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 talking about the biggest demand and revenue destroyers that stylists are battling today. Years ago, I was sitting in a room of other successful entrepreneurs and I was talking about my business and I was talking about such pride and I was like, “Everything’s going amazing and I had this great demand and I’ve got all these structures and I’m feeling great.” And there were some suggestions made as to how I could improve my business and I was kind of shutting them all down. And there was a business advisor of mine in the room at the time and he said, “Brit, your biggest blind spot right now is that you are so focused on the demand that you do have and the clients that you are seeing, you are completely ignoring the people that would be or could be a part of your business, but because of your structure, you’re turning them away.” And he was right.
It was a total blind spot for me. It was like business was good. Why am I worried about who’s not coming? Well, I should be worried about who’s not coming because it would increase my revenue by like 30% if I were to just capture a little bit more of that business. And it really reframed things for me and made me think about myself as a consumer. Like how many times have you been close to booking a service or close to buying a shirt or almost invested in a new car or whatever it was? You almost did something and then you said, “You know what? Let me think about it.” Or, “You know what? Let me keep looking around.” We do that all the time. Like I’ve done that this week, I’m certain. And we don’t think about the people who would have but didn’t or could have but chose not to, or though about it but then went to a competitor.
And that is your biggest opportunity to increase revenue, increase demand, increase financial security. And what we’ve done as an industry is we have over processed the heck out of things and we have created businesses. We’re in the service business at the end of the day and I, you know me, I coach to life balance. I want you to have it all and enjoy it all. But if you have a structure that is turning clients away, there’s only so much I can do to help you have it all. And what I’m finding as I’m coaching stylists and salon owners is that the great divide that I’ve been coaching to for a few years is, is very prominent and continues to get worse. And it’s this gigantic split in the industry of haves and have nots. The industry has always had a sector of the industry that was deeply successful, making lots of money, six figure stylists, all that kind of stuff, and then a sector of the industry that never makes more than 28 grand.
That’s always existed. What’s changing is I’m now coaching and talking to stylists as solo providers who are doing 350K, 450K, half a million dollars in services behind their chair as a solo provider with and without an assistant. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. And for those of you who are saying they’re all extension artists, they are not. And I’m watching people scale at these radical rates. And then on the other side, I’m coaching these stylists who are like, “I’ve never made more than $30,000 and I’m thinking about leaving the industry.” And it’s like, why are there these different groups? The other thing I’m seeing a lot of is stylists and salons who were doing great and are now in 2026 projected to lose 20% of revenue. I’m seeing this huge shift in demand and what it’s indicating to me is that clients aren’t starting to do their hair in their garage at scale.
They’re simply being more particular about where they go. They’re more particular about what they’ll put up with and they’re changing their behavior as clients. And I want to in this episode talk about what you can do to capture more of the business and what behaviors we might have to look at in our own businesses and change in order to get more clients in our chair. So the first thing I want you to reflect on and consider changing is destroyer number one, which is policies, deposits, and gates that repel more people than they protect. I’m big on this. And I know it’s controversial when I say it. I see all the viral TikToks and all the Instagram reels of the salon owners on the phone talking to a client and saying, “Yep, I know that you weren’t able to come in today and we do have a cancellation policy and I did charge your credit card and unfortunately I’m gonna keep that money and this is how I pay my team and I’ve gotta do it.” I so deeply understand that business owner.
I’ve gotta pay my team too, whether I make money or not. They’re on my payroll, it’s gotta happen. And you’ve gotta protect your time and I get that. And you look at the comments under those videos and it’s a lot of other stylists and salon owners saying, “Yeah, that’s right. Get yours. Protect our business.” I have to be honest, when I look at friends and family who ask me about these type of videos, it’s scaring the heck out of them. They’re like, “So do you know anybody who doesn’t have policies like this?” It lands as very scary and very cutthroat and the customer service aspect is being lost. And I understand why we have policies like that. Trust me, I get it. But what we’re doing is we’re creating these restrictions for the what ifs and the one-offs and the bad clients that just exist.
