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 Sieva, 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 we’re essentially gonna do an audio funnel review right now. So if you don’t know what a funnel review is, this is something that we’ve done in Thriver Society for almost 15 years. What I love to do is go through a stylist or salons brand, essentially with a fine tooth comb and find all of the blind spots in it. It’s one of my secret sauces and the thing I’m able to do really well. And when we go through with the fine tooth comb and we uncover all the blind spots and modifications are made, the salon can grow incredibly rapidly or the stylists can grow incredibly rapidly. We essentially find all the leaks and we repair them. So this salon leader reached out to me in the DMs and I’m gonna read you their DM asking for support.
They are struggling to fill the chairs of their existing stylists as quickly as they once could and they’re also struggling with their assisting program. I’m gonna read you the DMs. I’m going to break down what I would change about the salon. I’m gonna tell you what’s wrong with their website, some of the challenges I see in their structure. The one thing I’m not gonna do is give you the name of the salon. So when this salon leader originally reached out to me, they were just asking for help from me like one-to-one here in the DMs. And I said, “This is so good. I’m gonna do it as a podcast, but I’m gona keep it anonymous.” So they know I’m gonna share this, but I don’t think it would be fair to kind of like pick apart their brand publicly on a podcast that’s gonna be listened to by thousands of people.
And then a huge portion of the industry kinda knows all their trouble spots, that probably wouldn’t feel very good. So I’m gona describe this to you verbally as well as I can. I think I’m gonna paint a great picture. And what I want you to do is imagine that I’m coaching you. If you are a salon leader with a team, I want you to hear my advice for the salon and try and put yourself in their shoes because the challenges that they’re struggling with are not unique. They’re very common. I’m gonna read you the DMs and then we’re gonna go step by step and I’m gonna walk you through the advice I’d give if I were in person with this salon leader. She says, “Hey, Britt. I’ve been reflecting a lot on apprenticeship culture and hiring lately. I’m curious what trends you’re seeing with the newer generation entering the salon industry, especially around motivation, long-term commitment and workplace expectations.
I’ll be honest, mentoring has also felt a little defeating at times recently. I care deeply about pouring into apprentices, teaching, supporting, and helping build confidence and clientele, but sometimes it feels like that effort isn’t always matched on the other side. I’ve noticed some newer stylists seem comfortable coasting or expecting the salon team to build their clientele for them rather than taking ownership of growing behind the chair. I’m genuinely trying to understand if this is an industry-wide shift, a leadership gap, or if salons need to adapt the way we mentor and motivate this generation differently. What do you think makes younger stylists feel excited to apprentice or stay loyal to a salon today and what separates salons people want to work at from the ones struggling to attract talent? What a great question. Couple of things to unpack there, and then we’re gonna go into more of the details.
So she and I did exchange a few more DMs after that, and I’m gonna read you some of the clarifying deep dive, but I wanna start at the surface level. Let me paint a little bit of a picture. This leader who reached out to me joined the industry within my generation. I can just tell. So there was a season of the industry probably from like, I don’t know, 2003, four, five until maybe 2015. It was probably a good 10-year stretch where salon assisting and mentorship programs were kind of at their peak. And by at their peak, I mean they were rare, they were special. And if you could get into one, you would bleed out on that salon floor for the salon leader or the stylist you were working under to make them happy. I was an assistant who joined during that generation. I worked ridiculously long days for $8 an hour.
A lot of times I didn’t make overtime. Uh, when I went in for mandatory education, I was not paid. There were things that happened that wouldn’t even work in today’s salon culture and I did it happily because it was so rare to find a salon with a great training program that those who got into one were willing to do just about anything to make it work. It was so highly competitive. I want you to think about what the industry looked like from 2010 to 2000 … No, no, 2005 to 2015. Let’s look at that 10-year gap. Most salons didn’t have websites. Some did kind of towards the end there. The websites that did exist were kind of crummy and didn’t have a lot of information on them. So most salons with great assisting programs built interest by word of mouth or the owner would come in and talk at a beauty school and the students would sit there hanging on their every word hoping for a chance to work at that salon.
