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 today we’re going to talk about what to do if your demand is so high, it’s actually causing you problems.
Whoa, this is such a flip side of the coin.
I said that I’m going to be focusing the podcast on talking about the extremes rather than being so general. I want to talk about what it’s like to be brand new to the industry, what it’s like to be seasoned and struggling, what it’s like to be mega successful and the problems that come with that. I want to really dive into all aspects of the industry as we head into this next iteration of the podcast, and I got a really great Instagram DM from somebody who is like, “My demand is so high that I actually feel like I’m playing small.”
I think that if you’ve not been in that position, it can be difficult to understand, so I want to dive into a lot of the realities of the industry, what growth looks like, and then really talk about what to do if your demand is so high, it’s hurting both your income and your growth, which can happen.
I’m just going to spoiler alert, the solution is not raise your prices, so if you’re like, “I don’t need to listen to this, I know what her solution’s going to be,”—in 2022, 2022 was really the turning point year, I think, at least from my perspective as a coach when dozens, I don’t know, 40 to 60 probably people came to me and they were like, “I raised my prices and lost a lot of money. What do I do?” 2022 was really the first year where I saw it almost as an epidemic. It wasn’t just one person, which I can remember back in—it was probably like 2010, there was somebody in my salon who insisted on having a price increase. I tried to talk them out of it, like I knew on paper, I was like, “This is a terrible idea.” However, they insisted. The owner of my salon was like, “I don’t want to have this battle,” which was always, that’s always such a mistake. That’s never the reason to do anything. Didn’t want to walk the fire and was like, “Okay, do it.”
Man, that stylist probably lost 30 grand that year. It was terrible, terrible. All because of a price increase. It was just awful.
And so I want to talk about how to ensure we don’t make those reckless mistakes, how we break patterns of the past, and what we do if your demand is so high that you truly think it’s hurting your income and your growth.
First of all, let’s talk about two indicators that your demand is unreasonably high, like unhealthy high. Your retention is too strong. Let me share with you an example. In our industry, we consider base clientele retention of 90% to be healthy. Industry average is a little bit more like 70, but we strive for about 90% retention. If you are retaining 90% of your clientele quarter over quarter, you have a sustainable business.
Now a lot of us emotionally are like, “Oh, I retain way more than that.” Very few people retain way more than that and it can be dangerous, so we’ll talk about that. Then when we look at new guest retention, we want to be retaining 30% of the new guests we meet or more.
Now again, if you’re retaining over 60% of the new guests you meet, it doesn’t necessarily mean something is wrong, but it should be a red flag and the red flag, or maybe it’s like a hot orange flag, like that neon caution cone flag where it’s like, “Am I missing something?” Not like “sound the alarm, I’ve got a real problem here,” but like, “Whoa, am I playing too small?” if your retention is off, if you’re turning business away.
I remember the stylists of the 19—I really go back to like 1998. I don’t know why it takes me way the heck back there, but when stylists were like, “Ugh, I just feel so good about myself, I’m turning away 10 to 15 clients a month.” That is a tremendous sign of an unhealthy business.
If you were to bring in a business evaluator, like you were looking to sell your business or a financial strategist or a business analysis or a marketing expert and you said you were turning away that volume of business, they’d be like, “How long have you been doing this? And why?” There is no—I can’t think of an example of any great business model where you’re regularly turning a volume of clients away. It doesn’t make sense.
I was actually very recently mentoring—I can’t even say coaching, they didn’t even pay me, they just reached out and my heart bled for them—a veterinary clinic that was—they’re like, “You know what? We know we’ve done super well but we feel like we’re missing something,” and their veterinary books had been closed for like 18 months. I was like, “Okay, I’m going to ask you to try all these different things.” We implemented some strategies to shift their demand and within probably six or seven months—it took a while for me to follow up with them and see what was going on—they were like, “It’s like the financial floodgates opened. Everything really changed for us when we stopped looking at being so in demand as being a good thing.” When they really shifted gears on like, “Wow, turning clients away, feeling like we’ve already conquered our clientele was a massive disservice to the business,” and they had been turning away clients for a really long time.
If you’re turning business away, that’s a key indicator that your demand is so high that it’s hurting your income and your growth. If your guests struggle to get on your books, if you call out sick and to reschedule somebody, you’d either have to come in and work extra days or they would need to wait a month to get back on your books, that is a problem. It’s hurting your income and your growth.
We just want to look at what we can do to create a truly scalable business.
