Intro:Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hairstylist? Like you got into this industry to make big things happen? Maybe you’re struggling to build a solid base and want some stability. Maybe you know social media is important, but it feels like a waste of time because you 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 hairstylists, 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 before we get into this week’s episode, I am so excited to share that Thriving Stylist Appreciation Month is back.

If you’ve participated with us before, you know how value packed this entire month was last year, and this year we’ve really outdone even ourselves.

For the entire month of April, we are dropping free resources curated for your unique focus.

So for example, this first week in April, we’ve created a collection of resources designed for booth renters and suite owners.

By registering for the freebies, you’ll unlock a collection of trainings, free PDFs, access to an exclusive podcast that’s usually for Thrivers Society members only, and so much more.

Now, if you’re a salon owner, employee stylist, or a bridal industry expert, stay tuned, because we have resources specifically designed just for you coming out later in the month.

So if you’re an independent stylist, click the link in the show notes or head to thrivingstylist.com forward slash Thriving Stylist Appreciation Month to sign up for the Thriving Stylist Appreciation goodies.

And listen, if you’ve just got the FOMO and you do not want to miss out on any of the free stuff, but you’re not an independent stylist, it’s all good.

You’re welcome to register for the trainings too.

So that’s www.thrivingstylist.com forward slash Thriving Stylist Appreciation Month or click the link in the show notes.

Happy Hair Stylist Appreciation Month to all.

And now, on with the show.

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 weren’t seeing any results.

Maybe you’ve already had some amazing success but are craving more.

Maybe you’re ready to truly enjoy the freedom and flexibility this industry has to offer.

Cutting and coloring skills will only get you so far, but to build a lifelong career as a wealthy stylist, it takes business skills and a serious marketing strategy.

When you’re ready to quit just working in your business and start working on it, join us here where we share real success stories from real stylists.

I’m Britt Seva, social media and marketing strategist just for hair stylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist Podcast.

What is up and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast.

I’m your host, Britt Seva, and today we’re going to talk about the negative impact and effects of pre-booking in detail.

Now, this is an episode that people have been asking me for forever, and I’ve always said it’s really difficult for me to verbally explain without having a whiteboard or using slides where I can show real numbers.

And so I’ve taught this in detail.

I’ve taught in-person classes.

I’ve broken this down in Thrivers.

I’ve shown, but in audio format, it’s just harder.

So full disclosure, I know that when you hear this, the verbalization of it is a bit tricky.

All that being said, I kept that in mind.

And as I framed the episode, I was like, okay, how do I do this in a way where even if you’re driving in the car, if you’re walking the dog, you can understand this concept in a way where the math, maths, everything makes sense.

So if you’re listening to all this and you’re like, whoa, this is a really complicated one, it is a really complicated one.

And I’ve tried to simplify it as hard as I possibly can.

But buckle up, we’re on a journey together.

I think it’s going to be fun.

So I’m going to go back through my personal history with pre-booking, and then I’m going to talk about the history of pre-booking as it relates to the industry, like using data and facts and research and all the things.

So let me tell you about my experience with pre-booking.

I was a stylist behind the chair, 2007, 2008, 2009.

2009, I was promoted to salon director, and then I ran salon operations from 2009 to 2016, so seven years or something like that.

And pre-booking when I was in the salon, so from 2007 to 2016, pre-booking was always a really big, fat focus, and largely because when I joined the salon, they were working with a salon coaching person, people, group, I’ll say, where pre-booking was one of the benchmarks that was evaluated.

And I think that that’s very common.

I don’t think that’s unique or special.

I think that in that time, like the mid-2000s and before that, pre-booking was like critical, and we’ll talk about that history for a minute.

So I kept being taught like pre-book, pre-book, right, you got to pre-book everybody.

And so I was trying to do it in like 2007, 2008, 2009, fine, because I didn’t know the game the way I knew it further down the line.

When I started leading the team, so starting in 2009, 2010, 11, 12, I started noticing these patterns as the person who was processing people’s payroll and as the person who was literally doing the salon profit margins and budgeting and spent, like I was looking at the financials month to month.

I was like, this is so wild because we are preaching for people to pre-book, pre-book, pre-book, but the math wasn’t mathing on it.

Like I was looking at the people who were growing the fastest and making good money, and there wasn’t this direct correlation between pre-booking.

