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 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 Hair Stylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
What is up?
Welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
I’m your host, Britt Seva, and this week we have a really fun one because all of the content, is provided by you.
Every once in a while, I do these kinds of episodes, and they’re always some of the most fun, because even I learn a ton in these type of researched episodes.
So there’s kind of three different types of research I get a chance to do when I’m doing podcasting.
The first is very similar to like investigative journalism type of research, where I’m looking for reputable sources, and I’m trying to figure out data points that I know I can trust, versus there’s so many garbage data points out there.
And I’m trying to come to you all from a place of educated, well-researched, non-biased.
Whenever I’m doing strategic episodes, that’s kind of the route I choose to take.
Then, every once in a while, I throw in an episode like last week’s, which was all biased.
It was just all personal opinion.
But that’s probably the least common form of episode I like to do.
I like my shows to be real strategic.
So often I do that kind of journalism style research.
But then there’s another style of research I do, where I’m just kind of leaning into the current experience.
So I do get to see quite a few salon owners’ P&Ls every single quarter, meaning their profit and loss statements.
I get to understand what their financials look like, where their profit margins are, what’s going well, what’s going poorly, how their compensation model is working.
Is that creating retention amongst their team?
I get to see these different data points, and I get to see them from stylists all across the US.
Sometimes international, we have a pretty good Canadian Thriver Society base too.
And then we have some well beyond.
We have some in Europe, South America, but primarily the United States and Canada.
And I get to take a look and see patterns.
That’s some of my favorite podcasts to report on, because it’s the stuff you wouldn’t see anywhere else unless you had a coach who was looking at these very data points, kind of reporting back on them anonymously.
So then we have that sort of data.
Then we have this sort of data, which is probably my favorite because it’s all from you all.
I didn’t make up any of these things.
I’m going to give you a gajillion direct quotes today.
But when I do episodes like this, I’m learning along the way, too.
I don’t know what the answers are going to be.
So I’ve done episodes like this every couple of years since this podcast started.
And somebody DMed me as I was running this series of polls.
She could see what I was doing.
And she said, I can’t wait to hear what the data shows this time around because I feel like the industry has changed so much.
And it has.
It really, really has.
So this is kind of a nice, timely episode where we take a look at what stylists want, why they’re leaving their salons right now, what they’re looking for, what they’re not interested in, what they are interested in, how to draw in high achievers.
So that’s the interesting thing too, is the way I arrange my polls is some of them are anonymous.
And whenever I do an anonymous poll, I know I’m going to get the most feedback.
But also when I can’t trace a source, it’s like a double edged sword because I will get very open and honest feedback, but some of it’s really unhinged.
And I have to be mindful to throw out the things that seem extreme because I never know the background or the intention.
And so I have to like tread a little lightly with the anonymous stuff versus when it’s not anonymous and I can see the sources.
We had some really high achieving stylist participate in this one.
And I know it because I know them and I know their business and I know what they’re up to.
And so I’ll kind of flag for you like this is what a dream stylist said was important to them because I think it’s helpful to know like, okay, but who are these people saying they want these things?
Is this the new stylist who’s doing 14 grand a year in services?
Or is this somebody who’s doing multiple six figures?
So I’ll kind of lean in and quote that when I can.
So let’s start with why stylists are choosing to leave salons right now.
I got a few hundred responses on this one.
So this was an anonymous one.
And I’ve narrowed it down to, I don’t know, 20 or so of the ones that I felt like were the most clear, some of them were a little ranty, which is totally fine, but maybe maybe not as constructive as possible.
That’s a good word.
I pulled the 20 ish or so most constructive.
So in no particular order, I’m going to read them to you and then we’ll discuss all together.
So these are the reasons why stylists are currently choosing to leave their salons.
Empty promises from ownership over and over and over.
Higher commissions, paid trips, bonus incentives for promoting the salon.
Education allowance, the list is endless and the payout never seems to come.
Let’s talk about just that for a moment.
If you’re creating incentives for your team, but nobody is earning them, they’re empty incentives.
