Intro:
Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hairstylist? 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 weren’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 hairstylist, 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 talking about how to grow as an employee stylist. As per ushe, this episode’s a very inspired one because it is based on a message I received from an incredible Thriving Stylist Podcast listener. So to the stylist who inspired this episode, thank you for writing in. And on behalf of all of the employee-based stylists, I think we all give you a round of applause.
So thank you for reaching out. If you want to know how to reach me for a potential podcast submission, you can leave a rating or review on iTunes. And in the comment section of that rating or review, you can submit any question you’d like. And if you go through past reviews, you’ll see questions submitted there. I go through those twice a month, choose the best ones for the podcast, and that’s how we create the show.
So please, please, if you have a topic you want me to hit, leave your ratings and reviews there and we will get to as many as we possibly can. So I am going to talk about how to grow as an employee stylist. Before I do, I want to just make a note to all the salon owners who are likely listening to this thinking, oh, I want to grow my employees, what should they be doing? Couple things to note.
I will say I’ve caught flack for the past decade from salon owners who feel like I coach to stylists creating too much success on their own, and it makes salon owners feel vulnerable and scared. That, to me, I really have a hard time with because every salon owner started off as a stylist working somewhere and had bigger dreams for themselves and chased them. I think it’s naive of any salon owner to say, “That was okay for me, but it’s not okay for those who work for me.”
That simply doesn’t make sense. And even if I didn’t exist, if I was not an industry educator, if I didn’t talk about stylists empowering themselves, they’d still have those aspirations. It really has nothing to do with me. I’m just speaking to the truth of what highly determined stylists are already thinking. And also, we want to have driven people in our building, I assume.
We don’t want the lackadaisical stylist. We want the stylist who wants to grow. I’m trying to help your team grow. Catch me if I’m wrong on this, but you expect your stylist to develop at least a portion of their own clientele, if not the whole thing. So you want them to be driven. You want them to be motivated. You want them to market their selves, but only to a line, and then you start to get uncomfortable.
It doesn’t work that way. If we want our stylist to grow, we have to go all in. You know the saying, a rising tide lifts all boats? If your stylists are more successful, you are more successful. No? Am I wrong on that? Isn’t the goal for the stylist to be successful so the owner can be successful, so everybody’s succeeding? I don’t know any other way that the model works.
So just understand, as I empower your employee-based stylist, I’m empowering you. This is how growth looks from a leadership perspective. In the business I own, it is my job as a leader to make sure that one day when every member of my team leaves, because I can only assume that at some point everybody will, they leave better off than when they started.
They gained more skills. They got more experience. They made more connections, whatever it is. That should be your goal as a leader too. The goal should never be, “And everyone must work for me forever.” That doesn’t happen. So again, shift your mindset. Our goal as salon owners and leaders is to empower our team to grow as fast as they can to become as successful as they can.
Which by the way, successful stylists aren’t generally looking to leave their salon unless there’s something going on negatively with leadership. If all is well in the salon, they’re not leaving. They only leave when stuff goes sideways. So I’ll get off my soapbox for that. But three things to note. If your stylists are growing as fast as they want, they’ll stay. If they’re not growing as fast as they want, they will start to look for other places to work.
And growth, growth is not just vertical, it’s horizontal too. So often when I say growth, salon owners are like, “Well, Sarah has always made more money year over year.” Yeah, but Sarah might want to now work a part-time schedule and you don’t allow her to. She feels like she’s earned it. So for her growth is more horizontal. She still wants to make the money she’s making, but she wants to do it working two days a week and you’re telling her that’s not an option.
You’re capping her growth. So it’s easy to look at growth as a vertical. And for most owners, growth is financial. Period. End of story. For most stylists today, growth is not that simple. So as soon as we stifle their growth, they are going to start to get a wandering eye. It’s just that’s the way it goes. On average, a recent survey showed that stylists expect the salon to provide 35% of their clientele, which is interesting.
That number is so interesting to me. I don’t think stylists were thinking of it this way because I got that number on an average. We surveyed 25,000 stylists or something like that, 25,000, 28,000, and 35% was the average expectation. So half were lower, half were higher. It’s interesting that the average commission in the industry right now hovers between 34 and 36%.