And so that’s when it hit my radar.

I didn’t coach anybody in my salon to stop pre-booking because this was like my early years.

I didn’t start coaching until 2012.

So when I’m starting to see this non-correlation, I don’t have any credibility in the sense of like, let’s undo this system that’s been put in place for years and years.

I simply didn’t have the facts and data.

It was more of like a hunch, and something I saw within my own salon team.

That was it.

2012, 2013, 2014, I was coaching stylist and salon owners one-to-one primarily.

So I’m a small group, but primarily one-to-one.

And again, I saw the same thing.

There was not a direct correlation between people who were pre-booking and people who were growing and building fast.

I couldn’t see a pattern in it.

Like, was it sometimes there?

Were there people who were pre-booking and still ending up broke?

Yes.

Were there people who were making lots and lots of money and not pre-booking?

Yes.

And so it just didn’t end up being this thing where I was like, oh, pre-booking seems critical.

It just, it wasn’t.

I couldn’t see it in the data.

So I kind of kept it to myself because I knew that bringing it forward would rock the boat.

2021, I decided to bring it forward.

And in 2021, I released a podcast episode called 165, The Dangers of Pre-Booking.

It’s still up.

You can go back and listen to it.

And I came under fire for it because at the time, and I knew that I would, but I was confident enough in myself and my coaching and my research to just go ahead and say it at that point.

And I took a lot of heat for it from stylists, from salon owners, from educators, from everybody.

I didn’t care though, because that was the truth.

Like that’s what the data was showing.

And I shared that, listen, pre-booking is not the answer.

There’s flaws in it.

And I shared the episode more just to invite people to get curious.

Just to know that there’s nothing where it’s like this is the correct answer for everybody and everything.

And pre-booking was one of those things that was just accepted as an industry norm and nobody questioned it.

And I was like, no, let’s question it.

Like this is not right.

There’s something wrong here.

Since 2021, people started testing my theory and trying it out.

And as it turns out, it was right.

And now you hear more educators and more big companies saying like maybe pre-booking isn’t it?

Because of the invitation just to get curious about it.

And I want to take that invitation one step further and kind of break down some of what I was noticing, the patterns, the challenges, so that you can continue doing your own deep dive into whether pre-booking is a fit for your business, whether it has a positive impact, whether it has a freaking impact at all.

And really think about your lifestyle, what makes the most sense for you.

So that’s my history with pre-booking.

Let’s go back to the history of pre-booking in the beauty industry in general.

So I want you to remember what salon appointments look like.

Like, let’s go back as far as probably those who are still potentially living today.

So we still have, you know, centurions who were living in the 1920s, right?

Here in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, up to 60s even.

Women particularly were going to the salon for like weekly hair appointments.

The in-home hot tools that we have today didn’t exist.

You’re looking at roller sets.

You’re looking at weekly styling services.

I looked it up, and only 4 to 7 percent of American women, and that’s not 47.

That’s 0, 4 to 0, 7 percent of American women colored their hair in the 1950s.

So when you look at hair prior to 1950, it was like weekly style sets because there was no other way for women to do their hair at home other than brush and go.

There just wasn’t that capability.

So weekly recurring salon appointment visits or bi-weekly appointment salon recurring visits was just what happened.

That was the way salons functioned.

And by the way, not everyone had a home telephone.

You have to look at it.

That’s what life was like at that time.

This was the way you got your hair done, is you had a standing appointment, and you showed up, and that was the end.

Then in the 1970s, and people were still doing this through the 60s, in the 1970s, in-home hair dryers gained popularity.

If you’ve ever seen the dryers that existed before, then we all know hood dryers, obviously.

There was almost those plastic bag dryers that you’d put over your head.

In the 70s, in-home hair styling tools started to become affordable.

They were made of plastic, not metal.

They could be manufactured at scale.

So styling your hair at home started to be possible.

So it was kind of like the phase out of those weekly salon appointments, those bi-weekly salon appointments, but also by the 70s, women were coloring their hair at a much higher rate.

40% of American women in the 70s were coloring their hair.

Isn’t that wild to think that like, this wasn’t all that long ago.

40 years ago, 60% of women weren’t even coloring their hair.

Isn’t that funny?

Now by 2015, 70% of American women were coloring their hair.

So flash forward, everything has changed.

