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: What is up, you guys? Britt Seva here. I hope you’re having a beautiful week this week.
I’m here to talk about the dangers of pre-booking. When we were making up these podcast titles, I was like, how can we make this as spooky and enticing as possible? And as we sat down and really looked at what I wanted to talk about on the podcast this year, I really wanted to double down on myth-busting big time and breaking old industry standards.
If you’ve come to any of my free trainings or you’re in Thrivers Society, you know I’m all about retiring that old mindset of what it means to be a stylist, what it means to be a barber, what it means to be a makeup artist, what it means to be a service provider in the personal services industry. I am here to change that perception.
We are a necessary piece of everybody’s world. People need to take care of themselves. It’s important now more than ever. And I want to change the perception of the entire industry. The only way that’s going to happen is if we all show up differently, if you choose to run the business behind your chair in a way that you didn’t do it 10 years ago, five years ago, three years ago.
We have to constantly evolve if we want the consumer’s perception of us to evolve. If we want to be able to make more money and have traditional benefits and have job security and have incredible leadership, and a lot of the things we want to have in this industry, we got to show up for it. This is one of those things that’s earned and talking about shifting things like the concept of pre-booking, shifting things like the perception of what a stylist schedule should be per se, shifting the perception of you’ve got to work hard to make that money. I don’t believe that at all.
And I think even the idea of work hard is different than we think. Often we think work hard means do as many clients as possible. No, no, no. That’s actually the slow path. To do as many clients as possible is the slow growth trajectory.
We want to work hard, but we want to work hard in the right areas, not the old school areas, right? When I was a stylist, the system that we worked in was you were rewarded for high volume, take as many guests as you can. One day you might even be able to triple book and then you’ll know you’ve made it. I call that the hair factory mentality, where it’s cranking out as fast as you can. How fast can we dial up this machine?
While I get it, because on paper, yeah, if you can do three times the guests, you can make three times the money.
We are human beings though. We are not machines. So your shoulders don’t want to do three times the blowouts, your back and your neck don’t want to do three times the haircuts, your feet don’t want to do three times the foils. They don’t.
Instead we need to think about strategic ways to scale and build and grow our business. So you’re going to see on the podcast this year a lot of myth-busting and a lot of revolutionizing the way we look at our industry and retiring old habits.
One of the things I want to talk about is pre-booking.
I remember when I was in the salon and I was taking clients, one of our goals—and actually an expectation—was to have a really high pre-booking percentage. I could make up a number for what the expectation was, I don’t remember to be totally honest. I want to say it was like 80%. It was high. Maybe for a new stylist, it was more like 60%. And then for our more senior stylists, it was something like 80%.
Eight out of 10 guests were expected to pre-book before they left. It’s funny, one of my favorite, absolute favorite of all time receptionists that ever worked for me at the salon works for me here in my business now. And we were joking about this recently—actually, two of them do. Two of my favorite receptionists work for me now. And we were joking about this because even our reception team was incentivized to pre-book guests, so it was this heavy push. “And so don’t you want to pre-book?” “Do you want to pre-book? Can we get you on the books? Here’s when you should come in.”
Now it’s not that pre-booking is bad, and this is where my message gets twisted. pre-booking is still okay. Not everybody is a good fit to be pre-booked and it’s not a good fit for every business.
Let’s take a step back for a second. I want to read to you some of the questions in the Q&A that popped up. In the fall of last year, I hosted a training workshop where I talked about the myths behind pre-booking and why that is an old school mentality and how it’s broken. And I want to read to you some of the questions that came in through the Q&A from that,
The first one was, “Wait, what pre-booking is out? Tell me more.” Then another student in the class said, “Wow, I’m in trouble. How was being booked out a bad thing?”
Then the next question that came in was from Jessica. She said, “If we get booked out solid for weeks, what are we supposed to do?” And that’s when we start getting to the meat of the issue.
How many of you listening to this are booked out for weeks and you feel like that is success? Some of you are like, “I love it. I love when I go in and I look at my schedule and I’m booked out for the next 12 weeks.” Raise your hand. I see you. I get it. I totally get it. I’m going to change your mind today, but I get it. I get why you feel that way.
And how many of you, you are stylists who are more in the Struggling zone. I talk about the four archetypes being a stylist. We have Struggling, we have Sacrifice. We have Scaling. We have Sinking, right?
Some of you are struggling and you’re thinking like, “Man, I would kill to be pre-booked out.” Would you really though? We have been led to believe that pre-booking equals security and it does not.
