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 life long 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?
And welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
I’m your host, Britt Seva.
And right this second, as you’re listening to this episode, we’re digging into our week-long training intensive that is gonna help Stylist to 5x their demand, to be attracting 10 new clients to their chair every single month.
This is the business training of the season.
You don’t wanna miss it.
The absolute last day to register is Tuesday, March the 11th.
We can’t do late registrations.
There is a ton of content being shared.
We have Q&A sessions, we have networking, there’s the workbook, all the things.
And with a few thousand participants, logistically, we just can’t process anybody joining later than Tuesday, the 11th.
So this is absolute last call to get in the room.
This bootcamp isn’t just information.
It’s highly actionable.
It’s going beyond the basics.
And it’s what I think all Stylists and salon owners need in order to build and scale their business today.
So if you’re not a Thriver yet, head to www.thrivingstylist.com/newclients to register and save your seat.
If you’re a Thriver Society member, you get to join us totally for free.
So you’re going to head to your portal and RSVP from your events menu.
This week long training is happening from March 10th to the 17th.
And as with all of our week long trainings, replays are available on everything.
So happy business building and I’ll see you there.
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.
What is up and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
I’m your host Britt Seva and today we’re talking about the new marketing funnel level that changes everything.
I want to before we dig into the new marketing funnel level that changes everything, I want to explain what I’m even talking about with the marketing funnel.
And especially for those of you who are former Thrivers Society members or have just been listening to the Thriving Stylist Podcast since, what was it, 2018 or something when we launched or whatever.
This may be confusing or hard to understand.
So I want to slow it down for one second right at the start of the show.
And explain what is happening and what this means and why it’s happening before I get into the good stuff.
So let me explain the inception of the marketing funnel and then the retention funnel before we get into our core content.
I started coaching Stylist and Salon Owners in 2010, 15 years ago, which is bonkers to think about.
And when people asked me how I got started, I didn’t chase this, I didn’t seek it out.
I was the director of a multi-seven figure salon and a salon owner approached my owner asking if they would be able to consult with me because of the way I was leading operations in my salon team.
They were very curious about it.
The owner of my salon said yes.
The very first salon I coached was like two miles up the road from us.
It was amazing.
It was a husband-wife duo salon ownership team.
And one coaching session led to another and another.
And then they referred me to somebody else.
And then I started working with that other salon that was maybe 10 miles from me, just a little bit north.
And then they referred me to two other people and so on and so forth.
And this coaching business began very organically for me.
And when I first started it, I didn’t know what I was doing.
I just was sharing what was working for me.
And I was a very good troubleshooter.
So I could take a look at what was going on in their business.
And based on what I knew and what I experienced and what I had seen amongst my own team, provide some suggestions for what might work well and pinpoint the things that were probably going to fail.
And I was really good at seeing these patterns.
And because these owners were working with me and seeing very tangible results very fast, the demand to work with me built on word of mouth alone.
In real time, I’m kind of telling like a two year story in 30 seconds.
Over that period of time, what I came to realize like the more and more I coach these salon owners at first and then stylists and salon owners, there were these patterns.
And most people when they’re having issues in their business, it does feel unique and everybody feels like a special snowflake.
And so I always try and listen and understand everybody’s concerns.
But as somebody who’s coached now over 16,000 stylists and salon owners, it comes down to a really small handful of challenges.
And if we can troubleshoot the challenges, everybody can see amazing results.
And so as I started seeing these patterns in 2012, I created just at the time, it was just the marketing funnel.
There was no retention funnel yet.
It was just the marketing funnel.
And I was teaching these stylists and salon owners like, listen, if you do this series of steps, your business will grow fast.
And over and over and over and over and over, it was right, like it never failed, not one time, if the stylist or salon owner actually did all the steps.
It didn’t cut corners, but like did all the work.
It worked 100% of the time.
And I was like, oh my gosh, this is a method.
And so I started coaching to this marketing funnel, trademarked it, then built the second half, which was the retention funnel.
And that was when I started coaching a little bit more to guest experience and nurture and retention and that side of things.
And later in 2012, I started testing this retention funnel.
Again, that worked predictably too.
And then trademarked that as well.
With both of those pieces, I created what’s called the Hairstylist Success Hourglass.
It’s the signature methodology that I’ve been coaching to in Thriving Stylist Methods since 2015.
So over 10 years now.
And it worked great.
Predictable, flawless.
