Intro: Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hair stylist like you got into this industry to make big things happen? Maybe you’re struggling to build a solid base and want some stability. Maybe you know social media is important, but it feels like a waste of time because you aren’t seeing any results. Maybe you’ve already had some amazing success but are craving more. Maybe you’re ready to truly enjoy the freedom and flexibility this industry has to offer. Cutting and coloring skills will only get you so far, but to build a lifelong career as a wealthy stylist, it takes business skills and a serious marketing strategy. When you’re ready to quit just working in your business and start working on it, join us here where we share real success stories from real stylists.
I’m Britt Seva, social media and marketing strategist just for hair stylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
Britt Seva: What is up? And welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Britt Seva, and today we’re talking about the pricing crisis and how we got here. It’s interesting. So I’ve been talking since on Thrivers Live 2022 was the very first time I talked about what I called the Great Divide, and I said that I felt like it was coming and I wasn’t sure when it would hit. Man, we are in it. We are deeply in the Great Divide. I’ve been talking about this for a minute now. I spoke, like I said, about the Great Divide at Thrivers Live 2022. Then in episode 263 of the podcast, it was called My 2023 Predictions I talked about it.
And then more recently in episode 315, My 2024 Predictions, I talked about it again. So if you haven’t listened to episodes 263 and 315, I suggest you go back. If you just Google search, “Thriving Stylist Podcast 2023 predictions or 2024 predictions,” they should come up that way as well. But we’re in it and there’s several indicators that show me that we’re there. One, the industry is starting to turn on itself a little bit, which is always an indication of a divide. I mean, in any culture, whether it be workplace or socially or whatever, when you see people starting to turn on each other within a specific group, a divide is coming. We’re seeing a lot of resistance, a lot of resentment, a lot of pushback.
It’s interesting. We’re seeing that resistance, resentment, pushback between clients and stylists, which we’ll talk about in a minute. Like our own clients are turning on us, which is very unfortunate. And clients at large, not just your clients are turning against you just like the people who are not stylists are turning against our industry. So I want to talk about that. But for the past decade, there’s been so much, “Community over competition. We love each other. Rising tide lifts all boats. Let’s celebrate each other,” and it’s becoming a little bit more dog-eat-dog. And I believe that’s because we are in a pressure cooker. For a few years I’ve been saying, “The train is leaving the station. Now it’s the time to get your business in line.”
And some people accuse me of false advertising or almost like clickbait stuff. I mean, I was just reading the writing on the wall. And as this industry is starting to turn on itself, man, it’s like, had you not solidified your business structure in the last few years, it’s really crunch time because I really do believe it’s going to get a little bit ugly. And I’m sorry to say that, but I really… I think the writing’s on the wall. We’re already in it, and I want to just speak to that for a minute. So first of all, if you’ve not listened to episode 198, it was called Will the Client Boom Last, let’s go back in time for a minute. Does everybody remember Q2, Q3, Q4 2020, more Q3, Q4 I guess, when the world started to open back up a little bit?
I don’t want to say the world normalized through the pandemic, but it started to open back up a little bit. Stylists and salons who had been closed down were starting to open back up. Some of you never really shut down depending on where you were located. But listen, some states shut down for months, several months sometimes, and we saw in Q3 Q4, huge surge in demand of clients wanting to get in to see stylists. It happened for a few reasons. We saw tens of thousands of stylists and salons walk away from the industry in 2020, so it created this huge clientele surplus. There were all of these clients who had lost their salon home completely and were looking for new places to go. So that created additional demand on those who were still in operation.
The other thing was clients had not been able to get their hair done for months, and A, they wanted to get their hair done, but B, there was this new appreciation for self-care and were definitely still in that. We’re still in this place and season of life where people are really valuing time and self-care and mental health and feeling good about themselves and confidence and all that. And that’s had a really positive impact on the beauty industry, and I’m here for that massively. If you go back and listen to episode 198 or any of my past podcasts, I said very openly, “This is artificially inflated industry demand. This will not last. Seize the day, be in it because this won’t last forever.” That artificial demand, that clientele boom is waning, and because of that, clients are starting to get nervous.