And then stylists are saying, “I believe the owner should provide 35% of my clientele.” To me, that’s fair. That’s so fair. If you as a salon owner are not providing 30% of clientele to a stylist, why shouldn’t they go work in a suite? Serious question to the room. And then you say things like, “I provide security. I provide amenities. We have a great environment.”
Yeah, but a high performer can provide those things for themselves. So what can you provide for them that they cannot provide for themselves becomes the question. And often it’s a partnership in the clientele build. So with that being said, the whole idea of do as I say, not as I do, does not work in leadership anymore. If you as the owner are not doing social media, you cannot expect your stylist to do social media.
If you as the owner are burnt out, you should expect a team of burnt out stylists. If you as the owner are not driven to build and grow business, neither will your team. In order to lead, people have to choose to follow you. If you’re not playing the game, you can’t just say, “Well, I’m not going to do it. I’ve already paid my dues. You need to do it.” That’s not leadership, that’s ownership or being a boss.
It is incredibly challenging as an owner to be successful doing that today. It simply doesn’t work. I don’t have time. I’m overwhelmed. I can’t do it. I already did that. I paid my dues. I did that for years. Now it’s your turn. Yeah, nobody’s buying it. When I joined the industry in 2007, that was the mindset. I totally get it. It’s 2024, so we need to get with it. So for salons, you have to have a working marketing funnel.
You have to have an updated, modern, well-functioning, well-formatted website. You have to. It’s not an option anymore. You have to have a new social media. And by the way, social media to me is the core four platforms. I think when I say social media, people think Instagram. I think Instagram, Facebook, Yelp, and Google. And why do I think those four? Because those are the four that are growing salons the fastest based on data.
And you have to develop a brand, and the brand is not, we’re nice and we do good hair. The brand is so different than that. So you as the owner must have those things first, then we can expect to have a talented team that is growing successfully as well. So let me read this DM from this stylist, and the rest of this coaching is going to be to the stylist. We’ve addressed the owners in the room.
Let’s talk about the stylists in the room for a minute. So this stylist has been in the industry for more than five years, less than 10. So they’re in that sweet spot. And the DM says, “Hi, Britt. I love your podcast and you always give great advice. I was wondering if you could speak more to us commission stylists on how to up our game within a structure that’s set for us.
I feel like everywhere I look, advice for stylists is catered more towards renters. Some advice seems impossible to implement because I’m not actually in charge of every aspect of my career. Sometimes I feel like being commission stylist is so exhausting and limiting.” I hope salon owners heard that. Imagine if all your employees feel exhausted and limited. You’ve stunted their growth and then they’re DMing me about it.
Interesting, huh? “I’m not financially in a place where I’m able to go independent just yet. I know I’m not the only commission stylist feeling this way. I think we’d all appreciate some advice.” I loved this. And I responded and I was like, “I hear you. Can you tell me a little bit more about what’s going on?” I asked questions. I said, “What are your roadblocks specifically?”
This person said, “I think the biggest things for me are feeling like I’m unable to create an authentic personal brand due to being within the salon and its culture, setting my own prices, choosing what services I want to offer and don’t, and just generally feeling unsupported.” Yikes! “I have ideas and dreams for how I would like to have things work, and everyone around me seems to be so passive and okay with just getting by and doing what is set for them. I feel restricted and I can’t flourish the way I know my heart could if things were different.”
And this is tough. This is a combination of ineffective leadership, an unsupportive environment, lack of structure. And honestly, if this stylist doesn’t get what they need, I’m going to guess she’s going to move on within the next year or so and find a new place to work. So I went on and asked this stylist. We went back and forth and I was asking about the knowledge of the marketing funnel.
And this stylist was like, “I understand the concept. I’ve heard you talk about it before.” And I said, “Tell me what you think about your current marketing funnel.” And the stylist basically said, “I think it’s on life support.” And in many ways I agree. I think that there’s a lot of work to be done. But let’s back out for a second. I am going to do a mini verbal funnel review for this person because I think the feedback I have for their funnel is going to be really effective for all employee stylists, but we’ll get there for a second.
So things that you can completely control as an employee, contrary to popular belief, first and foremost is your brand. I think this is… No. Back it up. Back it up. I don’t think this is something that stylists are confused about. I know it is. I know that stylists think that branding is something that is totally not. Stylists will be like, “Well, I can’t choose teal as my brand color.”
