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 and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
I’m your host Britt Seva, and today we’re going to talk about hybrid salon success strategies.
So something we are seeing a lot more of is hybrid salons.
And what’s interesting is previously, call it like a decade ago, the trend was that employee-based salons were starting to offer booth rental opportunities because stylists were getting to a place as employees where they were like, I want more, I want what’s next, I want independence.
And so for salon owners to not lose these people who they cared about or who were amazing members of the team, added to the culture, whatever the reason, they said, you know what, you can stay here, but go independent.
You want your independence, you can have it, but stay within our four walls.
We’d love to keep you.
So 10 years ago, we saw that.
Flash forward to now, and we’re seeing a lot of the opposite, which is interesting, meaning booth rental salons now hiring on employees or offering employment-based opportunities.
For a lot of reasons, one being that the industry is cyclical, and probably in another 10 years, 15 years, we’ll see a shift back to independence.
But right now, people are realizing that being a business owner is hard.
It’s a lot of work, it’s expensive, it’s a lot of pressure.
The workday doesn’t stop when the last client walks out the door.
And a lot of people are like, that’s not for me.
I just want to do good hair and love the people I work with and collect a paycheck and be done.
And I think that we are graduating out of a decade where it was like shameful to get a paycheck.
And now people are like, my paycheck is freaking great.
Like those of you who want to do your own thing and work hard and build your business, you should do it.
But it’s also gotten harder to build business.
The last 10 years were arguably the easiest we’ve ever had.
And we were talking about that a lot, like many, many years ago when social media was really at its peak.
It was like, I know social media is hard, but if you don’t do this now, wait until you see what it looks like in a few years, because it’s going to get harder.
And now I feel like we’re there.
And because the heyday is over, and it doesn’t mean you can’t still build great business.
There’s still a lot of stylists and stylists who are making more money now than they’ve ever made before.
But the strategies have changed, and what it takes to pull it off has changed, and it’s not as easy as it used to be.
And so people are saying, you know what, if somebody else has figured this out, and I can work for them, and the culture is great, and I can make great money, why wouldn’t I just do that?
Like the idea of you can only be successful in this industry if you’ve done it on your own and have graduated to being a studio suite owner or being a booth renter, that’s kind of changed, which is interesting and exciting.
I was talking to a booth rental salon owner that I really respect and admire a few months back, and she was like, it’s so interesting.
For years, when I had an employee-based salon, everybody wanted to be a renter.
And she’s like, now I have a full rental salon and everybody who’s applying wants to be an employee.
Things are just shifting and changing.
So we know that there’s gonna be more hybrid salons entering the market, whether they be brand new salons opening up or salons that are shifting models.
I want to talk about what it looks like to have a successful hybrid salon or to work at a successful hybrid salon.
So this question comes in from Emily.
This is a review on iTunes if you want to read along with me.
Emily says, hey Britt, it would be amazing to hear your thoughts on a future podcast episode diving into hybrid salon models, especially when it comes to the balance of booth renters and employees.
And that is at the core of what makes this challenging such a great question.
Do you think they should be clearly differentiated in a salon’s branding and website?
I’ve really struggled with how to make it clear to clients that booth renters are independent businesses who are simply renting space.
It feels misleading not to distinguish them to clients, especially when I’ve often had renters clients call or text me directly, and they are then confused when I tell them that they need to reach out to their stylist.
But I also know that some salons mean more into the salon suite model where the distinction is expected versus a traditional salon where it’s booth rental and stylists are seen as part of the brand.
Right now, I allow booth renters to be on our main booking site along with employees, and honestly, I think it’s a huge draw for them.
It brings the bulk of their clients.
Ideally, I’d love for each renter to have their own booking link, and I’d still send referrals their way, but I worry about pushback or even losing some of them.
I also wonder if it adds too much friction and barrier to entry for clients who book lashes with one person, and browse with another and a facial with somebody else, all in one visit.
From a business standpoint, the biggest challenge I am seeing is that some renters with open books are taking a lot of last minute bookings from clients who could have gone to my employees.
It slows down the process of getting more of my employees booked, and there’s a client retention issue with some of the renters who don’t rebook new clients they receive from online bookings.
This is unfair to the rest of the team because they could have taken that client on and probably retain them.
Would love to hear your perspective.
Do you think booth renters and employees should be on the same booking site, or do you recommend separating them entirely?
Thank you so much for everything you share.
Your insights are always helpful.
Such great questions.
Like the person who asked this question is so clearly a leader because they’re thinking in the right way, they’re asking all the right things, and such great concerns and questions were raised.