There was such a demand to get into those places and spaces that those salons were hiring the best of the best graduates out of beauty school and those people were willing to work insanely hard to make it in this industry. Okay. The people who went through those assisting programs from 2005 to 2015 are now leaders in the salons they’re working in. They’re veterans of 10, 12, 15, 20 years behind the chair or in the salon and they’re now the ones who are reaching out to me in the DM saying, “What has happened?” What has happened is we joined the industry during this bubble where assisting programs and mentorship was so rare that the way we were willing to work for it was different. That doesn’t work today. There are assisting programs and mentorship on every corner of this industry. If I were to throw a stone out my window right now, I would hit one.
The majority of salons have some kind of assistant or training program. Now, a lot of them are terrible, some of them are amazing, but because they’re a dime a dozen, to get amazing talent who’s willing to work insanely hard for your assisting program, you have to be in the top 10% of salons and programs. You can’t just be good. It can’t just be nice. It can’t just be effective. It can’t be the thing that worked for you. You have to sell that thing as if it is the best program in your state. And if you do not position it like that, you will not find stylists who are willing to bend over backwards, work extremely hard for you. Now you can’t just sell that dream. It has to be true. I have several podcasts that talk about shifts in assisting and training programs. Anything over a year is way too long.
More than likely people will still stay in your program. Once they graduate, they’ll have incredibly slow growth because they’ll be so burnt out from the assistant program that they’ll have lost their drive. So the growth on the flip side is slower than you’d like it to be. A lot of people won’t even apply. If they can’t graduate the program in a year, I want you to think about it. A mega-driven stylist, do they wanna grow slow or fast? Fast. Now, I know a salon owner would argue with me, but I can teach them double in two years. I would argue back. You could teach a driven stylist who is motivated and will do the work needed to graduate quickly in 75% of the time. I would argue you could train them in nine months instead of a year and certainly not two. Somebody who is kind of a mid-graduate, definitely wants to work in the industry, lovely person, probably isn’t the hungriest, yeah, two years.
But that’s probably also not who you’d prefer to hire. So just something to consider. Okay. So just talking about kind of shape of the industry and why hiring has changed and mentorship has changed. I do agree, but there’s an abundance of opportunities so you have to be so much more competitive now to attract the right person. So when you say they’re not as hungry, they’re not as interested, oh, they are. I talked to the new grads who are hungry and interested. They’re just not applying for you and we’re gonna talk about the positioning of your program and why I think that might be. But I do strongly disagree when people say this younger generation isn’t as motivated. It’s n- no. It’s still, you know, the top 20% of graduates are the ones who are motivated. 80% are kind of just okay, but that’s how the industry’s always been.
It’s just that only the top echelon of salons with the most amazing programs are getting the most driven talent today. So then I went back and asked this owner, I said, you know, “Give me a little bit more context. Are the issues only with your assistants? Are you having issues with your stylist once they’ve graduated your program? What does stylist retention look like overall?” So this is the clarification. The issues seem to be at every level or phase in our experience. So it’s at the end of the day, not just their assistants, it’s everybody. They feel like there’s kind of been a shift in the whole salon ecosystem, which a lot of leaders I think can resonate with. An example being apprenticeship applications. We’re noticing a lack of professionalism and effort, even incomplete answers, minimal communication and social media profiles that don’t even clearly identify who they are.
I also think there’s a huge gap in what cosmetology school is preparing students for, but that’s probably an entirely separate conversation. It is, and listen, we’re watching potentially the collapse of the private beauty schools in the US happening in real time. So yeah, there is a lot of pressure on the schools to level up and reengage and improve the quality of education. Will they be able to do that? I don’t know. But I, you know, I agree. When we’re talking about what’s going on with the schools, it’s a totally separate issue. I have a podcast dedicated to that just a couple of episodes back. You could certainly find it. She shares more, but I want to start with that first paragraph. She says, an example being apprenticeship applications. We’re noticing a lack of professionalism and effort, even incomplete answers, minimal communication, and social media profiles that don’t clearly identify who they are.