I’m on a tour and I’m visiting a lot of my Thrivers-owned salons throughout the US, and I just did a tour stop recently and I said straight up to the Thrivers in the room, I said, “Game on. It’s about to get a lot harder to build business than it’s been over the last few years.” So over the last few years, it’s actually been easier than ever before to build business as a stylist. It is going to get significantly harder over the next few years, and I don’t want to sugarcoat that. I don’t mean it as a threat. I really mean it as a promise. So when it starts to get harder and as things start to change, there’s nothing wrong with you. I want you to know that. The game has changed and it will continue to change and continue to evolve. But the game we’ve all been playing for the last few years just got flipped on its head and this is where that great divide comes from.
So let’s talk about what got flipped on its head. One of the things is influencer culture really changed. It didn’t die, but it evolved. It shifted. Do you remember when somebody had a hundred thousand Instagram followers? We were like, “Oh my gosh, they’re important.” And now for a lot of us were like, “I don’t care what your follower count is.” It doesn’t impress us much anymore. Things have simply changed. And we’re like, “Yeah, but what value have you added to my life? What have you actually taught me? What are your true credentials?” Just having a high follower count or just having a million dollars doesn’t carry the same weight in value to us as it did 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10 years ago.
Okay. So influencer culture died. I want you to understand that we all are in an influence battle. Influence is the ability to make somebody have belief in you, to see value in you. You want to have influence within your local market, within your clientele, within your existing client base, within your potential new client base. Everybody listening to this podcast is seeking influence. I’m seeking influence, right. We’re all looking to have people say like, “Wow, I really like what this person has to say.” That’s essentially influence from a business perspective. You’re all trying to create it. It’s not to say that influence has died, it’s just no longer about popularity. It’s not a popularity contest. It’s who is delivering the highest perceived value, not who looks the coolest, not who does the best hair.
Because by the way, clients have come to figure out like, “Lots of people do good hair, but are you a good person? What are your values? Are you authentic or are you fake? Are you just in it for the money or are you real?” And those are the questions that consumers are asking today. As we increase your perceived value, it increases what I call your demand margin. And with that, the price your client pays can be driven up because they feel like it’s worth it. So what a lot of people do when they’re trying to create increased perceived value is they throw in deep conditioning treatments, right. They throw in champagne at the visit [inaudible 00:07:57] they throw in custom playlists. Unfortunately, today’s client is not looking for that kind of stuff, but the great news is the stuff they’re looking for doesn’t cost a dime.
And what happened was a lot of stylists started throwing in free conditioning treatments, free blonding treatments, all of these upscale amenities that cut into their profit margin. In a healthy business, we have a high profit margin and a high demand margin. That’s what I like to coach to. What I need everybody to know is right now we’re in what I call a client’s market. Kind of like you know how in the real estate industry there’s a buyer’s market and a seller’s market? Well, in our industry, there’s a client’s market and a stylist’s market. 2020 to summer of 2023 was a stylist’s market. We commanded the space. We were in deep, deep demand. We got to call all the shots. There really was this call to raise the bar and truly own our business, and we saw this massive potential and we stepped up into it.
The problem is we stepped over the line too far a little bit. Not everybody, but some people did, and they created backlash, and that’s what I want to speak to. So now we’re not in a stylist market anymore. We’re now in a client’s market. Clients are in the driver’s seat yet again, and this is cyclical. We’ll go back to the stylist market in a few years, but right now clients are in the driver’s seat and I need you to understand that. They’re not going to surrender to our commands and demands anymore. We need to listen. We need to shift our approach a little bit. So I want to talk about a few of the things that kind of push this great divide that’s splitting the industry, that’s causing some discontent with clients and stylists and also with stylists versus stylists. So a few things if you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s great.