So couple of things that I pulled from this.
One, the question of do I think that booth renters and employees should be clearly differentiated on the website?
Two, is the booking system challenge of booth renters like to be on the shared system, but part of the issue is that clients that could be going to employees are now going to renters.
And is that fair?
Does that make sense financially?
First of all, fair is an F word to me.
I don’t put a lot of weight into like, is it fair?
I don’t care so much for that.
I look more at what makes business financial sense, what makes sense for the arrangement that everybody’s working in.
I look at things more like that versus fair in the sense of everybody should get all the same because that’s not how the world really works.
But what makes sense for the business and for the people in the business, I do think is something we should talk about.
Another concern is she didn’t bring it up, but I know this comes up for salon owners all the time.
Like if a client has a bad experience with a stylist and they call the salon owner to complain about it, but the stylist that they saw as a booth renter, well, the salon owner can’t really do a whole lot, but this client doesn’t get that part.
So how do you make that differentiation?
The other thing that this salon owner was bringing up is if somebody wants to see a renter for one thing and an employee-based stylist for another, how does that work logistically?
So lots of different things going on.
I’ll get to all those things.
Let’s talk about what should be the same for employees and renters in a hybrid salon and what should be completely different.
So whether you have a salon that is full of employees or full of renters or is truly hybrid, you’re building a team.
You’re building a collection of humans and personalities and values and beliefs and thoughts and work ethics and clientele target markets, and you’re putting them all together in four walls and hoping to make it work and hoping that everybody’s happy there.
All the personalities get along well.
Everybody’s working kind of with the same values and belief system and it’s all very well and good and everybody’s making good money and everybody’s happy and everybody stays.
Like that’s the vision.
When you look at what stylists are looking for now, when you look at why stylists leave the salon they’re at, almost always it does come down to culture.
And stylists wanting to love the people they work beside, love the person they work for.
And I don’t mean love in the way of like, we’re all best friends.
I mean it in the way of maybe love is not even the right word, but it’s like feel very well respected, feel like they work with a group of people who share the same beliefs and drive and desires in the industry that they have.
And that they work in alignment and that things just feel good.
That’s what most stylists are looking for when they’re looking for a place to work, whether it be independently or on a team.
When you see stylists who leave a team-based salon, very rarely is it just the dream of chasing more money.
Now, if there is a compensation plan and path in place that doesn’t allow for a stylist to make more money, like they have really truly capped out, and it’s like, well, the way to make more money is to do more services, but the stylist is already doing like $180,000 in services a year.
And you’re like, well, the commission is just kind of what it is.
That person, you stand a good chance of losing to independence because truly they could make a lot more money somewhere else.
It just is what it is unless you have an uncapped commission model, which would resolve all that.
But it’s not what this episode is about.
So knowing that culture is really at the core of everything, you want to think about everybody that you’re bringing into the building and how you want them to show up to work.
Do you want a booth renter to be willing to bounce formula ideas with your employees?
Do you want people to want to like sit in the back and have lunch together?
Do you want people to choose to clean up after themselves?
Do you want people to present in a certain way?
Like you can’t have a dress code for booth renters.
You can’t.
But there is a difference often in the way that somebody presents themselves if they’re charging $20 for haircuts versus $200 for haircuts.
Does that matter to you?
Like what is the way that the salon brand presents?
What is the way that you want those in the team to present?
What are the values?
What are the beliefs?
And if you can get all of those things aligned with a group of independents and employees, you can create a really incredible culture.
How important is education to everybody who’s in the building?
How important is professional development?
All of these things will impact if you have a positive salon culture or a negative salon culture.
So we’re still here talking about what everybody should have in common.
I do believe everybody should be on the website.
Employees, booth renters, whatever.
We want the salon to appear cohesive and happy, and this is a great place to get your hair done.
When I’ve experienced this before, when I go into a business and some of the stylists are on the site and some of the stylists aren’t, and I’ve looked at the website and I’ve tried to get to know the team, and I pop in and there’s faces that are working in the building that I don’t even recognize.
And I wonder to myself, is it that the website hasn’t been updated or they don’t recognize some of these people as team members or some of these people are shadowing because they flew in from out of state for the week?
Clients notice that kind of stuff.
Like, yes, I’m here to see Sandra, but I’m also seeing all of these faces that I’ve never seen before.
And I have looked at your website because I looked really hard to find Sandra.
And now I’m seeing a room full of people I don’t even recognize.
It’s very confusing, especially to a new client.
You want it to feel like we all go here.
We work as a team.
We are happy here whether everybody’s independent or not.
