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 we are here with our 2024 predictions podcast.
I will say I think these have become a real fan favorite. We always see huge listenership on these ones and I think for good reason: I have a very high success rate in predicting what’s going to happen in the future of the industry.
Before we do this year’s predictions, I actually thought it would be fun to review last year’s, which I don’t think I’ve ever done before. If you have not listened yet, episode 263 is called My 2023 Predictions for the Industry. You can still go back and listen to it, but I’m going to give you the high points and you can decide for yourself what my track record is for these episodes generally, and then decide how much of this upcoming episode to trust.
I predicted one year ago today that in 2023, we’d see mass layoffs. I mean the numbers don’t lie on that. Hundreds of thousands of Americans were laid off this year.
The consumer discretionary sector is projected to be strong in 2023. We saw a huge spending up as far as consumers are concerned this year. If that did not hit you as a stylist or you as a salon, definitely stay tuned because not everybody reaped the rewards of the huge discretionary spending this year because there was a changing consumer behavior, which I’m going to get to in a second.
Number three, I said that luxury hair services will be sustained, but maintenance will likely be adjusted, meaning clients were going to spread out their appointments a little bit more. Anybody see any of that?
I said we’re going to begin to see the great divide in the industry. Hang on to that one.
Next, I said the industry is going to grow much faster than average. That is not even something that I made up or guessed. There is a ton of data on that. Forbes is reporting on it. The US Department of Labor Bureau is reporting on it. Trades are surging right now. And if you think competition is stiff right now over the next 10 years, it’s going to get stiffer than it’s ever been before because a lot of people are interested in joining trades.
We’re already seeing the repercussions of that. Booth rental and commission salons will see more applicants in 2023 than they did in 2022. You’d be the judge of that one.
Oh, by the way, I actually know the answer to that. That was a little teaser, but I should give a clarifier. If you were a salon who was trying to hire this year and you struggled, I’m here to tell you there actually was data-wise a surge of stylists choosing to work commission or booth rental over true independence. Not a huge landslide victory, but it was there. We did see people leaving suites, going back to salons, those kind of things. The reason being that it is now harder than it used to be to attract and sustain a clientele. And you used to be able to get by not understanding the systems and the strategy.
It is getting increasingly harder. Because of that, people are finding I don’t want to be so independent, I like the structure of commission or whatever. We did see an interest in going back to team-based, so if you’re like, “We’re at the end of the era of the salon team, everybody wants to be independent,” no, they don’t. This was the year we really saw a circle back to that.
Also quick side note, the industry is circular. Meaning that every few years, there is always going to be a surge one way or another. People are going to want to go independent. People want to work for a team, people want to be independent, people want to be employees. For decades, that’s how the industry has worked.
So when people say, ‘Oh my goodness, the salon team is dying,” no, it’s not. What has happened is this is the first time in the last decade that we saw a surge back to independence. Because this decade’s the only time where we had social media to really talk about it, there was more of a megaphone on the cycle. But it’s already starting to cycle back, so no one needs to freak the heck out. Team salons are not going away. In fact, there’s more of an interest in working with a team than there has been in recent years, so don’t buy into that. That’s not the truth. We did see people shifting back to team-based salons last year.
I predicted in 2023 it would be harder to find and retain clients. Anybody struggle with that? Now that doesn’t mean impossible. A lot of people like my Thrivers Society members and some other people saw huge boosts in their income and their revenue and their clientele this year. If you’re a Thriver who saw that, I would love for you to DM me on Instagram and tell me all about it. We’re sending some little gifties and goodies this year. I would love to include you.
But if you did not see that incredible growth in your clientele, if you struggled with retention, if you were struggling to retain guests, there’s nothing wrong with you. Consumer behavior has changed and the game has changed. We’re going to talk about those changes coming up in just a moment.
My third-to-last prediction was that consumers would be much more particular about where they invest, opting for more evolved and sophisticated brands. We definitely saw that and we’re going to see more of that in 2024.
I predicted that values-based brands would win. How many of you find authenticity trending right now to be a really good thing? Absolutely. Values-based brands won big in 2023 and we’re going to continue to see that.
I said that in-person education—meaning not digital education, in-person education and skills-based education will surge. People in this last year were interested in refining their color-based education, their extension application education, cutting skills, drying skills. We did see a big pickup in that. I’m going to talk about where education is going this year and beyond.
That’s what I predicted for 2023. I did an episode predicting 2022, 2021, so go back and listen to ’em. But what I’m trying to say is I’m pretty good at this stuff and as I share that, it’s like, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, all that stuff happened. But just keep in mind, I predicted that a year ago, so I predicted it before it actually happened, and I am seeing shifts and trends in consumer behavior that are happening radically.
I think this 2024 episode is probably more critical than ever.
I will be honest, this episode may feel a little bit overwhelming and I totally understand that. I would just prefer to be upfront about that. It’s going to be a longer one. I have a lot of data to share. What I want you to understand is I do these episodes and then, based on what I learned from my research and what I share and the conversations we have after the episodes, I cultivate all of the podcasts, the Thrivers bonus education, my live speaking, everything for the next year is going to be to overcome any challenges you’re having.
