Intro: Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hair stylist? 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 aren’t seeing any results. Maybe you’ve already had some amazing success but are craving more. Maybe you’re ready to truly enjoy the freedom and flexibility this industry has to offer.
Cutting and coloring skills will only get you so far, but to build a lifelong career as a wealthy stylist, it takes business skills and a serious marketing strategy. When you’re ready to quit just working in your business and start working on it, join us here where we share real success stories from real stylists.
I’m Britt Seva, social media and marketing strategist just for hair stylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
Britt Seva: What is up and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Britt Seva, and today, we’re going to talk more about the future, about what it looks like to be an assistant. If you’re not watching on YouTube, I’m doing an air quote right now, assistant.
When I joined the industry, I joined as I believe we were called assistants. We may have been called associates. We’re going to talk about all those different names in a moment. But when I joined the industry, I was in that assisting role where I was paid $8 an hour, which in the San Francisco Bay Area is the equivalent of very minimal minimum wage. I was doing whatever was needed to be done, right? The cleaning, the maintenance, I took class six hours a week (unpaid) and then worked 40 hours a week (paid), applied color on clients, lots of shampoos, upselling treatments. I was learning on the job and I did that for about a year.
This was the mid two thousands. 2007 into 2008, I was assisting. That was pretty typical, and actually what I experienced as an assistant, honestly I had such a stellar experience. I cannot, I can’t say a negative thing. I really had a wonderful experience as a salon assistant.
Things have really changed. That was what, 15 years ago now, maybe more than that. Everything has changed, but I don’t believe as an industry we have looked at that role evolving and changing in the way that it should, and so what’s evolved is bitterness and resentment and lots of talk about how this next generation is lazy.
I’ve talked before on previous episodes about generational differences and how boomers and the Silent Generation had a really different mindset than Gen X did, which was a very different than mindset than millennials. It was just completely different than Gen Z.
You know how your parents looked at you and they were like, “Haha, you don’t know anything,” and they laughed at us for being young, dumb, dumb kids. Now we’re the people doing that to the generation underneath us.
Do you remember being that young person and looking at the person who was like, “Oh my gosh, you’re so young, you don’t know anything,” and you would look up at that older person and be like, “You are so out of touch and dated.” That’s how Gen Z is looking at us now. They’re not looking at us and like, “Maybe I should get a stronger work ethic.” They’re looking at us and they’re like, “How sad that you don’t realize how the world has evolved.” Take yourself back to being 18, 19, 20 and yeah, you were naive and no, you didn’t know everything and yes, you made mistakes and all the stuff, but there’s this mindset in the industry right now of no one wants to work hard enough. No one’s willing to pay their dues.
Do you remember how hard it was to build a clientele? To work and live on next to nothing? Why do we feel like we need to subject the next generation to that? I’m so confused as to why we feel like, “Well, I did it so they should have to do it too.”
For me, I feel like I want them to experience better. If you’re listening to this and you’re a parent, you might relate to this. As I raise my own children—I’m the mother of a nine year old son and a daughter who’s about to be 20, and when I look at how I’ve raised them, I wanted them to have so much better and so much more and suffer much less than I did when I was at any of their ages and stages.
And believe you me, I always say the Sevas are a working family. They work their booty cheeks off. I’m not saying that they’re entitled, they’re certainly not lazy.
My daughter’s working at her first salon and I know her owner really likes working with her and I don’t think she appears to be lazy. However, I do not want her to endure any of the suffering I did as a young person and I wish that we could deploy more of that empathy to the newer generation coming up now of “…but what if it didn’t have to be so hard?” Is there something wrong with giving them a better experience than what we had?
I know a lot of people are like, “Yeah, but it does take time and it does take hard work.” “Yeah, but it’s different.” We’re living in a different world and the longer that we stay in that mindset of like, “It’s got to be what it was and the workforce has to change,” y’all, the workforce is not changing. We have to adapt.
I wanted to dedicate this episode to rethinking what it looks like as you bring on support to your salon team.
I see us really developing a new category of salon support. I think that if you’re saying I need a new assistant or I need a new associate, or I need a new apprentice, what you need to be saying instead is I need either a new salon assistant or a mentee one or the other. Not apprentice, not associate, not some other fancy name you put on it, salon assistant or mentee.
I want to explain the difference. Let’s look at the definition of some of these words for a second. You know I like to get into the research detail, so just go on this journey with me for a minute. I promise you’ll like the destination we end up at.