So if it feels like the goalpost is not even achievable, the incentive is not effective.
So having bonuses and incentives I love, but if they’re impossible to achieve, nobody’s going to be inspired by them.
Next, I just recently left my salon.
I didn’t leave because I didn’t agree with their vision, mission and values.
I left because they no longer were following their vision, mission and values.
There was no captain of the ship anymore.
She had completely lost her way.
She let the wrong people influence too much, so she didn’t rock the boat.
In the last three years, she’s lost about 15 stylist and I can’t imagine she won’t lose more.
Next, favoritism.
They’d have monthly private meetings with each stylist and it was clear that they would allow certain stylist to get promoted and they just scraped by, but then the next stylist who sat in on the meeting would work their ass off and they’d hold them back from promotion.
And then this person names a specific coaching company and says that that coaching company also supported this guidance.
Next, I left 20 years ago because my pay was always bounced and short changed.
It was never clear how our compensation worked.
The owner felt like they were taking his money.
The owner favored assistance over stylists.
Too much favoritism, too much lack of transparency around compensation.
Next, there’s no sense in staying as an employee when I bring in over $300,000 a year in services, but only make 50 percent commission with no opportunity for growth.
I left my last salon because I wasn’t making enough money and I was working too much with no leeway to change my schedule.
My salon was using a team-based pay method and I was very clearly pulling the weight for three other stylists.
I was triple booked all day long.
I had to work 10 hour days and weekends just so that I could sustain my own revenue while others weren’t even pulling their weight.
Capped to 55 percent commissions while being the highest earner by over $100,000 in my salon.
My pricing is also lower than it should be.
Also, stylists who have proven to be awful at their job are in leadership roles because they’re no good at doing hair.
It’s in everyone is the same salon, when that’s not how life really works.
Both the top performers are thinking about exiting because it feels like we’re favoring the bottom.
Y’all, how often do I talk about this?
Salon owners doing this, thinking that they’re growing forward, your high performers notice what you’re doing and they reach a point of burnout.
I got asked to leave, aka I was kicked out of my last salon, because I wrote my phone number on the back of business cards, instead of using the salon’s booking system.
Mind you, I was a booth renter.
It was legal for me to do that.
The owner stopped communicating, like stop talking to me.
A year went by, I gave my notice and still nothing.
They did cash my rent checks.
I still have not had any communication with them.
It’s been a year and a half since I left.
They clearly wanted to be rent collectors, not leaders.
I’m thinking about leaving my current salon because it needs a renovation badly.
It looks very dated and not just what my target market is looking for in a salon.
There’s hardly any amenities.
This owner has 100,000 followers and is a total influencer.
She has a full clientele.
She’s not in a rush to renovate because business is going well for her.
I left my previous salon three years ago because I felt like the owner was checked out.
Didn’t care to grow the salon because she had already built her own massively successful salon.
The one I worked at was the second location.
I think she wanted to be an absentee owner.
She was over 60 and just wanted to pursue other things.
This one, I think, is a really good lesson learned.
And I like how this whoever the stylist is, this was an anonymous one, gave grace to the owner of saying she was in her 60s.
She was probably thinking towards retirement, wanted to be an absentee owner.
This happens a lot when you open multiple locations.
You cannot duplicate the culture of one location into another.
My daughter worked at this extremely successful Bay Area restaurant change, extremely successful, where the menu of each restaurant is practically identical.
It’s all the same cuisine.
It’s a really specific cuisine.
It’s all the same cuisine owned by the same owner.
It’s a man and he does have managers of each locations, but it’s not like a restaurateur partnership.
It is a solo man who’s probably got eight Bay Area restaurants.
You would not necessarily know they’re owned by the same person.
They all have their own brands, their own flair, their own price points, their own energy.
And I think that’s why he’s been so successful is it’s extremely difficult to build a successful culture at one place, then duplicate that culture somewhere else.
The hearts and souls in that one building cannot be duplicated.
It’s the individuals in a building that make the magic.
