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’s episode’s going to be a little bit fiery, so if you like that kind of stuff, you’re going to love this one and if it makes you uncomfortable, you’re going to want to back away slowly. This episode’s going to be a little bit different.
This episode, I want to share a lot of facts and data, and it’s going to be one that just makes you think. You know how a lot of times in my episodes it’ll be like five steps to taking better social media photos or something like that. It’s very actionable. Do this first, do this next. This episode’s going to be a little bit different. I want to make you extremely aware of what is happening in the industry, what is happening in the economy at large, what you need to do to protect your finances and your lifestyle. I want to really dig into all of that.
Our industry is very interesting because it operates in a very specific silo that most other industries don’t. For example, my husband, he’s now retired, but he was a firefighter paramedic with the San Francisco Fire Department. He definitely networked with other Alameda County firefighters. One of his best friends works for Santa Clara. He has a network within probably the five key Bay Area counties and a couple people outside that area, and that’s it. He doesn’t know a ton of medics in Florida. He just doesn’t.
In our industry, we all follow other hair stylists on social media. We all go to classes together all across the country. We have influencers in our space that we’re all following collectively together. Our industry is talking at and to each other all the time in a very unique way.
I’m trying to think of any other industry that operates like that other than the beauty industry, and I’m truly coming at blank. I don’t think dentists do it. I don’t think about professional cheerleaders or dancers or professional athletes even. I don’t think they operate in this silo the way that we do. Because of that, you are hearing so much noise. You’re hearing and seeing what other stylists and other salons are doing if you’re following the social media noise. If you’re not, good for you, but if you are, there is so much misinformation going around right now and there are so many people making very irrational decisions that I just want—I feel like I’ve done this six times in the last two years. I want to again get out ahead of it and encourage you not to fall into this scarcity mindset with the way that you’re running your business.
I saw a post. I don’t want to share too much about it because I think this person—actually, I don’t think I know this person—wrote this post from a really beautiful place in space. They wrote it from a place of space and heart and care and concern, but it reads like a person who’s completely scared and panicked, and I talked about this on a previous episode. We’re really good at doing that as service providers where we’re like, “Here’s a lot of fear, but I’m going to wrap it up with a red bow and it makes me look like a hero,” but it doesn’t. You think that it does, but it doesn’t.
I’m going to summarize what this post says. It basically says the economy in this country is a mess and we don’t really know what we’re doing. Everything has become too expensive. Hair services are a luxury. And then goes on to say that they’re lowering their prices and they want to get away from this broken system.
Time out.
Do you all remember in 2020 where we—I’m in California and so I do have a biased view of a lot of these things. There were protests in the streets for months. Months. We were shut down for six months here, protests in the streets for months of stylists saying, “We are essential. Our work is essential. We are essential workers. We should be able to go back to work. We should be able to be in our salons. We should be able to service our communities.”
Do you all remember that? That was three and a half, four years ago. How the tables have turned because now we’re leaning back into hair is a luxury, not a necessity. So what is it? Do you want to be essential or do you want to be a luxury? You can’t be a luxury and then also be a discount? Those two things don’t go together.
If you look at it from the hotel industry, when you look at a luxury property, we’re talking about let’s say the Four Seasons. I’ve not stayed at a Four Seasons recently, but if you were going to, I mean, I’d imagine you’re paying $600, $800 a thousand dollars a night for a basic room because when you think about—I really like the Marriott hotel chain. I was a Marriott employee for years. When you stay at an average Marriott, it’s between two and $400 a night. I don’t think that that’s luxury by any means. I think that’s nice, and I think that’s where a lot of our industry should be operating.
I don’t think hair is a luxury. I don’t think hair is exclusive for the Four Seasons clientele. I don’t think that we should be bottom-dwelling our prices.
Here’s the reason why: Yes, our country is in a very challenging place. Our economy is an extremely challenging place. Inflation is barely starting to soften a little bit, but the cost of living has gone up and will continue to go up again this year. If we as stylists and salon owners continue to reduce our prices, discount our prices, my question is how will you afford to live? Truly, what is the plan with that? I’m not sure.
