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 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 hairstylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist podcast.
Britt:
What is up? And welcome back to the Thriving Stylist podcast. I’m your host, Britt Seva, and today we are going to take a little bit of a left turn, and I’m going to allow a TikToker to actually be the star of this show. So one of the things I’ve been talking about as a side note, here on the podcast, definitely on Instagram, is the surge in TikTok videos in particular, but also Instagram Reels clapping back at the beauty industry, specifically hairstylists. Now, there are some clap backs at makeup artists, there’s certainly some at lash techs as well, but specifically I believe that hairstylists and salons are being hit the hardest.
Now, I will be the first to say, a lot of these viral TikToks and Instagram Reels videos are not justified. I have seen some Thrivers, I’ve seen some salon owners attempted to be taken down by clients, and a lot of them are not justified. A lot of them also are. And one of the things that I think that we are doing incorrectly as an industry is every time there’s one of these videos that comes up that sheds a negative light on our industry, we immediately go on the defense and we’re like, “They’re liars. They’re wrong. They want us to stay broke. They don’t want us to make any money. They don’t understand how hard it is for us.” Defense, defense, defense.
Well, if you’ve ever gone through any level of business coaching or training or even therapy as a human being, you’ll know that going on the defense very rarely leads to a solution. And usually the solution lies in listening. Listening, absorbing, understanding. While I think that there are quite a few of these TikToks and Instagram Reels that are unjustified and are just kind of gross and I wish didn’t exist, there’s also a lot that are really true. And the ones that are really true are shining a mirror back at us and forcing us to see what we have done to ourselves as an industry.
I have shared on previous podcast episodes, I think over the past three years, we as an industry made some very critical mistakes, specifically on Instagram. There was a lot of very trendy Instagram post moments where we did a lot of humor, making fun of clients, where we did a lot of posts where we were like, “My work is expensive, and here’s why.” And what happened is it made us look very egotistical and it made us look like we didn’t like our clients. And our clients are what makes our world go round. And while you as an individual listening to this podcast maybe didn’t do any of those things, enough stylists did that word got back to clients that we were doing it, and obviously it would. And I think we were making a lot of those posts to entertain the industry and that’s why they went viral and that’s why they became successful is because others in the industry really lifted them up. Other stylists would celebrate these posts and be like, “Yes, speaking for the people.” But the problem is clients were watching and it made us look like money-hungry, bitter, egotistical stylists that forgot that client experience is what makes this industry go round.
So all that being said, we are at a bit of a war between stylist and client and we’re not going to win it being defensive. We’re going to win it listening and staying offensive. I chose a series of TikToks that were created by an influencer that I actually deeply respect and admire because I really appreciated her approach to having a negative experience with a series of stylists, not just one stylist, a series of stylists. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to start by sharing that TikToker’s handle with you. I would suggest that you go back and listen to her TikToks and then listen to this review and/or listen to this review and then watch the TikToks knowing my opinion on them. Either way, it’s going to give you a really great vantage point.
So the TikToker I’m going to be reviewing today, her name is Clara Berghaus, and I’m going to share with you her Instagram handle. It’s C-L-A-R-A-B-E-R-G-H-A-U-S, and she has a series of TikToks that landed in early September 2024. So the first was on September 6th. That one went deeply viral, over 100,000 views. Then on September 9th she did a secondary video responding to some of the comments from her first video. And then on September the 12th, she did a third video in the series that was like, the seven things I learned going viral on hairtok. So what she openly says is, “I actually didn’t intend to go viral necessarily. I just intended to share my experience. But clearly this resonated because so many stylists and clients alike responded.”
So I watched all the videos in her series multiple times, and what I want to do for us as an industry is break down for you what I believe clients are feeling as their biggest pain points. That way, when you watch these TikToks, you can get defensive if you want to, knowing that what I’m about to share with you here is the real, real. This is what clients are actually thinking and feeling. And do you know what? I think they’re right. And so I want to show you what is right about everything that Clara talked about and what is right about a lot of the other TikToks and Instagram Reels I’ve seen so that we can understand where the actual pain is coming from. Whenever anybody does a ranty post or a ranty video, they’re trying to express their pain, and obviously we, in our defensive viewpoint, only pick up on little bits and pieces that are triggering to us. That’s how most of us are wired emotionally. But if we can find the fact and data in it, it’s very powerful.
