I want you to love your clients, but keep them out of the friend zone. It’s the only way for a sustainable business.
Listen, I know we all want to be friendly with our clients. We want to be close to them and for them to know us. I don’t want you to be sterile or have your salon environment become very corporate where you can’t connect. That’s not what this is about.
It’s about that you are a stylist first and foremost. Think of the relationships as a fringe benefit because, at the end of the day, we’re there to run a successful business. By staying out of the friend zone, we can make that a top priority.
Five Signs You’re in The Friend Zone
How do you know if you’re in the friend zone?
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You feel guilty even thinking about a price increase. Do you think Target stresses out when they decide their t-shirts are going to be $5 more? No. They are a highly-successful product company who isn’t sweating it about paying their bills. They are worried about running a business, and we have to start running our businesses that way too.
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You discount your guest. How about those long-term clients who have their own price, then your friends and family who don’t pay full price, but you have some clients who do pay full price? That is not going to work.
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You feel awkward talking about retail or up-selling services. When people choose to see a higher-end professional, they want your advice. They want you to take care of them and help them look their best.
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When you make business decisions, like price increases, you worry if your clients will be upset. If you run your business like that, you are in the friend zone. You can keep it humble and still respect yourself enough to charge your worth and run your business like a business, not like a hair hookup chick.
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You feel embarrassed to go all out on social media or take photos of your guests. FYI, clients know that social media is an essential part of our industry. If you’re not embracing it, it doesn’t make you look cool, it makes you look uneducated.
If you’re doing any of those five things, there’s a really good chance you’re in the friend zone. Let’s start making the way out of it.
Step 1: Flow of Visit
I created a flow of visit immediately after going on to the floor as a stylist. My natural tendency is to be highly-introverted and disorganized, so I created a flow of visit. It included:
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Consultation scripts –If their answer was this, my answer was that. It was autopilot because if it wasn’t, I knew I would be nervous and miss things.
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Retail sales touch points – You should hit these with every single guest. No, they do not make you feel like a salesperson.
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15 go-to questions – As an introvert, if I’m in a room having coffee and the conversation lulls, I panic. I had these 15 openers to open the flow of conversation.
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Social media images –When do you take your social media photo? Before you walk your guest to your chair? Before the drape is on? When is “before the hair”? Have a very specific moment in the visit to take social photos to create the habit.
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Close of visit series – The checkpoints that I would hit before the client walked out the door.
I know this sounds systematized, but I felt really prepared, and it didn’t allow me to slip into the friend zone. I went through that flow of visit every time with every guest no matter how long I’d been seeing them or where they found me. We laughed, talked about celebrity weddings and our latest trips, but that was fit in between my flow of visit.
Step 2 – Professional Boundaries
When people ask me how much should they tell their guests about their upcoming surgery, so they know what’s going on in your life, I always have the same answer: Nothing.
When you go to your massage therapist, do you want her to tell you how the profession is taking a toll on her body? No! That massage is not about her. It’s about you coming in and having a nice time.
It’s the same thing when our guests come in to see us. You can let your clients get to know you without crossing into that friend zone. It’s so much easier to allow the service ticket price to roll off your tongue if you didn’t spend the entire visit complaining about your boyfriend. Share less about yourself and talk more about the guest.
Step 3 – The understanding that friends and family make the worst guests
Friends and family make the best people in our life. We need them in our life, but we don’t necessarily need them in our business. And generally speaking, friends and family don’t make the best clients when we’re trying to build our business.
For a lot of us, it’s how we cut our teeth. Eventually, those who have thriving careers tend to phase friends and family out. It’s not that they don’t love us; it’s like it doesn’t cross their minds that we’re there to make a living. That’s a huge part of the way that family as clients aren’t great: they just don’t put us in that professional setting.
That’s a slippery slope because as you start to friend zone your clients, they want a discount, start to flake on you at the last minute, or stop sending you referrals because you know too much. It’s not that we don’t want to have our clients open up to us, but we always want to be seen as a trusted professional.
Step 4 – Mindset
Most of you were nodding your heads and believing everything I just said, yet some of you will go back to the salon this week, and nothing will change. You won’t create the flow, the structure, or the way you talk to your guests.
I want you to remember pre-cosmetology school you. The you who was trying to find their path or maybe you knew you were going to be a hairstylist. What were you most excited about? What lit you up, knowing that you were going into this? Where did you see your career going? Maybe salon owner, platform artist, or super successful stylist who worked the schedule they wanted?
What other professional do you know who is wildly successful who discounts their customers, feels guilt over charging their worth and spills their personal gossip out? None. Did you get into this industry because you were lonely and wanted more friends? Or did you do this because you saw this as a fun and lucrative career path?
Because if it was to make more friends, stop showing up to the salon every day and invite your friends over for wine and hair. Trust me, they’ll show up by the truckload to do that with you. But if you saw this as a lucrative career path, you have to change how you’re doing things. You have no choice.
If you want to start making more money this year, you have to start charging more. You have to start asking for referrals and get confident in selling retail. You have to shift the way you take care of your guests, so you’re not in the friend zone, you’re an amazing professional your clients can’t wait to recommend.
I want you to commit to looking your role in the salon at this as a career. Not a hobby, not a cool job, but a career. When you look at this as your livelihood, decide how it’s going to play out for you and start making the right decisions to get you there. When you get clear on that, it will 110% change the decisions you make.