What is up, and welcome to the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
I’m your host, Britt Seva, and if you’re a salon owner who wants to be able to walk out the door of their salon every night, knowing that your team can run itself, profit’s always gonna be there, and you’re offering the best possible salon team
experience, I have got an incredible new 90-minute training just for you. It’s the Ultimate Salon Structure Masterclass, your roadmap to getting off the floor organized and achieving 500K or more with a 10% margin. This is kicking off this week.
This is for booth rental leaders, hybrid leaders, employee-based leaders. You’re not gonna want to miss it. We have a few dates scheduled.
You can register now at thrivingstylist.com/ultimatesalonstructure. That’s thrivingstylist.com/ultimatesalonstructure. I’ll see you there.
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 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 this week we explore the question, how much money can a salon owner really make? And this episode is based on a ton of data I’ve collected recently.
So I didn’t realize I was sitting on kind of a gold mine of data until yesterday. I am coming off of our X Club retreat that we hosted in May of 2025. So this was 70 very high performance stylist and salon owners who are part of Thriver Society.
They have to have doubled or tripled their income while working with us or be a salon team that has increased revenue by 25% working with us. There’s all this different criteria to get into the room. So 70 of them are there.
And we had them complete a survey ahead of the experience, primarily for the reason that I wanted to put them into these masterminding groups based on their production and the sophistication of their business and all these different things.
Okay, so I’m sitting on that data from this high performance group of individuals. Then I’ve got our salon owners survey data.
So in July of this year, I sent out a survey request that was completed by a bunch of our thriving leadership members, but also just a bunch of salon owners from around the country.
So I have 80 something thousand followers on Instagram and 30 something thousand people on our email list.
So we pulled all this data from all these different places, some being thriving leaders and some just being incredible salon owners from around the country.
Then, just this last week, I did something called our Thriving Leadership Boot Camp Compensation Survey. And that was on August of 2025.
And the reason that I did that was not to collect survey data, but because I promised anybody who came to this boot camp that somebody was going to get a compensation plan makeover.
And I was going to show them what it would look like to use our compensation model instead of whatever it was they were using. And I told Emily on my team, I said, listen, if we get 50 responses on this thing, I’ll be thrilled.
Well, the week is halfway over and I’m sitting at 181 responses.
So I have tons of data on what’s going on in salons, how much money is coming in, how much money is going out, what compensation plans are looking like, what business coaches are providing effective strategy, what compensation models are generating
walkouts at scale. I’m sitting on this data goal line that I didn’t even realize I had.
Until this last survey where I was like, oh my gosh, if I put together everything I’ve got here, this really gives such a good cross-section of what’s going on in the industry. So this is going to be kind of like at a ramble.
I’m just going to kind of share a lot of the data that I’m looking at. And you’re just going to kind of peek inside my brain and get a sense of what I’m geeking out over as it relates to where the money’s at for salon owners right now.
Because what’s very interesting, kind of like I’ve been talking about the great divide in the industry, there is a real great divide in salon ownership.
And we’ve got some salon owners who are taking home multi six figures every single year, while compensating their teams incredibly well. Like these are not owners that are ripping their teams off. Because I’m looking also at their payroll.
Like I can see everything that’s happening and everybody’s getting theirs in the end. And there’s a profit margin. Incredible, incredible stuff.
Then I’ve got a huge cross section of the industry who just heard me say that stat. And they’re like gagged a little bit. And they’re like, I don’t even have a profit margin.
I’ve been an owner for eight years. I’ve got nothing to show for it. And there’s this huge disparity and almost like a valley in between.
Like I’ve got these very high performance salon owners taking home tons of cash. And then I’ve got these other ones over here who are like, I’ve never made a dime. And then there’s some people in between, but there’s this huge disparity.
And so I just kind of want to talk about how that happens and why that happens and how you can ensure if you are thinking about opening a salon or you have a salon, how you can make sure that you don’t end up with a money pit, which can always be a potential possibility whenever opening a business. So first of all, let’s look at where revenue can come from in a salon. So I identify five different revenue sources that exist in any given salon business.
You have the owner service revenue, which I do include in total salon revenue overall, depending on who you talk to.
There’s some, I think, methods and models where they’re like, well, the salon owner’s revenue is theirs to keep, but it’s this side thing and that’s how you pay yourself. I don’t think so.