So while I’m going to be unpacking some of the challenges we’re going to see in 2024, please know this is a note to me as well. Then my job becomes helping you to understand how to overcome all of these things. I’m not going to share with you everything that’s going to happen and all the solutions here in one podcast. That would be impossible. But stay tuned because we are going to be talking about these things all year long. I do not want to leave you hanging. I just want to give you a little sneak peek into what next year will likely look like.
Three things you need to know as it stands right this second. I’m recording this December of 2023. As of right now, consumers today and business owners today understand that time is precious. When I said that, did anybody close their eyes or have a moment to their selves where they’re like, “Woo, yes it is.” We are valuing time right now more than ever.
I am going to guess that you as a business owner, you as a stylist, you as a salon owner, you as an esthetician, you as a waxing professional are valuing the quality of your time, how you spend it more than ever before. That doesn’t make you unique. That makes you normal. Your clients feel the same. I want you to keep that in mind as we shift forward.
Number two, the job market is very uncertain. We have seen hundreds of thousands of layoffs this year. We will likely see hundreds of thousands more next year. Even though a recession hasn’t officially been declared, basically all of the indicators have been there for quite some time. A huge part of why a recession hasn’t been officially declared is because there hasn’t been a big enough gap in unemployment. We are just now seeing that gap start to come together where there are not as many jobs available as people unemployed.
For a long time there were layoffs, but there were so many opportunities that people were able to get rehired and it was no problem. We’re seeing that gap close. That is something to keep in mind.
Now that being said, like I said a few weeks ago on the podcast, there is still more money in the economy and more spending in the economy than we have ever seen before. But people are more particular about how they spend it. People are not stopping their spend, they’re being more particular. That pressure is on you, my friend. We’re going to talk about how to overcome that.
And three, joy and personal fulfillment matter more than ever. And when I say that statement, that probably resonated with you too. Like you’re at the point in your life where you’re like, the quality of my life matters. Feeling like the work I do is important matters. Feeling like my time is well spent matters, my quality of life matters. We are all walking through the world looking that way, feeling that way, we’re prioritizing life that way. Your clients are too, so I want you to keep those three things in mind as we shift into these predictions.
Okay, four high points I want to make and then I’m going to get into specifics.
You are in a fight, a battle, a dog-eat-dog war for attention and perceived value next year. Y’all, if you thought competition was stiff before, buckle up, baby. It’s about to get stiffer. And like I said, I want to support you with tools and resources to overcome that. But if you think it’s going to be easier next year or you can just keep on keeping on, it’s not going to work like that. That’s the first thing.
Number two, clients are becoming more demanding. You don’t have to like that, you just have to understand it. And if you think like, “Well, they think they’re going to be demanding and I’m not going to go for that,” that’s fine. But they’ll find someone who will.
This is the rule for their small business always. It’s the rule for 2024. It was the rule for 2012. It was the rule for 2002. If you do not adapt to what consumers today want, your business will fail. It’s very simple economics. If you do not understand what clientele and consumers today want, they will simply not choose you, right?
Think about any business that closed down, like a Toys ”R” Us. Man, Toys ”R” Us was a huge part of my childhood. Even my daughter, I happened to be recording this on my daughter’s 20th birthday, happy birthday to my girl. But I can remember when she was a kid, that was our treat. If she—this is a rule in our family. If you go to the doctor and you have to get a shot, what we do after is you, we call it a Toys ”R” Us treat. You get to go and you get to pick something under 20 bucks at Toys ”R” Us, but it’s like pick whatever you want. As long as it was within budget, you get a shopping spree.
That always worked really well for my kids. Parenting tip there.
Well, now, we can’t do that anymore. Toys ”R” Us is gone. Why did a business like Toys ”R” Us fail? They were the market leader forever. Does everybody know why Toys ”R” Us failed? They didn’t adapt to consumer behavior, they didn’t offer free shipping, they didn’t offer fast shipping. Then once they did, they were too late to market with it. Amazon had already dominated at that point. Walmart struggled with that for a really long time too.
You can try and hold strong and be like, “Nah, clients are just going to have to adapt to my way of doing things.” Okay, but then your salon, your chair is going to be the next choice or your business will slowly dwindle and decline until ultimately the stylist, the salon who is choosing to modernize, choosing to go forward, choosing to systematize and structure, they will win in the end.
You can choose to be stubborn for a while, but you have to know all roads lead to business closure if you choose to be stubborn or strategic, right?
Number three, the education space is going to change again. Like I shared, I said that in 2023 in-person education was going to surge, which I don’t know about you, but I definitely saw that. And then also that skills-based education was going to surge. Meaning people were going to shift a little bit away from business and shift more towards cutting, color, styling, extensions, that kind of thing.
And number four, business structure must be your priority for 2024. You have no choice. Well, you do have a choice. You can be the choice, you can say, “I’m going to hold firm. I’m not going to prioritize learning how to structure my business.” But consumer behavior will pass you by and this is going to be a critical point for the industry. We’re going to continue talking about that through the episode.
