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, you guys? Britt Seva here, and I am extra, extra excited for this week’s episode. You know I’m always excited, but I’m extra excited this week because I am including a highly-actionable PDF workbook that goes along with this week’s episode. It’s been a minute since we’ve been able to do this and so I’m really excited.
The reason it’s been a minute is when you take a look at this PDF, you’re going to be like, “Oh shoot, Brit’s taking it to another level,” and we are.
I’m really excited for this episode. I’m super stoked on the new PDF workbook we’ve created for you guys because it really has the potential to change the way you look at your business, your future, make all of your marketing choices, so I’m really excited for you.
I’m just going to give you the URL now, and then we’ll dive in. So if you had to brittseva.com/marketing — simple, right? brittseva.com/marketing — you can get your hands on this brand new PDF workbook.
No matter how long you’ve been following me for, you’ve never seen this before. It’s super brand new. And in it, I break down the Hair Stylist Marketing Funnel, the Hair Stylist Retention Funnel, and my Hair Stylist Success Hourglass System so you can start putting that framework into place in your business.
Let me go back in time for a minute and share with you how this all came to be. Because when you take a look at it, part of it looks like a believable and part of it is like, “Well, maybe she just made this up,” and “How do I know that this is true?”
That’s a really fair question. How do you know anything I coach is true? Like what if I’m just making up stuff and you’re drinking the Koolaid. It’s fully possible, right?
So let me just share the backstory of how this all came together. I’ve been coaching hair stylists since 2012. (I can’t believe it’s been that long.) And that coaching career began very organically for me. I didn’t seek it out. Stylists and salon owners were seeking me out. They saw that I was doing things differently than others in our area and they started asking if I’d be willing to consult.
I actually did it a little bit awkwardly because I didn’t really know what I was doing at the time. I didn’t have experience in it.
For me, a lot of what I was coaching to came very naturally. It just seemed like common sense. But what I realized is there are so many hair stylists and salon owners in our industry who don’t come from a marketing background who don’t have a business background. That, I believe, was my cutting edge stepping into the industry as I had worked in sales, marketing, and business for many years before making the leap.
When I would coach with these stylists and salon owners — I had probably done 15 or 21 on one coaching opportunities — when I really started to see patterns, there were nuances, but more or less, everybody was struggling with the same things. As I began to fix these problems, the path to fixing it was the same. Like we would put the same pieces in place.
There are eight pieces, and I’m going to share them all with you. We put the same eight pieces in place and poof, it was like magic. Everything would work. I was like, “Well, dang, if I can box up with a bow and make this easy for people to understand, I mean, I could truly revolutionize the entire industry.”
When I got to a place with my one-on-one coaching where there was only one of me and my waitlist was too long and I could never get to all the people, I started feeling horrible about it.
I didn’t like the fact that I wasn’t able to help as many as I wanted to, which is why in 2015, I launched Thrivers Society, the industry’s first business-based digital education program. We’ve helped over 10,000 stylists to transform their lives and business for the program.
I would love to offer you the same benefit and opportunity, but until you’re ready to make that leap — or if you already have, I’m so happy to have you in the Thrivers family. If you haven’t yet made the leap, I want to share with you a bit of the methodology, some of the strategies that we teach to. And I think that in doing that, you’re going to gain some insights as to why some of your efforts work and some of them fall flat, and you’ll also better understand what needs to happen next.
So here’s the thing that I know and the thing that’s become even more prevalent in 2020 as we walked through this pandemic: I know it’s overwhelming trying to fill your chair. Completely overwhelming.
I remember that feeling of overwhelm. And then it’s doubly overwhelming when you do fill the chair, that you have to find the time and energy to serve all of those new guests, and do the marketing strategies, and be creative, and come up with awesome captions, and take great social media pictures. How your referral program doing, what are you doing for all of these different things? It’s too much.
It feels like being behind the chair is job number one and then there’s six other hats you’re supposed to wear, and how are you supposed to find time to do all the things?
Here’s the hint. You’re not supposed to find time to do all the other things.
You’re supposed to put a system into place so that all of the things feed into each other and once the system is in place, it’s like putting business on autopilot. Business on autopilot doesn’t mean you don’t have to do anything anymore. You talk to anybody in Thrivers society. They’re not going to say, “Oh, that’s great. I don’t have to do anything anymore.”
What happens is your efforts actually produce results.