I think that the revenue that the owner generates just comes into the business overall. For me and my coaching business, if I go do a speaking gig somewhere, that’s not my money to keep for myself. That just goes to my business’ bottom line.
I think it’s the same thing for the salon. If you do services, it just goes to the salon’s bottom line. Owner service revenue is a primary revenue stream.
What I am finding in the survey data is that there’s a huge disparity in the amount of salon owners who are still the primary earner in the business. Oh my gosh. We have got to get you out of there as soon as possible.
I think I’m going to have next week’s episode be dedicated to that. Looking at why it’s so critical that the owner is not what’s called the key man or the person who is basically holding it all together.
If it wasn’t for the owner’s revenue, this whole ship sinks. That’s really dangerous. No wonder a lot of salon owners are not finding the margin and are stressed at night.
There’s this push-pull with high production as an owner where you’re like, I want to keep pushing because I do charge the most and I do have the strongest clientele. That’s what allowed you to be an owner.
We have to dismantle that and quickly in order for you to have a business that can scale. Number one revenue source in most salons is going to be that salon owner service revenue. Number two is going to be the team service revenue.
Now, this is only revenue that hits the salon’s bottom line. If you have an employee-based salon, if you have a booth rental salon, that’s not a stream you can tap into. But you do have stream number three, which is booth rent collected.
If you’re a booth rental owner, collecting that booth rent is a primary revenue stream for you. If you just have employees, you don’t get that one. If you’re a hybrid, you get both of those.
Then we have what I’m calling product sales. Notice I didn’t say retail sales. Any products that you sell in your salon, so whether it be shampoo or blow dryers or earrings or sweaters, products is another way that you can make revenue.
I think that the interest in product sales is because in a salon, you’re mostly trading time for dollars. But when we can sell a product, instead, it feels like you’re increasing the value of a ticket without actually having to work any harder.
Retail sales and product sales are something I like to geek out over.
If you zoom out beyond our industry and you look at just like good business analysis and good business data, and when you listen to people who invest in businesses or talk about what they look for in profitable businesses, retail is like the business
that people say to stay as far away from as possible. I don’t mean like when I say retail, you think conditioner. I’m saying like the retail industry, meaning reselling pens and stationery and jeans and candles and it like selling products.
Your overhead is so high on that. It has the thinnest margin in pretty much any industry that you can find a business to invest in. So product sales and retail, I think that they feel really exciting because it does feel like adding to the ticket.
Just be really wary of it.
We’ve incorporated a new tool into our leadership program in particular, that I think is going to be really eye-opening because we’re looking at retail sales balanced against monthly retail investment to find the actual true profit.
What I think that we do, especially with things like retailer product sales, is we say, buy it for 20, sell it for 40, you made 20 bucks, you’re able to restock the shelves over time, you find this margin because you’ve got this markup.
But what happens is when you get in the rat race of restocking your shelves and investing in new lines and trying to pay out commission, not only is there no profit, you often end up in the hole.
We’ve got this cool new calculator that helps you to understand if you’re falling into that trap or if you really have found the margin.
Product sales is a revenue stream, but it’s a tricky one because like I said, if you just look at business strategy in any industry, physical product sales, generally speaking, has the lowest margin you can find, but it is something that we can use
as a revenue stream in our business. Then lastly, the fifth one is going to be education. You can sell what you know, you can sell physical hands-on classes, you can sell training classes, lots of things that you can sell education-wise.
Now, I just named five revenue streams. Do you as an owner need to have all five? No.
Should everybody listening to this episode have all five? Not at all.
Not everybody is a good teacher, not everybody is set up to sell retail or physical products, not everybody wants to have booth renters, not everybody wants to have employees, not everybody wants to take clients anymore.
All of these five revenue streams are optional, but you likely need to have at least two or three of them in order to have a salon where revenue and profit are even possible. We know where all the money can possibly come from.
Let me take you back to X Club Retreat, which we hosted May of 2025. Like I said, it was this high performer room. I had sent them all this survey with the purpose of, I wanted to have them network with those who they worked similarly to.
I had a few tables that I think are relevant to this particular podcast episode. I think we ended up with a total of 12 tables, something like that. But there’s only a handful that makes sense for this episode.
I want to talk about our booth rental salon owners table. Shout out to you all. I know you all are still in touch and are loving that life.
It makes me so happy. We had this one table of incredible booth rental salon owners who were all networking with each other. Then we had two high performance salon owner tables, very high performers.