I think that a lot of these posts come from a place of something’s better than nothing, right? 50% of my regular rate is better than a hundred percent of zero, and I get that. But what if you didn’t have to have zero? That’s what I want to talk to.
What I believe is happening is our industry is making really reckless decisions that are not backed by data. They’re backed by emotion. Not everyone’s going to come out of this unscathed.
In 2022 at Thrivers Live, I announced something called the Great Divide. I’ve talked about that at scale on the podcast. If you want to find out what I’ve said about it, you can just Google Search Thriving Stylist Podcast, great divide. Everything will come up. Guess what? It’s here. I nailed it. Two years ago I called it and I wasn’t exactly sure what would trigger it, but I could see the writing was on the wall and now we’re in it.
We’re going to go into data behind that as well. If your business right now is suffering, it’s not because of a recession. It’s because the industry has massively elevated in the last five years and you’ve got blind spots in the way you’re running your business. You’re simply not using the business strategy that is working for stylists and salon owners today.
A salon owner I deeply admire shared with me very recently that they closed out 2023 at crossing over $2 million in gross revenue for their salon. This is a market where the average annual household income is $47,000 a year. This is not a big fancy city, and they did $2 million—best year ever—in 2023.
Another salon I work with shared with me, this was just last week. I have real numbers on this. They saw—listen to this, I couldn’t believe it—2,488 new guests in 2023. They turned away 200 new clients, they couldn’t fit them in. Now they have a 17-stylist team, so you should know that, but that equates to 208 new clients a month. That’s 52 new guests looking to get into that salon every single week. That is three new guests per stylist per week if you do the math on that.
So when people say to me, “Oh, our industry is really in trouble. We need to start cutting our prices. Clients can’t make it work,” clients can’t make it work with you maybe, but clients are making it work. I’m not seeing people at scale being like, “You know what? I’m just going to grow hair as long as I can. I’m not going to cut it. I’m going to cut my hair myself.” We’re not seeing that level of desperation right now, and consumer behavior spending isn’t showing that level of desperation right now.
The only people desperate and making weird choices are the stylists and salon owners. It’s like we’re not listening to what’s actually happening. We’re making these emotional, fear-based decisions, and I want to put a stop to it.
There’s a McKinsey report that said, since 2020, consumer behavior has changed at an unprecedented rate. I have seen that said in different words in different ways. I don’t know, 300 times in the last few years. Consumer behavior has changed. You need to change. There is no other way. You need to get on the same level that these consumers are at right now.
Our industry, unfortunately, at large has not adapted to the way that most customers, consumers, clients, whatever you want to call them, have adapted. We’re very slow to adapt, and historically we always have been.
Y’all, this is not a season where we can afford to be slow. We got to get with it.
Americans today are still spending money at large, which is why a recession in the US still has not been declared. The markers just aren’t there for it. The economy has softened a bit, but your income is stalling because clients are choosing to go elsewhere, and I know your ride or die are staying with you and you’re negotiating your prices for them.
Part of why they’re staying with you is because you’re negotiating your prices for them, and that’s a personal choice. But can you afford to take a sacrifice on your own lifestyle and to what end instead of just doing the work to get your business to where it needs to be?
I don’t coach to price gouging clients at all. Anybody who’s worked with me will say that’s not what it’s about. But it is about creating structure in your business so that both you and the client can win. For some reason, we’re going back to the 1991 mindset of, “Well, the client has to win even if I have to lose.” No, we need to choose to mutually win. Clients today are picky.
I want to share some more stats with you. I’ve had 15,000 plus people go through Thrivers Society so far. I know my Thrivers know what’s up.
Let’s imagine that four times that many stylists didn’t do Thrivers, but figured it out on their own or figured it out through another education company. Let’s assume that 75,000 stylists really have a bang in business right now. They have it all dialed in. 12% of the industry today has a net income of over a hundred thousand dollars a year. So best case scenario, 75% of our industry is in a state of struggle. Best case scenario.
I think the stat would actually probably be higher, but that is the best case scenario.
