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 lifelong career as a wealthy stylist, it takes business skills and a serious marketing strategy. When you’re ready to quit just working in your business and start working on it, join us here where we share real success stories from real stylists. I’m Britt Seva, social media and marketing strategist just for hairstylists. And this is the Thriving Stylist podcast.
What is up? And welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Britt Seva. And today we’re talking about the economy, the state of the industry, what to do next, what you might be thinking, feeling, seeing. What I’ve come to realize is there is a lot of fear in the industry right now, and I think when there is a lot of fear, there’s a lot of fear mongering. There’s a lot of scary conversations that happen in break rooms. We see our friends, our peers, people we respect, changing their business strategy, changing where they work, changing course changing income status. And when we see shift and change that we don’t understand, it breeds fear. And I’m realizing that we are deep in it at this point. And I wanna talk about why continuing to blame the economy is costing you as a stylist or salon owner, maybe your career.
And this is kind of like an op-ed. I don’t have like, so here’s the six steps to, that’s not what this episode’s gonna be like. I feel like this is a message that needs to just be said for 15 minutes or so. I’m in a lot of community groups for the industry and I’m watching a lot of stylists post in a place of, for lack of a better word, desperation, feeling like they were doing okay and now they’re struggling to pay their bills. They don’t know how to pay their rent, their marketing is no longer working. They have more gaps than they ever had before. And I see other stylists commenting, saying things like, well, the J months are just slow. January’s just always slow. You’ll be fine. Or everybody’s suffering right now, you know, hang in there. And I understand as the person receiving that feedback, it doesn’t calm the nerves and it doesn’t feel like a plan.
And what happens is when conversation starts to look like that, people just leave the industry and they think something’s wrong with them. It can really be spiral inducing. What I’m here to say in this podcast episode is the J months are not always slow. That’s not true. Everybody is not suffering and struggling right now. That’s also not true. Not everybody has gaps. Not everybody’s making less money. Not everybody’s having due to discounts. This whole, everybody is anything. Narrative is simply false. We saw this happen in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 when it became sexy to struggle. If you were around in that time it, whether you were in the industry or not, you were just like living as an adult human. And you can remember what it was like. It was such a flex to like save money, get a bargain, get a deal. Like that was what was trendy.
We were coming out of an era where there was a lot of affluence, a lot of affluence for the last decade or so, and it was like Birkin bags and flashing cash and private jets and the age of the influencer. And we have watched all that come tumbling down pretty hard. And now when people start to flex that they’re like making tons of cash, they get, I mean, cancel culture, you get torn down real quick. Like it’s not a good look. And so the narrative has changed. And so we’re watching this happen in real time where 15 or so years ago, almost 20 years ago now, I guess it was on trend to be like, we’re all struggling, we’re all suffering together, we’re all figuring out how to budget and save together. That was very trendy. We’re coming back around to that. Like we’re seeing like capsule wardrobes trend again and minimalism.
And when that happens, the conversation becomes, nobody’s doing well, we’re all in this together. The economy is just working against us. You don’t stand a fighting chance. It’s easier to say that sometimes than look at what’s actually happening and what would be necessary to not get caught up in this. The reason why I’m saying that blaming the economy is costing you and it’s not correct is because there is no data to support that the US economy, it grew by 4.3% at the end of last year. Stock markets are still up and inflation is finally coming down. The reason why there’s this pinch is cost of living has stayed high. And that is a result of a lot of different things. One of them being the stimulus of post COVID-19 pandemic where there was a lot of money pumped into the economy and everyone was really excited about that because it felt like relief.
’cause people weren’t able to work and weren’t able to get paychecks and had to pay their bills and something had to happen. Well, what happens is when the government artificially pumps a bunch of money into the economy, there has to be a balance that gets put in place. And we didn’t realize inflation was gonna be what that balance looked like. And it did. And what I was saying, even back then at the time is, you know, we saw the things like the cost of washers and dryers went up, cars went up, housing of course went up. And I think there’s this thought of like, it’ll all rebalance, it’ll all come back down. If you look at the history of the United States, that has not happened ever where things go up and all of a sudden there’s these this huge crash back down where like all of a sudden cars are gonna be half price, like it’s not gonna happen.
