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, with a very inspired episode. Suggested about one of our beautiful listeners happens to be a thriving leadership member. Thank you so much for this incredible suggestion. We are gonna talk about scaling as a cutting specialist or a barber. This is definitely not something I’ve ever talked about on the podcast before. So timely, we are seeing a huge explosion in both specialties. Let’s dig into it. So this is the podcast topic suggestion that was made. I recently on my Instagram story said, “Hey, what do y’all want to hear on the podcast?” And this is what came through. Haircuts is a specialty. I’m seeing people talk about it, but no one talks about how to do it. And I think this is such an amazing topic. I happen to know several haircutting specialists just in my personal life, not people that I coach, just stylists who happen to be cutting specialists.
I also have several thrivers that are cutting specialists, and I think this is gonna be a really eye-opening episode. So first of all, at the top, let’s just talk about specializing as a whole, because maybe you’re listening to this and you’re like, “I’m a colorist, this is never gonna be for me, ” or, “I don’t believe in specialization.” Just ears wide open, hear me out on this whole thing. Specialization is becoming more and more popular based on consumer behavior. Did you catch what I said? It has nothing to do with the industry being in the mood to specialize or being trendy. The reason why specialization is becoming more and more common in our industry amongst service providers is because consumers, meaning our clients, are super into it. You can’t deny that that’s the reality of what’s happening. Now, there’s this narrative in our industry, and I’ve heard it, I’ve seen it, I totally understand.
I’ve heard other educators talk about it. I’ve seen stylists make TikToks about it, where they’ll say, you know, a real problem with the younger generation right now is they’re looking at specializing too early in their career. I don’t agree at all. I think that when we say things like that, we are completely ignoring the market behavior and the reality that we’re living in. I understand that years ago, it would have been really, really rare to specialize early in your career when, you know, it was the early 2000s or the ’90s or the mid 2000s, even specialization was reserved for those who were in the industry for a decade plus and had already done all the things and were ready to just refine their skillset. It was like something you graduated into. That’s just not how the industry works anymore. And so I think when there’s a lot of chatter about, you know, the industry is specializing too early, it’s like we’re living in the past.
Specialization is what’s working right now. And whether you’ve been in the industry for one year or 25, this can be a really great opportunity. So how did we get here? Because even just a few years ago, like going back to 2017, 2016, being a specialist was even more rare back then. It was like just kind of starting to trend upward. So for decades in the industry, stylists were just expected to do everything. Cut color, style, perm, relax, clipper cuts, precision cuts, expert of blonding. Maybe we do brides, maybe we do extensions. It was like, you know, there’s something new to be added, do it all. It was like you were just supposed to be an expert of all trades. And we’d even look at barbers. Like there was a lot of barbers who were coloring hair and doing things like really outside of the truest specialty of barbering.
And it’s not to say that if you’re a barber who likes to color hair, you can’t. You can do whatever you want. I’m talking about choosing to really niche down and specialize. We’re seeing a real shift in that direction. Why is that becoming more common? Does anybody know? The internet. The internet is what made specialization trend. It actually doesn’t have a whole lot to do with stylists themselves and a whole lot to do with marketing and market messaging and what clients today are looking for. When I look at Thriver Society members specifically, who I do get the honor of seeing the backend of their finances, when I look at stylists who are doing over $300,000 a year as solo stylists, meaning not a salon is doing 300,000, an individual is doing $300,000 in services, they’re all specialists. I don’t have an example of a generalist who’s pulling that off.
When we zoom out, when you look at any industry, the specialists will always make more money. For example, I did a little bit of research. If you were to hire a handyman in California, which we’ve done in our home before, maybe we need a piece of furniture built or we need a room in our house painted or we need, you know, some kind of basic electrical worker to be done or whatever. You can hire a handyman who’s like a jack of all trades, right? So I looked up how much do handymen make in California on average. And it was $60,000 a year, 60,500, to be specific. And then I said, “Okay, well, what about house painters in California?” So not jack of all trade handymen, but just people who paint houses. Their projected annual income is 67,000 to over 100,000. So they’re working actually within the same industry, right?