It worked 100% of the time, every single time, which is why we were able to create an entire methodology around it, is because it was foolproof.
And it wasn’t just this collection of ideas or thoughts or hacks that was kind of cool.
It was a method that always worked.
Enter 2023.
So I started mentioning in 2022 that I felt that a big shift was happening in the industry.
And I announced at our Thrivers Live event that summer that I was going to call it the Great Divide.
And I said, I think what we’re going to see is this big giant split in the industry.
And the split is going to be haves and have nots.
And I could feel it brewing and I could see the patterns.
And I said, I don’t know exactly what the symptoms will be, but I do strongly have a feeling that over the next few years, we’re going to see another mass exodus of stylists.
We lost about 10% of our industry in 2020 and 2021.
Isn’t that wild?
A lot of people just shut down during the pandemic or walked away from their careers, went into different things, never came back.
Now we’re growing again.
Our industry, barbers and cosmetologists are the trades, and not just the trades, the industries that are the most in demand right now.
People really want to get in here.
Combine that with the fact that there is so much chatter going on online about stylists and salon struggling.
Like it’s harder than ever to build a clientele.
And it comes down to what has been our Achilles heel for decades in that our industry is very slow to adopt really great business strategy.
We’re operating several years behind most every other industry.
And because of that, we’re always in this catch up mode.
And clients don’t care.
Clients don’t care that we can’t quite figure it out.
Clients don’t care that we’re overwhelmed.
Clients don’t care that nobody told us we were going to have to be social media influencers.
Clients just don’t care.
They just want what they want.
And that’s a tough pill to swallow.
I completely understand what we watch the industry do in 2021 and 2023 is get a bit reckless and the industry got reckless with pricing.
The industry got reckless with marketing.
The industry got reckless with boundaries and with process and with systems and with protocols.
And it all worked fine for a minute because there was this over saturation of clients and under saturation of service providers.
So clients had no choice.
Their choice was to do their own hair at home or to kind of adapt to what we were doing.
So they adapted and then they said F this and decided not to do that anymore.
And in 2023, we saw things really start to shift and change.
And I was like, this is it.
I predicted this great divide a year ago and now we’re really in it.
And I’ve spent the last 18 months watching and looking and listening and dialing in the new patterns.
And what I realized in 2024 was that the marketing funnel had extended and the retention funnel had changed.
And because of those two variations, I had to redesign my own methodology.
I had to expand the marketing funnel for the first time in over a decade.
I created it in 2012, trademarked it and brought it online in 2015.
Been teaching to it for 10 years.
Now it’s expanded.
So forever, it was four levels.
And if you’re a thriver or a long time listener, you’ll be familiar.
There was awareness up at the top and then there was interest and then there was desire and then there was opportunity.
We’ve coached to it and talked about it and a lot of you have mastered it and that’s all great.
Well, now there’s a fifth level in there, which is what we’re going to talk about today.
Can’t be skipped, can’t be ignored is the Achilles heel for a lot of Stylists and Saloniners today if you already have all those other four pieces in place.
Then when we look at the retention funnel, it’s actually stayed the same amount of levels, but the first step in the process has changed.
So I had to add a completely different level to the retention funnel, not an expansion, just a shift and then a completely new level to the marketing funnel.
So the marketing funnel did give an expansion.
The level to the marketing funnel that was added in is brand new, is Drumroll Please Trust.
Trust has actually always been a part of the Hair Stylist Success Hourglass.
The shift is that trust moved from retention to marketing.
And that trust level that was formerly in retention was replaced with something else, which we’ll talk about at another time.
If you’re in Thrivers, you already know what it is.
If you’re coming to my upcoming trainings, you’re going to find out.
But if you’re not in those places yet, let’s just focus on the marketing funnel for now and talk about this expansion.
So where does this trust level live?
I just pulled up a marketing funnel, so I’m looking at it.
You can’t see this visually, so I’m going to describe it as best as I can audibly.
So at the very top, we still have awareness, which is how people find out you exist.
Then we have interest, which is all of our social media, the social proof that you’re awesome.
Then below that, we still have desire, which is the website.
It’s where somebody goes when they’re in decision making mode.
And then below that, we have trust and the trust comes before the opportunity.
So the expansion happened between desire, which is when somebody gets to your website, and opportunity, which is your first chance to actually work with them.
There is this gap period that now exists.