I have been saying for years, it is time to get your business mindset straight as a stylist or salon owner. The train is leaving the station. You can’t wait too much longer. Now is the time to jump on the train left.
Now, if you are struggling, if you’re at the point where you’re discounting prices and you’re doing it in the name of taking care of your clients, at what point are you going to say, “I need to be sure I can feed my family though”? “I need to be sure that I’m going to be able to retire one day.”
I talk about this a lot. I know personally, in my personal life, and I will never say who they are because I know that it would just cause pain and embarrassment. I know so many people close to me who had beautiful, very incredible, very lucrative, very respectable careers, and now in their seventies, they are working part-time jobs, relying on state benefits, living the lifestyle they did not picture for themselves, hoping to survive. I don’t want that for you.
And when we do things like this, you are setting yourself up for that. You’re thinking about the short term, not the long term. If you think to yourself, “Well, but I’m going to raise my prices back up when things come back around,” but now you’ve built a discount clientele. The bar must be raised. We’re avoiding doing the work that actually counts.
Here are the things that stylists are doing that when I see these things happen, I’m like, “Oh, you’re fear-based. You’re in a panic”: free haircuts for new clients. Stylists are reporting that they’re having more cancellations, that their clients are stretching more appointments out. Because of that, they feel like, “Oh my gosh, my clientele’s falling apart. I’m losing clients. I need to start making big, bold moves to retain those I still have.” We’re seeing posts on social media that say things like, “Skip your coffee, save up for hair appointments,” or “If you can’t afford your services, talk to me and we’ll work something out.”
I’m seeing stalled price increases. I’m seeing rushed price increases, like desperation price increases, price reductions, client poaching. I am seeing client poaching right now at a scale I have never seen before, ever. Now, I’ve been coaching since 2012, so I’ve not seen poaching at this scale in the last 12 years. Stylists are aggressively getting in the DMs of all of your clients, anybody and everybody, and saying, “Hi, I noticed you follow so-and-so. I’d be willing to do your hair for less.”
If you don’t think it’s happening, you have your head in the sand. That is happening at scale right now. Desperate, desperate moves.
Do we think that stylist looks professional? No. Do we think they’re getting clients that way? Absolutely. We are looking like we spent 2020 to 2023 trying to look like the professionals we wanted to be, and now we’re letting it all slip away.
I want to talk about business for a second. There’s a very famous Gary Vaynerchuk quote, I’m going to butcher it. I’m a quote butcher and I didn’t write it down, it just crossed my mind, but if you look it up, you’ll find it. What Gary Vaynerchuk says is going into business, and by the way, if you’re a booth rental stylist, a salon owner, a suite owner, a commission stylist, you are a business owner, correct? You live and die by the clientele you build or don’t build. Can we agree with that? Great. Then you’re a business owner.
So Gary Vaynerchuk says, choosing to be a business owner is choosing to be a UFC fighter. And what he says is, today in 2024, not enough business owners have been punched in the mouth yet, and that’s why we’re seeing all of these desperate decisions being made because these people don’t know how to actually fight. It’s been so easy to own, operate, and run a business in the last five years, ridiculously easy. Then even the five years leaning up to it, it was pretty darn good. The economy was good, easy to build on. Social media demand, especially for stylists and salons was high, high, high. Now, things are changing and rather than doing the work, like getting in the arena, choosing to be a fighter, people are throwing their hands up and surrendering.
When Gary says being a business owner is being a UFC fighter, you’re going to have to take some blows. If it was easy, everybody would do it. No fighter says, “You know what? The opponent I’m facing is just too hard. I’m actually going to crawl out of this ring and ask somebody if they can come in and fight for me. I’m going to crawl out of this ring, give all the money back I was paid for this fight and just do something else,” which is what a lot of people are doing.
Data from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics shows that approximately 20% of new businesses failed during the first two years of being open. How many people do you know that got their cosmetology license and tried to build a clientele and then quit? That’s probably about the 20%. 45 businesses close within their first five years. 65% close within their first 10 years. Only 25% of businesses make it to the 15-year mark.