I want to share with you something interesting I saw when I did this episode. You should know this is one of the top three longest episodes for me to prepare for. It takes me several days to research and amp up for this episode because I don’t want it to just be based on me throwing out random ideas. I think that’s really irresponsible. Instead, I do a lot of research and all year long I’m making notes about things that I’m seeing and coming up and all that stuff. But I also like to look at what mainstream resources are making predictions to the future as well.
I want to share with you something I heard from Forbes. The title of the article was The Pandemic Disrupted Business and Transformed Customers. That’s the title of the article. I want to read from you one paragraph: “COVID-19 safety protocols and the fear of getting sick pushed customers to adopt digital first behaviors in their personal and professional lives. Whether they were buying groceries, dinner from a local restaurant, sporting goods, leisure, where their next car, their next home customers learned how to discover, shop, and procure goods through their digital apps and devices.”
Well, if that doesn’t scream online is more important than ever, I don’t know what does.
Then it says, “In-person services too became digital-centric with health concerns and physical distancing rules put in place, creating the need to accelerate.” “Creating the need to accelerate,” did you catch that part? Accelerate means fast, everybody. Many virtual applications such as remote learning, telemedicine, telehealth, courtroom law, insurance claims processing, and many, many more. That’s the end of that article quote.
I want you to think for a second about how you’ve changed as a consumer. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had more telehealth appointments with my doctor in the last three years than I’ve seen her in person. And I love her. I have such a great physician, she’s amazing. But we’ve realized, wow, we can do a lot virtually and online and it saves a lot of time.
Having those little micro wins like that of, whoa, that saved me a lot of time. Whoa, Instacart saves me time grocery shopping even if it costs me more money. Whoa, I can get more stuff delivered to my doorstep in two days than ever before because Amazon Prime is getting better and better all the time. Consumers are being conditioned to feel the need for speed.
Again, going back to that idea, you don’t have to like it, you just have to understand that is the world we’re living in. That is what’s happening, right?
I want you to think to yourself, have you been going to the movie theaters lately? And by lately, I mean in the last three or four years, but you could think about the last year too. You can also look up data on movie theater performance. What you’ll find is movie theater viewership, ticket sales, whatever you want to call it, have not bounced back since pre-pandemic because people are interested in doing more, what? Sitting at home streaming everything.
That’s why when we see things like Disney Plus and now when there’s a new Disney movie that comes out, sometimes it comes out in theater, sometimes it doesn’t even, but it’s streaming within a couple weeks because they know the box office is something. But streaming is everything.
What is streaming? Convenience, speed. We actually pay more for it. I don’t know about you, but I look at how many streaming services that we currently invest in and are considering investing in because it’s like, man, to get everything you want, there’s just so much that has to be streamed now. Cable television is no longer enough. Things are really changing. When you look at this speed, convenience, subscription-based world that we’re living in, things are simply changing.
I’m going to do this a couple of ways. I made a list of all the predictions I wanted to share. Some of them really correlate and correspond with the marketing funnel and the retention funnel. Especially if you’re a Thrivers Society member, listen up. If you are familiar with my trademarked Hair Stylist Success Hourglass, the Marketing Funnel, the Retention Funnel, this will all make sense to you. If you’re not yet familiar, continue listening to the podcast. I have tons of episodes on both of them. You can also head to thrivingstylist.com/thriverssociety to learn more.
But I want to dig in and talk about changes that will affect the funnels specifically as a gift to my Thrivers, and then I’m going to get into some more generic stuff too.
First I want to start at the top and when we’re starting at the top of the marketing funnel, we’re talking about interest and awareness. That’s going to be social media for us. When I think about social media predictions, what I think is more clients will come from Google and Yelp at scale significantly more than people are going to be seeing clients from Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook. I just feel that way.
I’ve talked about this openly for quite some time, but I’ve never made a direct prediction about it. I think 2024 is going to be the year and I think it’s going to continue heading in that direction. Why do I think that? Time spent scrolling is down dramatically. You can go ahead and do that. Research yourself. Look up changes in Instagram behavior if you don’t want to look it up.
Let’s just think for a moment. Do you believe your friends and your family post a little bit less on Instagram and Facebook post a little bit less? I’m not asking you to make guesses about how often they log into the platform. I’m saying in the last few years have they posted a little bit less, showed off their family photos a little bit less? Yes. That should be an indicator to you that they are less interested in the platform.
Also time spent on Instagram and Facebook is starting to wane. If people are on there less, the chances of you capturing attention there is also decreasing.
Now, I’m not saying hop off either platform, I’m actually going to get into that ’cause there’s a huge gap, a big opportunity sitting and waiting for you on Instagram and Facebook. We’re going to talk about that. But what you need to understand is usership and scrolling is significantly down. The game has changed. It used to be hashtags, geotags grab people there. That stuff is not going to work anymore. That game has really changed.
Ad spend on both platforms is down dramatically. It has been for several years. Everyone was like, “We want to see less ads on the platforms.” Well, now you do see less ads on the platforms because they changed their advertising structure. But not only do you see less ads, you see less users, you see less posts overall, like the platform is waning as a whole.
The other thing you have to understand is that Meta and Mark Zuckerberg have no interest in building social media forward. Zero interest. When I say Meta, Meta is the parent company that owns the platforms WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram amongst others. But those are the three big ones that everybody’s well aware of.