Raise your hand if you’re listening to this podcast and you have tried your darndest on Instagram, and you’re still not seeing the results you’re looking for. You have really, really tried to change your guest experience. You’ve modified your pricing. You have a great referral program in place. Your salon is beautiful. Your team is amazing. You’re a great salon leader. All of these pieces are in place. You’re extra-talented, like your skills are on the next level. And yet you’re still not working that dream business you thought was possible.
Maybe you feel like you’re overworked and underpaid. Maybe you feel like you are making good money, but you’re working so damn hard to get there, it doesn’t even feel worth it.
Wherever you land, this Thriver Society success system and the Hair Stylist Success Hourglass is the game changer to get you to where you want to be…and I want to share some of those secrets with you today.
when you download the PDF at brittseva.com/marketing, what you’re going to see is it looks like an hourglass. You know what an hourglass is; it’s that thing and there’s thousands of grains of sand in it, and when you turn it upside down, the sand runs from top to bottom for an hour.
The reason they call it an hourglass is it keeps the time, right? So once the sand falls from top to bottom, it’s been an hour. So when you take a look at the Hair Stylist Success Hourglass, you can see I have it broken down into eight different layers.
Those layers are awareness, interest, desire, opportunity, trust, nurture, loyalty, and lead.
When you’re taking a look at the visual, what you’ll see is the hourglass is made of two components. One component is what I call the marketing funnel and the other component is what I called the retention funnel.
So there’s the efforts we do to get a guest into our chair and then there’s a second set of efforts we put into place to keep them there. That’s something I noticed a lot of people weren’t coaching to. They were saying, “Well, you got to just do all the things: referral programs, social media, amazing guest experience. Pricing’s gotta be right to sell the retail.”
It was this mess of things we were all supposed to do. I said, “Ah, that’s completely overwhelming.” It’s like trying to cook a pot of all of these different marketing ingredients and then hoping the recipe turns out, right?
It doesn’t. It’s going to be burned and you’re going to hate it. So instead of trying to create a hairstylist marketing stew, let’s just put this into an organized funnel with levels that you can take a look at and even diagnose when they’re not working correctly.
It was through this system that I was able to pinpoint accurately 100% of the time why a stylist’s business was succeeding or failing and I want to give you that gift as well.
So what I’m going to do — you’re going to download this PDF and you’re going to be able to see the visual — but until you have that visual, what I’m going to do is go through all of the layers, top to bottom.
At the very top, we have the awareness layer. This is the layer that I always say lets people know that you even exist. It’s like me shouting from the rooftops. “I’m Britt Seva and I’m a hair stylist business coach.”
At some point in your lifetime, you were made aware of me and you were made aware of the fact that I have this podcast, right? Somebody told you something or you found it through an iTunes search, and then you became aware of me. Until that awareness happened, you didn’t even know I existed.
The reason why that’s so important is, until you had heard the name Britt Seva, until somebody had told you that I was legit, the work I did on my Instagram didn’t do anything to attract you. The blog posts I was writing did nothing for you. The emails I was sharing didn’t even matter. The program I offered is irrelevant because you don’t even know any of those things exist.
For a lot of you, the lack of awareness is bringing a lot of frustration because here’s what you feel like. You feel like you are taking all the photos. You’re trying your darndest on social media. You have created a beautiful website for yourself. Your guest experience is amazing. You’re a fantastic communicator. Your salon or your suite is beautiful just on another level. Your work is amazing.
And yet you’re still not growing as fast as you want to.
Nine times out of 10, it’s because you’re lacking awareness and awareness is comprised of lots of different things. The examples I share in the PDF would be handing out your business card; hashtagging on Instagram; referrals; running ads in magazines, Groupon, Facebook, or Instagram; community networking.
When I mention all of those things, I’m not suggesting you do all of those things. Some of those things, I would never suggest that you do. However, all of those things are in an effort to create awareness around a business.
That’s important to note because let’s talk about hashtagging on Instagram. How many of you do 30 tags on every post? You’re like, “Oh, Britt, I got that. I’m doing the hashtag thing.”
Okay, so what are hashtags? Hashtags are search tools, right? And let’s say somebody does look up a hashtag. Let’s pretend I’m in the San Francisco Bay Area, so let’s pretend it was #SanFrancisco stylist. Well, when they look at that hashtag they’re going to compare the photo they see that you posted to the 150,000 photos other stylists have posted using that hashtag.
How do you feel about that? Do you feel like your work and the photo you’re sharing stands up to the point where it stands out in a crowd of 150,000 and they say, “Oh shoot, now this is who I’ve got to see”?