You will not find those same individuals at the second location.
So what happens is one location is thriving, and owner opens a second location and tries to recreate the magic and can’t, and now they’re split focus.
So location number one doesn’t really get the love it needs anymore.
Location number two is floundering because it turns out you can’t duplicate culture.
And so it ends up being kind of this like funky spot.
A lot of expansions are unsuccessful for owners because you can’t duplicate the magic.
To do it really well, you have to have really great leadership in place in both locations.
And maximizing that first location truly to the point of the walls are exploding is a much stronger way to do it so that you can have directors at each location.
You can split time at each location and not feel like your focus is cut short.
Next, I left my commission salon because nothing was evolving.
Beautiful salon, but nothing ever changed.
I was one of the top three performers.
I wanted more.
Nothing was happening.
I had hit a ceiling.
The owner talked constantly about how expensive things were and the cost of the salon.
Not my problem, though.
Assistants were lazy.
There was no set program.
It just felt like we were stagnant.
Here’s another one.
The owner is stagnant.
I’d rather work for someone who doesn’t do hair at all, but has a great business vision rather than work for somebody who’s actively behind the chair, but 10 years outdated, exhausted and refusing to evolve.
Next, salon management burned me.
No control of my schedule at all.
No control of the services I could or couldn’t offer.
And time off was always a nightmare.
Policies were never enforced.
Vacation days were rarely approved.
Never had a price raise in five years because I didn’t meet key metrics.
I was told the only way was to make more money was to work more days.
I was already burnt out.
That wasn’t going to happen.
Next, left the salon because the owner was skimming off the top of my paycheck.
The math wasn’t mathing.
She also played favorites.
Go back and listen to last week’s episode.
If you want more clarity on what skimming the paycheck looks like, I hear about stuff like that all the time.
Even if you’re taking legal deductions to Stylist, it doesn’t often feel that way.
I asked for a raise in my commission and was told that I couldn’t get one right now because another one was promised to another girl in the salon and she needed her turn first.
I brought in 250K in services, working 32 hours a week, and I wasn’t eligible for a raise, felt like a gut punch.
Here’s another one about favoritism.
This came up a lot.
Unequal treatment amongst Stylists, whether you’re in or out with the boss, favoritism is insane and it pays to suck up to the boss.
I wish this job felt like a normal job, but in a professional environment, but you need to play into all the politics just to get by.
It’s exhausting.
This is a good one.
Listen up.
My boss leaves her phone unlocked in the break room and people go through it.
I saw my name and it turns out her and my manager were talking badly about me and the way I was trying to grow my business and were essentially making fun of me for trying to do extra things.
That’s when I knew I had to get out ASAP.
Do you know how many stories I’ve heard of stylist going through their owner’s phone?
So many, so many.
Do you know I had to fire a stylist?
This was in 2012 or something because another employee reported to me that she was rifling through my desk looking for my employee notes.
Fired her the next day immediately.
But you guys, and by the way, she didn’t find them because I had all that stuff locked up.
You can’t have bad conversations about your team members with other team members and not think it’s going to get back to them.
You won’t catch somebody on my team talking about the bad conversation I had about somebody else.
If I am frustrated with somebody, they know it.
They’re not confused.
It’s never gossip.
They are very well aware that I’m frustrated.
If you are having secret squirrel conversations laughing about your team members, they should not be working for you.
That’s not leadership.
I left my last salon because it was sad, toxic, and uninspired.
I doubled my commute and went to booth rent.
It was worth it.
I’m now at a salon in a better location with stylists who are doing better hair than me.
It pushed me to level up big and I haven’t looked back.
I could no longer trust my owner.
After I overheard her gossiping about how weird it was that I was into Thrivers, I finally left that salon a year after being Thriver when I had doubled my income.
The owner raised the prices three times in a year due to their overhead rising without there being enough new clients to support price increases.
If you as an owner are raising prices and it doesn’t make sense to the stylist, they feel it.
Everybody knows your cost of running your business has gone up.