And I want to talk about the trust building path that we unpack and go into detail about how to overcome in Thriving Stylist Method, the new updated expanded version, and give you some ideas about how you can put some of these strategies into place in your business too.
So when you look at the trust building path, there’s five different components.
There’s desire, which is what I’ve always coached desire since 2012 for us in our industry.
It’s your website.
Somebody goes to your website when they actually have the impetus and the desire to actually work with you.
Then there’s consideration, initial commitment, reconsideration and acceptance.
This part might blow your mind.
So desire is still the piece.
When they find your website, somebody decides they want to work with you.
They’ve likely fallen in love with you on social media.
They read your reviews.
Somebody referred them to your business, whatever.
There’s a lot of different ways they can get there, but your website is where they’re going to go to learn more.
They think they want to work with you.
And it’s kind of like the salesperson.
I always say like your website is the number one salesperson in your business.
So if your website doesn’t get enough sales pitch, they’ll go ahead and book an appointment.
That’s how it used to work.
Now these other five things happen and this is what’s new.
So then there’s the consideration phase, and that’s when somebody has the desire, but it’s still kind of just thinking about it.
Like they’re on your website, they’re looking around and they’re like maybe that’s consideration.
Then we have initial commitment, which is booking that first appointment.
By the way, does not mean you’ve locked them down, which a lot of us have learned in the last year, right?
How many of you have had clients, new guests, book an appointment and then no show.
And we’re like, I’m so sick of it, that’s the worst.
If people want to come in to see me, they’re gonna have to pay a deposit.
And like, that was our response of like, show me the money or you’re not sitting in my chair.
There was a time where that works.
I think we’re gonna continue to see rapid failure of that strategy, because here’s what we did when we did that.
Instead of looking at ourselves and being like, huh, why would somebody book an appointment with me and then not show up?
We can believe the lie is that all people are terrible, all humans are the worst, and people have just become more flaky.
I don’t think so.
What I think happened is you were an option, not a necessity.
And someone was like, yeah, maybe I’ll go see that stylist.
Let me put something on the books.
I’m gonna hold some space while I go look at other stuff.
That was the piece you needed to focus on.
You were an option, not just a necessity.
And so, why did that person think it was okay to book on your appointment and not go back and cancel?
I don’t know.
Maybe they forgot.
Maybe they are flaky.
But what it boils down to you is it wasn’t worth it to follow through.
Have you ever gotten like a reservation at a restaurant?
There’s a restaurant in, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area.
There’s a restaurant up close to Napa Valley.
I think most people know where Napa Valley is.
It’s up in that area.
It’s called French Laundry.
And they use a rolling booking system, where it’s every 30 days or every 60 days.
I’ve never been there, full disclosure.
It’s too fancy for me, but it’s a huge deal.
Everybody wants to go there.
Celebrities go there.
Local governments there all the time.
Like it is like the hotspot in the Bay Area when you want like an elevated, elegant dinner.
French Laundry is where you go.
People wake up at 6 a.m.
on the day that the reservation is open, 60 days from now, and clamor to get their spot booked before all reservations are gone within three or four minutes.
Why?
Because there is such a strong desire that the consideration period is very short.
And by the time I’ve made that initial commitment, I mean it.
You don’t even have to ask you to put down a deposit.
I had been waiting for this day.
It’s on my calendar.
I woke up early.
I need to get in because I got to have that tasting menu.
And this business has run this way for decades.
It’s not like new.
It’s not trendy.
It’s like decades in the making because it is worth it.
And I think as an industry, we kind of lost the worth it part.
And instead of working on the worth it, we were like, you know, more processes, more rules, more restrictions, more booking fees, more cancellation fees, punishment, punishment, punishment, flaming hoop to jump through.
And if you want to see me bad enough, you’ll do it.
And then what clients decide it is no thanks.
No thanks.
I’ll find somebody who actually wants my business and I’ll just go see them.
And for some of you, you’re like, I don’t even have all that Britt, like I don’t even have the cancellation fees and the processes and all that kind of stuff.
And still people are no showing on me or booking an appointment and not showing up.
Same, same, like it wasn’t worth it.
You were an option, not a necessity.
That is the initial commitment that happens when somebody books that first appointment.
Then there’s reconsideration, which is the downtime between booking and actually showing up.
And then we have acceptance, which is I’m coming in and I’m at least going to give this stylist a shot.
And we know the statistic.
This has been widely talked about forever and ever.