I will tell you, if a graduate knew how to create a phenomenal social media profile, they would not be going to a commission salon looking for an apprenticeship. They would probably take a stab at it on their own. They’re coming to you to learn how to do it. So you got that though. You were like, “You know what? They probably should learn that in school and they just don’t know. ” Totally agree. So I don’t knock them on that, but I did pull up your application and I’m going to explain to everybody listening to this what it looks like. So I go to their website, which is beautiful and professional, by the way. Website looks great. I come to the careers page, there’s a beautiful picture of the team up top, very branded, looks nice. We’re always open to new faces. We’re a commissioned salon that loves to support stylists any way we can.
It’s such a beautiful thing to see stylists crush their goals. We support everyone’s individual growth as well as the salon itself by having a growing team atmosphere. We value hard work and great passion for our industry through continued education and growth, but along with that freedom and flexibility. Just those two paragraphs.
I bet those two paragraphs could have been stolen off the website of probably 90% of salons across the US today. Passion, supporting stylists, crush your goals, we support individual growth, we value hard work says everybody. So that alone to me is not a differentiator. They’re probably seeing that on all of the other websites they’re looking to apply to. So just one area for opportunity, but we’re gonna go on. We offer PTO for part-time and full-time employees. I’m gonna be honest, Gen Z doesn’t always even know what the acronym PTO means. You probably wanna put paid time off. Continued education and a sliding commission scale so you can determine your income. Those are all really vapid promises. Like when I talk to assistants who are applying, first of all, they might not even know what the term PTO means. Do you all know that people graduate high school not knowing how to address an envelope to mail a letter anymore?
Like this generation is just operating in a new reality and so sometimes we’ll use terms that to us, it’s like, who doesn’t know PTO? How would they have learned that? Who would’ve taught them that? Who’s talking to them about that? This generation doesn’t know the things that like mill- millennials and Gen X knew. So just watch even little things like that. When you say PTO for part-time and full-time employees, how much? They seriously wanna know the details. What does that mean? I can take as much paid time off as I want to, or is there a certain amount every year? Like literally put that on your website. Sell it to me. Continue to education. What does that mean? Are you bringing in educators? Is it happening in- house? How often is it happening? Is it every single Monday? Do I have to stay late? Is it coming in early?
What does that look like? Because these promises are generic. These are the things that most salons offer today. And a sliding commission scale, does everybody know the word sliding commission scale immediately brings pricklies to everybody’s neck right now? Sliding commission sale isn’t sales strategy. It’s a sketch strategy. People see sliding commission scale and it gives the ick. It’s too vague and too many people have been burned by sliding commission scales that you have to explain what that means. The other thing is too, somebody graduating out of beauty school might not even know what that’s referring to. You have to break it down, okay? For newer stylists, we offer an apprenticeship program to help you achieve your goals behind the chair. If you’re passionate about this industry and growing your business self-motivated and able to multitask, we might be a fit. It’s a heavy ask, right?
You’re passionate, you wanna grow, you’re self-motivated, and you can multitask. We might be for you. Okay. So then we go to the apprenticeship program application. We’re an open learning environment salon, however, our apprentice drives deeper to truly grow your skillset during the nine month to one year program. I love that timeframe, that’s a good one. You’ll immerse yourself in all aspects of this amazing industry from client communication, time efficiency, business growth, and of course, technical skills, you’ll be working alongside a senior stylist, not just observing. So I assume there’s no formal classes because there’s nowhere on this website that mentions formal classes. So I assume it’s one of those apprenticeships where it’s like you shadow the stylist, you do their shampoos, you ultimately apply their colors and they’re like learning in real time. There’s no promise anywhere on this career page of formalized education. When I talk to new graduates and I, I am fortunate, I do get a chance to talk to schools and talk to new graduates and understand what they’re looking for.