Now, when you’re to the place where your demand is this high—this is not everybody. This podcast is probably talking to 20% of the industry or less who really is in high demand. If you are experiencing any of those things, there’s a chance that you’re actually losing money. Leaving money on the table is what I should say and I want you to regain as much of it as possible.
What I don’t want you to do is, number one, like I said at the top of the episode, do not rush to increase your prices. You can actually end up further behind and then be like, “See, why did Britt tell us to do that?” Well, I didn’t tell you to do that, so don’t just think like a price increase is always the lever you pull when demand gets high ‘cause it’s not. It’s very dangerous.
Number two, don’t change your pricing structure or your business structure as a way to make things easier. One of the things we do a lot of time is we’re like, “Ugh, I’m exhausted. What can I do to make my life easier?” and we do things like we simplify our offerings or we shift our pricing structure and we’re like, “Well, this will be so much easier for me to manage.” There is a portion of systems and process that should make your life easier, there’s no doubt about it. But that should never be the forethought when we’re making business decisions.
It’s like, “You know what? I’m tired. How do I make my life easier?” For me as a business owner, let’s say I’m tired. I say, what are the reasons I’m feeling that way? How can we relieve that pressure from me while elevating the profit margin and the gross revenue in the process? And it really changes the solution.
As we get into the tactical, I want to give a little nod to podcast episode 214. Came out just over a year ago and it talks about different ways to grow your business. I listed the four that I believe in: expansion, scaling, shifting, and stabilizing. Now if you want to hear a breakdown of all four in detail, go back and listen to podcast episode 214, but I want to give you a brief overview.
When we look at expanding, expanding would be like adding to your service menu, adding more chairs to your salon, opening a secondary location or a third location, hiring an assistant so that you can run a double column or a triple column. That’s expansion. Expansion can bring you more money, but it will always require a financial investment. There will always be a short-term loss when you expand.
Expanding your service menu, expanding your salon, hiring an assistant, anything like that is going to cost you in the short term. It costs you profit margin, time, and it can be risky.
Then we look at scaling. Scaling is doing less, better. Generally to scale it and at some point will include a price increase and it allows you to work less and earn more. The problem with scaling is there is a maximum that you can scale and still increase your income. Some of you are eligible to scale, some of you are not.
The other thing is that scaling often feels boring for the driven beauty professionals. What happens is a lot of beauty professionals scale and then they’re like, “I’m bored. I’m going to develop my own extension line. I’m going to open a salon, I’m going to become an educator.” What they do is they fill the void that they created and they fill the void with more work.
That work doesn’t always produce profit. Sometimes it just makes them feel busy. It doesn’t even always make them feel productive.
When we do things where we’re like, “I’m successful as a stylist and I’m looking for my what’s next. I think I’ll open a salon,” y’all, probably 85 percent of the industry is not cut out to be a salon owner. That is not a bad thing. Not everybody is meant to own a business. It is stressful, it is hard, it can be incredibly rewarding. But when you choose to be a salon owner, you choose to only focus on yourself 15% of the time and spend 85% of your working hours worried about everybody else.
If you’re an owner and you don’t feel like your time is allocated that way, you’re likely showing up as a boss or a manager, not a leader, and so that’s not for everybody. Being an owner is really hard.
I think often when we look at how we fill the void as we scale, we have to be very smart.
Then there’s shifting. Shifting would be like a big schedule change or a restructure, so phasing out nights or weekends, adding in new systems or processes, doing what I call pioneering.
Pioneering is where you find a gap in an industry and you fill it in a way that nobody else has done before. The top 10% of businesses choose to shift. Shifting comes with a lot of risk but also generally has the biggest payoff.
Shifting is another option and it is something I’m going to be recommending in this podcast today.
Then we have stabilizing. Stabilizing is getting organized, cleaning up systems and processes, improving methods without adding anything new, and not actively seeking growth but instead looking to improve what it looks like to work with you so that in time you can expand or scale or shift.
I’ll say in my business in 2022 all we did was stabilize. That was the focus. We stabilized so that for the next two to three years we can scale and expand. We would not have been able to do that had we not taken a full year to hit cruise control and stabilize.
Stabilize feels boring. It’s annoying because it feels like you’re doing a lot of work but you don’t see an immediate payoff. If you tried to scale or expand or shift and your business is not stable, you are likely going to lose money and end up very tired and confused as to why am I working so hard and it’s not paying off.
Episode 214 if you want more details on any of those things, but I want to really focus on the idea of shifting more than anything as we look at what to do if your demand is so high that it’s hurting your income and growth.