One of the words that’s buzzy right now is associate, right? Well, we don’t have assistants, we have associates as if having a better title makes the job better. I’m not sure about that.
But when you look at the definition of associate, it’s a person with limited or subordinate membership of an organization. Then the secondary definition is a partner or colleague in business or at work. When you say partner or colleague, both of those things denote a certain amount of equality.
If I was to say I have a partner in this business, wouldn’t you all think that was somebody who had equal authority to what I do or that it’s another leader in the company? If I said I’ve got a partner, none of you would think it’s an entry level person making minimum wage, right? If I said, “Oh, my business partner’s here at this meeting,” nobody would say, “Oh my gosh, that must be Britt’s latest hire.” You would think it’s somebody high level, up in my company.
When we use the word “associate”, it has this underlying connotation of partner or colleague. But I think when we’re hiring somebody and giving them the title of associate, it really is the newest person, so it falls into that first category of a person with limited or subordinate membership of an organization. If they’re a subordinate, they’re somebody who’s got the very bare minimum responsibility.
Now the irony is the laundry list of things we’re looking for in an associate or an assistant or an apprentice is things like, “Well, they’ve got to be available, they’ve got to be driven, they’ve got to be motivated, they’ve got to be talented, they have to be well-spoken, they have to be able to put themselves out there, they have to know how to use social media.”
It’s like we want them to be the sun, moon, and stars, yet be our subordinate. Sun, moon, and stars, but be extremely entry level.
It’s like if you were running another company and you put out the job description of, “Hi, we’re looking for somebody who has maximum availability, is extremely driven, well-spoken, great customer service, talented, hungry, a go-getter, can build their own clientele, and is a master of social media,” would that be somebody making minimum wage in any other company? Likely not.
I’m not saying so you need to pay them more, so don’t think that’s where I’m going with this. What I’m saying is I don’t know that the title actually fits what we’re asking for.
Go with me for a second. Then we have the title of “apprentice,” which gets thrown around a lot too. An apprentice is a person who is learning a trade from a skilled employer, having agreed to work for a fixed period at low wages.
Now apprentice and mentee can go hand in hand for me. I’m okay if you bring somebody on and you call them an apprentice, but I’m going to read that one more time. A person who is learning a trade from a skilled employer, having agreed to work for a fixed period of time at low wages.
Here’s the deal: If you’re going to hire somebody who’s a mentee or an apprentice, which we’re going to unpack in a second, it needs to be a fixed period. It’s not, “Well, however long it takes ’em to finish,” or “They’ll be here till the work is done,” or “You’re going to be here until you get through 60 training lessons.”
No, literally how long is the fixed period? Is it six months? Is it eight months? Is it a year? What’s the transparency on that? Where’s the growth path, right? In my program Thriving Leadership, I coach to a growth paths and plans. Do you have a growth path and plan or do you have a theory? Do you have a bundle of education that you toss at somebody or is there actually a plan and a strategy for it? And I don’t mean a checklist. I mean what is the timeline? What is the fixed period? “Well, it depends on their work level and their drive.” No, no, if they’re not driven, they get fired.
This is where we get things wrong is we’re like, “Well, it took so and so three and a half years to get through our training program.” Why didn’t you fire them at the nine month mark when you could see that they were on the path of three years of assisting? It’s because they were either the wrong hire, like wrong person, or they were in the wrong role. That’s why it takes some assistants three and a half years to get through their training program. To be honest, it’s the fault of the salon owner who allowed that to take place, right?
Fixed period, low wages would be an apprentice or a mentee as I’m liking to call them.
Then we look at the job title of assistant. The job title of assistant is a person who ranks below a senior person, okay? That is the appropriate title for somebody who’s a helper in the salon for you. A person who ranks below the senior person versus associate is colleague or business partner, which doesn’t actually make much sense at all.
Really, it’s an assistant by definition what we’re looking for when we’re hiring. Generally speaking, if I’m advising somebody on this assistant, this associate, this mentee, whatever that they’re looking to bring on or that they already have in the building, there’s several common pain points.
The first is it’s expensive, right? We look at support people as either assets or liabilities. Either a person in your building is enhancing the business, is improving the profits, is increasing the bottom line, is helping you to generate more revenue, or they’re not. If they are not, they’re not an asset, they’re a liability. For a lot of people who say, “Bringing on an assistant is expensive,” they should be able to pay for themselves if your program is set up properly. But we’re going to talk about codependence versus independence in just a moment and you’ll understand where that breaks down.