They want formalized education. They don’t wanna just follow a stylist doing their workday. They don’t wanna watch videos. They can watch videos on YouTube and if they wanna follow a stylist, they’ll do that in a booth rental environment and just find somebody they can shadow a litle bit and then booth rent a couple days a week. Like seriously, if it’s not super structured, they’ll just find an easier way to do it with less restriction. I promise they will. So you have to break down exactly what that elevated education is gonna look like with a plan, with dates, with timelines, like really get into it. Okay, so then I go to this application. It’s a Google form, which is fine. It asks for email, phone number, first and last name, birthdate. Be careful with that. So it’s against federal law to discriminate against age, gender, race, ethnicity, like a lot of different things.
Asking a birth date on an application before you’ve not met somebody could get you into some gray area, so I would remove that completely. How did you find our salon? Why are you wanting to be an apprentice? What are your biggest personality strengths? When did you graduate? Have you worked in a salon before? When and where? What are you looking to gain out of our apprenticeship program? What do you like to do in your free time? What other jobs have you had? Why would you be the top choice? There’s more questions here. This is a really long application. The application should be name, email address, phone number, Instagram. When are you able to start? What role are you applying for? And then there could be check boxes, right? It could say assistant, stylist, whatever. What appeals to you most about our business? That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
The reason you’re getting short answers is this is an incredibly long application. These are questions that you’ll ask in the interview. If you are screening somebody by their ability to write great written answers, you’re gonna miss a lot of people. I happen to have the gift of gab. I do find myself to be a great writer. I think it’s actually rare in this industry. When you look at how many people struggle with things like Instagram captions, and then we have this long application where we expect somebody to kind of like write a story about themselves in words. It’s a, it’s gonna be a tough assignment. I think if you simplified this, you would actually get better, stronger applicants and just ask these questions in the interview versus being disappointed that they didn’t give more robust answers. Okay. Then she goes on in the DM to say, “Our apprenticeship program is extremely hands-on.
Apprentices spend full days working directly alongside either myself or the owner.” So then it is what I thought it was. There’s no promise of formalized education. It’s a shadowing program. We’ve also genuinely tried to stay aware of generational differences and how newer stylists wanna work and learn. We’ve listened to conversations around leadership, flexibility, communication styles, work-life balance, mental health, and creating a supportive environment. We’ve truly tried to implement those things because we care about getting it right. I do get that. I can tell that you care for sure, for sure. We’ve been lenient when needed, more structured when needed. We’ve tried to allow individuality within the boundaries of a professional environment, but at times it feels like there’s very little reciprocation on their part. The expectation can start to feel like less like mentorship and more like a handholding or parenting through every step. If you set up the program the way I think you have where the stylist is kind of like hanging with you throughout the day, that is a handholding type of education.
For me, that’s what you’ve created. If I bring somebody … We just hired somebody into my company, brand new social media manager, she’s a 10 out of 10. She had, I think, a day and a half of training and then she was given her first assignment and let it rip. It’s sink or swim, babe. And when you have a training program where people are expected to show up to classes, understand what to do and then perform, you would be amazed at how people take accountability and show up in a bigger, stronger way, because the pressure is on. When it’s just something where I’m like hanging with you every day, it feels really safe and comfy cozy. I’m not gonna bust out of that comfort zone. So then when I’m not confident and can’t hold a conversation and I’m not feeling strong building my social media profile, it’s because I’m under your little wing and it feels so cozy here and I love the way you’re taking care of me and you’re prioritizing me and it feels so good, but I’m a little too comfortable.
I think you have inadvertently set up a handholding base shadow based program when today’s top most driven assistants want formalized classes happening on a regular schedule that include them taking models and building a clientele starting from the day that they start. Like I think that you have a structural issue with your program as a whole and if what I just described is what you do, you have to put that on your website because I don’t see it on the website and I don’t see it here in the DMs. Then it says the current challenge is that even eight months in, there seems to be very little retention or confidence building. When asked direct questions, they often freeze, become overwhelmed, or emotionally shut down during services. I always try and lead with kindness and patience and if adjustments need to be made, those conversations happen privately and respectfully, which I appreciate that.