Because if not, you can hashtag till the cows come home and it’s not going to change and grow your business. This is why we get to the interest level.
Below that awareness level, we have the interest level. The interest level is what I call the social proof that you’re awesome.
On that interest level, we have Facebook, Instagram, Yelp, NextDoor, Google My Business, LinkedIn. We could put Snapchat there, Pinterest there, The Knot if you’re a bridal stylist. Anything like that is going to live on the interest level.
Why is the interest level so important? Because consumers today love knowing that strangers like a business and this is why we’re all in such a race to get like a thousand followers on Instagram. I’m here to tell you right now the follower count doesn’t matter. The follower count is irrelevant.
Let me ask you this right now, what would you rather have? 1000 Instagram followers and every time you post a picture, you get 14 links and maybe a comment. Or would you rather have 250 Instagram followers, but every time you post a picture, you get 80 likes and 20 comments. What would you prefer? The latter every single time, right? You would choose lower follower counts and higher engagement every single time.
For those of you who said the thousand, this is why you’re playing the game wrong. It’s not about how many clients you have or how many followers you have. It’s what you do with them, right? So getting this interest level correct is really, really important.
I watch a lot of people spin their wheels at interest and they’re
A) not on the right platform,
B) not posting the right content,
C) not prioritizing the right content to post, or
D) they’re doing all of those things, right?
But because they don’t have the awareness level cranking, none of the work they do on social media is creating a drop in the ocean. No one’s ever going to find it. Cause you can have the most flawless Facebook page on the planet, but if you’re not driving awareness to that Facebook page, who do you think is going to stumble upon it? Nobody ever.
So these two pieces go hand in hand, right? That awareness and that interest piece.
Now below that interest piece, we have what I called the desire level, and if somebody makes it to the desire level of your marketing funnel, they’re in decision-making mode. They are not there by accident. They are there hoping that you push them over the edge to be a client.
If you lose them at the desire level, it’s all your fault. It’s because you did it wrong. There’s no other or “Oh, or they were looking for something else.” No, you did it wrong. If you lose them at the desire level, you did something wrong.
And do you know what? The only thing that lives at the desire level is — where my Thrivers at, you know what it is. You’re shouting it out in your cars. I can hear it — your website.
Your website is the only thing that lives at the desire level. This is why I’m always saying the website is so critical because a lot of you are like, “Websites? Nobody cares about that anymore.”
Yet you shop online all the time. I know you do. And do you feel good shopping at sketchy websites or do you feel good shopping at legitimate websites? Where do you want to invest your money? Where do you want to invest your time?
If an educated client is comparing you to three other stylists and y’all look great on social media. I mean, y’all look great. You’re talented. Photos are flawless. Captions are on fleek. Everything is hitting, and then you have the worst website, do you think there’s a chance that you’re going to win that contest? You’re not.
And we’re foolish to think that clients aren’t searching for stylists like that. We’re crazy to think that they’re not looking at all these levels — interest, awareness, desire — cause they’re looking at all of them.
If you lose them at desire, it’s because your website is not formatted properly. Formatted properly doesn’t mean “pretty”, okay? And it doesn’t even just mean branded. It means functional.
And even when I say functional, if you’re like, “Well I have, I definitely have all my pricing. You can book online,” that does not mean it’s functional. It has to be laid out in a very specific way to actually convert followers into clients.
I was talking with somebody in my Facebook group literally yesterday and she was like, “Do you know,” — she does some business consultations on the side, and she was saying, “I was consulting with a business outside of our industry who spent $300,000 on this website. Just from what I learned in Thrivers Society, I know exactly why their business is failing.”
She goes, “You can spend all the money that you want to, but it doesn’t mean that the website is actually going to turn followers into clients.”
And that’s correct. It can be professionally designed. It can be pretty. But if it’s not working for you to turn followers into clients, it’s literally a waste of internet space, okay?
Below that desire level, we have the opportunity level. This is where we can attract the perfect clientele.
How many of you have some clients you love? Like you almost wish they could be your best friend? They come in, they have a great time, you have a great time. They don’t try to negotiate pricing. It’s easy, breezy, lemon, squeezy. The conversation flows. They send you referrals.
You have a handful of those, right? And then you have a lot of clients who, if he or she never came back, you’d be okay with it, right?