The way that services in the salon work have changed, what people are looking for has changed.

Our processes need to change.

And that is a huge part of me talking about the history of pre-booking.

You can see that pre-booking was simply a function of how the world operated.

Certainly, the service is being done, yes, but also a function of if you didn’t have a home telephone, how would you contact your stylist?

I guess you’d walk by the salon.

No, you’d pre-book your appointment.

That was the way to do it.

If you needed to get your stuff done every week or two weeks, it just made sense.

Think about the pace of life.

Think about the fact that the majority, there was certainly the barbershop clients, the men would go in after work or on the weekends or whatever.

That was great.

Most American women, when we’re talking about the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, like women in the job place and like women in the workforce, wasn’t really even a thing yet.

It’s just a totally different way of life.

I need you to remember that.

OK, so 70s, 80s, 90s.

We see this split between in-home hair stuff and in-salon hair stuff, right?

Boxed-eye starts to hit the market.

People are starting to be able to curl their hair at home.

We kind of get into this transition period.

Not that much changes in the salon.

Most things stay the same until about 2000.

I want you to think about what life looked like pre-2000 and then post-2000.

Let me give you some stats about the year 2000.

In the year 2000, 50% of Americans had home internet.

50%.

So 24 years ago, half of the United States didn’t have home internet.

I remember what a big deal it was when my family got it.

It was like, whoa.

And then here was the thing, there wasn’t even that much cool to do with it.

Google stuff, AOL instant messenger.

There just wasn’t that much going on.

So the internet wasn’t really a thing.

Email, does everybody remember?

So I’m in my late 30s.

I remember what a big deal it was when I got my first email address.

Tech just didn’t exist.

People walked around with a day planner.

There wasn’t even a digital calendar.

If you had a Blackberry, but that was reserved for people, or what would they call it?

Something pilot, palm pilots.

But those were reserved for business people.

The average person didn’t have that.

They had a personal planner or a journal that they’d carry around, like a purse calendar.

That’s what it looked like.

So pre-booking was required.

Also think about the year 2000.

Just life in general.

How basic and groundhog day-ish life was.

Like, the average person worked a 9 to 5.

You watched the same TV shows every single night.

Like, you had a television routine.

If you’re younger than me, you may or may not remember this, but you couldn’t just, like, stream a show or, like, pull up whatever you wanted on the DVR.

Does everybody know TiVo?

Does anybody remember TiVo?

TiVo came out in 1999.

It was the very first way to record TV programming without a VHS tape.

Like, we were subject to watching whatever was on TV.

You followed the same schedule week to week.

There was just a lot more structure in life.

Things were just more simple.

Does life look anything like it did in 2000 right now?

No.

Some of you weren’t even alive back then.

And those who were are like, oh my gosh, it was like a lifetime ago.

So we can’t run our businesses like we did in the year 2000.

It doesn’t make sense.

Pre-booking back then just wasn’t critical.

People didn’t want to have to call to make appointments.

It was just easier.

It was effortless.

Your schedule stayed pretty much the same.

You, as a stylist or salon owner, didn’t want to have to be on the phone managing appointments.

It simply worked.

Enter 2005.

2005 is when Amazon Prime started.

Amazon Prime has been around for almost 20 years.

Isn’t that fascinating?

I thought it was going to be shorter than that, 20 years.

And that’s when two-day shipping came along.

Two-day shipping was revolutionary.

Again, if you are my age or older, you remember that you used to order something and it would take six to eight weeks to arrive at your doorstep.

If something came faster than like three weeks, it was like a miracle.

So Amazon Prime came along and they’re like, we can do it in two days.

That shook consumer behavior.

Then flash forward to June 29th of 2007, the iPhone came out.

That’s when we were able to start walking around with the internet in our phone.

That’s when we were able to start walking around with the internet in our pocket.

And that functioned as your organizer, your email access point, internet browsing, Yelp took off.

That was the age of the internet explosion.

Things really changed.

Then two years later, and interestingly enough, June 29th, 2009, the exact same calendar day, just two years later, Samsung Galaxy phones started coming out.

So about 15 years ago, we had this technology revolution that changed the speed in which clients, consumers, whatever you want to call them, wanted to do everything.

We started getting into this instant gratification world.

You don’t have to like it, you just have to understand that that is what happened.

This is also around the time where online booking started to become available for salons.