And people will say like, oh, well when mortgage rates go down, also the cost of houses will go down. That’s not happened historically. So it’d be pretty incredible if that were to take place. But it’s not looking like that’s what’s gonna happen, but it, there’s this narrative of if we just wait long enough, everything’s gonna get better. That’s not what’s going to happen. And I just wanna have a very transparent conversation with anybody who listens to this episode that waiting for things to turn around is a lost cause. We have to get on board with the idea and the knowing that the world we live in has changed. The only way you’re going to see a better result as a stylist or salon owner is to change. The interesting thing about our industry is that our industry has not changed in the way that the world has changed.
It’s changing the way that the world has changed and doubled. On top of that, the industry is under a massive pressure to level up and change. Salons were run in a way for decades that was not sustainable. And the unsustainability started to come to a head and crash around 2023. And there’s a lot of salon owners who in the past two or three years started to really feel that pain. That pain is now at a fever pitch. And so salon owners are at a crunch of, oh my gosh, how am I going to pivot hard and fast enough to keep the wheels on this thing? Combine that with the fact that stylists are now saying, I don’t know if I can afford to be independent anymore. So they’re wanting to go back to employee based salons, but they’re not finding great salons to work at.
They may have been burned before. They’re not seeing compensation skills and structures that would entice them to come back. Yet they’re also the crossroads of they can’t really afford to pay their booth rent. And they’re seeing gaps on their schedule and demand has changed. And so they’re feeling the desperation and those are the conversations I’m seeing happening in the groups and in the communities of, so literally, what am I supposed to do? And as I explain it like that, it starts to feel like the walls are caving in and what are we to do? Well, on the flip side of all of that, there are stylists and salons who are making more money than I even thought was possible. To be totally honest, we have stylists, solo stylists not working with assistants doing 280,000, 350,000, $400,000 in services as solo stylists, not with an assistant right now.
And I’m talking about 12 people. I’m talking about thousands of people. We’re seeing salons that are growing by 30, 35% in revenue year over year consistently for the last two years plus. So how is it that some people are growing so radically and some people are like, I’ve been in this industry for 20 years and it’s never been this hard. So a few years ago I started talking about this thing called the Great Divide. And if you’ve been listening to this podcast or you’re in my thriver society, you’ve heard me talk about it hundreds of times. It was a term I, I don’t know where I made it up in 2022. It’s not a real term, it was just how I felt. I was like, this industry is gonna split and it’s gonna split into haves and have-nots and it’s gonna be ugly and it’s gonna be painful.
We are in that. Well, in the last few weeks I started seeing economists like people who actually know what they’re talking about, saying that we have fallen into what’s called a khap recovery. And I was like, oh my gosh. That’s the actual term for a great divide. Great divide is what I called it. Khap recovery is the actual term. I had never seen that before. You can look it up. We are in that. So khap recovery, think about the letter K. So there’s a vertical line that goes up and down and then in the middle of that vertical line, there is the top line of the K that goes up and the bottom line of the K that goes down, that is what we’re in. And some people are going up the K and some people are going down the K, the people that are going down the K are feeling the pain.
The people that are going up the K are doing better than ever and they’re not talking about it because when people are struggling and people are in pain and you’re the person who’s doing well, you look like a jerk if you talk about it. Am I right? If you are a stylist who’s in pain right now, do you want to see a bunch of stylists bragging about how much money they’re making? No, it doesn’t make you feel any better. And so they’re not talking about it, they’re just winning in silence. That is the actual truth of what’s happening right now. So this economist, and you can, if you just Google Search Khap economy or 2026 Khap recovery, you’ll see this. This article happens to say this is a unique post pandemic transition. This is not an economic collapse. So the reason why people are freaking out right now is because if you are on the sloping down K, it feels like the economy is failing.
The economy is not failing. The way in which to succeed in business has changed and you did not change along with it. And that’s brutal. I wish I could come back on here and say something like softer and sweeter and nicer to con. This is gonna sound so harsh. To continue to survive forward in business, you will have to change. It’s also what happened in 2008, 9, 10, 11, 12. Think about the salons that never jumped on social media, that never built a website that are still trying to run their business just on paper books. How do you think they’re doing right now? Barely clinging on 15 years ago was this huge push and outcry for people to figure out how to market their business online, take their books online. It was a huge hurdle to overcome. We’re in another one of those, and guess what? In 15 years it’ll be something else.