When you get this opportunity level, you only work with dream clients. I know you’re like, “Yeah. Right. Sounds nice.” No, seriously, you don’t have clients that you don’t like anymore and when somebody does sit in your chair that you’re like, “Oh my gosh, is this serious? What we’re doing today?” you have the power to let them know that they’re not a good fit and that you think it’s a good idea for them to see somebody else. Maybe that sounds harsh. You guys, that’s how business works.
You should be working with clients who are a good fit for you. I’ll tell you right here, right now, if a client who wanted vivids sat in my chair, I would say with full confidence, “I love your vision. I love that. You want to do this beautiful mermaid hair. I have to be totally honest. I don’t specialize in vivids and I don’t feel like I can achieve the look you’re looking for today. However, a good friend of mine, Vanessa would be an amazing stylist for you and I’d love to set you up with her,” with full confidence and you know what? The client would be happier. I’m happier because I don’t have to do hair that I don’t love and Vanessa stoked because she just got a new guest. Win-win.
When everybody wins in that situation and when we can get good about this opportunity level, you’re only attracting dream clients. You have no bones about telling clients when they aren’t a good fit or you aren’t confident in what they’re trying to achieve because you know you have a steady stream of clients coming in right behind them to fill that spot.
Successful Thrivers who have put this whole system in place have 10 to 15 new referral requests a month.
I was just in my Elite Facebook group. Last week, we have one thriver who’s like, “I’m seeing 40 new requests a week. I don’t even know what to do, like, is it possible even in this pandemic universe?” but these are stylists who have the opportunity level, the desire level, the interest level and the awareness level kicking.
That’s why when I say putting business on autopilot, it’s not to say these ladies and gentlemen aren’t putting in work. They’ve put in tremendous work but they’ve set up a system that creates this painless flow where they don’t have to stress about, “I hope I still have more clients to see there’s so many coming in.”
The problem is, “How do I handle it all?” It’s a different kind of challenge right?
Then we have the trust level. This is where the emotional connection is made and it’s not just good consultations and it’s not just good head massages. It’s way deeper than that.
When a stylist doesn’t retain a new guest, it’s because something was lacking in the first visit almost always, right? First visits are like first dates except weirder because you actually change your date’s hair, which is so spooky and scary.
When’s the last time you saw a new stylist? It’s scary. You were like, “I hope they know how to formulate. I hope they know how to do extensions. I hope they know how to cut hair.” I didn’t know how to cut hair. So somebody should have been saying that when they sat in my chair, right? That trust is a huge piece and what builds trust is different for every guest that sits in your chair.
One of the things that we talk about in Thrivers society is the five different ways that that trust has to be built. The different learning methods, the different communication styles, what works for one will not work for the next.
This is why the best stylists today are only retaining between seven and 30% of the new clients who sit in their chair. 93% come and see you one time, and they’re like “Peace, you are not for me.”
For the best of the best of you, 70% feel that way, right? The more of these markers we can hit at that trust level, the better the odds are we’ll actually build. It’s so funny because everybody’s so worried about the marketing, right? Everyone comes to me for marketing. “Britt, teach me how to social media, teach me more about that awareness level marketing. How do I build the website? What do you mean target market and branding, right? How do I do all those things?”
I’ll teach you how to do all those things. Happy to do it. It’s like my bread and butter. I love it so much, but we can get that right and tight. And if we don’t get this trust level, right, it’s all for nothing. We’re going to attract all these people to your business. They’re going to be disenchanted, sit in your chair and be like, what the heck? That is not what they were selling, right?
Have you ever done that? Gone to a restaurant that looked great online. You sit down and you have two bites of your meal and you’re like, “This is garbage. I’m going to pay $35 for this meal. This is horrible.” That’s what some people feel like when they sit in your chair and it’s why they don’t come back for another visit, right?
The more we can get that trust level, the more you’ll retain and grow.This is how we gain scalability, right? The marketing funnels amazing for improving the client flow. This success hourglass that I’m getting into here is how we get that scalability, right?
This retention funnel on the lower half.
We have the nurture level. This is where the relationship builds. Once you’ve made it past that first date, that trust phase, you’re in the dating phase, right? Where you date someone for months or years or a decade before you decide to get married. That’s the nurture phase of the relationship with your clients.
This is where you make retail sales. You love on them with email marketing, you put a rewards program into place that they’ve never seen anywhere else. And they think, “Oh my gosh, why would I go anywhere else? This stylist takes amazing care of me.”
Like if you are with somebody you love, you know how you were like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve never been with anybody better.” That’s the nurture level and it’s consistent, right?
