hard pressed to find an assistant who wants to do that now. It would be very challenging.
What I’m finding when I talk to these cosmetology school graduates or even people who are assisting right now, they’re like, “I want someone to mentor me. I want to feel like somebody is taking the time to get to know me. I’m taking the time to get to know them. I’ll dedicate to them. I’ll be totally all in, but I want to be trained in six months or less.”
Six months is really, really long. That would be like maximum. What they’d like is an eight week mentorship, maybe 90 days. And then as I say that, we start to say things like, “Well, that’s impossible. It takes years to learn good hair color,” but see, that’s where we’re missing. The mark is that they’re willing to put in the work, study hard, maybe make a few mistakes on their first clients, but they want to get the advanced education and go at a pace that serves them.
Now we could argue, “Well, we’re going to lose quality in that,” but you have to understand this is what they want.
So go back in time to when assistant programs weren’t the thing. How did stylists learn how to do what they were doing? Through trial and error. So they’re almost like “Give me the basics, give me the foundation, pour into me and I’ll learn as I go.”
What we did with assisting programs is we basically allowed new stylists to play safe. There was a lot of hoops to jump through and a lot of check marks to make. And like, whoa, let’s make sure we’re doing everything properly. Now, it’s more like, make sure they understand what formulation looks like, make sure they understand the chemistry, make sure they understand placement of foils or lightener or whatever it is you’re doing. Make sure they understand how to cut hair types and textures, make sure they understand how to style hair, but then let them cut their teeth. That’s essentially what they’re looking for.
I know that’s really difficult for us because we think like, “Well, how can somebody learn enough that fast?” That’s for you to figure out and that’s what this podcast is for.
When I say that, a lot of you are probably thinking, “I couldn’t pull that off in six hours a week.” I don’t think you could either. And this is where this gets tricky is when I talk to these new stylists, they’re like, “I’d like four hours of teaching a day and four hours of assisting a day.” That’s what they’re looking for. They’re looking for that level of mentorship.
So if you’re a salon team, it’s like, do you have a few different stylists? Somebody does a morning class for two hours and someone does an evening class for two hours. And the assistant assists four hours in the middle. I don’t know. Or is it a morning class for four, the assistant helps the stylist for four and then the stylist is on their own for four. Again, I don’t know. But what I’m saying is this is what assistants today want. Very heavy.
I cannot stress enough the amount of mentorship and learning they want. They want to learn, like they want to be poured into, but it can’t just be the kind of education where it’s like, “Okay, well, I think what we’re going to do today is a long layered cut.” They want to know, “Okay, week one, we’re going to master boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, week two, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, week three, yada yada, yada, yada,” and they want to plan. They want to stick to it and it needs to be strategic and formulaic. That’s really what they’re looking for.
Now when I was coming up, what I really wanted to do, but I couldn’t afford it was Sassoon has these programs that are called ABCs of Cutting and Color. I believe that they still have them. They’re these very intensive experiences and they’re not cheap, but you learn foundational cutting and color almost like in a bootcamp, really intensive.
I got to tell you, I think programs like that are going to explode. That’s what stylists today want when they’re joining the industry, like “Teach it to me in depth. I’ll work hard, but teach it to me fast.” So if you need to have intensives with your assistants, like maybe Monday and Tuesday, you’re teaching them all day, and then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, they’re assisting you. They’re working on doll heads when you don’t have a client. It could look like that. That’s when they’re getting their reps in, but they want very hands-on, very intensive education.
Now the other thing that they want, and this may be the trickier part, but I actually think there’s some good workarounds is they want control of schedule and flexibility. This is the part that makes it really difficult for stylists is that flexibility. Because you’re like, “If I double book, I can’t have an assistant who’s flexible. I need them to be there.” If you’ve double booked and you work with an assistant and they call out sick, you know what I’m talking about? You’re like, “But how will I do this?” It becomes an actual problem and I get that.
The other part of it, you have to remember though, is that they want a really short-term experience. The assistant cycle used to be 12 to 14 months. You’d get an assistant in, they’d work with you for a year, two years, something like that. It’s now more like 90 days to six months. That’s your assistant cycle now with the full expectation that they’ll be able to start taking their own clients at 30 days.
Yeah. That’s when they want to start building and then they want to be fully booked on their own, like spreading their wings six months in. That’s the timeline that they’re working with. So thinking creatively about how do I create that freedom and flexibility, maybe you say straight up, “Listen, for the first 90 days, we’re in this and you are going to have to commit to me and I’m going to pour all into you.” And maybe that’s the most intense education portion. But after the 90 days, they’re going to start feeling antsy for that flexibility for time off, to be able to do stuff with their friends, all that kind of stuff.
We had implemented a policy when I was an assistant and then when I was running our assistant program that you could only request—it’s laughable now—one Saturday off a year. A year. Can you believe that? That would never fly today, but 15 years ago? Sure. That was a totally normal thing to ask. That would never work now.
When you’re saying, “Well, Saturday’s my busiest day,” okay, I just want you to think outside the box for a moment, knowing what you know about what assistants want now, would you consider if you’re a double booker—I have some feelings about double booking, but if you double book, could you consider offering double booking on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, when your assistant is there to support you? Saturdays, you don’t double book. You single book and you premium price it. If you’re in Thrivers, if you know, you know. You premium price to the day. So you’re actually still making the same amount of money you’re working less hard. And your assistant gets Saturdays to build their clientele. That would be a salon every assistant would line up to work for.
Think innovatively like that. Think about “What can I offer that’s cutting edge, where I’m able to meet all of these demands, educate in depth, feel the need, the need for speed, allow this person to book how they want to and still sustain a great client experience?”. That becomes the question.
Like I said, I don’t have all the answers. What I’m sharing with you is the wishlist of assistants today, that these are really the things that they’re looking for and that they’re hoping for. So it’s looking at your salon and your team and your culture and saying, “Okay, what can we offer these people that works for us?”
Now, the other thing you might consider is not offering assistant programs at all, and instead offering some kind of intensive for 10 weeks or six weeks or whatever. Come to the Seva Salon. We do sessions on Sundays and Mondays, or Mondays and Tuesdays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, whatever the heck you want to do. Remember these are people who are being mentored Tuesdays and Wednesdays. You come in and we do all-day training sessions. This is for new cosmetology graduates. They pay you. You’re not even paying them. Listen to me. This is going to get good. They pay you, you mentor them, teach them, the best of the best who go through your training program get an opportunity to work for you as a new stylist.
Oh, to me, that could be a really working model because then you have like this working interview with them that they’re actually paying for. You’re not out money trying to see if this assistant’s going to work out, they’re getting educated, and then they come in and work for you. Really think about what it looks like to have an assistant, what you’re looking for from that person, like a good junior stylist who’s brought on as an employee can still be asked to help out around the salon when they don’t have clients. If they’re being paid hourly, they’re an employee. That’s a very reasonable thing to ask, right?
So I invite you to think differently about assisting. I invite you to not think about assisting from 1999 and think about what assisting could look like today. Think about the new generation. I invite you to go to a cosmetology school and talk to them for a minute and understand deeply what they’re looking for before you pitch your program to them.
So much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