So I’ve listed out a few of the points that I picked up after watching all of her TikToks. Again, I recommend you go back and listen to Clara’s TikToks, I think you’ll learn a lot from it. But these are my takeaways and I have many. So first thing you should know, she shares in that first video on September the 6th, you’re seeing her and she’s not yet had her hair done. So she’s talking about her frustration. She wants to get her hair done. When I look at what her hair looks like, to me, now this is through a video, through a video on TikTok, could be filtered, I don’t think it is, but what I’m seeing is like a warm level seven, eight blonde with a one and a half to two inch root, it’s a little bit hard to tell, with very minimal dimension, extremely minimal dimension, and also very thick hair. And I should let you know, she knows she has thick hair, she mentions it several times throughout the video, so she’s not delusional in that, she totally knows.
Also in that first video, she shows her inspiration photo and the photo she shows is what looks like to me, a very deep shadow root, dimensional blonding and an all over tonal change compared to what she has right now. So the video kind of kicks off with her saying, “Is it just me or have the prices of getting your hair done become astronomical?” And that’s kind of the kickoff subject line. And then she goes on to explain, she’s been looking for stylists in Ottawa, she’s Canadian, looking for stylists in Ottawa. And before you get hung up on that, because I shared this video on Instagram earlier and somebody said, “Well, the Canada market’s different.” No, these pain points are the same. I understand that she’s Canadian. Of course some things are different in Canada, the pain points she expressed exists here in the US too, so I need you to understand that.
So she’s explaining, “I don’t feel like I’m in Manhattan. I don’t feel like I’m in Los Angeles. I feel like I’m in a community and should be able to get my hair done at a reasonable rate.” That’s basically her point of view throughout this. And then she goes on to explain her issue. She reached out to many stylists and salons trying to get quotes that were within her budget and price point to get her hair done. And basically what it looked like to me was she was willing to pay up to about 300 bucks and anything beyond that was going to be too much for her. Okay, so that’s where she was at. She’s looking, she’s looking, she’s looking and she’s not finding anything. Then she breaks down what made her so upset and flash forward to the third video, she does get her hair done, and I want to explain what I find.
Let’s start at the top with that first video where she’s of explaining what her search to find a stylist looks like. She does say her search started with Google, her search did not start on Instagram, and I’ve been saying this for about three years now, the average client does not start their hair search on Instagram. We as an industry have to get a grip on that. And it doesn’t mean Instagram is an important, it doesn’t mean Instagram isn’t relevant. It means it’s not the main number one priority search for clients anymore. I know we like hanging out on Instagram, we’re comfortable on Instagram, we spent years mastering Instagram. It’s a highly visual platform, it’s where we network with each other. Clients are not starting their search there, and I’m trying to get everybody to understand that, she very openly says it.
So she says, “I Googled salons near me, and then I Googled blondes near me.” Now, what she did say was, “It seems like cheaper options are on Instagram.” I thought that was very interesting. And actually as you listen through and watch all three of the videos, she mentions Reddit and she ultimately finds her stylist that she goes to see on Reddit. But remember, this is somebody who’s looking for cheaper options and she openly says that it seems like stylists and salons who charge more are on Google and Yelp. So let this be a lesson to you, if you are more of an economy stylist, which there’s nothing wrong with that, there’s something to the client’s mindset that the cheaper stylists are on Instagram and on Reddit. So this should be a light bulb moment for everybody. How many of you feel like you’re getting a lot more DMs from clients who are trying to bargain shop with you in the DMs over the last year? Price negotiate and you’re feeling frustrated by it?
Y’all, hat is the reputation of the industry that the cheap bargain stylists are on Instagram and Reddit. I didn’t make this up, but I think it’s an interesting piece of feedback we’re getting from this that that’s kind of the vibe, very interesting, and that the more professional and maybe more higher end stylists and salons are on Google and Yelp. Just something to note. I don’t know where you land on that personally, but something to note for sure. Now, another thing that she mentions is that she feels like in her search, she’s coming across two different price points that she’s not familiar with historically. So she says, “What I’m seeing is there’s two options near me and both are astronomically expensive.” That’s a direct quote. So the first she says is, “Salons charging by the hour as opposed to what you’re getting done.”