They very publicly are stating that they are essentially just sustaining those platforms as they are current revenue sources. But their interests lie in building something called the metaverse. It’s an AI-based world. Their interests and their priorities are changing. They’re not going to continue to develop and invest in these platforms.
Remember Threads? Threads is still there, but it’s really fallen off in popularity. Threads is another platform that was owned by Meta. Why did they shift to Threads? Why are they testing Threads? In case you haven’t used it, Threads is an app that’s similar to X and X is formerly Twitter. It is very simplistic. It’s not about videos, it’s not about lives, it was text only. The work it took for them to sustain it was low. There’s no ads on it. And so they liked it because it was simple.
It was a way for them to keep their hands in the social media game without being heavy handed, right?
You have to read between the lines on all the moves they’re making. Every announcement they make, they’re deeply prioritizing shifting away from Instagram and Facebook. They’re sustaining, so don’t get wild and wacky. They’re sustaining because that’s a major revenue source for them. But it will not last and that should not come as a surprise to anybody. No social media lasts forever. These were just two big dogs and it’s hard to see ’em go and I get it. But when you look at AOL instant messenger, when you look at things like MySpace, Tumblr, right? Clubhouse. There is just a time span on social media and these big heavy hitters are coming of age and there will be something else.
But what I need you to understand is you have to shift your efforts elsewhere. So what I said is most clients will come from Google and Yelp at scale more than Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook.
Now, caveat to that, quality of content matters more than ever. You still have a huge chance to stand out on Instagram or Facebook. You know why? Because again, you even had to read between the lines on the things that I say. So if I say people are posting there less, I mean you’ve probably seen stylists, their frequency has really decreased, right? If everybody else is decreasing frequency, why don’t you increase yours? Because there’s still hundreds of thousands of people logging into the app. It’s just less than ever before.
But it doesn’t mean people aren’t there and it doesn’t mean you can’t capture business. What it means is you have to A) play a different game and B) play a stronger game.
You can’t just do your best, post a few times a week and be cool. Your strategy there has to be strong, like really strong. In Thrivers Society, we teach you how to do that. There’s lots of really great resources coming to Thrivers in 2024 to double down on that. But just choosing to piece out a Facebook and Instagram would be a little reckless.
There’s this idea of red sea, blue ocean where the red sea is like there’s blood in the water, right? Instagram was the red sea for so long where it’s very cutthroat and everybody was there and everybody was an influencer. It’s starting to become a blue ocean because there’s less people there, which means there’s an easier way to grab attention so long as you do it correctly. It cannot be a passive attention grab. Quality of content matters more than ever.
That doesn’t mean photo composition. It means the way in which you’re delivering your brand message, which we’ll get you in a second.
Now, with that said, quality over quantity, but frequency counts. Quality matters most. You don’t need to be posting every day, but if you’re only posting twice a week, it’s not enough. If you’re posting four times a week with mediocre content, don’t bother. It needs to be the right content, with the right frequency, with the right messaging, with the right brand message that make people say, “Whoa, this person has a high perceived value. I should really consider this person.”
Another thing I want to share on that topic before we move on, like I said, online reviews matter. Now more than ever, my goal for you is that you get 156 reviews next year. Whoa, that’s three reviews a week.
When I say reviews matter, I mean reviews matter. If you picked up 156 Instagram followers, you’d be like, “Oh, that’s cool, and it wasn’t even that hard.” So pick up 156 reviews. It should be cool and it shouldn’t be that hard. You have plenty of clients and if you don’t have plenty of clients, keep hanging here and I’ll show you how to get ’em. But I want you to have the goal of really focusing on online reviews next year.
Number two prediction: online booking has never been and will never be more critical than it is now. This is going to be a Desire level thing for everybody who’s in Thrivers Society.
I reported on this trend a few months back and I’m going to go ahead and double down on it. The system that’s emerged over the last few years of “Fill out a form and then you can apply to be a part of my business and I’ll review your application and decide if you’re a right fit and it’ll take 24 hours. But then don’t worry, I’ll get back to you.” That actually did work for a while. It really did. And then clients decided they were over it.
It was something that I was even open-minded to, but clients are deciding, “Nah, that’s just not for me.” So again, that’s something that we tried, it worked for a while. It’s no longer working the way that it used to.
The system where clients have to apply through your website, fill out a digital consultation form, you’re going to get back to them within 24 to 48 business hours, Tuesday through Saturday, all that kind of stuff, it’s waning and it’s waning fast. The idea that if people are curious about working with you, they have to DM you and then you check your DMs at lunch and then at the end of your day, that’s falling apart quickly too.
I have some data on this. There was a site, I’m not super familiar with, so I’m going to give you this quote, but then I’m going to give you a few more that I think are a little bit more reliable. Qminder, “Customers” — that’s a survey platform, a consumer behavior survey platform — “are willing to wait 14 minutes before getting the results they’re looking for when interacting with any business.”
14 minutes. So that means if a client finds you on Instagram, finds you on Facebook, finds you on Google, finds you on your website and cannot get an appointment on your books within 14 minutes, they’re likely to bounce.