How many of you know stylists who left the industry before making it to 15 years? All that’s happening right now is the normal turn-and-churn of business. There is always a life cycle, and my goal is that we are the industry who does not follow these norms. We don’t need to have 75% of the industry flushed out before they hit their 15-year anniversary. That does not have to be our story, but we have to start making savvy business decisions if you want to overcome those odds.
Those are publicly stated statistics. That’s not thoughts or feelings that I made up. That is the truth.
Why do you think this happens? It’s because 75% of businesses aren’t making the decisions they need to make. A recession happens every 10 years. There have been 11 since 1948. We are essentially just in a down market and you need to learn how to survive this market without making desperate choices.
I saw a great article, this one came out of Investopedia, and it was “The 6 Reasons why New Businesses Fail.” They said, one, didn’t create undeniable demand for their services in their market. Hello, Thrivers Society. I’ve been coaching to that for 12 years now. That’s correct. That’s the number one reason: didn’t create undeniable demand for their services in their market.
Number two, business structure issues, lack of plan for profit, lack of budget, lack of a marketing plan or time restraints.
Number three, they were not making a desirable revenue. If you’re discounting your services, it can’t possibly be a desirable revenue, right?
Number four, rising cost of business expenses. Hello, rising cost of goods without a plan to create the profit margin to sustain.
Number five, rigidity. Businesses failing to be flexible and adapt constantly to the changing economy. I did not write these things. This is a different published article, which is so true.
And number six, expanding too fast beyond their capacity, taking on too much too fast. I don’t think that’s most of what’s happening right now. I think it’s the first five.
When I saw then, I made my own list, I was like, okay, what are the top three things that I see stylists and salon owners doing that are causing them to get to this place of panic?
Number one, long-term decisions for short-term problems, boundaries, and pricing mistakes. I saw so many boundary and pricing mistakes over the last three years. I think that we’ve made it harder for ourselves, harder for clients than it needs to be in today’s market. All of those things were appropriate in 2020 and 2021 because we weren’t saying things like hair is a luxury. We were like, we’re essential. Demand was ridiculously high.
Now things have changed, so we have to adapt.
Number two, we got way too comfortable. There was that client surplus. There was a huge client surplus. If you did not get to take advantage of it, this is your call to look at your marketing funnel because you missed it. There was a massive client surplus from 2020, 2021, 2022 until about August 2023. Huge client surplus. You probably heard me say on the podcast, it’s never been easier to build a clientele than it is right now, and it won’t ever be again. That ship has sailed, but it was there for a while and we got comfortable in it.
Social media also made it easy for us. 2015 to 2019 was the social media heyday. That has really changed.
Then we have number three, the stubbornness. Too many stylists and salon owners not interested in adapting to technology.
Let me ask you this question: How many of you carry a smartphone? How many of you check your smartphone? How many of you are on your phone two hours a day? I think that is such a gross underestimate, but let’s assume everybody listening to this podcast is on their phone at least two hours a day. You yourself spend like 15% of your day—oh, let’s actually remove the time that you’re sleeping. You probably spend more like 20% of your day on technology, but you refuse to incorporate it into your business.
Do you think your clients don’t use technology? Of course they do. We have this aversion to building websites, having online booking, optimizing reviews, optimizing what it looks like to have a great during visit guest experience using technology.
Yet we’re a technology-obsessed society and we can say things like, “Well, that’s what’s wrong with people today. They should stop relying on the tech.” Yeah, but they’re not going to happen. That’s such a beautiful thought. It’s not going to happen. Then we started to sound like our grandparents where we’re like, “Well, in my day, we spent our days”—
My in-laws, my husband’s great grandparents, worked on orchards. We’re in the San Francisco Bay Area, and there was a time where the South Bay, it’s now called the Silicon Valley, but if you lived here, we call it the South Bay. The South Bay was all apricot orchards and apple orchards, almonds, I think as well. They worked in the orchards. When I would go hang out with his grandma and his grandpa, they would talk about, “Y’all, spend too much time playing video games. We spend our days running through the orchards.”