And her biggest issue with that is she says there’s a notation that junior stylists, and she says it twice, junior stylists are starting at $150 an hour. So she’s doing mental math on that, knowing she has a lot of hair and she’s thinking, “It’s going to cost me $600 to get my hair done by somebody who has the word junior in the title.” How many of you are in Thriver society? How many of you are in Thriving leadership and have heard me say forever, “Please don’t give your stylist titles like junior stylist. I think it’s extremely problematic.” Because what comes to mind when we say things like baby stylist, junior stylist, level one stylist? Incompetence, those are the words that come to mind for a client, and that’s what came to mind for Clara. So you’re calling a stylist publicly on your website or wherever a junior stylist and you’re doing it because in the back end of your business, it makes sense, they are the most junior person on the team. It makes sense. That doesn’t mean it has to be forward-facing.
So in my team and in my company, we have several different levels. There’s somebody who can come on as a specialist, which is entry-level in my company. There’s supervisors, there’s managers, there’s directors, and there’s chiefs. But when you’re interacting with my team, I’m not saying, “Okay, well now I’m going to put you in touch with a specialist. Now I’m going to put you in touch with a supervisor.” You’re just interacting with my team and they’re just here to help you. So if you are a salon owner or a stylist who’s categorized in ways like, junior stylist, mid-level stylist, level two stylist, let that be something to think about. How would that appear in the eyes of a client and does that align with your price point?
Next, she starts to talk about the way she felt nickel and dimed in the pricing, extreme a la carte pricing continues to be problematic. So things that she brings up is she was being quoted prices for a wash and blow dry. Never, ever, ever should we be charging clients for a wash and blow dry, never. And if you’re in Thrivers, you know I don’t coach to bundled pricing, so I’m not saying “It’s for free, you just include it in there.” What I’m saying is you don’t make it appear as an option where, and your blow dry is going to be an additional $50, that never ever comes up. The other thing that she talks about is toners. The additional toner cost is going to be 30, the additional toner cost is going to be 40. That should be included in the price of your blonding, period. I think any of you who work in blonding would agree with me that probably less than 20%, and that’s probably a really big, huge exaggerated number of your blondes walk out with no toner at all.
It’s pretty rare that we let somebody walk off with a raw blonde, even brunettes. Oh, your highlights are done, you’re set to go. There’s almost always some kind of toner or glaze or refinement that happens. So it’s not an option. So having that as almost feeling like an additional charge to this client is problematic, and that is something that may have been fine in recent years. We are stepping into a different economy. People are going to start to push back on things like that. This has always been my problem with, I know there’s pricing methods where it’s like you charge based on the ounces of color that are used per client. That is going to walk into a really tricky season in these next few years. Unemployment is going to go up. I talked about that on the predictions podcast. The economy is going to feel very unpredictable for the next two or three years.
Clients are going to start to feel nickel and dimed by that, and Clara did mention it, so we just have to talk about it. Next, I want to bring up the term dusting, which is something that Clara talked about in her video as well. And I personally can’t stand the term dusting, but it doesn’t mean it’s not something that’s popular amongst clients. And this is something we have to understand. There’s a difference between client verbiage and stylist verbiage. Now, for clients, dusting is a fancy way to say trim. So trim was the big thing that came up in 2008, 2009, 2010, that recent economic recession. “I just want a trim, what’s your cost for a trim?” Well, what’s trending this time is dusting. “What’s your cost for a dusting?” Now, we all know that looking at a client like Clara, who does have thick hair, even if you were to trim just a quarter of an inch off her ends, you’re talking multiple sectioning, that is not a cut you would do dry.
So our process is the same to cut her hair, whether it’s a quarter of an inch or four inches. What we’re very comfortable with is the cut is the cut, if you want me to cut off more to make it feel more justified for you in the price point, happy to do that. That’s our usual clap back, very defensive statement. Versus the client saying, “I just need a dusting.” Now, I don’t know exactly what you want to do with this, but what I do know is that term is not going away. I think we’re going to see a lot of requests for dustings over the next couple of years. You do without what you want to do with it. Is there some sort of health maintenance haircut you can incorporate into your service menu to make clients feel met where they’re at?
I do think stylists who consider doing something like that are going to come out ahead. Just my 2 cents, think about it. Now, leaning into that is my next point. Price is what you pay value is what you get. So when she talks about dusting, she wanted it to feel worth it. Now, when she talked about her frustration with being charged by the hour as opposed to being charged for what services she was getting done, it’s because she felt like the price was too high for the value she was receiving. We are in a value, value, value game. How many times have you heard me talk about perceived value? So price is one thing, value is another. Now, what I thought was interesting was when she was going back to her initial search, this is a direct quote, she said, “I don’t even know what their work looked like. I didn’t get that far.”