The first thing that I would do, let’s say you’re getting anywhere from seven to 20+ new guest requests a month. Some of the stylists listening to this are exactly in that boat. They’re getting seven to 20 new guest requests a month and they can’t get them in or they can only get one in but they’re turning business away.
Okay, so something is not vibing and we have to troubleshoot what that is.
Step one for me is to reevaluate your target market. When we look at these requests coming in, are they just people who want to work with you or are they perfect target market clients? ‘Cause often when I go to these stylists or these salons and they’re like, “My demand is so high,” probably, hmm 40% at best of that demand is viable. A lot of those clients are really curious but can’t afford your rate. Super interested but wouldn’t be loyal to you, want to come in one time but you wouldn’t retain them. We have to look at, okay of those demands, what percent are perfect target market clients and will be viable for the long term?
Now, if that’s in alignment with your specialty—if, for your specialty, you’re like, “You know what, I mostly do color corrections, so having people who are here for the long haul isn’t really what I’m all about,” that’s fine. Then you’re mostly looking to screen for things like budget, right? What you’re screening for would be very, very different.
Then we have step two, update your brand positioning and your message. When we’re looking at something like brand positioning, I want you to ask yourself how are you positioned in your marketplace currently? Are you seen as somebody who is worth investing in? Are you seen as somebody who’s exceptional and stands out in a crowded market? Or are you looking like just another stylist in your area, ‘cause there is a real and radical difference.
I was coaching somebody recently who was like, “You know, I feel like my demand is really good and I actually for a long time wasn’t taking new guests, but now my retention,” Everybody loses clients over time. She’s like, “Now I’m in a place where I have some more gaps on my schedule and I’d really like to start taking more guests. How do I do that?” This is somebody—imagine this journey. A couple of years ago she was seeing so much demand that she actually stopped taking new guests. Flash forward and now she’s at a place where she’s like, “I want to add more guests to my books. Where do I start?”
Well, I looked at her marketing funnel and what it looked like is a great marketing funnel for a couple of years ago. It doesn’t look like the marketing funnel that represents somebody who is so booked, so busy, so in demand that she can command a high price point, that she can start really being picky and choosy about what kind of clients she sees, who is sitting in her chair. That was not the messaging, that was not the energy, and so it’s not a surprise to me when that’s not who she’s attracting to her business either.
What I said was, “You know, step one”—’cause she was asking, “Where am I going to find these perfect target market clients who really fit into this now higher echelon business or target market that I’m looking to achieve?”
And I said, “Listen, for you, step one is you actually need to elevate your brand position and your message so that you become so highly desirable that it is worth it to potentially jump through extra hoops simply to sit in your chair. Before we even start saying, ‘Do I raise my prices?’,” I said, “No, no, no, you definitely don’t touch your prices. Not at all. Instead we focus probably for a period of months on improving the brand positioning and the brand messaging so that we are set up to scale.”
When I talked about that season of stabilizing for somebody like this, that’s 110% where they need to be like you need to really get your ducks in a row so that we can pull some other levers and make some amazing stuff happen for you.
Step number three, update your process. This is where we get to do things, where we get to tinker with process.
One of the things I’ve seen happen really recently is people are almost gating their business, like to get into work with you has become so hard and so complicated. They’re probably losing guests who are like, “Forget it, I want to work with you but not this bad.” And for some of you, like if you really have such a high demand, you’re like, “Oh f it, like 90% of the people who want to see me, I don’t even want to see them.”
Okay, then you can have a very complex appointment request process with lots of forms to fill out and tons of boundaries and really heavy policies and you can do all that and that’s fine, that’s totally your prerogative. But just know that when you have a very heavy process, that is a hundred percent going to change the kind of clientele you see and the perception of you. For some of you that’s exactly what you need. For some of you, it’s working against you.
I invite you to look at your process and ask yourself, “Is this serving me?”
This stylist I was coaching who’s overly booked, I was saying, “You know, I noticed that you have a new guest request submission form on your website,” where they fill out a bunch of information and the form gets submitted to the stylist, which is very—we talk about that in Thriving Stylist Method. I’m all for that, but I actually felt that her form was not appropriate for the demand that she was having. I did not believe that her form was doing its job in order to bring in the kind of clientele that she was seeking and also screen out those who were not an appropriate fit.
Now, when I say screen those out, I think sometimes we add forms to our website or pieces to our process to almost put our foot down or cement ourselves and be like, “Yeah, look how tough I am.” Instead, your process can actually give your clients the warm fuzzies if you set it up properly.