Right around that same time, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, right in that window, it all started coming together.

So the reason I say this is right around that time is when I started noticing there was not this direct correlation between pre-booking.

And I think that that’s very relevant, like the data doesn’t lie.

You look at what was happening in the world, you connect the dots, and it kind of all makes sense.

So let’s take a step back for a second, and I want to ask, why do we think that we pre-book?

Why is it we think we’re supposed to be pre-booking?

Because we’re told number one, it guarantees appointments and revenue.

Number two, we get less calls and ease of business operations, right?

Everybody’s appointments are set.

Nobody’s reaching out to you to get on your books.

It’s just done.

And then we also believe that it improves retention.

But why do we actually pre-book?

That’s why we think we’re doing it, but why are we actually doing it?

Well, we don’t realize it’s an antiquated way of running business.

People just don’t have that awareness at scale yet.

Psychologically, and I actually think this is the biggest reason.

We like looking at a book full of clients.

We like to say, I’m booked out for the next eight Saturdays, guaranteed revenue, like it makes our little hearts feel good.

I understand.

Financial peace of mind is worth its weight in gold, and so I understand that.

The problem is point number three, which is that we don’t realize that being pre-booked is costing you money.

It’s a false sense of security, which leads us into point number four.

We’re scared to change the pre-booking and lose our clients.

And you know, that’s understandable.

Again, this comes back to like psychological and financial safety.

I can’t mess with that.

Like we have to do the deep healing work.

You have to trust me as your coach to be like, okay, I’m going to give it a shot.

And listen, when and if you shift out pre-booking, do not do this flippantly.

You have to do it with a system and structure.

Anytime I’ve coached a Thriver Society member to phase out pre-booking, their business has exploded.

But Thrivers also have the systems and structure in place to do it.

If you just pull the plug and you’re not set up for success, A, you will lose money, and B, you’re going to completely overwhelm yourself.

So what I’m saying is don’t just do this recklessly, but not phasing out pre-booking is financially costing you.

It’s important to understand.

Years ago, I had a business coach tell me, you know, I was somebody the younger version of myself.

It’s not funny with age comes the wisdom and you’re like, man, if I had the wisdom when I also had the energy of being the younger person.

Years ago, I, when I started coaching, I did find fast and radical success as a business coach in the industry.

There was no doubt.

And I felt like I knew what I really knew what I was doing.

And a few years into it, this is a decade ago now, wow, I had a business coach tell me like, Britt, yeah, you’re doing well, but for every dollar you’re making, you’re leaving three more on the table because you’re not willing to look at but what if.

But what if there was a better way?

But what if there was a different way?

But what if somebody was doing it smarter?

What if I could turn good into great?

And since that business coach told me that I have really chosen to check the ego and embrace curiosity and always remember somebody’s doing it better than me.

And I now have this yearning to figure out what can I change to get a better result?

Like I’m not interested in settling for good.

It’s great or nothing.

I’ve got this one lifetime to do the damn thing and I’m not going to let it go to waste, right?

So first, before I dig into the problems with pre-booking and how to solve, I want to talk about the difference between pre-booking and being booked out because those are two different things.

And so I want to make sure we’re speaking the same language.

I coached a stylist having full books three weeks from today.

So if I was recording this podcast episode on May 1st, I would expect you to be booked out from May 1st through May, what does that end up being?

21st?

And then having some availability.

That’s a really good cadence for how full your books are.

Anything beyond that, and you’re losing revenue and flexibility, flexibility of lifestyle, flexibility of schedule, and you’re definitely losing financial growth.

The other thing that you could potentially lose is wealth.

And when I talk about wealth, it’s time, love, health, and money.

And I do believe if you’re booked out too far, you lose all of them.

The other thing is that prebooking capture growth and income.

It does not guarantee it.

It commits you to a schedule without any flexibility, and it truly prevents business growth.

Being booked out for two or three weeks, that’s a great thing.

Being prebooked out is when we start to be three plus weeks, four weeks, five weeks.

I sometimes coach stylists who are like, Britt, I’m prebooked out 12 weeks.

I’m like, oh no, what happened?

That’s where it starts to get really, really dicey.

So, problem number one with prebooking.

It doesn’t actually guarantee your income.

There’s a time when it did and it just doesn’t anymore.