So I’m going to go into these questions a little bit deeper. Maggie then said, “I feel like the volume of cut-only clients is still a huge part of why I can’t make more money year over year. I don’t want to keep pre-booking these guests. How do I stop? My focus is color and extensions, and I want to make the transition, but it feels impossible.”
And now we’re starting to get to the issue. Maggie wants to make a change in her business. She’s at a point in her career where she’s like, “You know what? I don’t want to do six haircuts a day.”
Here’s the reality, especially to you, new stylist. I have to tell you something. Haircuts are amazing. It’s where we all started in the industry. That is a great place to start. You learn so much about doing good hair from the cut, because the best color in the world can be spoiled by a bad haircut, right? A lot of us know that.
Getting your cut styled in is very important, definitely. But you get to a point in your career where you realize cuts are the most labor-intensive service that we offer in the salon, even more so than foiling work or advanced balayage techniques.
Both are very physically demanding, but often with a complex color service, you get a minute in between to step back and breathe. With a cut, you are with that guest from start to finish. Even if you have an assistant who helps with the shampoo, you are on for 85% of that service. You can do that for a while, but you get to a point in your career where you can’t sustain it.
The other thing is too, haircuts are the least profitable service in the salon because they’re so labor intensive that you have to be there, working your body to make that money. So often you get to a point where you’re like, “I don’t want to be haircut heavy. I want to focus on some of these other services,” which is where Maggie’s at. But the challenge is she’s pre-booked haircut clients from here to Timbuktu, and now she’s not sure how to regain control of her business.
Now we’re starting to get to the issue. This is why I coach against aggressive pre-booking. You are locking yourself into a business model that worked for you in the past, and then when you decide to get out of that business model, it is incredibly challenging because now you have to break promises.
Maggie promised her guest, Cynthia, that she could come in in six months on a Sunday at 4:00 PM. Well, now Maggie is going to have to go back to Cynthia, kind of with her tail between her legs and be like, “Oh Cynthia, I’m so sorry. I can’t do that anymore,” versus Maggie could have been in the driver’s sea and as the appointment was coming up, as Maggie was making shift in her business, she has a really sophisticated and really beautiful conversation with Cynthia about how her business model is changing.
Can you see how in the second scenario, Maggie’s in the driver’s seat and seen as more of the professional versus in the first scenario where she has to break Cynthia’s heart and explain to her that she can’t pre-book for haircuts anymore? Maggie is now the passenger.
Cynthia is going to be upset. Cynthia is in control of the situation and Maggie feels bad, so Maggie loses all around. Versus if we can get out of the habit of pre-booking to the moon and back, we really gain control of our business.
Here’s another question from Jessica. Jessica says, “How do I make room for my target clients when I’m already booked six weeks out?” Ding ding. And if you think that new guests love having to wait six, eight, 12 weeks to come in and see you, if you think it makes you fancy, you’re like, “Oh my gosh, they love having to wait three months to come in and see me,” no, they do not.
A few years ago that was fun and exciting. You guys, consumer behavior changes and it changes pretty rapidly. It used to be consumers would change every decade or so. With the speed and the change in our life’s pace, increasing consumer behavior changes to it’s no longer cute or fun or exciting to be pre-booked 12 weeks out.
Let me ask you this question. If you decide you want to get your own hair done, and there’s a stylist, a good friend that you love, and you’re like, “Girl, I need to get my hair done. Can you take care of me?” And she’s like, “Yes, come in and see me in four months,” you’d be instantly let down.
Maybe you’d wait the four months, but you’d be like, “Okay, but I have to do something in the meantime.” So you’re going to do something in the meantime, because you can’t wait four months between hair appointments. For most of us. Some of you can, it’s rare.
So you have to do something else in the meantime, and then that stylist that you were going to go in and see is now vulnerable, because what if the interim solution that you find while you’re waiting the four months to see her ends up being a really good option. And you’re like, “You know what? As much as I wanted to see that fancy pants stylist who I had to wait four months to go in and see, this other stylist was amazing. And she was able to get me in in three weeks and she was great.”
It becomes a no brainer. So gone are the days where it’s impressive and a good thing to make clients wait weeks and weeks and months to come in and see you. It’s not in line with today’s consumer trends and we have to break that cycle if we want to build and grow.
Last comment and then I’m going to get into the strategy. Carrie says, “I literally can’t even get my own clients in for at least four weeks and some of my clients are having to go to see my coworkers. I certainly don’t have time for new clients. I can’t even handle the business that I have.”