And we’re ignoring the fact that you’re more than likely losing what would be good clients because they see those policies and they’re just like, “Yikes, like, I don’t wanna put my credit card down. I don’t wanna request an appointment and wait two days for y – to see if I’m approved or not. I don’t wanna have to place a deposit. I haven’t met you yet. Like this heavy cancellation policy I’m agreeing to before I’ve even walked in the door.” There’s so many restrictions. I want you to think about it as your business is a castle and all of these policies are a big moat, right? A moat is the water that lives around the castle, and it was designed to keep enemies out. Well, your moat that’s designed around your business castle is keeping your enemies out. And I’m assuming your enemy is the person who books an appointment and doesn’t show up so you lose money.
That’s the enemy you’re trying to keep out. But you’re also keeping out the good clients that just aren’t great swimmers or are like, “I don’t know, the castle looks nice, but I don’t know if I wanna get wet today.” You’re keeping out more than just the bad clients. You’re keeping out a lot of great clients because they’re not willing to swim the moat. They would just rather go to the salon where they can book an appointment. They are a good person. They are super reliable. They just don’t wanna have their credit card living in your system. And I just want you to reconsider it and test it. I’ve been coaching to removing policies very openly for about three years. We never as a coaching company suggested paid deposits and deposit requests and all that kind of stuff. And a few years ago we started these little challenges where we were like, “Try it.
Remove your policies and if in 30 days there’s a huge negative backlash, put it back.” And instead, we have quotes like this. Angelina said, “Yesterday I updated my booking process and removed the appointment request form on my website, making it easier for guests to book directly. One day later, I have three new guest requests booking in their services directly. This is huge. That’s in one day.” Gary says he’s a salon owner in the San Francisco Bay Area. He said, “We saw 21 new guests in a week by opening up our same day online booking and no longer requiring us to take forms and deposits.” Melissa said, “A month ago, I took down my cancellation policy. I had been seeing two to three new guests consistently for about a year. In the last three weeks, I saw nine. She tripled her demand. The only thing she did was take down her cancellation policy.
She wasn’t even requesting deposits or forms or anything else. She removed the policy and tripled her demand.” And I followed up with Melissa and Gary, not Angelina, and I said, “Was there a long-term negative impact of doing that?” And both of them were like, “No, it was sustained.” And do we have the one-off people who cancel or no-show? Sure. But because demand is higher overall, we’re making more money. So the impact of it is much less negative than if we had all these policies and yeah, we’re auto-charging people. The other thing is when you auto-charge somebody because they canceled at the last minute, maybe it was totally their fault. First of all, they’re never coming in again. And a lot of times as the business owner, we’re like, “Good, I don’t want that person to come in again.” But they’re also gonna tell five friends about you, and they’re gonna tell five friends that you have these policies that they can’t stand.
Just be careful with your business reputation and the policies you’re building. Are you building a moat that’s keeping clients out or are you really at a place where demand is so high that you can be turning guests away all the time and charging people for services they didn’t receive and no worries because you have a wait list 100 miles long? Then maybe it is for you. But if you’re actively building your business, be really careful about those penalties and policies. Destroyer number two, you’re booked out too far. I remember when Instagram first became a thing, this was the first time that stylists really could advertise, like no longer taking new clients and booked out for 16 weeks and it was such a flex. We would look at people whose Instagram bio said like, “No longer taking clients or wait list booked out five months.” And we were like, “Wow, I wanna one day get there.” And even for clients, they were like, “I’m dying to sit in that person’s chair.
I’ll wait weeks and months to get there.” And it worked. It doesn’t work anymore. Consumer behavior has massively changed. I looked up recent data, and when you look at response rates and booking rates, clients who activate a phone or text reach out to you expect a response within five minutes. If they send an email, they expect a response within 30. 81% of salon and spa regulars want to manage their appointments outside of nine to five. So you’re talking nights, weekends, early mornings. How many of you have gotten a text from a client at 10:45 at night? Like everybody has, right? And they’re looking to see a service provider within two weeks or less. When somebody decides they want something done, they want something done now. Like I don’t know about you. It’s the Amazon Prime effect. I decided I wanna change my hair. I wanna do it today.
I decided I wanna get a facial, I wanna do it tomorrow. We’re, we’re just. I don’t wanna wait six weeks. The average consumer is not willing to wait that long. The reason I call it the Amazon Prime Effect is for a lot of shoppers now, they find something online and if they cannot get it in 48 hours or less, they will go to another person who can get it to them faster. We’re just not conditioned to wait any longer. Everything is instant and if you are booked out for weeks and weeks and weeks, you are losing money. So a lot of times when people have a full books, it feels good because it’s getting security. Security and growth don’t exist in the same arena when it comes to building and growing a service-based business. So if you want to make more money, you do have to be taking on more new clients.