These two tables were significantly higher revenue than everybody else in the room. These two tables, one was a high, high, high six-figure annual revenue table, and the other table was million dollars in that table.
We have one table of salon owners where everybody sitting in that table, their salon generates at least a million dollars in revenue and for a lot of them, it was multi-millions.
Then we have this other table where it’s salons that are doing $750,000, $800,000, $900,000 in annual revenue. We’ve got these two big tables and then we have our booth rental owners table.
Something that I noticed as I created these two high production tables, what is the one thing you think they had in common? All of them had employees.
I think one was a hybrid, so had some booth renters as well, but in those two high, high, high performing tables, where the revenue was high and the margins were there, which we’re going to get into the margins in a minute, they had employees.
And it was like something that I knew, but to see it in such a way like in a physical room where you have all these high performers, but when you look at like where the money’s really flowing, to see that like having employees really made a
difference, I thought it was very fascinating. And like I said at the top of this episode before, any of the stylist come for us and say, well, that’s because they’re keeping all the stylist money.
Uh-uh, I’ve gotten a chance to look at the payroll and a lot of the financials thanks to this very last survey of the salon leaders and they’re paying their people well. So that’s not what it is.
It’s just that they have scaled their businesses to a place where revenue is possible because they’re able to tap into more of those revenue sources versus a booth rental salon.
You just don’t have as many places to turn to find the revenue to feed the business to grow it well.
Okay, so backing out again, in the survey I did in July, we polled a bunch of different places, my Instagram, my email list, and then we also polled our Thrivers. And I segmented out just the Thrivers’ data to have an interesting cross-section.
So the average booth rental salon owner in Thriver Society that filled out this survey generates $130,000 in revenue in their business beyond their chair.
The average employee-based salon owner in Thriving Leadership that filled out the survey generates $820,000 in revenue beyond their chair. So the employee-based salons are doing what?
Seven times more, 6.8 times more revenue annually than a booth rental salon owner. What was interesting is when you look at the average profit margin of the thriving leaders who took this survey, both of them have an average margin of 11 percent.
Half higher, half lower, 11 percent was the average. So the average employee-based salon owner was taking home $82,000 in profit, while the average booth rental salon owner was taking home more like $12,000 a year in profit.
It’s still profit, it’s still good, but it’s on a totally different scale. Now, that being said, the average employee-based salon owner is probably working harder. They have a different level of responsibility.
But with that, the way the industry is shifting and changing, the average booth rental salon owner has to work really hard too. There’s a huge marketing component.
There is an expectation to create a beautiful environment and provide amenities and all these different things. But you’re making seven times less revenue. And it’s simply something to consider.
Now, another factor that I thought was worth talking about is that when we look at the highest performing salons that took any of these surveys, X Club Retreat, my July survey, this most recent one I did in August, the highest performing salons are
the salons where the owner is taking clients 12 hours a week or less. So I do want to explore that more next week and next week’s episode because I think it’s a beefy topic and it’s going to take us a little bit of time.
Now, before any stylist, like I said, start coming for me and saying, yeah, that’s because the salon owners keep all the money. Not true.
So the other pattern that I saw in these very high performing salons where there is a lot of revenue and there is a good amount of profit and there is stability in the business is that those salons are retaining stylists that are doing upwards of
$200,000 a year in services or more. So as I say that, some of you are thinking like, well, why would a stylist doing $250,000 in services continue to be an employee? Because they’re working at the best possible place in space.
They love their environment. They love their team. They love that they get to clock in and out and aren’t running to the beauty supply store.
They love that their client relations are taken care of. They might have a front desk team. The website is gorgeous and taken care of.
Their demand is generated for them. And so the money is good and the peace of mind is better. And the other thing that we’re seeing a trend on is that 11% of the salon survey now offer uncapped commissions.
And this is something I’m really geeking out over. I was the business coach who for years said that if salons pay more than 50% commissions, there’s no way for them to generate profit. I am totally changing my tune on that.
As I have looked at some of these very high performance salons, and by high performance, I don’t mean you have to be making a million dollars to pull this off.
It’s when I look at salons who have dialed it in and have figured out how the game works now, the days of saying our commissions top out at 45% are over.
And because there are so many options and opportunities for where stylists can go to work, it is imperative that if you want to be attracting and retaining the best and the brightest, you offer them competitive compensation that they cannot beat
going elsewhere. Here’s the best possible scenario. I want booth rental salon owners to win and I want employee-based salon owners to win. How is that going to happen?