These are the traps that we get into. So when I talk about the four stylist archetypes, Carrie is the perfect example of the sacrifice stylist. She is max capacity. If you can close your eyes and visualize her books, it’s like a balloon waiting to pop, right? People are already starting to have to slough off and go see other people. She is at a breaking point. She’s either going to choose to scale, which I hope that she does, or she’s actually going to slip back into the Sinking stylist. She’s going to lose her ground. You can’t stay in Sacrifice stylist. You can’t stay living there and she’s really on the edge.
Often we would look at stylists like Carrie and we’d be like, “Wow, Carrie has really made it. She’s really booked out. She can’t even handle the business that she has. Good for her.” Carrie’s losing money. How can we say good for her? We need a structural change and one of the structural changes that makes a huge difference is shifting our ideas around pre-booking.
Let’s get into the nuts and bolts of why pre-booking is detrimental to your business and how to do pre-booking effectively. I’ve said this before in this episode, but I’m going to say it again: I’m not anti pre-booking. I’m not saying you shouldn’t pre-book some of your guests. I’m saying very clearly the goal shouldn’t be to pre-book everyone and here’s why.
Number one, you make it a mission to pre-book all of your guests. It creates a salary cap. It is like artificially closing your books. So when you look at your books, you have this false sense of security, which is actually point number two here in this countdown.
When you look at yourself and you’re pre-booked out six weeks, eight weeks, 12 weeks, 14 weeks, you’re like, I am good because it feels like a salary, right?
Anybody who’s in the industry now who used to work corporate? I used to work for a major hotel company and every two weeks I would get the exact same paycheck, and I was able to anticipate how much money was coming to me, and—well, I didn’t love the paycheck. I would have loved to have made more—I felt secure. I felt stable.
It’s in our human nature to want those things. Going back to when we were cave people, we wanted stability and structure and to be able to anticipate that our needs were going to be met. It is hard wired in us. That is what as human beings we want.
The problem is pre-booking is a false sense of security. It’s actually not real, because for how many of you—let’s say, you’re pre-booked 12 weeks out, will 100% of those clients sustain those pre-booked appointments? No way, no way. 70% if you’re lucky and the other 30% will have to reschedule, change a time, somebody is going to cancel. Little Betty was sick, I had to stay home with her, right?
Stuff comes up. That’s just life. Nothing wrong with that. That’s just life.
However, first of all, you’ve blocked new guests from coming in to see you because you were booked out for 12 weeks. So a lot of people who would have wanted to come in and see you don’t/can’t wait the 12 weeks. You’ve lost them. They’re gone. They’re going somewhere else and now you never had that security.
It was a false sense of security because 30% of those clients ended up moving or rescheduling or whatever anyway. So it’s not the security we’re looking for and you’ve basically locked in your income. You’ve created your own glass ceiling. There’s nowhere to grow. There’s no opportunity to make more money.
One of the things I talk about is making a margin for magic, a little space where you can increase your income by 40 or 50% every single day. Well, you’ve killed that. That’s now an impossibility. You have truly limited your business in exchange for a false sense of security.
I want you to get out of that habit and I want you to look at prebooking to the moon and back with that context. I don’t think any of us would choose that and when we say, “Why am I working so much harder, but I’m not making much more money?”, this is why. You’ve made an artificial salary cap in exchange for false security and we have to get out of that pattern.
Number three, this takes you out of the driver’s seat of your business, kind of like that scenario I was talking about with Maggie and what was I calling her client? I make up these names. Cynthia, right? I said Cynthia was in the driver’s seat because Maggie has now promised Cynthia haircuts for the next six months, but Maggie has decided she’s making a structural change in her business.
Well, in order for Maggie to make that structural change, she now needs to negotiate the change with Cynthia, which is crazy. Cynthia is the client. However, Maggie promised something to Cynthia that she now cannot sustain or deliver on. So Maggie’s in the backseat of her own business.
Cynthia is in charge because what’s going to happen is Cynthia’s going to negotiate. “Well, I already pre-booked those appointments, so I’d like to come in for those.” She feels entitled to them. Now Maggie is not in the driver’s seat of her own business. Her clients are making the calls.
Raise your hand if you feel like your clients have the reins in your business. Your clients call a lot of the shots. How many of you are scared of your clients and that’s why you don’t do price increases? Or you look on your books and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, if I have to call Nadine and tell her I’m moving her appointment, she is actually going to kill me.”
So your clients are in charge. Then you need to be in the driver’s seat and getting a hold on things like pre-booking. It’s a huge part of how we make that possible.