So for a lot of us, that was like, whoa, mind-blowing for me. She’s starting with price. If the price isn’t right, it doesn’t matter what your work looks like. And it made me think how many other clients are starting with price? So for a lot of us who are still leaning heavily into Instagram, we’re leaning with, “Look how gorgeous my work is. Look how incredible my grid looks. Look how refined I am. So I’m worth $500 for you to see me.” They’re not even at the point where they’re looking at your beautiful, refined grid because you’ve sticker shocked them on your website, which goes back to having an effective website, which I could do a whole other episode on, but we’re not going to do that today. I’m going to guess she’s looking at pretty crummy websites and/or stylists who have not even taken the time to build websites and just have online booking pages with a bunch of prices listed, and she’s like, “This is not worth it.”
So for those of you who say, “My work speaks for itself.” Your work’s not speaking at all because the client’s not even getting to the point where they’re looking at your work. All they are is being sticker shocked by the poor presentation they’re seeing online before they even get a chance to look at your work. That, to me, was very mind-blowing. So really make sure that you’re thinking about that too. That’s the price is what you pay, value is what you get, kind of edge of things. Next point, she found many of the salons booking processes very confusing. She says that openly in the video. She was like, “I could not make left or right of it.” She’s like, “I didn’t know if I was supposed to add a toner. Did I have to add a haircut? The prices were still estimated. Nothing was guaranteed.” She felt like there was no clarity, no instructions, and she became so frustrated and lost that it made her not want to book at all.
Now, from 2020 to 2023, there was so much demand for us as stylists, we were like, “F it. If you can’t figure out my booking system, you can go somewhere else.” And that was the attitude. We got to flip the script on that because we are stepping into a different era. We were in a stylist’s market where stylists held all the chips, all the demand. It was pretty easy to build a clientele. We are shifting massively back in into a client’s market. You need to cater to their needs. I know that sounds tiring. That is the game. That’s what it looks like. And if your online booking is really confusing, if I have to submit an application, wait for you to get back to me, probably I’m going to go somewhere else. Things have just gotten different. Next, she talked about economic fragility, and I don’t even know, maybe she did, I don’t even know if she went back and listened and heard the breakdown that she gave.
So I think this is in video, either two or three. She talks about the sticker shock and she explains it like this. She says, “In 2016 or 2017, I paid $180 for…” I think she called it full highlight or full balayage. When I look at her hair, to me it’s not dimensional. It looks like an all over extreme, extremely heavy back to back foiling. But I’m certain at some point she’s gotten balayage or whatever too, but she’s very, very, very blonde, warm level seven, eight. So she’s saying 2016, 2017, she paid $180. Okay, that was seven years ago, potentially eight years ago. That’s a really long time ago, but that is the price that sticks in her mind. Why? Because 2016, 2017 represents the glory days for all of us. That is pre-pandemic, that’s when life felt predictable, it felt easy, it felt systematic, things were just like butter. Those were the glory days.
That is a benchmark for a lot of clients, just like it’s a benchmark for us. Then the next date range she mentions is 2020, and she says, “In 2020, I paid 250.” So 2016, 2017, she says she’s paying 180. 2020 she says she’s paying 250. That was four years ago, potentially five, depending on when that happened. Then she’s saying now she’s being quoted a 450 to $600 minimum. So her solution is, “I’m just not going to get my hair done more than once a year.” I think that’s the solution for a lot of people, which is why I’ve continued to say, “You need to increase your demand.” We’re living in this world as stylists where we’re like, “How do I get my clients to come in more frequently?”
I want you to ask yourself the question, “What if can’t?” What if we’re stepping into an era where frequency is going to take a lull? Does everybody remember why rooted color became so popular, being like a rudy blonde, root smudges. If you’re like me and you were in the industry in 2008, 2009, that was a trend that was born so that clients didn’t have to get their roots touched up very often. That’s when it became popular to be like, “And you’ll only have to come in to see me twice a year.” We’re coming back to that, and that’s why I said in my predictions podcast, those high maintenance services do make me nervous. Now, root touch ups, gray root touch ups will always be there. That’s a bread and butter service. But if you’re like, “I do these high dimensional blondes with a lot of frequency.” It does make me a bit nervous for you because when Clara says, “That’s fine, I’ll pay your $600, but I’m only going to do it twice a year.”