You have to. If you are booked out to the moon and back, let’s say you’re booked out for three months and you’re seeing a bunch of regulars, you will make the same amount of money that you always make. Sure, that’s predictable, but the world around us is going up. You have to be making more. We serve with the three week rule. So if somebody can’t get in to see you within three weeks, you have a capacity issue and we have to change the structure. Changing the structure does not always mean price increase. That’s why if some of you have been booked out to the moon and you do a price increase, you find that over time you make less money. Yeah, you pulled the wrong trigger. So you wanna have the structural shifts in place so that people can get in with you quickly. They don’t have to wait for an email back or wait for a text back or wait weeks and weeks to get on your books.
They should be able to book instantly and get in with at least three weeks if you wanna build your business forward and make more money. Let me take a quick break to thank Square for supporting today’s episode. This week’s Square story comes from Sharin who runs a booth rental salon and she uses Square to auto invoice her renters for rent every single month. She doesn’t have to remember to do it. Auto sends happen on a schedule and her renters pay quickly by ACH. And what’s also amazing is she can have her booth rental contracts living in that same system, all of her team details all in one place. I’ve actually used Square Invoicing as a user and it is so easy. The business sends the invoice by text or email, and then as the payer, you verify your bank info via Plaid, which is the most trusted tool for connecting banking information for instant verification.
The customer logs into their online banking portal through a secure pop-up window. They do not have to manually enter any of their banking information. It is so easy as the business owner and it’s super easy as the payer too. So if you’re just getting started or you’re running a business that deserves better tools than what you’ve got, right now you can get up to $200 off Square Hardware at square.com/go/thriver. That’s S-Q-U-A-R-E.com/G-O/T-H-R-I-V-E-R. Run your business smarter with Square. Get started today. Destroyer number three, you’re priced for a value you haven’t proven. I genuinely do not know the source, but there was a very trendy pricing model that started probably around 2023 that was like you take your overhead cost and the expenses to run your business and you divide it by how many hours you work and that’s your hourly rate. That is such backwards business advice.
There is no business consultant in any industry that would tell you that’s how you price your service. The price of a service is based on demand. It’s based on what the market can withhold. If you have rented a suite that you can’t afford, you can’t just pass that cost on along to your client and expect to build a full book. Now, if this is somebody who is already deeply in demand, certainly that could work for you. I would argue that you’d actually likely be losing money, but that’s neither here nor there. If you are somebody who is still building a book of business, that pricing model’s really risky. I was coaching a stylist recently who moved from one suburb, I guess, of New York to another and kept her prices the same and she was like, “When I was in such and such suburb, I was doing super well and now I’ve moved here, my business is flatlined.” And we ran her through my pricing calculator and I was like, “Well, you’re 30% overpriced.” And she was like, “Yeah, but that’s the value of my services.
That’s based on my experience, that’s what I’m gonna charge.” And I was like, “Well, then you’ll continue to make less money. You can’t just charge yourself based on how many classes you took or what you charged over here.” Pricing is based on market demand and market potential. And what I find is a lot of stylists today are pricing themselves based on what they think they should be making or they could be making or what they wanna be making or what their peers are making. Pricing is based on your perceived value, always. And in Thriving Stylist Method, we have that eight-part calculator. It’s dynamic, all the parts and pieces speak to each other, and you run yourself through it, and it tells you what to price yourself at to grow as quickly as possible. It has yet to fail anybody who’s used it. You have to price yourself properly, even if emotionally you’re like, “Whoa, that’s too high,” or, “Whoa, that’s too low.” It’s not about emotion, it’s about the facts and the demand, right?
So if you think you might be priced wrong, you’re priced too high, and maybe you haven’t proven that price to your market yet, use our marketing positioning tools and thrivers, run yourself through the pricing calculator, and determine, “Am I currently an economy stylist? Am I premium economy? Am I premium luxury?” And you can’t just use the word luxury and be luxury, it’s based on other things. And when clients are looking at your business and they’re looking at your website and they’re looking at your services and your prices and your social media, they’re putting a perception on your value. You have to be living and working within that value in order to own that price point. So pricing discrepancy is a huge one. Destroyer number four, bad pricing menus and worse job titles. So I did a podcast in 2024, and it was about a TikToker named Claire Berghouse.