14 minutes.
In one survey, businesses reported that they lost 75% of customers due to extended waiting times and extended means longer than 14 minutes. That’s a really short window. And then let me get into some other studies.
Inc.com is very reputable, said “Through an HBR study after analyzing 1.25 million leads,” that’s a lot. That’s a huge amount of consumers, “we’ve concluded that replying back to potential customers within one hour makes it seven times more likely that you’ll close the client than if you reply within two.”
You have one hour to make magic happen when someone’s interested in your business. That’s just not a lot of time.
Forbes said “Speed is the most important component of customer experience and the only one that never pauses or goes backwards.” Calling it the most important component of the customer experience is bold. But consider a key finding from the report. 50% of consumers are likely to spend money with a business that takes longer to respond than they expect. 50% of consumers are less likely to spend money if the business response takes longer than they expect. The expectation’s 14 minutes or an hour at best. Anything longer than that and you’re losing them.
The researcher who created this Forbes study said, “Customers’ expectation for speed and responsiveness escalate every year without fail and will not be slowing.”
Remember what I said at the beginning? Clientele’s demands for speed have increased. You don’t have to like it, you just have to understand it’s happening. Here’s what’s challenging is that—I want to take a small trip back in time. Remember in 2020, some of us had to close our salons for a while. I know some of you didn’t at all. I’m in California, stylists here had to close their salons for six months or longer. Imagine coming out of a six-month, a three-month, a four-month, a two-month shutdown, a one-month shutdown, a few weeks, man, the demand on the stylists’ books. I mean it was wild. It was like hundreds of people all wanted to get in. Demand had never been higher. We were the most in demand people on the planet ’cause everyone wanted to feel and look good again. They wanted to get that confidence back.
Because of that shift, we had to set some guidelines. There had to be a stronger process, we needed more structure. We learned, “Okay, we got to have more structure. This free-for-all thing is not working.” I think what happened is we overstructured. In my business we call that swinging the pendulum too far to the left and I’m famous for it. So I totally understand this happens. But it’s like we see a problem and we say, “Okay, perfect. What I’m going to do is build a 40-foot wall. I’m going to make it very challenging to get in to see me and that will ease the pressure,” and it did ease the pressure. But the problem is we left the wall up for too long. It’s time to bring the wall down and we need to be a little bit speedier, a little bit more open. We need to make it easier to work with us. Not not a cinch, but we need to shift our process so that it’s not so complicated because what it’s starting to feel like to clients and consumers is, “Oh, you want a haircut? Jump through this flaming hoop of fire. Once you get through the hoop, I’ll think about working with you. If I decide I want to work with you based on criteria that you don’t fully understand, then I’ll reach out and let you know three appointment times that work for me regardless of if they work for you or not.”
Or maybe you don’t do it like that, you’re like, “No, no, no, and then I send ’em a link to my calendar.” Fine. But then it’s like, here’s an elusive link to a calendar you’ve never used before. It’s the most contrived process. And clients are like, “I didn’t want booking this appointment to be my part-time job this week. I just wanted a haircut.”
We’re not matching where consumers are in their speed, in their need, right? I really want you to think about online booking, your relationship with it, your current booking process, and what you can do to restructure and streamline.
A couple more facts on that. “Two thirds of consumers say speed is as important as price. So you could be priced right and have booking that’s wrong and lose clients.”
“More than half of the consumers surveyed hire the first business to respond to their request even if it was more expensive.”
Woo, I’m going to read that one again. “More than half of the consumers surveyed hired the first business that responded to their booking request, even if that business was more expensive than others.” Speed wins.
“Half of all consumers will not wait more than three minutes once they’ve walked into a physical location.” For those of you who run late, those of you who run long, those of you who double book, those of you who run slow, three minutes is your new window for that.
What I thought was interesting is there’s a survey that talks about how three years ago—I looked this up. Quora was noting it. They said three years ago, clients and consumers were willing to wait up to 20 minutes for a service provider. That has been cut down to three minutes in the last three years again.
Then I hear people already—it’s funny, when I record this podcast, I can almost hear you all in your cars screaming at me, “That’s ridiculous. These clients are becoming wild.” You don’t have to like it. You have to understand it and I want you to think about yourself.
I don’t know about you. I can remember—my son is nine, my daughter’s 20. I can remember with my daughter, sometimes I would show up to her pediatrician and sometimes we would wait there for 30, 40 minutes and I would have this toddler running around and thankfully there’s toys and stuff in the doctor’s waiting room and we would keep her entertained or whatever. If I went to a doctor’s appointment now and I had to wait 40 minutes, I would be livid by the time I went in there. Not because I’m a more irate person or my patience has waned, which it probably has, but because I no longer accept that as normal.
Maybe you do, maybe you’re like, sometimes we go to the doctors and wait 40 minutes and I don’t care. I don’t mean it’s irritating, but you do it anyway. Literally when my daughter was little, I expected to wait 40 minutes. I was like, “Well, this is just what happens.” Clients used to be okay with that.
Customers used to be okay with that. We are living in a need-for-speed society. Things have changed.
