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 Siva, 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 Siva, and this week we’re gonna talk about low demand and empty books troubleshooting. This is one of my more requested one-to-one coaching topics. Often people say like, “Listen, can you just take a look at my business and tell me where things might be off? I’m not getting as many new guest requests as I want, ” or maybe new guest requests haven’t changed, but the books just feel gappier. And, and, you know, we can problem solve and say, “Well, guests are, you know, pushing appointments out, ” which is true. We are seeing, you know, inconsistencies and frequency. We could say clients are being pickier where they go, which is also true. One of the things I’m not buying into is this idea that clients aren’t getting their hair done anymore, only because a relatively large portion of the industry is growing so fast right now.
And I know if you’re not growing super fast right now, it’s challenging to hear because it seems unbelievable. It seems like there’s a lot of struggle and, and the struggle is the noisier side of the internet and it’s certainly a side of the industry. However, there is another side that’s doing exceptionally well, like growth I haven’t seen ever. And I wanted to offer up the opportunity for anybody who I’m not coaching right now or isn’t in Thrivers to have a resource where they can take a look at the things I’m looking for when I’m trying to troubleshoot a business that isn’t growing as fast as the stylist or the salon owner would like. So this guide would work for a studio suite owner, a booth renter, a commission stylist, a salon owner with a team, anybody. These are kind of universal things that I have found.
If I analyze a business and I notice discrepancies in any of these areas and the stylist or the salon makes a change, we see a positive impact. So it’s not like this is just a list of things that I find to be annoying or things that would be nice to be fixed. These are like the, the light switches that we’ve been able to flip to see a positive result within days. And that’s been the fun thing is I’ll talk to a stylist and say, “Hey, look at changing this, that, or the other thing.” And I’ll get a DM within a week of, “Oh my gosh, I did that and I got two guest requests.” So these are the little things that you might be able to adjust in your business to see an increase in demand. They’re all worth a try. If you’re seeing demand issues, gaps on your books, you wanna get more new guest requests, these are all good ideas to give a shot.
One caveat I wanna make for 14 years now or something like that, long time. I’ve been coaching to this marketing funnel concept. That is still the truth. So if you have no marketing funnel, just changing these handful of things might not give you a super strong result. It doesn’t mean not to try these things, but what it means is if you do all of these things and you’re still not seeing demand, I want you to ask yourself if you have really put effort into building a marketing funnel, and if you don’t know what one is, just Google search, driving stylist podcast marketing funnel, and you’ll find some really great free resources on that, so that’s another place to start. So number one, the thing I’m seeing more than anything else right now is very confusing booking sites. One of the very first things I do when I am analyzing a stylist or salon owner’s business is I pretend like I am a client and I experience the online presence of that business as if I’m somebody who wants to get my hair cut or colored or styled at that place.
And I’m looking at it just from the perspective of, “I’ve never been here before. I don’t know these people. I’m trying to find my way around.” And in doing so, I’m able to uncover a lot. And so if you haven’t done that for your own business, I suggest that you do. And what I’ve noticed is, I always say to stylists and salon owners, like, “You can do this yourself.” One of the challenges is we’re so familiar with our own verbiage and systems and structure that the things that might be confusing to a client don’t land as confusing to us because as the business owner or the booking site builder, you incorporate all this logic that the average client wouldn’t have. Some examples would be the names of the services that you list. We say like, “Well, we know what a tint is. We know what a gloss is.
We know what a glaze is. We know what’s considered a root touch up.” Some clients don’t, and some stylists even refer to those things differently. Like in some salons, a root touch-up is doing the roots, like the outgrowth, and also refreshing the ends. Like some salons call that root touch-up. In some salons, like, well, no, that’s a root touch-up and a refresh or a root touch-up and a glaze or an all over color. There’s all these nuances and a lot of clients have experienced those nuances and because of that, if we go to your booking site and it’s a lot of shop talk, they might not be able to decipher even what’s right. And so if they get analysis paralysis, just looking at your booking site, they might not book at all. Sometimes there’s too many services listed there. Sometimes the descriptions are too confusing.