For those of you who are like, “I would like to make a change in my business here this year,” how many of you want to change your hours? You’re like, “I am so sick of working nights and weekends,” which I don’t coach to working nights and weekends, P.S., I coach to creating a more scalable business model which does not include—unless you’d like working nights and weekends. Let’s say you want to be home to homeschool your kids all week and you just want to work in the evenings. Heck yeah, I’m here for it. Let’s make that happen.
But I’m here to make you help you work your dream schedule, right? So let’s say you want to phase out nights and weekends, but you’re pre-booked for the next four months, so I guess I’ll teach you how to do it six months from now versus we could do this in real time and it doesn’t have to be so painful and we can actually do it really seamlessly, right? Puts you back in that driver’s seat.
Number four, the fourth reason we don’t like pre-booking is it creates additional admin work when you have to reschedule.
How does it go when this happens? Erica calls you and she’s like, “Girl, I know I’m in for a major blonding service, I’m supposed to come in at the end of next week. My mom is flying into town. I absolutely can’t do it. When can you get me in next?”
So you sit there, you spend 25 minutes moving Erica’s appointment. I know you do. You and I both know that you do it. You’re like, oh my gosh, okay, so Erica needs to get in. I know she’s not going to want to wait 12 weeks to come in and see me. But that’s the only thing that I have. So I guess I’ll work on a Sunday or I’ll work long or I’ll come in early or you’re going to piss her off, or you’re going to hope that somebody else cancels so that Erica can slide in. But you say you’ve spent 25 minutes of your time trying to solve Erica’s problem because she pre-booked. And then when her life changed, she wasn’t able to fulfill on it. Right?
When I think about myself, I was saying at the top of this episode, not everybody’s a good candidate for pre-booking. I am a horrible candidate for pre-booking. My life changes too fast. My husband works for the San Francisco Fire Department—he’s actually on an injury leave and has been for about 18 months, but when he was working for the fire department, anybody who has a partner who’s in emergency medical services or law enforcement of any kind knows that their partner has no schedule. It’s like a lack of schedule. There’s an idea of what his schedule could be, but they could up and leave at any given time.
For me to try and pre-book was so unrealistic, I was definitely at a cancel that appointment because my life was too uncertain. More people are like me than are super stable. More people are a little bit in flux, especially in today’s day and age than they were 30 years ago when most people worked a corporate nine to five, it was the same kind of schedule. Kids’ soccer games were on Saturdays.
There used to be a lot of stability in the schedule and now people are traveling more and living bigger lives and things are changing. And all of these moving pieces have come into play and as those moving pieces came into play, we needed to look at things like pre-booking and say, “Does this really fit my client’s lifestyle?” and often it doesn’t right?
Last but not least, the reason why I want you to really shift the way you think about pre-booking yourself out weeks and weeks in advance is it doesn’t allow you to live your wealthiest life. How many of you—let’s say you get invited to a bridal shower. A friend of yours, maybe you guys were best friends in college. You haven’t seen her in a while, but she invited you to, you’re going to her wedding and she invited you to her bridal shower. You’re going to get that bridal shower invite, maybe six weeks ahead of the party, right? You’re going to be booked out on that Saturday. You’re not going to be able to go, so you’re missing out on seeing all your friends from college. You were able to book for the wedding because they sent a save the date 10 months in advance and that’s how much notice you need to have to do cool things in your life.
But you would have loved to have gone to that bridal shower and instead you say, “Oh, I have to work.” It doesn’t allow you to live your biggest wealthiest life.
I can’t even tell you how many school field trips I wasn’t able to chaperone for my daughter who’s now 17 because I was locked into the salon schedule. With my son. I’m never going to have to miss anything and it’s such a happier way to live life.
When you pre-book yourself and create that false sense of security, you are actually limiting the life that you’re living. You’re exchanging perceived consistency for a life well-lived.
I want to sum this up by saying I’m not against pre-booking. I think for some guests pre-booking is a wonderful thing. I think for big, huge appointments, like if you have complex blonding services where it takes four hours, yeah, you might need some structuring your business. That includes pre-booking.
But I want you to just really think about locking yourself into a long-term schedule, where you’re booked out for weeks and weeks and weeks in advance and start asking, “Is this really what I wanted out of my career as a hair stylist? Am I living my biggest, best life being booked this way? And what can I do to change it?”
You guys, if you enjoyed this episode as much as I did, make sure that you take a screenshot, share it on Instagram stories, ask me any other questions that you have right there over the image.
If you’re not already in our Thriving Stylist Insiders Facebook group, come on over. I’m going to dive deeper into this podcast episode this week with another video training and you’re not going to want to miss it.
If you’re looking for more coaching help building your business, definitely check out thriverssociety.com.
You guys, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