I don’t care what your brand color is. Truly, I don’t care. The conversation so doesn’t start with what color should it be. That is question number 72. When we look at branding, it’s the energies and the actions and the positioning we take to attract a dream target market clientele. It has nothing to do with you. It has nothing to do with the salon you work at. It has everything to do with the clientele you serve.
And I think that that’s where a lot of employee stylist, independent stylist, salon owners in general get it wrong, is that they don’t quite understand what branding is or what branding means. And it’s why the very first module of Thriving Stylist Method is on branding because it is the number one most misunderstood thing, and it’s also the foundation of the funnel. If you don’t get the brand right, you’re right, you will suffer and struggle and clientele will grow slowly.
It just will. So you as an employee do get to control your brand. And it doesn’t have to in any way be in any type of conflict with what your salon is doing at all, even remotely. So that you can completely control. I think there’s just often a misunderstanding of exactly how branding works and what it is. Then there’s the interest level. The interest level is social media. You as an employee can control your social media. You own that social media account.
And for the owners who are like, “Well, I like all my stylists to have a handle that says @MaggieatBrittSevaSalon or whatever.” Why? How come? Why can’t the stylist just be who they are? Have in their bio that they work with you and for you, but clients today are looking for an emotional reaction with their stylist. If you’re an owner, your clients are probably like that. They like you because they like you.
They don’t like you because of what your address is. What your address is is just a second perk benefit. But they like you because of who you are and the relationship that you’ve built. New employee stylist clients feel the same. Now, there was a time where clients were much more loyal to the salon than they were to the person whose chair they sat in. That model is really slowly fading away.
Salon should be working to attract top tier clients who are values aligned, who our culture is aligned. All of that is still the same, but clients are becoming much more attached to the person than the building. So we want our stylists to have control over their social media, to have that social media be branded. And by the way, like I said, branding has nothing to do with the stylist, nothing to do with the salon, and everything to do with the client.
So we want that social media to be ample, updated, properly managed, inspired, elevated, and, of course, branded. So that is something that as an employee you can control and you should control. Then we have awareness. Awareness is like the gas that goes in the engine. The brand I guess is the engine of the car. The interest or the social media is like the shiny exterior, like the paint color that you choose and all that kind of stuff.
Which by the way, notice how branding wasn’t the paint color. Notice how social media was the paint color. Hint, hint. Awareness is going to be the fuel that you put into that engine. So that’s what drives the eyeballs to our business. You can’t just have a great brand, kill it on social, get a bunch of reviews, and magic happens. We have to create that awareness.
The awareness is always going to be driven by the stylist. The only time it wouldn’t be is if the salon has built up an incredible reputation for itself, which if it has, often the salon owner will then be participating with their 30 to 35% clientele contribution. The salon is driving that top level awareness that leads into interest, that leads into desire, that leads into opportunity, trust, all the things marketing funnel.
I’m talking marketing funnel here. So some awareness can come from the salon for sure. But as a stylist, you control that. Awareness is also things like referral programs. Hashtagging used to work. I don’t coach to that anymore. I haven’t in many, many years. But all of those are awareness strategies. Then we have desire. Desire is the website level, and that can be tricky.
If you’re an owner and you’re listening to this, please let your stylist build a website if they want to. It will not take away from you and your business. It will add to it if they do it properly. And remember, the whole point of having a team of successful stylists is mutual success. The more successful they are, the more successful you are. I share this story all the time.
A stylist who was working for me approached me. We were not a bridal based salon at all, but this stylist was really into it. And she was like, “Britt, I really want to build my own bridal website. I think it’ll really help me.” And I was like, “Absolutely not. Nope. You are an employee of this salon. We have our own website. There’s a page on there that talks about bridal.
If that’s not enough for you, you might have to make a different decision.” I mean, just so young and naive and stupid and egotistical. So dumb. And I slept on it, and the next day I apologized and was like, “That was such a terrible reaction and such an uneducated response. How foolish of me. Yes, you can do the website.” And she was willing to do the footwork on it.
She was actually excited about it. “Build the website. Let me take a look at it. As long as we both feel like it makes sense, let’s go for it.” And her business took off. And in doing that, my business took off. Because the more she made, the more I made. So what was the downside? What was the downfall in doing that? There was nothing.