Sometimes it’s too many words, too much information. If in any way the booking site creates chaos in the client’s mind, they, they’re just not sure how to do it properly. We do find that they back out and just go to somebody where there is more logic to the booking system. So it’s ironic because a lot of stylists say like, “Well, I don’t like online booking because the clients mess it up.” I really tend to think clients don’t want to mess up their bookings. They’re just trying their best and we sometimes don’t speak the same language. Like when we say partial highlight to them, they don’t know what that means. How often does somebody book for a partial and they come in and you’re like, “Girl, you’re a bleach and tone.” Like it happens. And I don’t think it’s malicious. I think that maybe it’s because they’re trying to save money, maybe it’s because they don’t know what they’re doing.
But if you have strong verbiage and strong structure, it’s incredible how those things sort themselves out. So booking sites specifically, not even websites like your booking page being too confusing, huge one. I was coaching a salon owner recently and I was like, “The strangest thing happens when I click on your overall booking site link, it makes it appear at first glance, like all of your stylists operate at the same price point.” And she was like, “Well, but when you go through to actually book with each individual person, by the time you’re like checking out, like you’re picking the date, the pricing regulates.” And that was right, it does. However, when I first entered the booking system and I pick a service and I pick a stylist name, it’s like this general range of pricing. And she was like, “Wow, I didn’t realize that. ” Like there’s certain blind spots in booking systems you might not even know.
And so what it appeared like to me as the client going to book was that the person that I could clearly see on the website was the newest person on the team was charging as much as the most experienced person on the team. And so you could see how well for a client that might be a turnoff, but it wasn’t even the reality. It was just like a weird glitchy thing that happened based on how the flow of booking had been set up. And, and then the owner was able to go back and make a change and now everything’s great, but there’s just sometimes nuanced things that you don’t even realize that might be making clients look the other way. Just double, triple check all those things.
Number two, pricing on the booking site doesn’t align with what I see on the website. That happens more often than you think. And I don’t know if it’s that the booking site was website, updated and the website wasn’t, or that maybe you have price ranges and it’s like, “Oh, well, you know, on my website, the haircut’s not included.” As a client, it j- it just causes cost confusion. And if I don’t know what I’m paying for, I might just go somewhere different. Number three would be lack of clear pricing at the time of booking. I’m seeing a trend where stylists are putting on their booking site, on their website too, but also on their booking site, like if I go to book a root touch-up, it’ll say anywhere from $90 to 110. And sometimes there’s a notation, sometimes there’s not, and it’s like, well, depending on hair density, but to me as a client, if I’m seeing that there’s a $20 sway in the price for my color, and potentially maybe for my cut too, I don’t even know, that could end up being like 30% more for me at the end when I’m checking out.
That’s a lot for people sometimes. And so if somebody is not certain at the time of booking what they’re gonna pay, that can cause the hesitation of booking as well. I know that when I say that, the response is sometimes, “Well, it does depend.” I know that sometimes it does depend. What we’re doing a lot is standardized new guest pricing, where for a new client, they’re gonna always pay X, Y, or Z. There’s a buffer in there to account for those little nuances, and it’s the opportunity for surprise and delight if somebody ends up being less, but it reduces the chances of somebody paying more than they expected, right? Somebody would always be happy when it’s like, “Actually, you know what? We were able to finish up quicker, so it’s $20 less.” Or, “You don’t have as much hair as maybe the person with the thickest ponytail, and so I don’t have to make an extra color charge, and so your cost is $15 less.” A client will never be disappointed when a checkout you say, “Actually, there’s a savings involved.” That’s like a surprise and delight, like, “Oh my gosh, this went better than I expected.” If anything, that’s like an advantage to the guest experience.