Like personal homes, updating personal homes, but the person who specializes in just the painting, their entry level wage is above what the handyman is expected to make in the year. Now zooming out further, let’s talk about the profession of doctors, because I think when we say, you know, “What are the high income earners in the world today?” We’re like, you know, doctors, lawyers, we, we rattle off a handful of jobs. And doctors is always one of those careers where we’re like, “Oh, you went to medical school, you’re gonna do well for yourself.” It’s just one of those widely accepted, like an engineer. You know, the potential to do really well is there, so let’s look at doctors. A primary care physician in the United States today makes approximately 265,000 to $275,000 a year. Not bad. Like that’s some real money, yeah? Orthopedic surgeons make an average of $575,000 a year, twice as much as a PCP.
Started off with the same medical schooling. The only difference is they chose to go into a different specialty. Now let’s push the specialty one step further. The orthopedic surgeons who work with NFL players make 600,000 to $800,000 a year. So what this is proving to us is when you look at trades, and I could argue that choosing to go into medicine is similar to going into a trade in many ways, right? Especially when you go into private healthcare, which is where we’re getting these numbers like this, right? When you look at doctors who are really pushing the envelope, they’re going into private healthcare and that’s how they’re pulling this off. When you look at how they’re doing this, it’s the more specialized you are, the more money that you’re making. I understand that our industry was built on the norm of your stylist, you should be able to do it all.
I don’t know about you. When I was in the salon, I worked with an incredibly talented team, incredibly talented. Like some of the best hair artists that I’ve ever seen, brilliant beyond their years. There isn’t a single one of them that was good at everything. Um, we had some who were better at shorter cuts, longer cuts. Some could do styling for special events. Some were like, “Don’t put that client in my chair.” Some who loved doing like perms, some who couldn’t stand it and dreaded the smell being in the salon, right? We all have our preferences and the expectation that everyone do everything is how mediocre services get pulled off. Like, could I do that clip or cut you want? Sure, but am I the best person for it? Probably not. And clients got smart about that when the internet happened. Because before, clients would just accept a jack of all trades hairdresser because it was too hard to find anybody else.
And this is why in the ’90s there was a hairdresser who would do the whole family. Everyone in the family goes to the same person because it was like good enough, right? And that’s how the person built a clientele. We’re living in a different time. It’s just not what it looks like anymore. So let’s dig deeper and take a look at who has earned the right to call themselves a specialist. And I’m gonna take specialists for a while and then I’m gonna get into barbering, I promise. But let’s talk about specializing. Let’s pretend you’re a cosmetologist. So you truly could do, you know, the world is your oyster. You can choose what direction you wanna go with hair services. I believe when you’re starting to put the title specialist on something, it’s somebody who has extensive education in their specialty. And this is where I can see the argument that some stylists who are new to the industry are specializing too fast.
For me, it’s not about timing. Like if you get your license and you’re like, “Brit, all I ever wanna do is cuts.” I’m fine with that. I have no issue with that. All I wanna do is color. All I wanna do is extensions. Seriously for me, not a worry, like good for you for knowing what you love. I think that’s amazing. You do have to have the education to back it up. Now, notice I didn’t say experience. And the reason I didn’t say that is because for a long time, this industry was built on how many clients have been in your chair, how many years have been you’ve been doing this? I’ve done 600 more haircuts than you have. Yes, but if I have done 40 amazing haircuts and you’ve done 600 mediocre ones, arguably I am actually more talented than you are. It’s not necessarily about years and volume, it truly is about education and skill.