The reason I chose to do this podcast is because I’ve seen more TikToks and more Instagrams in the last probably three weeks about the industry hating on each other and clients being about stylists and the way that they’re treating them than I’ve ever seen before. It’s like fever pitch. I mean, just all over the place there’s buzz about it. And there’s a few things I think we did that really made clients upset and I understand why we did them, but now here’s the backlash. So I think there was, I’m calling it the Charge Your Worth movement. We came out of 2020 swinging because there was so much demand for our services and a lot of stylists had stayed under price for too long, and it was like this empowerment movement of like, “No, you’re worth it. Charge your worth.” I do believe stylists should charge an appropriate rate for their services.
I hate undercharging. I hate stylists having to feel like they have to discount themselves. The problem with the statement of charge your worth is it allowed people to feel like they could create an emotional value of their worth and of their time and just put a price tag on it. It doesn’t work that way. I could say, “The value of you listening to this podcast is $1,000. That’s my worth.” How many of you are going to pay $1,000 to listen to this episode? And that’s the problem. It doesn’t matter what I think the worth of it is or what I think the value of it is. The value of anything is what a consumer is willing to pay. And the whole idea of charge your worth and add tax guacamole is extra and you are too, it just made us a little bit jaded and some people make some really irrational pricing decisions based on that.
I was talking to a stylist recently and she was having a pricing issue and I said, “Where did you come up with your price point?” And she says, “Oh, my accountant suggested it to me. Why is anyone taking pricing advice from their accountant?” I understand what you’re thinking. Some of you’re like, “Oh no, that was smart because they’re covering their profit margin or they’re covering their budget.” Yeah, but if they’re paying for a suite that they can’t afford, they just made a bad business decision. And it’s not the client’s fault that the stylist made a bad business decision. They got in over their head and they’re just simply not at the place where they can charge that rate. Now, if we were a physical business, if we were selling handcrafted pottery, then yeah, I guess we could talk to our accountant and they could make a suggestion, but we’re in a service-based business.
It doesn’t work that way. The trend that happened a few years ago of stylists showing off. Remember where it was Instagram graphics where you would put, “This is a $600 service. This is an $800 service.” It sticker shocked a lot of clients and it made them feel like we did it because we were trying to build confidence. I understood it came from a good place, but to clients, it landed a little bit like arrogance. To a client, it didn’t feel quite the same. Now some clients were like, “Love it, here for it, happy to pay for it.” But it made some clients feel not good enough. Okay. But it was fine at the time. That was a few years ago. It’s what happened after that layered onto that where things started getting ugly. Last year, 2023, we saw… and end of 2022, a lot of industry stylists making posts basically dogging clients.
Like red flag, red flag clients, making fun of clients, teasing them, joking about them, posting about their cancellation policies and how annoyed they are with their clients. Have you ever heard the saying, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you?” That’s where our money comes from. And if we’re saying that clients are the biggest problem in our business, we took the wrong approach on that. That caused some resentment. Emotional based pricing, kind of going back to what I was talking about, the whole charge your worth thing. Stylists started overcharging or undercharging based on their feelings or their thoughts or what they were going through in life. We can’t do that kind of stuff either. Slow to adapt has always been a problem in our industry.
Our industry lags behind most other industries when it comes to what it looks like to build smart business in any given time period. And because we’re slow to adapt, slow to change, slow to evolve, we end up being a bit behind and we’re really behind right now. Compound that with my last point, which is burnout. This industry is flipping tired. We have been put through the wringer in the last few years, and so I think some stylists are throwing their hands up and they’re like, “Take it or leave it.” The problem is because we’re now in a client’s market, clients are going to start to leave it. And if we don’t choose to show up as the professionals that I know we can be, we’re going to be in trouble. And that’s why I call this the Great Divide.