Clients don’t have that same cookie cutter schedule they did pre 2005.

It just doesn’t exist anymore.

So, you probably know this.

Yeah, you can prebook every single client you have.

A good chunk of them, I don’t have an exact percentage to give you, will change, reschedule, call in sick, have to move.

Can we agree with that?

Just because somebody prebooks with you, it’s not like they are penalized if they don’t show up.

They’re going to do whatever they do.

And even if I say that, you’re like, well, I have a cancellation policy.

Cool.

So, the client cancels, you have this policy, now you have a gap on your schedule.

Now what?

What’s your plan, man?

Like, it’s not the guaranteed income that you think is there.

The income guaranteed, here’s the other part of that, the income that you have guaranteed is less than you’d be making if you would just give your business more breathing room.

And that’s not theory, that’s fact.

I have found that to be true since I started coaching to this in the Thrivers Society, so for the past three years, it’s rang true every single time.

Problem number two, the income it guarantees you isn’t your business’s revenue potential.

So let’s say that your average ticket right now is a hundred bucks.

I just want to keep math easy.

Your average guest spends a hundred bucks every time they come in to see you.

If you see on average five clients a day and you work five days a week, you’re going to make ish $10,000 gross in a month.

You’ve put yourself on a salary, but not a real salary, a fake salary, a salary that’s contingent on none of your clients moving, you having no gaps, no cancellations, you not calling in sick.

So that salary, I’m doing air quotes if you’re not watching this on YouTube, that salary is your maximum potential.

But arguably there won’t be any months where you actually hit that because life happens and nobody’s schedule is perfect.

So there’s always going to be variations to that.

No guarantee of that salary, but it will be very challenging to go above it and almost guaranteed that you’ll hit below it.

So that psychological safety isn’t real safety, it’s fakeness.

Problem number three, you’ve set up a stable business, but stable businesses are slowly dying.

There is no investor on the planet who would choose to invest in a stable business.

I’ve talked to some investors.

Trust me, they’re not interested.

And listen, I don’t want to sell my business and you probably don’t want to sell yours either.

But what I’m saying is a stable business just is not seen as something that’s financially viable long term.

And when you see salons have to close their doors or stylists walk away from their business 15 or 20 years into their career saying that it’s because of burnout.

Burnout is a result of working harder than you want to for the income that you’re making.

The work is always worth it when you’re like dang, look at the payoff.

Look at the life I get to live.

Look at the schedule I get to have.

Look at the money I get to take home.

When all those boxes are checked, the work feels worth it.

We get burnt out and resentful when we’re like I’m working my cheeks off and the lifestyle I get to live on the flipside is no good.

That’s why those feelings happen.

And this kind of feeds into that.

Problem number four, you’re not set up for more significant price increases.

So in Thriving Stylist Method or any of my coaching, we use what I call the seven factor dynamic pricing calculator.

We have the industry’s only professionally engineered calculator that looks at the relationship between your schedule, your location, your cost of doing business, cost of goods, your overhead, your availability, the way that you work, meaning what services that you focus on, your timing, looks at how many new guests you see every single month, total volume per month.

It looks at everything and how those things relate to each other.

And it gives you the perfect price point that you should be offering your clients to grow as quickly as possible.

When your guest’s served number is stable, when the new guest request that you see every month is stable or non-existent, you’re not going to rightfully earn price increases.

And this is when you see stylists or salons who are like, oh, we do a price increase every January, or cost of goods would up when we did a price increase.

And these are the same salons that I’m seeing now in 2024, starting to do things like, we know everyone’s hurting, we’re discounting our prices, or we’re holding off on price increases this year.

None of that is based on actual business data or fact or research or consumer behavior.

Those are very emotionally based business decisions.

Businesses don’t grow on the back of emotionally based business decisions, right?

But you have no choice.

You’re trying to stay out ahead, so you’re doing these things.

Thrivers raise their prices two or three times a year.

A huge part of why that happens is because they’re able to see new guests, change their demand.

They’re able to pull those levers so that the price increases make sense.

Thrivers are doubling or tripling their income in a year.

Or more.

We have Thrivers who five times their income in three or four years.

They’re able to do that because they’re running a business that is able to grow and not in a way that’s gouging clients, but in a way that’s based on fact and on logic.

Number five, you’ve traded pseudo stability for pain in the future.