You need to market more.
You don’t need to raise the prices more.
You don’t need to cut commissions.
You need stronger marketing.
And lastly, the big salon I worked at kept changing the goalposts annually as they decided to change their business metrics.
They’d give price increases and not commission increases.
It was beyond frustrating.
Okay, so those are all the reasons why stylists are leaving.
Let’s take a look at what makes them want to stay.
So the first thing I asked was, what do you see a salon post on Instagram that makes you say, I want to work there?
I’m just going to read you all the direct quotes.
Team pics of people having fun, salon camaraderie and community, beautiful spaces, education being prioritized, team building days, salon branding shoots, high-end in-salon education, not brand reps, decor, product lines that vibe with me, their staff actually works like isn’t lazy, the equipment available, the brand, the vibe, I need a strong brand, great products, atmosphere, funny reels that aren’t tacky or trendy, pictures of the space celebrating team members, sharing salon experiences, camaraderie with staff, behind the scenes stories of the day to day, education being prioritized, the space has to be gorgeous.
The salon has to be a good backdrop for my client pictures and I need to see low team turnover.
They’re screening for that.
Do you know we have a data point, the average stylist stalks a salon for seven months before considering working there.
Next, happy stylist.
I need to see that on Instagram.
Acknowledgement, education, awareness that they appreciate their staff.
When it’s more about the team than the page dedicated to praising the owner, oof, good one.
A variety of stylist and specialties, not every stylist looking identical, all specializing in the same thing.
Seeing posts about their stylist and their work, but making it real, not meet our next stylist, Megan, type of cheesy post.
A beautiful salon space.
Real life stories, posts and feed that share with stylists working together, not just staged posts.
Salons that can show professionalism and authority without looking cocky or intimidating.
I loved that one.
It needs to be obvious that the salon is spotless in the background day to day.
And a lot of us feel like that’s impossible.
It’s actually relatively common at the most successful salons.
They’re not looking cluttered and wild throughout the day.
So if you’re feeling like, well, that’s impossible to keep the salon clean.
I would really rethink that.
Generally, it’s just new habits, but it’s very, very possible.
Training days, and I want to see what they look like.
Happy, friendly girls that work there showing the vibe you’re going into.
Post the talk to stylists at all.
Yes, your clients do care about how you treat your staff.
It’s important that we see that on the Instagram.
Showcasing fun, positive team culture.
The education they offer.
Updated decor.
I want to see a coffee bar.
Aesthetic social media.
I want to know what the benefits are.
Clean, clutter-free environment, and I got to see it on social.
Okay, here’s the response from a dream stylist, like somebody everybody would want to employ.
She says, I need to be able to tell from Instagram that everyone looks calm, neat, and like they’re actually engaging with their clients, not just trying to get through the day.
I’m also looking for a salon with super niche branding.
They need to have a point of view and it needs to feel polished.
I loved that.
Like it can’t just be trying hard, it has to be achieving.
Okay, so then I asked, okay, what are the red flags?
So that’s the stuff you do want to see.
What are the things you see that say I would never apply to work there?
Ready?
Lack of social media, poor website, no pictures of the work, no interactions with the receptionist or hiring team.
I want to see all that stuff on social.
Okay, here’s one.
If they say we’re like a family here, we could almost make that into a drinking game.
I want you to make note of how many times I say that we’re like a family here is a turn off.
The perks being either super outdated or literally just legal requirements.
So that was an interesting one.
So in a lot of states, sick pay is legally mandatory.
So what this stylist is saying is like, I don’t need to see you promote that as a benefit.
I know in my state, you have to give that to me.
What else are you giving me?
Right?
Oh, this is a good one.
Whenever somebody quotes, we have the best compensation in town.
It always makes me feel like it’s actually the worst.
The website is dated means I’m not going to work there.
Oh, another one outdated website.
That’s not going to get my application.
High staff turnover, family being used, lack of marketing, not keeping up with the trends.
When everyone says they love it here, but when you ask them if there’s anything they don’t like, they have nothing to say.