Well, there’s some booth renters who are willing to pay a premium booth rent, which by the way, having renters who pay a premium rent is the only way a booth rental salon turns profit.
The average booth rental salon, here’s a fun fact for you, in the average booth rental salon, the only thing the owner is getting as a perk of owning that salon is they themselves don’t have to pay rent.
There’s no additional profit, there’s no additional perks. Some months they actually end up running in the red, but at least they’ve created their own space, they are their own boss, they don’t have to pay rent and that’s the end.
That’s the average booth rental salon setup. When you look at the average employee based salon, most of them don’t generate any profit for the first three years at all. They operate in debt or in the red.
And then over time, they’re able to scale to a place where they are generating revenue in the positive if they put systems in place that make that possible.
So when I say the way that salons are shifting is uncapped commissions and you say that’s impossible, I can’t afford it.
As the person who has now analyzed 180 something compensation systems as of August of 2025, like these are currently run compensation systems, the pattern I see is exactly what I have suspected for a long time, that most salons are overpaying
underperformers and underpaying overperformers, and so your high performers get resentful and then they choose to move on. If you are a salon owner and you want to build forward and be able to scale and offer incredible perks and benefits to your
team, you have to be taking care of your best people, period. That’s how any business runs itself well. Rather than looking at our salons as special stovelakes, we have to start saying how do we run our businesses like real businesses?
In a real business, the highest performers make the most money, and not just your paycheck is biggest, they get a bigger piece of the pie. It’s simply how it operates in the real world, and I do think that’s what Stylists today are looking for.
Then the question becomes like, well, then, okay, if employee-based salons are now offering these uncapped commissions, no one’s going to go booth rent. Disagree. I think booth rental is always going to be a market in our industry.
I think studio suites are always going to be a market in our industry. I think that some people would rather work alone. Introverts United, I’m the president of the Introverts United Club, and some people would rather work alone.
I also know a handful of bad-ass booth rental salons where they can charge your premium rent. People do get freedom and flexibility that you simply couldn’t offer in an employee-based environment.
I think different strokes for different folks will always be a part of what makes this industry magical.
But I think that if an owner really wants to run a business and not just have a salon where the perk and benefit is you’ve designed a cute space that you like working in, I think we have to get really serious about the money.
And really start asking ourselves how much money did I want to make opening this business? Did I just want to be a booth rental salon owner?
My rent was paid for, and that was good enough for me, and I didn’t want to have to work too, too hard, and I wanted to be the boss, even if it doesn’t pay me well. Great.
Or did you say like, no, I wanted to come out head financially, like otherwise I should just go rent a chair somewhere and make more money. Or did you say I wanted to lead a team? I wanted to build a team.
I wanted to mentor. I wanted to do something different for my community. And somehow I had this money pit of a monster and my high performers leave just as soon as the going gets good.
I’m recovering from a walkout. I lost six people and I can’t figure out why. I don’t have any time to get everything done.
If you’re in that position and you can’t find the bottom, like you’re not able to find where the profit margin lives, I encourage you to take a look at your five revenue streams.
I encourage you to ask yourself, do I have a salon that could generate an extra $130,000 in revenue for me beyond my chair? Do I have a salon that could generate an extra $800,000 for me beyond my chair? And is that even what you want?
Maybe you have an employee-based salon and you would be thrilled if it would produce half a million dollars beyond your chair with a 10% margin. You would be taking home an additional 50 grand beyond what you’re doing yourself.
That’s something you’re probably pretty damn proud of. So, I encourage you to think about the money. I know we’re in an industry where we always say like, I love what I do, I serve my clients, it’s an art, the money’s a bonus.
That’s called a hobby. If this is really your business, I want you to think to yourself like, when I opened my salon, did I want to make money? How much did I want to make?
And do I have a structure where that’s even possible for me? If you have any questions on the flip side of this, again, this was kind of like a brain-dumb episode. I wanted to just kind of talk about all these facts and data I’ve been chewing on.
If you want to talk more about the money, if you want to understand how to amplify your five revenue streams, if you have any questions at all, there’s two ways to reach me. Leave me a rating or review on iTunes. I check those out every single week.
Ask me your questions there or hit me up in the DMs on Instagram at Britt Seva. So much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