I shared on the podcast a few weeks back that based on a new study heading into 2024, consumers today are willing to wait 14 minutes to get on a service provider’s books.

14 minutes.

So if you’re like DM me, I’ll get back to you.

Unless you’re getting back to you within 14 minutes, you’re going to lose clients.

Now, I’m not suggesting that you have a system where you’re replying within 14 minutes.

I think that’s not viable.

But you have to understand that’s where clients are at.

That’s where consumers are at.

The other thing is that clients are not willing to wait over a month to get in to see you.

Like it used to be such a flex.

I remember these days when stylists were like booked out for four months, see you in the fall.

Like that was such a cool look or like no longer accepting new clients, like almost too good for business.

Clients today just don’t find that to be a flex.

They find it to be like a little bit obnoxious.

And so when you’re doing those things and you’re doing those things out of survival, you’re like, well Britt, but I literally can’t take new clients right now.

Yeah, but that means there’s a structural issue within your business.

It’s not like a good flex anymore.

It used to be for sure.

But again, pre-booking used to be a good thing, and we’ve just unpacked why that does not work anymore.

I want you to think about this.

What other businesses can you think of today where it takes many, many weeks or months to be seen?

Like we’re talking three, four, five, six, seven, twelve weeks to be seen.

Like how would you feel if your car needed service?

And they’re like, perfect, we’ll see you in four months.

You’d be so, you’d go somewhere else.

You’d be livid.

Or if you wanted to have your brows done and you found somebody great and they’re like, okay, yeah, in three months I can see you.

In two months I can see you.

Or let’s say that you’re engaged and you’re looking to buy your wedding dress and you’re like, we would love to have you in the boutique.

We will see you in four months.

It’s just, it doesn’t work anymore.

This is just not the way consumers are running their lives.

Your reputation will become in your area.

They just don’t have enough time for new clients.

And that reputation is very hard to overcome down the line.

When you do lose clients, nobody retains it 100% and you need to always be filling clients in.

So I want to ask you this.

What do you have to gain from pre-booking?

Because there are certainly upsides to it.

Less calls, texts and DMs.

But if I’m being honest, you shouldn’t be dealing with any of those things anyway, regardless of if you’re pre-booking or not.

You do get that pseudo-psychological safety.

You have a stable, boring business that won’t improve your lifestyle and it will slowly dwindle over time.

But it won’t require much work beyond the services that you’re doing.

And listen, for some of you, you’re like, that’s what I want.

I want to do my clients.

I want to go home.

I don’t want to worry too much about it.

But here’s the thing.

You can have all of that and not have the pre-booking.

But it’s going to take some work.

And it’s like, are you willing to do the short-term work now to live your life?

Like 80% of the industry will never.

Are you willing to put in the work and the sacrifice now to truly have it all?

Or do you want to just stay comfortable?

That’s truly the question.

So who should consider pre-booking?

Because it’s not all bad.

Those who do weekly service clients, if you still do weekly style clients, pre-booking fully makes sense.

If someone can commit to that, I totally get it.

Stylists who are generally 50% booked or less.

Like if your demand isn’t there, if you’re still building a book of clients, pre-book, don’t pre-book.

It doesn’t matter.

You’re still building up.

So it’s kind of like a no harm, no foul situation.

If you’re still on paper books, I could make an argument for pre-booking because running your books on paper is fairly antiquated today.

There’s no shadow of a doubt you’re losing thousands of dollars a year if you still do it.

But I could make an argument for it because your business is now so complex on the back end that I could see why it would make sense for you.

I would change it, but I could see why you’d be doing it.

Who should consider phasing it out?

Those who want to significantly increase their income.

Those who are willing to learn about business structure and strategy.

Again, you can’t do this flippantly.

You got to do it educated.

Those who want to gain their freedom and their lifestyle back.

When I talk about true wealth, that’s what I’m talking about.

And those who want to build their local reputation.

Like we’ve talked throughout this entire episode of why pre-booking kind of works against all of those things.

I know this is a super hot topic.

Sound off in the iTunes reviews.

If you have something to say about it, let me know.

Hit me up in the DMs.

I would love to carry this conversation forward.

If you have additional questions, let me know.

We can always do a follow up episode.

I hope this deep dive was fun and educational for y’all.

So much love.

Happy business building.

I’ll see you on the next one.