You might have seen it. It went super viral within the industry. It was this client, and she was talking about how she felt completely ripped off by a salon that she had gone to. This was the time when, like, everybody was making content about how terrible salons were. We still see some of that. This was, like, at its peak. And what she was saying was, “I have really easy hair.” That’s debatable. She was a, a warm level 7-8 blonde. She had about two inches of root, very minimal dimensions, super thick hair. She acknowledged that herself, like, she wasn’t delusional on it. She understood what she was walking in with. Her inspiration photo was a deep shadow root, dimensional blonding all over tonal change. That could be for some stylists considered a color correction. I certainly wouldn’t consider it, like, a partial. Like, there was a lot going on there, right?
But a client doesn’t know those nuances. A client just knows what they know. So what she was doing was looking at salons, Instagrams, and websites, as a client does, and she was, like, sticker shock horrified me. She said, “In 2016, 2017, I was paying 180. In 2020, I was paying 250, and now I’m being quoted 450 to 600 for junior stylists.” There’s a couple things that went wrong there. So, first of all, please don’t use the word junior stylist unless they’re charging, like, an extremely low rate. Junior means rookie. Junior means trainee. Junior means. I’m nervous. And if I’m gonna see somebody who’s junior, I expect them to be pretty darn affordable. So if you have somebody who’s a junior stylist on your website, who’s 15% less than a senior stylist, change the titles, change the pricing, like, something’s way off there. So the positioning was really shocking to her that a junior stylist would be $450.
It felt like an uncomfortable dichotomy between the title and the price, so something like that can be something that would harm your growth. The other thing that she felt was tricky was seeing pricing ranges. So starting at 150 an hour, 200 an hour, or 300 and up, the ambiguousness of the prices was too risky for her. So she felt like why has it gotten so hard and complicated to find out how much you’re paying for your, your hair services? And I think that that’s fair, and I understand the, the stylist and the salon’s perspective of, well, there’s all these nuances to it, and there are nuances. And like she said, “I have super thick hair.” I would argue that was not a root touch-up, that was, like, an. A very heavy dimensional service, potentially even a color correction. Maybe she would’ve ended up paying $400 anywhere she went.
The problem was, she’s looking at dozens of Instagrams, dozens of websites. She cannot get clear answers. She doesn’t even know what to book for. The titles are weird. The pricing is weirder. It’s the positioning. The positioning was so funky. And when you look at a Thriver Society member’s website and you start to look at the verbiage they’re using, it is so clear. There’s no confusion. You have to be ultra clear. What. I want you to think of your website as a sales page and a salesperson. It’s not just a place to have your pricing menu. It’s a place to have somebody understand how your pricing works, how your titles work, and make it worth it to come in and see you. Demand and revenue destroyer number five, relying too much just on Instagram. I still love Instagram. I think Instagram is a representation of our industry.
Thank goodness it hit our industry. It’s a great place to showcase our work. When you look at the data, Google is where it’s at. There are very few clients who don’t start their search or end their search on Google. Somebody is going to Google you. They’re not just gonna stop at Instagram, they’re gonna look further. Google reviews are worth their weight in gold. When you look at all of the data, the vast majority of clients feel better seeing a stylist who has a lot of Google reviews. It just is what it is. You can’t just have the reviews, you have to build out the profile. One of the things I hear a lot is, “I can’t get clients to leave reviews.” Yeah, you can, you’re just not sure how to position for them. And if you’re not logging into Google and nurturing the platform every single week, that’s also probably why you’re not getting reviews or you’re not getting reviews to stick.
So learning how to use Google, learning how to leverage Google awareness, learning how to use Google Business Profile, building out your page, optimizing for reviews, using good verbiage, asking for reviews, all of those things are really powerful. Instagram is important, it’s not everything. And if you’re going all in just on that platform, you’re certainly missing out. Revenue and demand destroyer number six, diluted brand messaging. I’m big on this. So I was actually just going through and trying to find amazing Instagram accounts. We have coaches that work for us at Thrivers, and I was updating, like, our amazing Instagram base. We have this place where I keep amazing Instagram accounts. I’m like, “If somebody asks to see what an amazing Instagram looks like, show them this.” And for our members, they can see those things when they ask for those things, right? So I was having the hardest time finding great branding.