And again, this is a predictions podcast. Some of you are going to listen to this now and be like, “Ah, I don’t know about this.” In a year, you’ll be feeling different because some businesses are going to adapt and adopt all of this and do really well, and some are going to struggle through 2024 and wonder why. You can choose what side of that you want to be on.
I want to stop for a second here at the Opportunity and Trust level only to say that there’s no major changes for Thrivers whatsoever. The rules stay the same. Now, if you’re not a Thriver, listen up because these things really are critical and really matter. But if you’re already a Thriver who’s implemented your funnel, you already have these things, so you’re good.
Number one, if you want to truly build your business, your content can’t be about self-expression and instead needs to speak to your target market clients. If you don’t know them, you’ll struggle. This is hard.
We’re also in an era of social media burnout. I’ve watched a lot of people on Instagram and on Facebook and stuff, they’re like, “F it. I don’t want to have to be this influencer anymore. I don’t want to have to be posting photos of me working. I don’t want it to do the contrived stuff. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to turn my social media into a blog.”
You can do that. But do you know how many bloggers, TikTokers, influencers have massive followers and influence and are broke? You’ll start falling into that category. So yeah, it can be your self-expression place. You can start a blog, you can start a vlog, you can do whatever you want to do. You’re basically making a hard left in your business and choosing to play a completely different game. If your game is still “I want to gain clients to sit in my chair so that I can do hair with them,” you need to really dial in your brand message. If you don’t know what a brand message is, check out Thrivers Society. We’re ready and waiting for you.
But just posting pictures of good hair, posting pictures of what you do on the weekend, posting stuff about what you’re passionate about, it just doesn’t play anymore. Things have really changed.
There was a good article out of a site called Bismart that said, “Highly personalized experiences will win.” If you don’t know your target market, you can’t create a highly personalized experience.
How many of you came to my perceived value workshop I hosted in August? We talked so much about personalized experiences. That’s going to win in 2024. If I can’t look at your content, your website, your online reviews, your social media and know exactly who you are, what you do, who you serve, and how you serve them, I’m simply going to choose somebody who does show me those things. Nothing against you, I’m just going to go to the person who does a better job at it.
Like I said about 20 minutes ago, consumers today are not spending less money. They’re more particular about who they spend it with. You can’t be mid anymore. You can’t be average. You have to choose to be a business owner. You have to choose to be an entrepreneur. You have to understand strategic business growth and development as it relates to stylists and salon owners.
I’m telling you 2024 is the year there will be no choice. For years I’ve been like, “You know when you’re ready,” and now I’m like I hope you’re ready because we’re starting to lose that window of like, come on down when you’re ready. That window is really starting to close and I’ll get to where I think this is all heading at the end of the episode, but really, really prioritize it.
Speaking to trust, the one thing I want to double down on is you’re going to have to execute overcommunication between appointments and really emphasize your perceived value in order to keep retention up. That’s a trust factor thing. Lean into your modules if you’re confused on how to do that. Nothing has changed there. I just want you to make sure you’re doing it.
Then we have the Nurture level. I want you to expect—ooh, this is a hard one for me to read and a hard one for me to say, but I think it’s important. I want you to expect more cancellations and more reschedules, especially if you still offer pre-booking.
I believe it was 2021 when I started coaching away from pre-booking. If you are a brand new stylist with very minimal clientele and you’re still building your books, go ahead and pre-book. You’re not going to hurt anything. You may retain higher by doing it. So why the heck not? No harm no foul. If you have built a pretty solid book of business, I’m telling you what: I think pre-booking is going to start working against you.
I have coached several thousand stylists at this point out of pre-booking without negative repercussion. They’ve gained their lives back, they’re making more money because it’s simply an adaptation to more modern consumer behavior.
Here’s the deal and this is why I think this is going to happen. Consumers have more unpredictability in their schedules than ever before. Consumers are more impulsive than ever before. Whereas before we used to say, “Oh, I’m going to want to get my roots touched up in eight weeks,” eight weeks. I almost get anxiety thinking about it.
Eight weeks from now as I’m recording this podcast puts me in February. I don’t even want to commit to anything in February yet. That scares me. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to be up to, but I will certainly wake up one day in January and be like, “Ooh, my roots are coming in. I probably need to think about that hair thing.” Right now, I should have gotten my nails done two days ago. I am absolutely going to call and beg my nail lady and see what she can do for me. Now I take really good care of her and she has really adapted to consumer behavior, so I don’t doubt that she’ll be taken care of. But people are a bit more impulsive now than they used to be and you need to keep that in mind.
There is much less tolerance for having to wait for an appointment than it was before. I can remember it used to be cool, you’d be like, “Well, I found a new stylist but I have to wait four months to get in to see him ’cause he is really a big deal.” That’s very 2012. Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie called from The Simple Life. They want their booking schedule back. That’s not what we’re doing anymore. That was of a different time. That was of an influencer area. We’re not doing that anymore. It’s “Can you see me in the timeframe that works for me?”, which most consumers will still be able to tolerate as long as they can get in to see you within a period of three weeks, we’re good. If they have to wait longer than that, you’re in trouble.