I love that.
No place is perfect.
And when you ask everybody and they’re like, everything is great.
Like there’s no way that that’s possible.
Oh, I loved this one.
Poorly trained receptionist.
If your receptionist is untrained, it probably means everybody else is not getting good education either.
No website, bad website or not updated website.
If Instagram and Facebook aren’t good and I can’t find out anything about the team, I would never apply.
No rules, no website, no structure equals no thank you.
No posts on social media for the last month or a COVID pop up that still shows up on their website.
No team photos.
All of that shows me you’ve checked out.
No pictures of the team on Instagram or the website or just a poor website overall.
Lack of diversity.
I don’t want it to look like a sorority house.
I loved that one.
Bad social media and website.
Hiring on Instagram that is so vague and doesn’t show the salon or talk about perks or benefits or amenities.
I see that a lot where a salon will put up an Instagram post.
It’s like, we’re hiring.
Enquire within.
We’re all family here.
You’ll love it.
We’re super passionate.
Come on down.
And it’s like, wait, what?
What is happening?
What’s the schedule?
How much do you pay?
Like nobody’s going to apply for a job that’s vague like that.
Oh, this one was interesting.
I’d love to know everybody’s take on this.
It’s an itch to me when every stylist who works at the salon has to use the salon name in their Instagram handle.
I kind of agree.
I think that’s very like 2016.
Like it just doesn’t feel modern or of the times.
And it’s giving controlling when it doesn’t need to be like that.
Oh, this one was interesting.
When I can see certain stylists are very clearly favored on social media, it gives playing favorites.
Everyone looks the same, no diversity, confusing or unclear websites.
The phrase, we are a family.
Low commission, dirty salon, the energy of the salon.
We are a family?
Nope.
And then barf face emoji.
I have a family that my life revolves around.
Work is work, not my life.
Also an Ick when a salon says, you spend more time here than you do with your family.
Oh, I still see that.
What are we doing?
What are we doing?
No active socials, no decent website, poor social media footprint, poor first impression, not an updated website.
Clickier, edgy vibe is a no, dated decor, bad reviews.
I’m not applying.
Oh, when salons are always making it clear that all their past employees were the problem.
Oh, my gosh, so good.
OK, here’s another response from a dream stylist.
Salon leadership that withholds information about rent compensation.
It feels very MLM.
That should all be transparent and on the website before I even have to apply typos on social media or on the website means lacks attention to detail.
I love that.
OK, last but not least, I asked about perks and benefits, and I did it in two ways because I was really intrigued by the feedback that was coming in.
So the first thing I did was a poll and I said it was kind of like a would you rather and it was would you rather have 50 percent of your health insurance covered, like 50 percent of your premium covered by your owner, a three percent salary retirement savings match, which is basically a three percent raise.
Like that’s pretty big stuff.
Health insurance plus retirement, if it means lower commissions or 45 plus commissions, like 45 percent plus commissions with no other traditional benefits.
So the choices were basically 50 percent premium covered, three percent retirement savings match, a retirement and health benefits package, even if it means lower commissions or higher commissions overall with no benefits.
What do you think was the most common?
Well, I’ll tell you what the least common was.
Forty five percent plus commissions with no other traditional benefits.
People want the benefits.
And that’s a sway because when I’ve done this in the past, Stylists were like, we just want more money.
Now they’re thinking differently, which seems to be a different data point and trends.
So something to pay attention to.
Twenty three percent said I would like the combination of health plus retirement, even if it means lower commission.
So twenty three percent said that.
Twenty four percent said fifty percent of my health insurance covered.
That was a tricky one.
And I’m going to read you some of the quotes.
The tricky thing with health insurance is when people are married, often they’ll have their spouse cover them or like my daughter, I still cover her under health insurance for us.
And so health insurance is something we all need.
It is expensive, but because there’s other outlets for it, it’s one of those really tricky benefits.
Most companies don’t get a 100% health insurance opt-in rate in any industry because of that kind of nuancedness of the benefit.