So going back to my first point, to me, when you’re gonna call yourself a specialist, it’s somebody who has extensive education in their specialty. There are some people who graduate from cosmetology school, and I will say this is a luxury. So I’m gonna give you an extreme example. This is a total luxury example, who spend their first six months out of school living at home with their parents or working a second job and just educating themselves and not taking clients. Just doing advanced education while they serve tables or they work at home and all they do is learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn. It’s like getting your master’s degree in a specialty. You can get your experience and your extensive education that way. I’ve seen it done, right? Now you don’t have to. You can also join an assisting program and jump into a specialty from there in your assisting program.
We’re seeing a lot of stylists departmentalize again, which was a trend kind of in the 90s that kind of fizzled a little bit, now it’s coming back. If you go into a program that educates you in a specialty from the start that’s amazing, I would still do supplementary education. My role of thumb is you would need to be spending at least $1,000 a year on education in that specialty. A thousand dollars a year is like minimum, minimum, minimum. When I look at the specialists who are doing really, really well, that is a fraction of their educational spend. So that is one thing I will say is if you’re gonna go into something and truly say you’re a specialist, imagine you’re trying to educate yourself to be an orthopedic surgeon for the NFL. Like you, you want to be like truly best of trade, extremely well educated, learning from the best, mentorship from the best.
Like that is what we’re looking for, for sure. It doesn’t need, you don’t need to do it for 10 years, but you do need to get that experience and that exposure and those reps in. I think if you’re gonna call yourself a specialist, you truly do have to pick a lane and be somebody who doesn’t do anything else. So I think that when we’re looking at specialists who are really exploding, they’re not saying, “I’m a cutting specialist, but sometimes I also do color.” It’s not to say you can’t do that. That’s the best part of this industry. You get to do whatever you wanna do. You can still do all cut and color clients. You can do all blonding. You can do all curly cats. You can do whatever you want. That’s the best thing. Today we’re talking about specialization. So if you’re gonna say, “I am a specialist and you’re really gonna go all in on that, like go all in.
” The fully committing and the fully going all in is what I see making this truly work. The other person who can call themselves a specialist is the person who’s created a signature methodology or an approach to a service type that is unique. So a unique way in which you achieve a result, an extremely unique guest experience, I have seen a handful, that’s very hard to pull off. Whenever I talk about a unique guest experience, people start leaning into like amenities and sodas and that is not gonna do it. It has to be much more unique and niche than that. It can be done by branding. It can be done by nurture. It can be done by like really intricate guest experience details, but if you have created a very unique approach to achieving a result, a signature methodology can help to firm you up as a specialist as well.
So what are the benefits of specializing and why are people kind of leaning that direction? You get more qualified clients, always. So when somebody is choosing to see a specialist, the assumption is it will be a little bit more expensive. Now, are you for everybody? No, not at all. But if we know that the market is getting more crowded, there are more stylists joining the industry, distinctly, distinctly, distinctifying <laugh>, making yourself distinct by choosing to specialize is a way to stand out. And people who say, “You know what? I really do wanna see somebody who is just a bit more confident in cutting or whatever your specialty is, ” you do get a more qualified person to the chair. They know what they want, they know what you do. It, it is just a more qualified client. It just is what it is on that. Marketing is much easier.
You’re not trying to find like a balance of what you’re posting or a balance of content. All you do is show off the specialty over and over and over. Consistency is key when you’re growing as a specialist, like let it be boring. Consistency is what people are looking for when they’re looking to work with somebody who specializes. Appointments are incredibly predictable. A lot of people are like, “Oh, you know, with new clients, I never know what I’m gonna get. ” When you’re a specialist, you always know what you’re gonna get. There’s very few surprises. And the surprises make it interesting. Like it keeps it from getting boring, but you’re not gonna get any like really over the top curve balls because you’re so niched in what you do. And it’s much easier to scale financially. Like I gave the example at the beginning, statistically it just is.