That would never be a losing strategy versus if you have this price range and then the client comes in and they’re like sitting there on baited breath like, “Oh my gosh, am I gonna end up paying, you know, $130 today or 170,” because they know there’s this, like, margin.That cost anxiety can be big for people. So the more clear you can be, the more chances are that you’ll get more bookings and capture more of those new guest requests. Number four, you’re priced too high for your perceived value. I am seeing a lot of this right now and at scale, and I know it’s a tough pill to swallow. I’ve coached a lot of stylists recently, more than 20 who have said, “I know I’m overpriced and I’m not gonna take a deduction.” That is a choice. I’m your business coach, I’m not your manager, and if you don’t want to reduce your prices, you can continue pushing along.
The only way to sustain a price if you are overpriced is to increase your perceived value, and you cannot increase perceived value with free conditioning treatments or bags of potato chips. Like, you can’t amenity your way out of that at the, the state that the industry is in right now. The only way to increase perceived value is by branding and marketing, is the shift that we have definitely seen in the last few months, I’m gonna say. It’s not to say the guest experience counts for nothing, but as clients become more discerning about where they’re gonna go and what businesses they’re going to invest in, the way that your reputation looks, the way that you present, the seriousness of your business, the professionalism, and all of those things are judged by online reviews, your websites, the way you post on social. If all of those things are coming across as budget discount just getting started, it’s gonna be really tricky to say, “Well, I’m very educated, so this is what I charge, or the cost of doing business has gone up, so this is just me.
It’s okay if that’s your reality, but the amount of people who are willing to get down with you at that price point might be lower, and so you may see more gaps or lower demand. Still, as I’m navigating these pricing discrepancies with clients, in my mind, you would call these stylists, my clients are stylists. When I’m working with stylists on this, what we often find is that it’s less that they’re overpriced and more that their prices are unbalanced. So often somebody’s like color price will be fine, but their haircut will be way too high or vice versa. And so we always look at ways to navigate structure versus like working through a price deduction. We actually don’t often go there, but we do have to look at ways to make clients feel that you are worth that price point and looking fancy or looking elevated is not the same as looking worth it.
And so being overpriced and having a client say like, “Woof, I see that that’s their price point, but it just doesn’t feel worth it. ” If there’s a discrepancy there, you will have low demand. Number five, you’re too hard to get in with. So I think that there’s still a misconception in the industry that you have to work five days a week, you have to be super available to build a clientele fast. I’m not finding that to be true, still not finding that to be true. However, if a client has to wait two, three, four, five weeks to get in with you, you’re going to see way less new guest requests. So I’m finding stylists saying like, “I’ve always been booked out and what I would find is like new clients were willing to wait eight weeks to come and see me and now they are not.
That’s right. We are seeing that as a trend at scale. So lack of availability or spotty availability, if you only have, you know, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday mornings available, that’s gonna be tough. So there are some strategies that you can use to shift interest in coming to those morning appointments versus the evening ones. Like we can do some things to manipulate desirability of appointment times, but if you’re very difficult to get in with the days of clients being interested in waiting and waiting and waiting are waiting right now because there’s just so many great stylists out there that it’s hard for people to say, “Wow, this person’s so good. I’m willing to wait and wait and wait.” Having availability to serve people at a high level within a reasonable amount of time, and the reasonable amount of time is feeling like about two weeks right now is really, really critical.
Next, your policies or deposits feel intimidating. So if I go to your Instagram and I see those like red Xs in your bio that say like, “No DMs, um, 48 hour cancellation policy or I see those things on your website.” As a client, it doesn’t mean you won’t get new guests, but it creates a nervous system reaction. And I would say the vast majority of clients don’t book a hair appointment with the intention of canceling. The majority do not. Sometimes people do. Sometimes people will like leverage hair appointments and book one with you and one with somebody else and then like wait a few weeks and then decide and last minute cancel on somebody sometimes, but I think that’s the rare minority. I don’t think most of our clients are jerks. I think some people are and that’s just how life goes. I think most clients book an appointment with the intention of coming in and often we have these policies and s- and stuff like that and we’re saying, “I need to guarantee my income too.