Like I mentioned, that Forbes study showed that clients get irritated if they have to wait more than three minutes to get into your chair from the time they arrive at the salon.
I want you to think for a second. Going back to that doctor example, I don’t know about you, but if I’m not doing telehealth, it takes me a little while to get in to see my primary care physician. If I go to urgent care, I can get in usually same day or the next day. But if I’m going to see my primary care physician, I got to wait. How comfortable are you with the wait times? You have to wait for your primary care physician if you have one or your dentist, like it’s time for a cleaning when you call them and you find out how soon they can get you in. How do you feel about the answer?
I got a study for you on that. It takes 26 days on average in the United States right now to get an appointment with a dentist or a doctor, and customers are pissed. There’s a huge consumer pushback against that.
Funny enough, my son had a little dental emergency this week and by little dental emergency, I mean he was in significant pain. My son is dentally complex. Sorry my boy, I’m going to share your story for a second. He’s got a few challenges. He’s missing adult teeth, which I’ve come to find out is like not a totally uncommon thing. It actually does not run in our family. We’re not at a hundred percent sure where he got it. What does run in our family is very narrow mouths with larger-sized teeth. So he got a lot of dental complications and so him having a dental emergency is not unheard of. He goes to see a dentist who specializes in what he’s got going on and he had this dental emergency this week and I love his dentist and I called the office and I was like, “Listen, he’s in a lot of pain. We’re in a real bind.”
They’re like, “Okay, yeah, so definitely next Wednesday we can see you.”
I was like, “Oh, oh, he can’t eat. When I said significant pain, I’m serious. Is there some kind of emergency appointment or something I can do?” I was like I’ll pay extra. That’s the kind of customer I am ’cause of what I do. I was like, “That’s not a problem but he does need to be seen.”
She was like, “Oh yeah, let me put you on hold.” She came back and she was like, “Okay, well we can do early next week.”
I was like, “No, forget it. I’m literally going to find somebody else.” I’ve been loyal to this dentist for years, but in my time of need, she couldn’t be there for me, and now I have no choice but to find somewhere else for my son.
When I say loyal to this dentist, I mean I bring holiday gifts for the staff, I bring them food, I’ve written them reviews everywhere. I was a really loyal, very over-the-top client for them. I’ve really put in the work and I felt very snubbed. You can tell probably by the tone of my voice I felt it type of way.
I want you to imagine that I’m your client. If you have clients and they feel like they’ve been loyal to you, they’ve done a lot for you, they’ve left you reviews and in their time of need, you’re like, yeah, I’ll see you in four weeks. Or even for some of them I’ll see you in a week and a half. They’re going to be irritated. And it’s a shift in consumer behavior. And when I talk about retention’s going to start to wahe next year, if you do not adapt to these policies and changes, I mean it. So we have to find a way to have more options.
This will not be easy and I totally understand that, but I do think it’s going to be necessary.
One of the things I’ve coached you in Thrivers Society since 2012 is the idea of an office hour day. I want you to consider an office hour flex day. Maybe some days if you need to, it does become a bit of a pocket day, not a fan of pocket booking days. I think that the chance of you losing revenue and losing time on that is not great. But having an office hour flex day is something to really consider.
Next, price increases should continue, woo, based on the seven factors of pricing. This would be Loyalty level for anybody in Thrivers. Do not hesitate to raise your prices. What are you thinking? The world we’re living in is getting more expensive and inflation is not going to change.
I looked at what the Fed was saying about the rates and interest and all that kind of stuff. There may be a little bit of a dip in interest rates at the end of 2024. They think that inflation may plateau but there is no sign of it decreasing next year, so don’t count on that.
What that means is you don’t need to discount yourself further. If you discount yourself further, you will get yourself into a world of trouble. That’s when your debt is going to increase. We know interest rates are high. Do not do that.
Instead, what I want you to do is focus on growing your business forward so that you can earn those price increases.
Like I’ve said a thousand times, consumers are not going to stop spending. They’re going to be more particular about where they spend it.
Quality over quantity is another thing. I also said you don’t want to be the low price leader. You want to be the guilty pleasure. You want to be the experience that’s worth it. You want them to say, “She is 20% more expensive but you won’t find a better service provider.” That’s how I had felt about my dentist. Truly, she was not the cheapest. In fact, she’s probably one of the most expensive. But I needed to see a specialist. She always took good care of me until this week and now I made a change.
But again, I want you to really think to yourself, what am I doing to keep that bar high? To keep that perceived value high, to always take care of my clients, to have opportunities available for them.
What I want you to do is lean into a tool like the Scaling Stylist Pricing Calculator and lean into those seven factors of pricing and when and if you’ve earned a price increase, do one.
Now on the flip side of that, do not just do a January one price increase this year. This is not the year for that. That can be extremely detrimental because of the shifts in consumer behavior. You’ve either earned it or you haven’t.
I know the cost of goods has gone up. Totally understand. That is one of the seven factors. If that is the only factor you’re basing your price increase on, you may end up losing money next year and that’s my biggest fear for you. You want to really balance all seven.