Now, the other flip side of that is if you’re a salon owner and you take the design and development of your own website seriously, then maybe a stylist, an employee-based stylist can share your website. The problem is when I look at most salon websites, they’re done, they’re not even close to done properly. You have bio pages that are either weak or incomplete.
The format is not good. The photos you’re using are not good. I can’t make my way around it as a client and try to figure out what you’re doing. You’re missing information. You have too much of the wrong information. Just because you have your website done, it doesn’t mean it’s done properly. And often you all have websites that are not helping your new stylist to build business at all.
So that’s why they’re DMing me saying they feel unsupported and they don’t know how to grow a clientele because you’re not allowing them to have their own website, but yours is not good. So the owner can either choose to have a website that is formatted in a way that empowers new employee stylist to grow, or you allow your employee stylist to have their own website.
Either is okay for me, but the desire level, which is the website level, is too critical to just be like, “Oh, well, this is what we have. Oh, well, we’ve got a booking link.” That’s not going to work. A booking link is not a website. Even the free booking page that your online software is promoting as a website, it’s not. It doesn’t SEO index in the right way. It’s just not. Then we have the trust level.
This is also something you can control as an employee. This is the guest experience, the first few visits, the relationship that you build. Your salon may have systems and policies and processes, but there’s often a lot of innovation that you can bring into that without contradicting anything that your salon is doing. The reason why a lot of stylists don’t dabble in either the trust and the nurture level, which you can do nurture level as an employee stylist as well, do you know why?
They’re afraid of what other stylists will say about them. They’re going to say I’m extra. They’re going to say I’m doing the most. They’re going to say I’m weird. And we are so worried about what… I mean, this dates back to all of us in elementary school. So worried about being left out, being the outsider, being misunderstood. That’s vulnerable for a lot of us.
And so when you’re a stylist and you’re like… This person said, “I feel like I’m surrounded by people who are not passionate.” So then she’s supposed to be the only one who’s passionate and people will be like, “What are you doing?” That’s just an uncomfortable feeling. So this person probably knows what they should do, but a lot of it is getting over that mental mindset of, I don’t want to be the outsider.
Outsiders are generally the ones who find the most success. I’m the black sheep of my own family, and arguably I’m by far the most successful in all the ways, in love, in time, in health, in all of it. And so it’s often those who don’t go with the same grain, go with the trend that are the ones who find the most success. You just can’t be afraid of being the one who breaks the mold.
So let’s do a mini funnel review for this stylist because there are a lot of things that you can control that you’re currently not. So first of all, I looked at your link in bio and it goes directly to either online booking or a Facebook page. Never should I see a link in an Instagram page to a Facebook page. You’re sending me around in a circle. Don’t do that. So the link in bio in your Instagram page should take me to a full on website.
It’s a huge funnel break to expect a client to be like, “I love this haircut photo on Instagram. I’m booking an appointment tomorrow.” There was a time when that worked. That time stopped about four and a half years ago. You must, must, must have a full website. It’s part of the guest experience before coming in to see you. So change that link. I want that to go to a website.
The frequency of posting for this stylist is high. They’ve posted 70 ish photos since January. Over 95% of the photos are afters or before and afters. There’s not enough diversity in the photos, not enough mix. It was a lot of backs of heads, before and after shots. There was some photos of the sales and salon mixed in, but not nearly enough. So because there wasn’t a really good dynamic feed, it’s working against you.
So your interest level is a little softer than it could be. Your work is amazing, but the photo composition and video composition could be improved. So there’s lighting distortion, rarely showing faces. So again, often as an employee we’re like, I can only do so much. Totally, you can only do so much, but these are the things that you can work on that absolutely you can do as an employee and you will see a positive result for.
I don’t believe that improving the way you take photos will in any way be going against what your salon is up to. You might be the only one who does it. But again, those who are willing to swim against the current are the ones who find success. There is a notation of the salon that they work at. So I was able to see the salon that they work at. I’m going to make some assumptions here, so I’m going to tread a little bit lightly.
When I clicked the link to look at the salon that this person worked at, it looked… One of two things was happening. Either that salon bought their following, which I’m pretty keen at this point of picking up when a salon buys a following. And if you’ve ever been coached by me one-on-one, you know that if I can see it, I’ll ask you. I’ll be like, “Did you buy your following?” And I don’t know if any time I’ve asked that has the answer been no.