So let’s talk about scaling financially and why choosing to be a barber or a cutting specialist is much more financially lucrative than I think people realize. So often people think, well, the colorists make all the money. So the cost to get your color done is higher. Uh, generally speaking, that’s not always true, but as a general rule, right? If you were gonna go see a stylist who’s more of a generalist, their color might be 80 and their cut might be 50. It’s rare that you see somebody who’s more of a generalist where the cut is more than the color, not impossible, sometimes it happens, but usually that’d be something you’d see more in like a cutting specialist where the cut is elevated. So color services are charged at a higher rate, yes, but also the overhead on hair color and on a colorist business is significantly higher than the overhead on a cutting specialist or a barber.
I first noticed this years ago when I was doing one-on-one coaching and I was looking at, the studio suites had just exploded when I started to see this pattern. And what I would notice is I would coach studio suite owners who were cutting specialists or barbers and they would have profit margins of like 70% because their only expenses were like some styling product, the rent they had to pay, they would do some amenities in the salon and there just wasn’t that much else. Versus when I coach colorists, a 50% margin is like what we’re shooting for. When I look at a lot of studio suite owners and renters, especially when they’re like in the earlier or the lower demand days, their profit margin can run anywhere from 38% to more like 40, 45%. Like 50% is great. When you look at colorists who have scaled, yes, they can push that 50% margin higher.
It is incredibly rare. I see a colorist with a margin of 70% versus when I look at stylists who specialize in cutting or barbers, it’s frequent. I’ve seen 70% margin over and over and over again because they don’t have as high of a markup. So let’s say that we were comparing a colorist who was doing $100,000 a year and somebody who was a cutting specialist doing $100,000 a year, I could argue that the cutting specialist could potentially be taking home more. So I just want to unpack why a cutting specialist could actually end up being more profitable at the end of the day. Like don’t be fooled just because you can put a higher upfront charge on a color service. If you’re somebody who’s like, “I really love cutting. I love styling. I’d like to lean in that direction.” This can be just as lucrative for you.
So if you are in thriving leadership or you’re familiar with our compensation method, what you’ll notice is that those who are cutting specialists or those who are barbers do make a higher commission rate because they simply have more profit margin, the salon can stay profitable, the stylists should be able to earn more just because there is less overhead, and that’s something that’s built into our compensation system. So if you are somebody who does cuts and you’re thinking, “I’ll never make the money that a colorist could make, mathematically, it’s not correct.” So then the question becomes like, how would somebody as a cutting specialist earn the right to charge the higher rates? It’s the same rules that would apply if you were not a specialist. It’s based on the eight factors of pricing for me. When we look at the eight factors of pricing that we coached too, I did a really recent episode on it.
Let me give you the number. That’s gonna be 423, the nine factors of pricing. Listening to that, that’s how you would know when you’re able to raise and elevate your rate. When I talk about cutting specialists, the highest rate I’ve seen recently is between 400 and $450 for a cut. I think that’s probably top tier. I’m certain that there’s cutting specialists who charge more than that, but when I see, you know, probably the top 10% of cutting specialists, they’re around that rate. I know plenty who are more in the 300, 200, high 100s range. So when you run the math on that, if somebody was charging 150 a cut, doing five cuts a day, working four days a week, they’d be pulling in $3,000 a week. That’s not too shabby. Assuming that person takes two weeks vacation a year, they’re working 50 weeks a year, that’s $150,000 and working four days a week, like that’s not bad.
So let’s assume that that person is then making the 70% profit or the 70% split, they’d be taking home six figures, and that’s at 150 a haircut. And what I’m saying is, I understand that’s not the cheapest haircut, but it’s also not the most expensive. When you look at what specialists are charging, the potential and the possibility is there. So I hope that this was a powerful episode on specializing in general, but also the potential of barbering, of cutting, of cutting as a specialty. I hope it gives a new perspective on cutting as a specialty of profit margins and potential, and thank you to our amazing Thriver who suggested this episode. It was a beautiful one. As I always say, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