Another struggle is motivation outside of the salon. Promoting themselves on social media or showing initiative to build a clientele feels like pulling teeth at times. There doesn’t seem to be much urgency or hunger to grow this into a long-term career. Okay, this is where we have to have the real talk. So I looked at the salon’s Instagram. They post an average of five times a month and they recently went several months without posting at all. So if that’s your frequency as the owner of the salon, you have set the expectation for very low marketing. The leader is meant to lead so what you demonstrate is what will be echoed. Can you imagine if I was a new graduate and I found a great salon in my area with a beautiful website such as yours and I saw that they were posting every single day and their stories were active and the team looked happy and I was seeing people in classes, can you imagine how dedicated and eager and excited I’d be to jump in?
And the pressure would be on. I’m like, “Wow, this is a marketing focused salon. I need to get serious about marketing. I need to be serious about the way I dress.” The way you show up as the leader of the business and the way the business presents online will be the way that the team shows up. I promise it will. And so when you’re showing up with low frequency as the leader, the standard for the rest of the team, no matter what you say verbally, it does not matter what you say verbally. They’re looking at what you do visually and visually you’re not marketing much. So then you can’t expect them to market much either. And what we do in our old school ways is we say, “Well, it’s not our job. It’s the stylist job to market themselves. If it’s the stylist job to market themselves, then they will just go to a suite and do it.
In any other industry, the reason why the service provider chooses to work as an employee instead of as an independent is so that they do not have to generate the business themselves. Our industry has to start recognizing that. If you want to build an amazing commission-based salon or an employee-based team, you must fill their chairs. When I look at, and I’m gonna start sharing the stories of on a new project we just recently announced on Instagram, tune in. If you haven’t seen anything about After the Last Client on my Insta, you should head over there and look, you’re gonna love everything about it. I’m talking to real salon owners who are scaling fast and the common bond with all of them is they all fill the chairs of their entire team. And these are salons that are getting 15 to 30 applications a month in small cities.
Okay. I’m not talking about like Manhattan or San Francisco or something like that, like smaller communities. The demand to work there is insane because the promise of being a team member there is huge, huge. And they’re offering things like uncapped commissions and they can do that because they’re growing at such a scale where it’s not a problem because the top talent is all going to these places that are competing at a high level. And when I say competing at a high level, these are not multimillion dollar salon build outs. They’re not fancy. They don’t have fancy amenities. They’re not serving alcohol. Like it’s not elitist. These are not salons where the average ticket is $400. Like these are local salons, but the way in which they are positioning their education, the way they’re taking care of their team, the way they’re showing up on social is different and it is dramatically impacting the flow of clientele and the stylists choosing to work behind the chairs.
Okay. Then this DM goes on to say,” At the same time, I need to remind myself they’re only 20 years old. They’re still learning who they are and how to communicate and how to function. “As far as retention, we aren’t really losing stylists. We have a team of six and everyone outside of the owner and myself came through our apprenticeship program. The bigger issue is that growth behind the chair has been very slow lately, which I can tell is discouraging for them. So there’s this established team, but growth behind the chair has been slow lately. So then this person goes on to say,” I know the easy answer is probably they just aren’t the right people. “Hard disagree. I was not gonna say they’re not the right people. I can tell you what the problem is. It has nothing to do with the people you have in the building.
It does make me wonder what salons are doing differently to attract self-motivated people who are either coachable and hungry to build a career. Right now it almost feels like there’s no middle ground. People either come in already believing they don’t need mentorship or they require constant reassurance, direction and management every step of the way. I genuinely love this industry and mentoring. I have knowledge and experience. I truly want to pass on to people who are excited to learn. I don’t want newer stylists who struggled the way many of us did starting out. I just spoke to a salon owner who leads a booth rental team and her booth renters are eating out of the palm of her hand for mentorship. These are people who are not employees who don’t have to look to her for anything, but are crawling to her begging for mentorship and she’s pouring it out to them, pouring it, pouring it, pouring it out because she’s attracting the driven ones, the motivated ones, the team minded ones.