Imagine if you were dating somebody and everything was great. Just like a dream guy, dream girl. Everything’s great, and then like a year and a half and you’re like, “Hey babe, can you take out the trash?” and he’s like, “Take it out yourself. I’m tired.” Oh, okay.
More of that starts happening. You begin to become disenchanted. What has happened in that relationship, your partner’s taking you for granted.
We’ve likely been in relationships like that before, right? Where you’re like, “Oh man, he or she really tricked me. It was great in the beginning and then they took a turn.”
That happens with us as stylists to some of your clients just become Judy, Thursdays at four instead of, “Oh my gosh, Judy is coming in. What can I do to make her feel special today?”
We stop putting in that extra effort and you don’t have to jump through hoops. It doesn’t have to be this big, painful thing. We can systematize that nurture level so that you’re certain to retain and get clients to the loyalty level, which is level number seven.
This is where you are the decision-maker and are fully referral worthy. “What? Pump the brakes. I’m not referral worthy until I get my clients to the loyalty level?”
You heard it. This is why it makes me nervous. When I hear other coaches say, “Oh, you start asking for referrals at visit one,” are you kidding me? Would you ask to see somebody meet their parents after the first date? I should hope not. If I dated somebody on the first date, they were like, “This is great. I’d love to meet your mother,” I’d be like, “Oh my gosh, this is crazy. Are you insane?”
But that’s what happens when we start asking for referrals too early in the relationship. You have to nurture that relationship and get to the loyalty level until anybody’s going to invite you into their inner circle by sending friends and family. If you’re not getting your clients to the loyalty level, that’s why you’re not getting referrals.
Raise your hand if you’re not getting referrals? It’s because your guests are not reaching loyalty. 100%. I’ll tell you right now.
We need to learn to get them into this referral level if we’re going to build, grow, and scale, okay?
Then below that level we have lead, and this is where you can educate, inspire, coach, and mentor.
How many of you are struggling salon owners or you’re an educator and you’d like to build and scale faster, or you want to be a coach or a mentor? Here’s my suggestion: until you have all the levels of this funnel kicking for your business, you can’t possibly be an effective salon owner. You cannot possibly be an effective educator.
You know why? Because I’ve grown an education business and I know what those early years look like. And they’re hard. If you talk to any industry educator right now, they’ll tell you it’s not like a landslide where all of a sudden you’re like bang, I’m a big deal or you get consistent revenue. All of that takes a really long time.
If your hair stylist business isn’t solid and you’re starting a secondary venture, the struggle is going to be so real because you’ll have your foot on two sides here, right? One foot is building the salon business still, right? You’ve got to sustain because that’s where the paychecks coming in, and then the other foot is trying to build this education business.
You’re going to be overwhelmed in 2.5 seconds. Your money in the salon is actually going to start to dip because now you have split your efforts, but the salon business wasn’t as stable as you thought it was. It wasn’t scalable to the degree you thought it would be and so business starts to slip. The education business doesn’t build fast. Now you’re overwhelmed or stressed out. You’re not putting all your energy into either.
It’s a slippery slope versus you get your marketing funnel and your retention funnel kicking, and then you take on a second venture. That’s a recipe for success.
Same with my salon owners. I hear from a lot of salon owners, “Britt, this is an impossibility. How am I supposed to build my own clientele when I’ve got all these stylists who want a dozen things from me every single day?”
You put your business on autopilot and you do that through scalability system, like Thrivers Society that teaches you how to put this Hair Stylist Success Hourglass into place. That is the way to do it. When you look at salon owners who are really living a beautiful life, and often aren’t taking clients anymore, and still make a really great owner’s paycheck, and really enjoy the work they do, and have time to mentor their staff, they’ve done all these things.
You can call this my methodology for sure. It’s done from observations based on what I’ve coached to for almost a decade. And this is a replicable system and they, you or anybody else listening to this, right, anybody who downloads this PDF can put into place in their business to see tremendous growth and results.
So I want you to do that. Now. I want you to head to brittseva.com/marketing. Get your hands on this PDF. Run, don’t walk.
I know that you’re excited right now. I want you to jump on that enthusiasm and start really reviewing the workbook and say, “What are the areas I’m neglecting? Where do I need to make changes?”
You guys, I am really excited. We have a lot of free resources coming your way, a lot more free classes, and I’m so proud to be hosting them for you.
You guys, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see all on the next one.