I need to protect my family too. I need to protect my books.” I understand what we’re finding is your gate is so high around your business fortress that you’ve built that penetrating it has become hard. And so you might get a demand of two or three new guests a month when there’s 15 people who actually peered in the gate, but it was so intimidating to break through that they said, “You know what? I think I’m gonna go somewhere else.” So you got those two to three and you’re like, “Well, they’re my boundary of respecters.” But if you are having gaps or you’re seeing low demand, instead of somebody having to fill out a form and you get back to them within 48 hours and then they agree to your policy, would you have rather capture 15 new appointments on the off chance that one no showed?
I think, you know, 15 on the books with some risk involved, for some of you is a much stronger strategy than two or three guaranteed locked into a policy with a credit card on file. Now that choice is yours to be made, but if the game you’re truly playing is I want more butts in my chair, I want more opportunity, I want more revenue flowing, I want to see more new guests every month, lower the gates, like let the drawbridge down a little bit. And when you hear about business risk, this is kind of like one of the things you’re talking about. You’ve, you’ve all heard the sayings like, no risk, no reward and that the business owners who are willing to play a ballsier game do find more success. We’re in one of those seasons and eras. We were in the season and era a few years ago when you could have those gates super high and there was so much demand that it worked.
We’re now in an era where it’s like roll out the welcome mat a little bit, you’ll attract more, what is it? You’ll attract more bees with honey or whatever that whole thing is like than vinegar. I think that’s how the saying goes, right? I’m terrible at those things. I always butcher them. But like try a little honey a little less vinegar and you might be amazed by how many bees you attract. Next, confusing brand messaging. I was just coaching a stylist through this. So this is the stylist that I adore. I hope that she hears this. I’ve been coaching her for a long time. And this is one of those stylists who had the brand where I would use as an example all the time. I was like, “This brand is so dreamy. I love everything that she’s built. It’s so incredible.” This stylist had wild demand, like so packed.
Everything looks seamless. The salon space is gorgeous. I want to say in a studio suite or like a really unique salon space where it’s just like one or two chairs, very gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous, amazing amenities, amazing experience, and her demand is low. And I took a look at her branding and what I noticed is the brand message became very diluted. And so I asked this series of questions and I was like, “This is so interesting, like your branding, which branding is like messaging, positioning, photos, verbiage, logo. Branding is a whole slew of things.” And the photos she was taking still look great and the work that she did still look great and the guest amenities look great and the salon looked fancy. All that was there, but the brand messaging was like really different and confusing and in some ways like a turnoff. And I pointed out these few key areas and she was like, “I’m getting what you’re putting down.” And what had happened was she kind of got midway through a brand pivot, but didn’t really see it all the way through and so her messaging was like really confusing.
And so what it looked like was the stylists who did good work and had fancy amenities, but like who is actually supposed to be going here was really hazy and then some of the verbiage was kind of like, literally like, “This is not for you. ” And she was like, “I didn’t realize it. ” And when I asked her about the way that she wanted clients to feel, it was like fun and spunky and like really like fiery and almost like laugh out loud. And her message was very like almost like sad and down and it just, it was totally a disconnect. And she’s working on that right now and I’m really gonna be curious to see where that pivots. And I almost think it was like she made an effort to be like luxury or something. It was all of this like fancy word type stuff, almost like ChatGPT-ish.
Like hidden behind these fancy words is this interesting experience if you can decode it. And I do think a lot of brands have done that where it’s like splashy words, fun colors, interesting photos. Who are you? Like it’s not clear exactly who the brand serves, you’re gonna lose people that way. Next, lack of awareness marketing. So awareness marketing is not social media and that can be really tricky and confusing. Interest marketing is social media. So Instagram, Facebook, Yelp, Nextdoor app, TikTok, Pinterest, anything like that is gonna land, as I say Google already, Google Business Profile, all of that lands as interest. Awareness is a level higher than that. There’s no amount of posting on those platforms in the world that’s gonna fill your chair. There’s a whole other layer of things we have to do. If you search for thriving stylist podcast awareness, I have a whole podcast on it, but if you’re not doing any awareness level marketing, that could cause a lull in your demand as well.