And this is at a salon where the booth rental rate is $285 a day. So these are stylists who are deeply successful already and they are clamoring for mentorship. So it’s not to say like this generation doesn’t, doesn’t want it anymore or they don’t make them like they used to. Like that, that’s not what’s happening here. What has to be done by salons to attract the right people is what has changed. And this is the call out for salons to be like, ” Whoa, I can’t just own a salon. I have to deeply understand what modern leadership looks like, right? So I’m gonna do a little bit more of a deep dive into this salon’s website and just talk about some of the things that were concerning to me. So when I go to the new guest booking page, which I’ve coached to the new guest booking page, this is brilliant, this is all good.
When I open it up, it says, “Welcome,” and then breaks down a huge list of rules and policies. Please arrive five minutes before your appointment. If you’re seeking transformational color, we recommend booking an in- person consultation first. Here’s the cancellation policy. We need a new client deposit children in the salon, adjustments need to be made, what to wear. So I need to think about what to wear if I’m gonna change my mind, what are my kids up to? Here’s my cancellation policy. I gotta make a deposit. I am already intimidated and I have not even come into the building yet before. When you say your growth is slow and your existing team is growing slower than they did before, a huge part of it is your new booking process. And I know you listened to the podcast, you’ve probably heard me talk about this before.
Starting about 18 months ago, I said everybody needs to pull off the forms, the applications to book an appointment, the heavy cancellation policies, the deposits. Those heavy cancellation policies and deposits were never something I coached to. So I, I know that became trendy from about 2021 to 2024. I wanna make it clear, never from me. And I made a statement about a year and a half ago that anybody who did that has to pull it out now. I think it’s working against the industry at a radical rate. I don’t think there’s an upside. I have now at this point coached thousands of stylists to remove those pieces and have not had anybody come back and say it was detrimental to their revenue, nobody. Removing those pieces will make people feel welcome in your place and space again. If, unless you have an outrageous demand and you’re truly trying to gatekeep, you wanna keep the floodgates open, not make it feel like it’s super hard and competitive to get into your chairs.
I would remove all of this and just make it warm and welcoming and we cannot wait to meet you. When I click your new guest page and it’s just a huge list of rules, it would deter me of coming in as a client. The other thing I noticed is, like I mentioned, your social media presence I think has gotten a little bit inconsistent. Like the work you do is beautiful. The hair you do is beautiful. Unfortunately, if you don’t show up consistently on social media these days, it will radically impact the amount of demand to your salon space. I’m looking in the last about two years you’ve posted maybe 30, 40 times. I should see at least 150 posts in that timeframe, like at minimum. I know it’s a lot of work, but if you don’t market, the clients won’t come in. And when we say things like, “Well, the stylists should be doing it themselves.” That was the truth back in that old generation that I talked about from 2005 to 2015, Studio Suites changed that landscape Instagram changed that landscape.
If employee-based salons want to keep a team, they must fill the chairs like it works in every other industry. For a long time, our industry kind of worked as like this special snowflake, we do things different around here and it was like part of our charm and stylists really woke up and they were like, “If I have to build my own clientele and you’re setting all the rules for me, I might as well go do this myself.” And I can’t argue, “What am I supposed to say to that? ” And then, and then employee based salons would be like, “Yeah, but our culture.” But then you look at some of these booth rental salons who have insane culture, right? And so it’s like, what is the point, what is, truly, what is the benefit of staying with you as an employee? And if you say things like PTO and you’ve got this sliding commission scale, a lot of stylists would say, “That’s okay.
I’d rather just make the money and figure it out myself.” And you say things like mentorship, but then on the flip side, you’re telling me your team isn’t really coming to you for the mentorship. We’re just kind of at this like stalemate of I think that what you’re promoting and how you’re positioning would have attracted amazing talent 10 years ago, but today stylists are looking for different. I am going to continue sharing more insights as to what stylists you’re looking for. As always, if you have any questions or need any additional guidance, you can find me on iTunes, look up the Writing Stylist Podcast, in me a rating or review and ask your question there. My DMs are also always open and of course we’re here to coach you at writingstylist.com as well. And as I always say, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