But we are in a huge season of change right now. So rather than actually take the call to action to change, what I’m seeing stylists do is freak out about their pricing. They don’t wanna raise their prices. They’re starting to offer discounts. Some stylists should raise their prices. I was talking to a salon owner today about their stylist who has all indicators of a price increase. Their demand is through the roof and refusing to raise their prices because they’re so scared of the chatter in the industry. And that’s what this owner was saying. This owner was saying, it’s not what their clients are saying. They’re not seeing a dip in their clientele. There’s no numbers to indicate that their clientele is suffering. Everything is going fine now. The demand is actually increasing. But they’re seeing so much industry chatter about the suffering that they’re refusing to raise their prices.
’cause they’re so freaked out. I’m on TikTok, like I see the posts made by clients about how they got fired by their stylist, and then we freak out that we’re gonna get canceled, right? Clients who are complaining about, I spent so much money for my hair, do you know why clients are complaining about paying so much money for their hair? First of all, that client signed up to pay that much money to begin with, right? That client said, I wanna pay 180, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, a thousand dollars for my hair. The client agreed to do it. The reason why the client is complaining is they’re not happy with either the experience or the result. If they were happy with the experience and the result, they would say nothing. And a lot of us are saying, well, no, clients are just too picky right now. I don’t know. I’m watching a lot of these videos and a lot of these stories and and to be quite candid in some ways, the way that the industry has carried itself for the last couple of years and the industry put things into place like you have to apply to be a part of my business.
I’m no longer accepting dms. I’m no longer accepting new clients. There was all these barriers around connecting with stylists that we really put ourselves on this pedestal. And if we’re gonna be on the pedestal, then the expectation from a client is gonna be incredibly high. And so when clients have these really high expectations, like at some point we have to look at what we did to ourselves. Remember the post from a few years ago where it was like, expect to pay $600 to get your hair done. My work is worth blah, blah, blah. So then clients would save up money and it was this huge anticipatory thing. And then if we don’t match that expectation, it’s like this break. The other thing is something that’s trending right now is I’m seeing these trending posts about clients will pay $800 for Botox injections, but complain about $300 for highlights.
I’m paraphrasing, but I’ve seen many, many, many posts that are along those lines. And when I say it like that, it’s like, yeah, how does that make sense? We don’t see medical estheticians and injectors making the kind of like content that the industry makes running discount promotions the way that we do. And those who are are probably not charging those high rates for things like facial injections. That industry doesn’t move the same way that our industry has chosen to move in the last few years. The way that they’ve shown up in their business is different. So clients don’t expect to get a discount service or go into a dirty medical aesthetics place and pay $800. Like the bar is just different. The expectation is totally different. The way the industry has carried itself, medical aesthetics has never positioned itself as a discount industry as far as I know of.
I’ve never seen that at scale and at success. When you look at med spas, they are like five star hotels, the one that are doing super well. And so if a stylist wants to be having that kind of success, I would hope they’re running like a five star hotel. Like it’s not comparing apples to apples. So yeah, somebody is willing to pay a thousand dollars for Botox because the experience that they’re getting if they’re paying that thousand dollars might be totally different than the experience that they’re getting if they’re paying two 50 for a highlight. You can’t compare it like that. It’s not the same thing. And so again, I’m bringing up a post like that because we’re living in this narrative that we’re so looked down upon as an industry and we’re a victim of the economy and none of this is our fault.
And how are we supposed to climb our way out of this? And our clients are the enemies. And you know this, the world is just against us versus there’s a lot of stylists and salons who have pivoted really hard in the last 18 months and are killing it. Let me give you some examples. There are booth rental salons whose social media and websites dominate and destroy anything I’ve seen an employee-based salon do. Like these websites are exquisite. I had a salon owner asked me the other day, do websites still matter? Are you kidding? Websites matter now more than ever before. As AI starts to take over the world and we don’t know what we can trust anymore and who knows what social content is even real. And by the way, Instagram usership is at an extreme low. We are seeing less time spent on Instagram, less logins on Instagram daily.