There was people who were showing pictures of good hair, but everybody does good hair. And I was searching and searching and searching and searching, and it was like, “Man, these stylists aren’t standing out at all. These salons aren’t standing out at all. I could see why there’s low engagement. I could see why there’s low interest.” Like you’re showing off that you do hair, but there’s no actual brand. A brand doesn’t just show I do hair. It shows who you like to work with, what your personality is like, what it’s like to be in your space, um, what kind of problems you solve, what you’re a specialist of, what I could experience sitting in your chair, what your personality is like. Like when we look at branding, it’s all of those things. The other thing is that the value of your branding has to match your price point.
Like going back to that perceived value and that pricing thing, you can be super skilled if when I look you up, the brand is messy or feels juvenile or feels incomplete or feels haphazard, I’m just not willing to pay for that. And it’s not just me. When I say me, I’m talking about consumers at scale today. Going back to where I started this episode, when we’re looking at that huge divide of people who are willing to invest in stylists and those who are not, if the branding isn’t strong, your business will be soft. And branding isn’t pretty or we take good Instagram photos. Those are nice things to do. That does not mean you have an effective brand at all. And I see a lot of stylists and salons like trying to do brand messaging and it’s cringey because the posts that are being put out or the way that the website is framed isn’t cohesive and so the brand just feels kind of like sloppy or immature and all of that is gonna work against you when you’re trying to build and grow.
Lastly, we have decreased frequency, and this is the reality of the economy that we’re in. When I’m looking at data from scaling stylists, from stylists at scale, when I’m talking to peers, when I’m looking at market research, there’s no data that’s showing that clients are not getting their hair done in salon. There is data that’s showing that they’re decreasing frequency. Your client who was in every six weeker might be an every eight weeker now. If you’ll recall, going back to 2008, that’s when lived in color was born. You didn’t see people like with shadow roots. Like walking around with a root was like cringey in the early 2000s. It was like you, she gotta get her hair done. Like what has happened here? Then it became a look and a thing and lived in, and now you see stylists and salons promoting, you don’t have to get your hair touched up more than twice a year.
Like now it’s trendy to be low frequency versus high maintenance was the way of the early 2000s. Now low frequency, low maintenance, easy, lived in, like all of those terms are buzzy and trending, which means low frequency. When I’m coaching stylists and salons who specialize in lived in or low frequency, they have to have a higher volume of clients. It’s simply the nature of the beast. If somebody is doing gray root touch-ups, they need less guests because they have more frequency, right? You have clients who are coming in arguably every six to 10 to 12 weeks, like clockwork. The gray shows up, they wanna come in. When you’re somebody who’s doing lived-in, instead of having a guest come in to see you five times in a year, it’s maybe twice. So you need two or three times more the demand of somebody who is seeing guests at more frequency.
It’s not a bad thing. You just have to increase availability to see you. It doesn’t mean you have to work more hours. You just have to have the structural pieces in place that you can be seeing more guests. Demand to see you is higher, your marketing is stronger, your messaging is better. The thing about lived-in is often you can charge more. If I wanted a lived-in look on myself, it would arguably be two or three times more than my standard root touch-up, more than likely for me to get to a place where I could have that. And it’s to be expected. So there’s definitely pros of having those more complex lived-in services, but there’s cons too. And if you are somebody who’s chosen something more lived-in or rooted or you are doubling down on decreased frequency, you have to increase that demand. And I think it’s a blind spot that a lot of people miss out on.
Okay. So I know there’s a lot of things I said in here that don’t land comfortably. Uncomfortable realities are often where business grows from. So I want you to lean into the things that maybe you think like, “I don’t know about that.” Do a little research, get a little curious, think about what’s working in your business, what’s not. Be brave enough to test some things. One of the things I always say is there’s very few things you can trial in your business that you can’t work back. Try removing policies. If you hate it, put them back. You can always go backwards, but staying stuck in one place when you know something is wrong in your business, the money’s not there, the demand is not there, the interest isn’t there, something feels off. You can’t just keep doing what you’re doing and plow through. Something has to change and being open and willing to change is the first step in seeing a stronger result.
As I always say, so much love, happy business building. I’ll see you on the next one.