We sound like that when you’re like, “People shouldn’t rely on technology too much.” You sound like my husband’s 93-year-old grandma who talks about the orchards. Just so you know, that’s where you’re at when you say, “I like my paper book. I don’t need a website. My clients don’t like online booking.” You’re the orchard grandma or grandpa.
You have to get down with that. That’s how you’re starting to sound unwilling to listen to what the majority of clients want. You want it how you want it. You need to understand what clients want. It’s not about you. It’s about appealing to the market. That’s how you’re going to draw the business in. It’s also how you’re going to retain.
Lastly, under the header of stubbornness, excuses—everybody has excuses. None of us have enough time. None of us have enough money. None of us know what we’re doing, but those who want to be successful figure it out. You figure it out, man. I think we lost that.
You know what? I can be empathetic because I think we’re tired. We’re tired. We’ve been running a marathon for years, but this is where the great divide hits. Some people will say, “You know what? I can push for 18 more months,” and some will say, “I’m throwing my hands up,” and you have to decide what side of that you want to be on.
Here’s the trends being reported as far as what clients and consumers today are looking for. Big push for delayed payment options. I did podcast episodes 249 where I covered Afterpay. I want you to go back and listen to that if you have not already. That’s not something that I have a gut feeling about.
If you look at Consumer Trend Reports, there’s a huge uptick in things like PayPal payments, Afterpay, things like that.
Number two, human beings do not like to leave their house. Telehealth. You can have an appointment with your doctor online now. I feel like my throat’s scratchy. I can get on with my doctor and have an appointment, right? Instacart, you don’t even have to go to the grocery store anymore. Groceries are delivered right to you, right?
What makes me nervous is things like Madison Reed. Everyone got so excited about AI. They’re like AI, ChatGPT, write my captions. The reason I’ve been so AI hesitant is ChatGPT and AI write my captions is nothing, whatever. Use it, don’t use it. Whatever. It doesn’t matter to me. Where AI is going to rock the industry is things like at-home hair color services, right?
Now, do I think there can be an exceptional formulation with at-home hair color? I don’t know. Maybe. I haven’t seen one myself, so I’m just not sure. Five years from now, I think the technology will be there, and I think every major haircare and hair color company already has a 10 to 20-person AI team working on it.
That hair color company you’re ultra loyal to right now, a lot of them, not all of them, are working on going direct-to-consumer. I guarantee it because they’re not going to be left behind. You need to choose not to be left behind.
Also, number three, sustainability. Consumers today are big on sustainability, like reusable shampoo and conditioner bottles, glass jars, things like that. The more you can lean into that, the better.
And number four, micro influencers hold all the power. Instagram celebrities, nobody cares anymore. Celebrities, you looked at all the celebrity Super Bowl commercials if you’re a sports fan like I am, I’m a big sports girly. It was all these celebrities and I listened to the chatter Sunday night and Monday morning, and everyone’s like, “Who cares? Who cares?” There was a time where people lived and died for celebrities. We’re just not feeling that anymore.
I teach micro influencer strategy in Thrivers, but understanding that it’s not about being big and famous. It’s about having a micro influence. That will be the way we win.
Y’all, like I said, this was going to be a podcast more about stats and statistics than anything else. This is the call to action. This is the call for you to do your own research. Ask yourself if cost of living is still going to keep going up, if consumer spending is not declining, so if they’re not paying you money, they’re spending it somewhere else. You have the choice. You can say, “Hold on, time out. I’m going to be self-aware and ask, what is wrong with me? What is wrong with my business? How can I be and do better?” Or you can let the industry pass you by.
There is no third option at this point.
For the last several years I’ve said, “Come on down when you’re ready, train is leaving the station. Don’t wait too long.” The train has left now. Now, my message has changed a little bit of like, “Dang, we’re at the crossroads. We’re in it. Time is of the essence.”
We got to figure this out, my friends. I want you to use this as the jumping off point to do your own research. Look at what’s actually going on at scale. Look at where people are spending their money. Look at exceptional guest experience. Look at what’s working in marketing. I’m here to support you however I can. I hope you’ve gotten great value added this month. Hit me up in the DMs if you have additional questions.
And as I always like to say, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