Now, what you can do on your website is have a notation under the names of those who are independent.
And you could put independent stylist to contact, do this, blah, blah, blah.
Email here, click here, send a link there, whatever.
It’s OK to under those people have that notation.
It’s not going to prevent people from reaching out to the owner.
Guess what?
As a salon owner, when you chose to be a hybrid owner, that’s just going to happen.
Some people are going to reach out to you and say, like, hey, I had a question for Mark.
And you’re going to say, oh, my gosh, perfect.
So Mark is independently working with our team.
I can absolutely put you in touch with him.
Here’s the best way to reach him.
Oh, you can’t help me with my issue.
I can’t actually.
He is a leaseholder here, but you can reach out to Mark directly.
Here’s his information.
Again, just like really great communication.
So having that notation on the website will help.
Will it mean that nobody will ever ask you about Mark ever?
No, but you chose to have Mark in your building.
You chose to be a hybrid owner.
Like this is kind of what comes along with it.
And if you have great communication and great verbiage, it’s going to be the odd chance that that happens.
It’s not going to be the consistent thing that’s coming up.
So I do believe everybody on the website, everybody should have a bio, everybody should have a great photo.
If you want to bring in a photographer and give everybody the opportunity to get great professional headshots, I am so here for it.
Those are the things that we are seeing more independent salon supporting their stylist doing.
If you want to have very dedicated independent stylist, there should be additional perks and benefits.
Otherwise, they’re simply going to work in a studio suite.
And that doesn’t mean more control, but it just means what are the things that we can do to elevate the booth rental opportunity so that it is very enticing.
So what are some of the other things everybody should share?
Everybody should get access to the amenities.
And I’ve seen this come up problematically before.
As soon as you have a hybrid salon and you’re like, well, only the clients of the employees can eat the granola bars.
Only the clients of the employees can drink the diet coke.
It’s just messy and it feels a little tacky to the clients.
It’s confusing.
We all know that a client is going to eat the granola bar if they want to eat it.
So it’s like not something you can control and it causes friction.
And I saw Sally’s client eating the gum.
It causes all these issues that don’t need to be there.
Everybody in the building gets to use the amenities.
If you want to bake that into the cost of the rent, that’s great.
Everybody who’s on the team can use those kinds of things.
Parties and bonding events.
If they’re unpaid social events, everybody should be able to come.
If you’re hosting a holiday party and you have employees and independent contractors, everybody comes, everybody gets the same perks and benefits.
Again, you chose this model.
This is what that looks like.
What I would do personally is have some education that’s available for everybody.
Booth renters, independents, employees, assistants, mentees, everybody.
Everybody can come to these things.
But let’s shift to what would be separate.
I personally, in a hybrid salon, like there being a distinction between, you know what, there’s some things that employees get that are simply better.
I like that.
I think that there are massive perks to being an employee.
A lot of pressure is taken off and there can be some other perks we work into place as well.
So, if I had a hybrid salon, I would have some education that everybody could come to, but I would also have some really exclusive education opportunities for employees only.
And I wouldn’t be like, well, we bring in big name educators and that’s for everybody, but when I bring in like the random brand educator, that’s just for the employees.
Like, it’s going to kind of feel like a downgrade.
I personally, whether it’s every year or every other year, I’d be like, you know, we bring in a really high value educator and that one happens to be just for the employees.
It’s no shade if any independent contractor ever wants to shift back to employment, we can talk about it.
But it is one of the perks and benefits we offer to our employees.
That’s something that you can think about.
You don’t have to do it.
We don’t want to cause a rift or a divide in the salon.
But I think if you’re offering some education up to everybody, it would be okay to have some employee exclusive benefits as well.
Let’s talk about the booking system.
So this came up in the question that was asked.
I talked about, I believe that all stylists should be on the website.
I don’t believe they should all be on the same booking system for a few different reasons.
One, if anybody doesn’t know this, I talked about this on an episode I think earlier this year, earlier in 2025.
Audits are happening at scale right now.
I do believe it’s because of AI technology.
I myself have now been hit with two of them.
I’ve come out fair on the other side of both.
But I will do a podcast coming up based on what I’ve learned through the process.
I strongly believe that there is a lot more AI at place and that businesses are being able to be screened faster because it’s not manual anymore.
And from what I have learned through my own process, salons are very much on the radar.
And if you get hit with a suit for misclassification, it is extremely expensive.
All the back taxes that have to be paid.
One of the places that gets looked at first and foremost in an audit is your booking system.