The other thing is it’s a big time commitment. When you bring on somebody who’s working underneath you, they expect education, they need to be taught, they need to be trained. Who’s going to do that? Do you have the time? And a lot of times when we bring on a support person, we’re like, “It’s ’cause I need relief. I want to double book. I can’t handle all of my shampoos. My body’s breaking down.” Well, when you bring in this new person and you say, “I’m going to mentor you,” that doesn’t lighten your load. It increases your load, it shifts what you’re working on, but it doesn’t actually provide any immediate relief.
Most people who are really good salon leaders to assist for will say it’s a lot of work to have these support people, but they do it because—I’ll go with you in a second—They have bigger dreams and motivations. You need to just figure out what your dreams and motivations are.
Salon support is a liability if they are not earning at least enough to cover their wage. Meaning—when I was an assistant, let me do some rough math, I was making $8 an hour and I was working 40 hours a week. What is eight times 40, $320 a week? That’s how much my salon had to pay me. I needed to be generating at least $320 a week in order for the salon to be profitable on me. Well, the good news is I was a really fantastic assistant and I was making way more than that much money for our salon. It wasn’t because they supported stylists who were double booking, which I did do, but that’s not how I provided that revenue.
You look at the revenue levers in which assistants can support you with.
Now let’s get into that for just a second and then I’m going to talk about the difference between mentees and assistants. There’s codependent support and there’s independent support. Codependent support would be I need to bring on an assistant and associate a mentee because I like to double book or I want someone to do my shampoos. For me, that’s what I call a codependent support relationship. It can work. Often, those who double book have a codependent support person who’s with them.
The reason why I call it codependent is ’cause you’re relying on each other. If you double book and you have an assistant, inevitably your assistant’s going to get sick one day. Now you’ve got to juggle that double book by yourself. Some people can do it. For some people it’s a huge stressor. They’ve got to move things around.
What about if your assistant wants to take a vacation and they want to take a week off? They should be able to do that. Now you have lost the support person that you had been dependent on and you’ve got to juggle around to make it happen. Some of you were like, “Well, that’s why I have multiple assistants.” I totally understand, but I’m saying it’s a codependent relationship. That person only has a role in your business so long as you’re double booking and they’re supporting you through those things. If you have no one to do that for you, you’re in a bind. Which goes back to one of the other problems that people run into when they’re hiring assistants is it becomes this endless loop of somebody’s about to finish, I got to hire somebody else because I can’t not have somebody who’s helping me with all this double booking. It’s this cycle, right? You’ve now created the system of codependence of you need somebody to be there to help you because that is how your business functions. If you call out sick, that person now doesn’t have anything to do for the day because their whole job was to help you with your double column and now you’re not there. So not only are you out sick, they’re out sick. That’s a codependent working relationship, right?
There’s not a lot of companies that run like that. Even in my company. I used to have somebody who worked predominantly as my assistant. If I was out sick, she still worked eight hours that day, like she still had a job to do versus in a codependent salon relationship, if one person’s out, two people are out, right? That’s codependence.
Then we have independent. They’re an asset while they’re there and they’re with you, but they don’t cause a massive issue while they’re away and/or they can still be of use if you are not there. That is an independent relationship.
Have you decided, when you say you want support, would it be codependent or independent? And what do all the nuances of that look like? That’s a piece I don’t think many people think about at all.
Let’s go into the difference between having a true mentee or truly an apprentice versus an assistant. Mentee is probably what most of us think of when we think of traditional assisting. It is somebody who’s committed, it’s somebody who’s motivated. It’s somebody who does want to build their own clientele. They want to be a stylist one day or a barber one day or a makeup artist one day and that’s why they’re with you. They’re there because they truly want to be mentored by you. That is a huge level of responsibility and one that I hope you don’t take lightly. You realize that this person has said, “I want the career you have. I want to have what you have. Please take me under your wing and show me how.”
Now, when I joined the industry in 2007, there weren’t a lot of ways to figure out what building a successful clientele looked like. Social media wasn’t what it is. YouTube wasn’t what it is. Education was not available in abundance. Working as a mentee or an apprentice was how you figured out what success looks like. Guess what? People can now figure it out on their own.
So when we say, “Studio suites are stealing all the best stylists now,” no, they’re not. It’s simply because mentees, mentors have not raised their bar of work for me, learn from me because it’s so much better than you’re going to get through any other kind of training.