It’s always been like, “Yeah, I did because,” blah, blah. So either this salon bought their following to make it look like they were a bigger deal than they are, or the followers weren’t engaging with the content because engagement was disproportionately low. Based on the amount of followers this salon had versus engagement on their post, either those who are following are not interested in what’s being posted about at all, literally at all.
It’s not like, oh, engagement’s slumping on Instagram. It was dismal. Something was off there. There’s a disconnect. So don’t be blinded by the light on that. Just because the salon has a great following does not mean they have a great way of actually filtering clients into the chairs. Something was off to me in that. The photos were gorgeous, but there was no clear target market at all.
It looked fancy. It looked clean. It looked up scale. I had no sense of if I’d fit in there, if I wouldn’t fit in there, what most of the clients are like, what services you do. It was extremely vague. A lot of the photos were more like editorial. There was some everyday hair. There was some makeup stuff. There was some photo shoot stuff. Photos of the owners for sure, not so many photos of the stylists, which was kind of odd.
So it’s like as an employee, if you’re not promoting… There were some photos of the stylist. I’m not saying none, but let’s say for every four photos of an owner, there was one photo of an employee. So that’s fine, but this is a salon that is not super interested in growing their team. They’re super interested in promoting themselves. So you just have to know that going into it.
And as I’m explaining this, is this making sense? It’s like, wow, this is obvious when you look at it from this new vantage point. What I thought was interesting is I went to the website, there was no stylist bios. So there were stylist names listed on the website, sometimes pictures, no bios. If you don’t have bios on your website for your stylists, I don’t even want to say don’t even bother, but so am I just supposed to choose a stylist based on their looks or their name?
I don’t know. You have to have somebody that’s going to sell me on the stylist. And then this stylist who messaged me, they’re not even on the website. So no wonder they’re not linking to it. They’re not represented on it. So why would they link to something they’re not represented on? But then again, is this salon helping to grow her business? Probably not.
When I looked at the reviews for this salon, they were raving, really high, good high volume, but most were from four to eight years ago and have really dwindled in more recent years and become a bit spottier. So less five stars, more one stars. Frequency has waned. So something is going on there for sure.
So to the stylist who’s listening to this, going back to what I talked about a moment ago, I would focus on your brand, your interest level, your awareness level, desire, trust, and nurture. You can control all of those levels, and there a lot of things you can do to help yourself build and grow. Some of this lives on the other side of an uncomfortable conversation with your owners, which I totally understand. I have a podcast for that.
Let me pull it up. Oh, it’s an oldie but goodie, episode 38, how to have difficult conversations with your styling team or salon owners. So go way back. That’s probably from 2019 or something like that. It’s still relevant. Go back and listen to that one. But this is going to be saying, this is the year I want to really build and grow my business. These are some of the things I’m thinking about implementing.
How can we make this happen? And creating shared goals together around that. So also going to your owner and asking, who is our target market? Who are we looking to attract here? And then asking yourself, is that who I want to serve? Another question you might ask your owner is, how can I get a bio on our website? Or can I build my own website? I think that’s a really fair ask of any employee stylist.
How can I partner with you to get promoted through the salon to build my clientele faster? I would be so thrilled if a stylist asks me that question. If you ask the question of how can I partner with you to get promoted through the salon to build my clientele faster and they don’t get excited or have a argumentative response, really question if you’re working at the right place.
And then I want you to analyze who’s engaging with the social media posts on your salons Insta. And ask yourself, is that who you want to be attracting to your business? So for this specific stylist, I do think a part of it is, are you in the right place in space working for a leadership team that does want to support your growth? I think it’s worth asking.
If you are, as you ask those questions, who’s your target market, can I get a bio on the website or build my own, can we partner together to build my business, if you get great receptive responses, really good sign that you’re in the right place. These people want to grow with you. You want to grow, they want to grow, let’s find a middle ground there. If not, you need to be an environment where growth is supported.
When you’re in an environment where growth is supported, you as the employee should be in the driver’s seat. Because I’m telling salon owners and stylists, “Listen, stylist, you’re responsible for generating 70% of your own clientele. The salon owner needs to produce the other 30, and you need to partner in making that happen.” All right, as I always like to say, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