And if you have independent contractors on a shared booking system where you can impart any level of control on to their schedule, meaning you can book clients on to their books on their behalf, whether you see that as a gift to them or not, and whether they like it or not, that is almost always going to fail the assessment as to whether that person should really be an independent contractor or an employee.
Having a shared booking system to me is like red flag number one.
I would never do it.
If somebody is independent in your building, I do strongly believe they have to have their own booking system.
You can still send referrals their way.
You can still advertise them on your social media.
They can still be on your website if they’re down for all of that.
You can’t have control over their schedule, and as soon as you put them into a booking system, you do.
You simply do like for better or for worse, it would be hard to talk your way out of.
I would not do it.
And lastly, of course, there’s the financial benefits of being an employee.
Like when we look at some of the things that you can provide to employees, you can offer things like bonus programs.
You can offer financial incentives and fun contests and different ways for employees to earn more and do more than an independent would be able to do.
An independent has chosen to be in the driver’s seat of their own finances, which is amazing, but that means for better or for worse.
And so when you have employees putting other financial incentives into place that differentiates them, I think is smart.
So there’s some things that you’d want to be separate, and there’s some things that I think would be shared across the board.
So going back to the question that was brought up of, from a business standpoint, one of the biggest challenges I’m seeing is that some renters with open books are taking a lot of the last minute bookings from clients who could have gone to my employees.
I’m going to say this loud and proud, and I would like for the independents in the room and for the employees in the room and for the salon owners in the room to all hear it.
Salon owners, you owe it to your employees to build them up first.
You do.
Employees are like business partners.
You all are in it together.
Independence, you’re sharing space with.
You also have an agreement with them, but the terms are different.
I do believe it is the responsibility of the salon owner to help to fill the chairs of everybody in the space, but employees have to be prioritized.
Have to be.
Otherwise, why have employees?
Like if you’re not going to put your employees first, why bother?
So it’s not to say we leave the independents out to dry, but they made the choice.
They hopped off the employee train and decide to do it themselves.
So I’m here, still here for you.
I still want to help you, but for the employees that are still on the train with me, I have to feed them first.
That is simply good business.
It’s logical and it makes sense.
The other thing is, in a time where we’re seeing a lot of independents saying, you know what, I might just go back to being an employee instead, there’s huge benefits to everybody in that.
And in the way that we coach to compensation and in the way that we coach to structures that support booth renters and employee-based stylists, everybody can win financially.
It doesn’t have to be that there’s a huge windfall just to the owner.
Part of the reason why often employee-based stylists are underpaid is because the compensation model is swayed to favor underperformers.
As soon as you remove all of that, you can have very high paid employee-based stylists where there’s still a profit margin, the owner is still doing really well, the business is still doing really well.
But the narrative of, I should leave this salon to go independent because I’d make more money, that’s completely gone.
So the only reason why somebody would go independent is to find better culture, which is so much easier for the owner because if you’re losing people because of culture, now you know it’s not about the money, you simply have cultural issues to fix.
It just makes the whole system a whole lot cleaner to run from the jump.
So to answer that question and to your point, you do have to build up those employees first.
And right now, if you have a model where the booth renters are getting first shot at the clients, that’s probably backwards.
So to sum it up, I don’t think you need to focus so much on making sure that the clients understand that some of the stylists are independent.
You’re trying to train clients.
Clients are just here to get their hair done.
It’s not our job to train them.
The only thing that we need to train clients how to do is book appointments.
We only need to train them how to do the thing that makes us the money.
And that’s it.
All the other stuff is going to be great communication and verbiage on your website.
And as the business owner just knowing, listen, I chose this hybrid model, some blips are going to come up.
But having systems and verbiage and channels and places to point everybody.
So going back to that situation of, you know, if Mark makes a mistake and his client calls and you’re fielding this, this challenging phone call, you need to have an agreement with Mark of like, hey, if I do get questions about your policies or booking with you or a client calls and they say, say they’re running late or somebody wants to read it with you, what do you want me to do?
Do you want me to have them email you, text you, call you?
What do you want to happen?
And you have those agreements with your independents and that just is what it is.
And then it’s up to the independents too to let their clients know like, hey, I’ll work with you directly.
So you’ll book directly through my booking link.
If something comes up for you, you can find me here or whatever their communication channels are.
That’s for them to manage too.
And that’s great communication with you and the people in your building as well, which goes back to culture, very full circle.
Okay, I hope this has brought some clarity to Hybrid Salon success strategies.
If you have additional questions, leave me a rating or review on iTunes.
I’m happy to help as I always say, so much love, happy business building and I’ll see you on the next one.