If you want to have very well driven, motivated salons, I’m sorry, stylists coming in to choose to work for you, you need to raise the bar of what you provide for those people. They should have the opportunity to begin building their clientele within the first month of working with you. They’re hired with the purpose of working beside you within your brand.
A mentee is somebody who you hope grows with the salon for the long haul. They do need to bring in their own models every single week. You want someone who’s driven. Set the expectation from the jump.
It’s so funny, it’s an interesting dichotomy because I always share if you hire a stylist, you know whether they’re brand new out of cosmetology school, no matter what their role is, you should be having them serve their own guests within the first four weeks. And a lot of people say, “Well, they’re not ready. They won’t be able to hold to our standard.” Do you really want to employ somebody for eight, nine, 12, 18 months and then realize they can’t pull it off?
I did that in the salon for years and it was emotionally exhausting, physically exhausting. It burned our teachers out. There was—as I look back, I was like, why did we do it like that? It’s so backwards. In no other profession would you do that way. You would know very early on, can this person hold a conversation with a client for two hours? Anybody can hold a good conversation during a shampoo. You’re not talking three quarters at a time. You want to know can somebody do a consultation and listen, maybe their first six will be rough. I want the seventh to be better. The shorter the timeline from when you figure those things out, the greater your chance of success will be and you’re going to attract those driven people.
It’s funny, we say we want people who are driven, motivated, inspired, hungry, and then we don’t let them start building a clientele for six months. You can’t have it both ways. What is it that you want? Right? Great with people. We want them to be extremely coachable. We want them to have a regularly scheduled education, meaning you need to show up weekly, biweekly, monthly, with the sole purpose of teaching. Not, “Hey, I have a client coming in today, Jade, watch me do her highlight.” I’m saying pre-scheduled going with the growth plan, structured training. That’s what mentees or apprentices really want today if you want the best of the best.
Then we have the role of assistant. It was probably 2010 when I realized how powerful having a true assistant could be. We all know this, but it’s almost like this blind spot that nobody’s tapping into. Do you all realize there are tens of thousands of licensed cosmetologists who don’t actively want to be stylists or barbers themselves because maybe they can’t hold a conversation for two hours? Maybe they’re terrified to cut hair, maybe they got their license, they like being in the environment, but they just don’t really like doing the work. Do you realize, like no joke, tens of thousands of people fall into that category? Guess what? Yours truly falls into that category. I love the environment. I like stylists. I love the business side of things. I don’t like doing hair. There are tens of thousands of people like me out there. They would be phenomenal assistants.
We had two people in our salons who essentially were assistants. No interest in building their own clientele. What they were is they were years and years and years’ long support for our stylists. Imagine hiring somebody and they are your ride or die, your right hand for three, four, five, six, seven years. They don’t require ongoing education and they’re not as needy as somebody who wants to build their own clientele and they learn the ins and outs of how you do business. They know your clientele like the back of their hand.
They are truly your extra left arm, like truly an extension of you. Doesn’t that sound like a dream? There are people out there who would die for a job like that.
Here’s the criteria. No real interest in becoming a stylist, at least at this time. They should be licensed in most states. If they’re going to be working with your clients, doing shampoos, helping with blowouts, I don’t know what you’re going to want them to be doing, but they would need to be licensed. Great with people again, coachable, can-do attitude. Willing to do more than just hair.
What if you had an assistant who was licensed, didn’t want to be a stylist and themselves could do all your shamps, could start a blowout for you, could run your social media, could clean up your station, could go to the beauty supply, like hi, dream job knocking. So good and they can stay with you for the long haul.
It overcomes so many of the pain points that people run into with support of, “I don’t want to have to hire another assistant every four or five, six months as I get somebody who’s close to graduating.” That’s a mentee. Hiring a really good assistant that can stay with you for the long haul is a benefit to you, to your clients. It takes a load off.
I’ve shared this concept before. I see so few people actually jumping on it. I want you to rethink for yourself as you’re looking to bring support into your business or as you already have support, is that support an asset? Is that a liability? Are they categorized properly? What is their job? Are you showing up in full the way that you need to to make sure that you are giving them exactly what they need? Or is there work left to be done?
Again, another one to get your wheels turning. If you have any questions or you want to leave any feedback, I’d love it if you left me a rating or review on iTunes. You can head to iTunes, leave me that rating or review, and in the comments there ask any question you’d like. I get most of my podcasts ideas right from there.
As I always like to say, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