So it becomes a tricky benefit because if people are not participating in it, then to them, it doesn’t feel like any kind of benefit at all.
It’s tricky.
The most common one, 35% said they want the 3% salary retirement savings match, which I think people are getting smart.
That 3% salary retirement savings match, if invested, accrues compound interest, and that’s how you make money in your sleep.
And so I think when people are becoming more financially educated, it becomes very clear that like, that’s the money shot.
And that was really interesting that the number one requested one was that 3% retirement savings match.
I loved that.
That made me really happy.
So here were some of the quotes.
Honestly, I don’t care at all about health insurance.
I want more than a 50% commission.
Here’s another one.
I’d rather have retirement because my husband has our health and we get penalized if I am double covered.
That was interesting to me.
Here’s another one.
The benefits I want are PTO, vacation, pay and maternity leave.
I like to choose and manage my own health and my retirement.
I want the paid time off.
That was really, really interesting to me.
Then an owner said, I’d love to be able to offer retirement.
The nice thing about offering retirement as a business owner, depending on how your business is set up, is you set up contributions for yourself as well.
There is a requirement if you’re setting it up for yourselves, you set it up for your team, but everybody’s winning and benefiting together.
The way that we plan for things like that in Thriving Leadership is it’s budgeted at the start of the year.
If you can ask my company, we track our benefits year over year.
They know exactly how much gets spent in this company on benefits.
It’s something we pick and choose as a group of what we want more of, what we want less of.
It’s a really nice decision because the team feels like they’re a part of that decision making.
It can be really, really powerful.
Here’s another one.
I want insurance, but not if it’s trash.
So this is interesting.
As somebody who has less than 20 employees, I’m only able to offer certain types of insurance coverage.
Like for me, this is I’m going to go on a personal rant.
I would love to have United Health Care, like all of my most favorite providers I’ve ever worked with, except United Health Care.
I have too small of a company.
United doesn’t want any part of me.
I can’t offer that.
I want that for myself.
Too bad.
I can’t offer that to my team.
I can’t get it for myself.
We’re too small.
It’s not possible.
Our dental insurance carrier, I don’t love them, but I can’t get the one I want because our company is too small.
So when this stylist says, I want the health coverage, but I don’t want it to be trash providers, I get it.
And that’s one of the things that’s kind of tricky is a lot of times stylists are like, I wish we could have health coverage.
You might be able to get way better carriers through your state sponsored shop.
And that’s not because your owner sucks.
It’s because that’s just how health insurance works.
Like that would be a whole other podcast about the health care system in the United States.
But that can be one of those tricky things too, where we can only offer so much as business owners.
So that’s kind of a caveat to that as well.
OK, I hope this was helpful.
So some of the patterns that we noticed were tons and tons of focus on websites and social media.
Stylists are really judging you by how you show up there.
So if your website is dated, if your social media is lazy, you’re going to get dated, lazy applicants.
You’re going to get people who don’t really care because you don’t really care.
That’s how it looks online.
And it used to be like, they’ll come in and see us and then they’ll be won over.
It’s just not how the world works anymore.
So marketing, marketing, marketing.
I can’t say that enough.
That’s going to be your best friend.
The radiating happiness thing was really huge for me too.
We saw a lot of that.
I need the inside of the salon to actually be happy.
And then I need that to be shown.
I need that to come through on social media, come through on the website, but also be the truth.
We saw a lot of concerns about drama, gossip, favoritism.
There were a lot of high performers who felt like they were almost punished for being high performers.
There was a lot of quotes around that.
I just think we’re kind of in a time where stylists are very aware and they know they have options and your best opportunity is to be the best option.
And the nice thing is, being the best option doesn’t have to be expensive.
Like truly and honestly, it just has to be strategic.
So I hope this has been thought provoking.
I hope your wheels are turning a little bit.
We can keep this conversation going.
Leave me a rating or review on iTunes with any questions that come up for you or hit me up in the DMs as they always say so much love.
Happy business building and I’ll see you on the next one.