Only 30% of the new clients you meet, industry standard, only 30% of the new clients you meet will see you for a second and third visit.
70% of the people that you meet will not make it to visit number three.
So that’s why there’s that acceptance stage.
That’s just the opportunity, which is why I call it the opportunity level.
You haven’t locked them in.
They’re not yours for life.
They’re like, all right, I’m going to give this a shot.
It’s like dating.
So then there’s that acceptance phase.
This is all part of the trust journey.
Okay, we’re trying to build trust with you.
I don’t even know you yet, but I want a foundation of trust before I come in for even my first visit.
We used to, as an industry, get a chance to meet a person before we decided if we trusted them or not.
We don’t get that anymore.
And there’s a lot of you.
And here’s what I want you to know also.
I was in a not my Thriving Stylist community.
I was in like another Facebook group.
Sometimes I go in the Facebook groups just to see what people are talking about.
Not my Facebook groups, other random Facebook groups.
I don’t have a Facebook group anymore, but I go in other random Facebook groups.
I’m like looking around to see what people are talking about.
And there was this conversation of this stylist who was saying that she likes to have color clients come in for a consultation before she commits to booking their service because she wants to make sure that she trusts them and feels good about doing their hair.
I get it.
But I want you to think about that in the eyes of the client.
You’re saying to clients, I don’t know if I trust you yet.
You might be able to be a part of my business, but I’m not sure if I trust you.
You have to be really damn good to be making statements like that.
You have to be in demand.
You have to be able to turn clients down because basically you’re asking clients to prove themselves to you.
Like whether that’s your intention or not.
I don’t think it’s most stylist’s intentions.
I think most stylists are saying, no, I just want to make sure this is successful for both of us.
I got it.
But sometimes it’s the action, not the intention.
And if it feels like a client has to prove their trust to you, we’ve kind of got it backwards.
When clients and consumers today, not just in our industry, but in any industry are saying, no, no, you prove yourself to me.
I have options.
You as the stylist need to prove that I can trust you before you’re going to get my money and my time.
So let’s back it up.
And I want to kind of explain this process, speaking from the process of being a home buyer.
So my husband and I became home owners, I think it was 2017, it was either 2017 or 2018.
And we had been home shoppers for a decade before that, probably like a lot of people.
The Zillow app changed our life.
Like some people spend a lot of time on Instagram or on TikTok.
We were like, Zillow, take me home.
Like we just loved it.
And we would send each other houses.
We’re browsing all the time, right?
It’s fun.
It’s where we were getting inspired, what we were deciding what we liked or what we didn’t like.
Zillow is an interest level platform.
It’s social media.
Okay?
So we were spending our time on Zillow browsing.
Then it came the time where we were like, okay, we have the desire to buy a house.
Like we’re there, we’re ready, we want to do it.
We knew the area we wanted to buy in.
We had a sense.
So we started our search on Zillow, and we were looking for houses.
In our case, we didn’t find one there, but imagine that we did.
So you’re searching on Zillow.
Let’s say you find a house that you love.
The pictures are gorgeous.
You want to check it out.
Now the desire is there.
You’ve fallen in love with this listing that you found, and you’re like, okay, I think this might be for us.
I’m desiring to at least step foot in this house.
This one might be the one.
I want to explore this option, right?
That’s just the desire.
You have two options at that crossroads.
Show up at an open house, if there is one for this property that you’re interested in, or call an agent for a showing, whether you’re represented by an agent yet, or you’re just going to reach out to the agent representing that house, you have to take the next step, right?
And by the way, you’re not all in yet, you’re just considering moving forward with this, okay?
So then, let’s say you go to an open house, so you reach out to an agent and you book the showing, and you’re like walking through the front door.
The agent has to sell you on buying this property.
And if you’ve ever gone to an open house or worked with an agent, they’re trying to sway you.
Either to buy this house or if you have an agent who’s representing you, they’re doing two things.
They’re trying to sell you, because they want your money too, by the way.
They want their commission.
They’re either trying to say like, listen, here’s the things I think you should love about this property.
Make sure you notice this feature.
This thing I think is right for you.
We talked about wanting to have this yard.
They’ve got this feature here.
I think that this is really great.
Or a good agent will be like, I think we should look at other opportunities.
Same things.
This is like that sales portion of the trust level, right?
Remember I said the sales starts at your website.
The sales starts at desire.
And then there’s consideration and initial commitment and all of these things.