Now, here’s what a lot of people do. A lot of stylists or salon owners will be like form, process, boundary, hard challenge, and then once you make it through the obstacle course of booking with a person, then they’re like, “Oh my gosh, you made it, come on in. Everything is wonderful.” That’s going to be really challenging as the market shifts in 2023, 2024, and 2025 is like if you jump through these six flaming hoops, in the end, I’m going to treat you amazing. That’s going to be a tough sell.
That worked in 2020, 2021, 2022 even, when we had this surplus of clients that the flaming hoops were necessary. As we shift gears, we have to welcome people or introduce people or screen people for our business in a different way.
So updating your process and saying, “Is my process allowing me to attract the dream clientele that I want at the price point that is appropriate for my demand? And if not, what are the things that can change?”
Then number four, update your guest experience. This to me is arguably the most important. If your demand is so high it’s hurting your income and your growth, we start to look at “Okay, what is making me a badass? Why is it that people are interested in working with me?” It relates back to your demand margin. I’ve done some podcasts on this, but when we look at why that happens or how that happens, we look at the perceived value of your business.
Generally speaking, any consumer will choose a business because they think that the value they’ll receive is higher than the price they’ll pay.
I want you to remember this. Great clients, target market clients pay for a result, not a process. People want the result. They want to pay for the result and the result is the guest experience. The result is definitely how their hair looks in the end, but it’s the communication, it’s the experience of working with you. It is how they feel walking out of the space, how they feel between visits. That’s really what counts.
So if your demand is very high and it’s hurting your income and your growth, we look at your current experience and we say, “Okay, great. What in this is working? Where in this can I elevate? Where can I elevate this experience so that I can raise my prices, so that I can refine my clientele?” Maybe what you’re going to find is that your target market needs to niche down even further before you can even consider a price increase. Evaluating what can I do to make my guest experience so stellar that coming in to see me becomes a no-brainer.
Can you see how when somebody’s demand is so high, it’s hurting their income and growth? We actually go to a season of stabilizing before we even touch the pricing and we say, “Is this structure? Is what I’m offering? Is my service menu even aligned with where I want this business to go?” There’s this season of evaluation we need to go through.
One of my favorite stylists right now that I’m obsessing over, I’m watching her grow, her name is Taylor. She’s decided to incorporate things like Reiki and crystals and energy and essential oils into her business. Now as I say that, some of you’re like, “I do that.” I’ll be honest, I’ve never seen somebody do it the way that she’s doing it.
It’s not just that thing she does, it is like the essence of her being, like it’s on such a different level. If you’re like, “I don’t like crystals or incense,” that’s great ’cause she does not want you to come in there. Her demand is so high that it was hurting her income and growth. She had to get really specific and she was able to layer on, do a lot of the things I talked about, expand a little bit, layer on more services, change who she serves, change her brand positioning, like do all the things I’ve talked about here so that her income is no longer held back. Her growth is exponential.
By refining her target market, she actually opens herself up to a bigger market, which is the irony of the whole thing. Once she’s done that, then she can start tinkering with pricing levers.
Little recap, but if you are really booked to the nines and you’re like, “I feel like I’m losing money,” which I should talk about that for a second, for some people we get confused. When I say you can be booked so much that it’s hurting your income, let’s talk about that for just a brief moment. If you are fully booked out—and let’s say on average you’re bringing in a hundred dollars an hour. If you’re booked out for the next nine weeks at the hundred dollars an hour, five days a week for the next nine weeks, what’s five times 9? 45. So you’ll make—I’m really bad at math, y’all—4,500 bucks or whatever it is. But the demand is there for you to make more and you’re just not answering the call and I don’t understand that. I don’t understand why you’re not adjusting your business so that that cap disappears, so that you’re no longer, and then we’re like, “Well, I’ll raise my prices.” Cool. So you raise your prices five or 10 bucks. That’s not even 10%. It’s such a minimal incremental increase. It’s not actually an adjustment that is appropriate for what’s happened to the demand of your business, right?
That’s why a lot of people who are really, really, really booked think that they’re doing so well, but they’re retaining too high and they’re actually being held back financially because they’re not unlocking all the potential of the industry. That’s when they do silly things like say, “Okay, I need to open up a secondary business to fulfill all of my wants, needs, desires, and income.” It’s just so not true.
I hope this has opened your eyes a little bit to possibility. We’re going to keep diving down this rabbit hole a little bit, talking about what to do if you’re building as a new, Struggling, or Sinking stylist. We’re going to get into more social media strategy this year and so much more.
Good stuff to come, y’all. So much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