Now talking about loyalty again and going back to that trust and nurture, I want you to continue thinking of ways to celebrate your clients. I’m going to share some generic ideas ’cause I don’t want to give away any of the Thrivers concepts, but celebrating clients’ birthdays, new guest cards, referral, thank you notes, holiday cards, things like that. Pour on the zhush. You can’t overdo that in 2024 so go ahead and give it to ’em.
Rounding out my assumptions, my guesses, my predictions, this will be the year of the great divide. That’s not easy for me to say.
Last year I said it’s going to start, this is the year I really believe it’s going to come to fruition. It will likely be ugly. I think we’re seeing some indications of that already.
I talked about the great divide at Thrivers Live 2022. I talked about it again predicting into 2023. Right here, in Q4 2023. I’m starting to see it and I think in 2024 it’s going to come to a head.
The great divide is the people who have been slow to adapt, the people who have been slow to innovate, the people who have not prioritized really great, proven business education are going to take a significant hit because consumer behavior is changing so fast that if you’re not keeping up the gap to catch up just gets bigger and bigger and bigger all the time. To the point where I call it the great divide.
I mean there will be some who literally explode in business in the next year, two years, three years. And somewhere, they start losing 20% of income, 40% of income, 70% of income. Some of you are already there. It’s not too late to course correct. But you need to compound that with the fact that there is a huge surge of new stylists coming into the industry and they are hungry.
I know there’s this talk about like they’re lazy, they don’t want to work. That is not what I’m experiencing. They’re not lazy. You’re just telling yourself that ’cause it feels better and it sounds nice. Trust me, they’re not lazy and they know how to work social media and they understand marketing. They’re coming in with a different skillset. They’re hungry because they understand that the cost of living has gone up. They know they have to work their booty cheeks off if they’re ever going to move out of mom and dad’s house.
Trust me, they know.
They’ve got the hustle, they’ve got the drive. We’re a little tired. They’re not. And so this has to be the year where you’re like, I’m not going to waste any time doing BS strategy that’s not getting me anywhere. I’m going to figure it out.
The great divide doesn’t make me excited. It doesn’t make me happy. But I do think it’s important to talk about ’cause it is the reality and I think that people need to understand.
I’m here to coach you. If you feel like you’re a part of the downside of that divide, you can hit me up in the DMs so we can talk about it, but it is coming.
Talking about education, quality of education matters more than ever. Has anybody seen a huge jump in how many people are educators these days? There’s literally thousands of educators in our industry these days. I was part of the 2015, 2016 digital education I guess revolution. There was a group of us, there’s probably 50 of us in 2015, 2016. That actually might be an over assumption. Maybe there was 30 or 40 of us who really started building digital education forward and really pioneered independent education and what that could look like and what that could feel like. I was on the business side. There was a lot of people on the services side of things and we really pioneered it forward.
Now there’s thousands of educators out there, most with digital offerings. The problem is the quality has greatly decreased because a lot of people jumped in thinking, “I could do that,” or “I understand what they’re doing, I’m going to try it.” But they didn’t have innovative ideas or they didn’t learn what it was to be an educator. There’s a real difference between knowing how to do something and doing it well. There’s a difference between educating and teaching. There’s a difference between coaching and educating. I don’t think a lot of people took the time to cut their teeth.
I always like to share I started doing this in 2012 and I started learning this stuff in 2007. I’m coming up on almost 20 years in this game and 11 years in the coaching/educating game. And I didn’t start making real money doing it until probably seven years in. A lot of people who were coming up were educating—now, no shade. It shouldn’t take you seven years, but it shouldn’t take you one. I think a lot of people are making offers way too fast. They’re trying to monetize way too fast and you’re shooting yourself in the foot because you simply don’t have the reps, you don’t have the skill. People are getting in, they’re not earning trust with you and they’re like, I don’t think so.
What’s happened is there is a lot more hesitation to invest in digital education offerings now than there was a few years back because I don’t know about you, but probably listening to this podcast, you’ve probably been burned by a course or two. Now you’re a little more wary to invest.
We’re going to see a real shift in the digital education space. If you are an educator, I encourage you to serve, serve, serve, serve, serve in 2024. I think that’s going to be the win.
Take that as you want to, but I do believe that that’s what’s going to be necessary.
Couple things I want to close out with. You’re going to have to be more flexible in your business structure, your processes. And by flexible, I don’t mean become a human doormat. And by flexible, I don’t mean bend over backwards. By flexible, I mean you’re just going to have to be willing to adapt, willing to release things that had once worked in your business. You have to be a little more open-minded. You have to be willing to say, “Okay, maybe I’m going to try something new.” That’s what I mean by flexible.
The other thing you have to keep in mind is clients are no longer willing to bend over backwards for you. The client is the star of the show, not you. That’s a big shift in consumer behavior. I know this isn’t easy, but this is what I’m going to be educating to forward because I really do believe this is the way that things are shifting and changing.
If you love this episode, I would love nothing more than if you left us a rating or review on iTunes or Spotify. If you share this podcast episode on Instagram Stories with some notes about your key takeaways and then also hit me up in the DMs i you have any questions, I’m always here to support.
As I always like to say, so much love, happy business building, happy New Year if you’re listening to this in real time, happiest holidays, and I’ll see you on the next one.