It’s all part of the sales and trust path.
It’s all part of this.
Okay.
So you’ve walked into this house, which by the way, likely has been staged, right?
When you look at a lot of listings, they bring in like furniture and they try and make the house look the best it can possibly look.
Even if it will never look like that when you move into it, they’re trying to put their best foot forward.
That’s why your website and your marketing has to be your best foot forward.
It’s not just whatever random photos you can scramble up.
It has to be this good because somebody is looking to make a serious commitment.
So let’s say you walk in, you do the open house thing, you find a house that you think is right.
It checks a lot of the boxes.
So you decide you’re going to make an offer, which is essentially the initial commitment.
You’re like, okay, we’ve done the desire.
We’ve done the consideration.
We’ve walked through.
We saw the staging.
We think this feels right.
I’m going to make the initial commitment.
And the initial commitment is writing an offer.
So if you are anything like us, when you make your initial offer, you know you want it.
But you do ask your agent, like, listen, are we locked in when we make this offer?
Or can we still change our mind?
And then your agent will tell you like, no, you can change your mind.
We’re just talking.
You can make the offer.
They can accept the offer and you could say no, thanks and walk away.
You saw nothing is in writing yet.
It’s just essentially talking shop to see if this will work.
That’s the initial commitment.
You can still pull out of the deal.
That’s where a client is at when they’ve booked an appointment with you.
Now, if you’ve ever made an offer on a house, there is a feeling of it of like, oh shit, we’re doing this.
Like there is this very final feeling of like, oh my gosh, are we really doing it?
Which is the same emotion a client has when they book their first appointment with you.
And I know I’m talking about buying a home, which would be hundreds of thousands of dollars versus getting your roots done.
Do you know how scary it is to have somebody do your hair for the first time?
It’s really scary.
And for a lot of people, that’s kind of the pressure that they put on themselves.
So I want you to imagine that it’s coming from that same place.
So let’s say they accept your offer.
If you’ve never been through this before, when somebody accepts your offer and they’re like, okay, let’s do it.
We’re going to sell our house to you.
There is an excitement and then an initial, oh my gosh, let’s get back on Zillow and make sure that before we really do this, we’re not missing out on something else.
And I think that 99% of the people you talk to who have bought homes have done that.
Even if you just did it for one night, like are we sure?
Do we want to write this escrow check?
Is this really the thing for us?
That’s the reconsideration.
And then a lot of times you even do spend time in escrow, like waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Is something going to go wrong?
Are they going to find a leak in the ceiling?
Like there is this panic of like, okay, we’ve made this commitment.
Are we sure we’re doing the right thing?
It’s the same.
And this is what a client goes through after they’ve booked an appointment with you.
That booking of the appointment is only the initial commitment.
They’re going to go through a whole reconsideration process before they actually show up in your chair.
And by the way, they’re going to look at their other options.
And you’ve got to still be the best possible choice or they’re going to go somewhere else.
Then there’s acceptance.
So when you’re buying a home, acceptance is you’ve closed.
Like you’re getting the keys.
Your mortgage payment is due in 60 days.
Like you’re in it, babe.
But here’s the thing too, is even after acceptance, I could sell the house in two years.
Like I don’t have to be there forever.
It is the same when you’re working with a stylist.
This whole, I was able to use this analogy of buying a home and the extended thought process and the consideration and the thoughtfulness and the looking at other options.
Because this is very real and very similar.
If you talk to real clients, this is what they’re going through before sitting in your chair.
It used to be, oh, Maggie does your hair?
I’ve heard good things about her.
I’m going to book an appointment next week.
It did used to be that simple.
Or, oh my gosh, I love the way Greg is showing up on social media.
I think he’s for me.
He looks fun.
And they book an appointment.
It’s not like that anymore.
It is this longer extended piece of the marketing funnel that we have to adapt our strategies to.
So I hope getting an overview of this trust level of the marketing funnel has been insightful.
If you’re in Thrivers, you’re already digging into the content on it.
If you’re coming into any of my upcoming free trainings, we’re definitely going to talk about it a little bit more.
But I really want you to think to yourself, like before you make a commitment with any local small business, what trust components are you looking for?
What are the things that build trust versus work against it?
You’ll find a lot of answers and strategies living there.
If you have any additional questions, as always, leave me a rating or review on iTunes.
And I’m happy to respond to as many questions as I can in an upcoming episode.
And as I always say, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