Next, and I know I’m gonna sound like the broken record on this one if you’ve been listening to me for a long time, if you don’t have a website, it is 2026. The website is the only piece of the internet you own. If we’ve not learned that lesson the hard way with all the algorithms and the booking systems and how they’ve changed format and they’ve become less reliable and the internet goes down and you can’t check a client out and Instagram’s being weird today and it’s harder to see posts, you have to have a website. I cannot emphasize enough how much more legitimate a business becomes, whether you’re a booth renter, a studio suite owner, a salon full of 2018 team members. You have to have a website. I have lots of podcasts on that. Next, lack of recent online reviews. Recency really, really counts with online reviews.
So if your last review was seven months ago, 100% that’s having an impact on your demand. What was good summer of 2025 is not relevant spring of 2026. So recency matters a lot. So finding systems and structures to get those consistent reviews, and we have lots of trainings on that too, but finding how to create that consistent conversation around you and your business, all of those things are gonna help. Next, and we’re in the home stretch here, this is a long list. If I’m looking at your visuals that you’re showing me online, on Instagram, on Facebook, on your website, on your booking page, anywhere, anything I can find in my research about you and your business, if I cannot tell if you’d be able to achieve the result I’m looking for, I’m gonna find somebody else. And a lot of times Dallas will say, “Well, you could just ask, but they’re not going to.
They’re just gonna find somebody who visually they can tell can knock it out of the park.” And so if all of your work looks the same, or you find that you’re using the same client over and over and over, because a lot of your clients don’t want to be photographed, or you haven’t posted in a while, or there’s a representation of your visuals that’s a mix of work that is within your specialty and isn’t within your specialty, and I can’t tell if you have a specialty, any of those mixed visuals in your messaging is going to cause a slowdown in your demand and the interest in working with you. Last but not least, communication pre-visit. If the communication pre-visit makes me feel unintelligent, if you don’t respond to my DM, if you don’t respond to my inquiry quickly, if I book an appointment and there’s no warm welcome follow-up, there’s so many things.
If I text you and you don’t get back to me for hours and hours and hours, the expectation on a text response is so fast, which is why I don’t coach to a lot of text message booking because the expectation is so high that the risk of losing clients there is, is incredibly sharp. Anything you do in the communication that rubs a client the wrong way, we’ll send them packing. So what I have found is a lot of stylists and often it’s newer stylists will almost try to look … It’s almost like they’re trying to evoke an image of experience. And so they’ll talk above the client’s head or they’ll make a client feel small or unintelligent or like a problem. And that’s not the intention, but if that’s how the delivery lands, the client will go somewhere else where they don’t feel so inadequate.
Like a client will go somewhere where they feel like heard and understood and like a stylist wants to partner with them. So I, I invite you, if you’re looking to fill your book, to think about like your verbiage and your approach, and if you really are there to help, trying to educate a client at the moment they reach out to work with you, probably not a great approach. When a client is first looking to connect with you or asking the initial question, it’s come down to their level, be empathetic that they are not licensed, that they, they are coming to you because they’re hoping you’re smarter than them, but they want you to empathize with them and be like, “It’s all good. I’m here to listen and figure this out together.” And instead of talking down to them, talk face to face, you’ll find a much, much stronger reaction that way.
Okay. So just a few things you can look at to troubleshoot if you’re finding that your demand is low, your books are empty, you’re looking to get more clients fast and you’re wondering what you can tweak in your business to make that possible. Start by looking at these places. This is just a small list. Anybody who’s had a funnel review from me will tell you, Brick can find a hundred things and there’s, there’s always more things to look at, but these are the big things that I’m keep seeing over and over and over. So if any of these things sound like you, they’re a great place to start. So much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