So when your engagement is down, you should not be surprised. Less people are on there. If you look at how often your friends and family are posting on Instagram now versus how often they were posting four years ago, there’s a decline, right? It’s ’cause people aren’t using as much anymore versus consumers are leaning into things like online reviews and websites to build trust and credibility. And most salons and stylists put their website low priority on the back burner. I don’t know how to get reviews. Should I run a contest? No, you should not. And so the things that are actually working to build salons and stylists forward, we’ve backburnered so hard, and then we’re wondering why the, I’m gonna do air quotes. Economy is working against us. The economy is not working against you. You are working against you. We can’t autopilot this industry and this business anymore.
The world around us has become digital marketing around us has become sophisticated. If you wanna compare apples to apples to the other service-based businesses that are thriving, we have to look at the moves they’ve made and they’ve made real power moves. Our industry is still trying to play catch up to get there. If we wanna make the money other industries are making, we have to play the game They’re playing too. Both things go hand in hand, right? Again, going back to booth rental salons, I say booth rental salons that are filling their stylists chairs. And when I say that to booth rental owners who are not doing that, they’re like, that’s wild. Like my booth renter should fill their own chairs. You can say that and you can think that. But if I’m talking to a booth renter and I said, Hey, I have two salons for you to choose from, one that has a stellar online presence and they’re gonna filter clientele to you, and one where the rent is $200 cheaper every single month.
Actually let’s go for it. The rent is a hundred dollars cheaper every single week at this other salon down the street. Same area. They have a real mediocre website and they cannot guarantee any clients for you. The stylist will pay the extra a hundred dollars a week to have their chair filled to work at a salon that has amazing marketing every single time. Ask any stylist. I’m certain they would pick that. Same with employee based salons. If you are not promoting and displaying your compensation plan and how you’re gonna support your team openly on your social media, on your website, if we’re not doing like killer visuals and killer explanations, it’s gonna be difficult to attract high performance stylists, stylists who are saying they’re not attracting great clients. My question to you becomes like, what does your online presence look like? When I Google you?
How many reviews do you have? What do those review looks like? Do you have a full website or do we just have an online booking page? If you just have an online booking page, the message to the client is, don’t worry about it, just book an appointment with me and we’ll figure it out. When you get here, your website is your salesperson. Without your website, you’re expecting clients to make a total leap of faith without any kind of online credibility. And if you say, well, Instagram is my online credibility, I go back to the statistic I said a few minutes ago that Instagram usership is down, so your credibility is down from where it was two or three years ago because it’s not the same viable resource it was before. Now, that’s not to say Instagram is no good. That’s not to say you shouldn’t use social media, you have to use those kind of things.
Still, what I’m saying is the techniques and the strategies that even worked 18 months ago no longer work. You can’t say the industry is gonna recover. We can’t live in the J months are just slow. I want you to look up Khap recovery. If you don’t believe me and see what other economists are saying about this, you can be on the upward slope of that KI know thousands of stylists and salons who are killing it right now. That can be you. But continuing to do what you’re doing, hoping some recovery or change or bounce back is coming, isn’t going to happen. Thinking that the is just down and is gonna recover and then your chair is gonna fill again is also not going to happen. If you don’t change, your business will not change. You cannot continue doing what used to work a while ago and think it’s gonna work again.
If you are a stylist who is showing signs that you should raise your prices, you should. Consumer spending is not down. Consumer trust is down. If you’re nervous about the price increase that you should be earning, work on the trust factors. What are the trust factors? We look at your online presence. We look at the content that you’re posting, your positioning, your market position, your guest experience, the communication between visits. There’s all kind of things we can work on to increase that trust. If that makes you feel better, I’m so here for it. But don’t stall out your business. The economy is not stalling out. The economy is growing forward. So if your revenue is not growing forward, you’re falling further and further behind. The economy is not your enemy. Your strategy is okay. If you have any additional questions about this, you can always find me in the dms at bri siva on Instagram. So much love, happy business building. I’ll see you on the next one.