You need to increase more demand. You’re going to have to expand your books and take more clients. You have to have more clients in your book of business if that’s kind of what your model is going to look like. So when we say those numbers, immediately when I was saying the price difference between 2016 to 2020, 2024, a lot of you were saying, “Well, we didn’t raise our prices for a long time.” You’re right. But we did that to ourselves and now we’re sticker shocking clients in our attempts to recover. So let me just take you on a trip back in time to what prices for other things looked like back in the day. So in 2016, the average price of regular retail gasoline in the US was 2.14 a gallon, 2.14, the glory days. As of September 16th, 2024, the average price of regular gasoline in the US was 3.21 per gallon.
So that’s increased by 50%. That’s a very significant increase. When we look at the price of cereal, cereal has also increased by 30%, and there’s a really wonderful website dedicated to tracking the price of cereal. So thank you for doing that. And the reason that I chose cereal is because that’s something people complain about. Like, “Oh my gosh, to buy a box of Lucky Charms now is like eight bucks.” It seems really expensive. How many of you have changed your cereal buying ways? I know a lot of families who have. Then let’s go to the housing market. The median home price in the United States in September of 2016 was $224,000. As of May, 2024, the median home price in the United States was $440,000. So almost a complete 100% increase, prices doubling. So when we look at the price of gas, it increased by 50%. The price of cereal increased by 30%, and home values increased by 100%.
What Clara is feeling is that the cost to do her hair has increased by more than 100%. It went from 180 to 450 to 600, so that would be like a 300% increase. Yikes. Can you see why there’s a huge clap back against our industry right now? And I know we spent decades not raising our prices, but whose fault was that? Our own. And now we’re paying the price for it. And so we can’t be surprised when clients are feeling sticker shock that now we’ve woken up and decided to run our businesses like businesses, which is a beautiful, wonderful thing, but there’s also going to be a little bit of a, “Whoa.” Shock to the system, and that’s what clients are feeling right now. Lastly, I want to talk about the end result of her hair. So she does, you get to see on video three what her hair ends up looking like.
She finds a stylist. The stylist is able to do her hair within the price point she’s comfortable with. She says that she finds a stylist on Reddit. I don’t know exactly how, but she does make mention of that. What I noticed is the result didn’t look anything like the photo that she shared, nothing. And I don’t know how she and the stylist got to that place. I wasn’t there for the consultation. I didn’t get to talk to Clara. I’m not sure what her experience was like, but Clara seemed happy with her hair, and that for me was the full circle moment where I feel like we as an industry need to get back to the art of customer service. We need to be shifting our position and approach. I think about all of the stylists who saw Clara’s current photo and her inspiration photo of what she wanted her hair to look like and said, “Well, that’s a color correction.”
Because as I’m describing it, to take somebody from a seven, eight warm blonde to a dimensional rooted blonde with cooler tones, we’re starting to get into that color correction territory. That’s a lot of work. But Clara doesn’t know that, she’s not the professional. She’s a client. She just knows what she wants. She found a stylist who met her in the middle at her price point and said, “This is what I can do for you for this price.” And guess what? Clara’s happy now. So she was told over and over and over that her hair couldn’t be done for less than $400, but she found a stylist who was able to communicate with her what could be done within her price point. And that’s what I want you to keep in mind. I think we’ve become so guarded and so gated over the last few years that our immediate response is always, “No, can’t, too expensive, sticker shock. If you can’t pay my prices, scram.”
I think that’s become our approach, and I want you to walk away with a more clear approach to service, guest experience and thinking about if there’s a way to make room in your clientele for those who want to have a stellar experience. Clara, to me, honestly, I think she could be a great loyal client to somebody who is able to communicate effectively with her. Do you want to just stay egotistical, guarded and gated? Or do you want to build a beautiful clientele over this period of time where some stylists are deeply going to struggle? The choice is yours. So again, I encourage you to go back and watch Clara’s videos. She’s Clara Berghaus on TikTok, C-L-A-R-A-B-E-R-G-H-A-U-S, and the videos I’m referencing are from September 6th, September 9th and September 12th. We will link those under this episode as well, and as I always like to say, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