Some people are going to hear this podcast and be like, “F Britt. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I’m not going to do what she says.” That’s fine. Totally understandable. I expect that. And some of you are going to be like, “Britt’s not done me dirty yet. I’m going to trust her on this one.” And I believe, unfortunately, I don’t think it’s based on this podcast, I think we’re already deeply in it. This industry is going to divide and some people are going to do really well as it splits and some people are going to feel blindsided. And I’m going to do my very best to continue bringing advice and education and sharing the strategies that I think will help. There will likely be backlash and turmoil, but I’m here for it because my goal as a coach is to help those who want the hand out, the hand up to elevate and rise above.
And so this is kind of the beginning of really learning to navigate what this next iteration of our industry looks like. So how do we course correct from here? We are in a pricing crisis. When you look, there are hundreds if not thousands of TikToks and Instagram videos. And if you find one, read the comments. There’s hundreds of comments of like, “My stylist is ripping me off too. There’s stylists in my area doing this. They’re so full of themselves. They have such big egos. I don’t know what they think they’re doing.” When we started promoting on Instagram that we were doing cost of goods increases, I said on the podcast I don’t know how many times, “Please stop doing that.” There’s no other business that does that. We just started to get a little bit irrational with the way we were speaking about why we were moving the way we were moving and now we’re paying the price.
So how do we course correct? How do we counterbalance and counteract all of this? The very first thing to do is to choose confidence over arrogance. And there’s a big difference between confidence and arrogance, and I want to explain it. I want to read you a definition. “Confidence emerges from a genuine belief in oneself leading to positive self-assurance, openness to collaboration, and empathy for others. Arrogance however stems from insecurity, resulting in an inflated sense of self-importance, dismissive behavior, and a lack of empathy.” I think that empathy piece is the biggest part, is that we started to appear selfish, and I don’t think that most stylists were trying to appear selfish. I think that they were just desperate and didn’t know what to do, and it was like the panic.
And you saw one person do one thing, and that’s the trick about our industry too, is we’re one of the only industries where we follow hundreds of our peers. Most mechanics don’t follow a hundred other mechanics on Instagram, right. Most business bankers don’t follow a hundred other business bankers on Instagram, but we do. We follow each other, and so we just start blindly following whoever and hoping that they’re doing the right thing. And it leads to these really impulsive accidental decisions. I think we stopped looking empathetic. I think we did start to appear a little bit selfish in some of the outward forward-facing things that we did, especially as it related to pricing in the industry. Now, Coach Carly, who’s one of our Thriving Stylist certified coaches, is releasing a Thrivers members-only podcast.
We have a members only podcast just for our Thrivers Society members on what transparent pricing looks like in 2024. I think that’s going to be such a nice dovetail podcast episode to this one because it’s going to dig into like, well, what does pricing transparency look like for clients? Because it’s not the posts that say, “This is $800.” It’s not the posts that say, “This is my cancellation fee.” It’s not the posts that are like, “This is my cost breakdown.” It’s not the post saying, “My cost of business has gone up.” Clients don’t like that. We’re feeling the backlash of it. So what is it? What do they mean when they say that? And I think it is really meeting them where they’re at, learning how they communicate, and showing up in those ways. Arrogant people brag, belittle, and call each other out to make themselves feel better.
Cancel culture ran rampant from 2020 till now still. We’re still in it of people talking very openly about angry they are, how frustrated they are, and I totally get it. I understand. But when you look at people who choose to be confident instead, they’re aware of their strengths and weaknesses, and rather than come out guns at blazing, they choose to have open conversations and would rather get to a place of compromise and understanding and empathy rather than argue. And I think that clients are exhausted just like we are, and they just want to find the common ground again and not feel at war, not feel this push-pull, feel more of that collaboration again. Number two, price yourself based on your clients and your services, not the trends.
So the other thing that’s emerged in the last few years is we have all these pricing methods, right. We have a la carte, we have session-based, we have hourly, we have method based, we have all these different ways of pricing, and a lot of stylists and salons don’t know how to choose which ones. So what they do is they choose the one that feels the easiest. “This one’s simple. This one’s trendy. I really like Shelley and Shelley prices this way so I’m going to do it that way,” rather than basing the pricing method on what actually makes sense for your business and clientele. I encourage you to do the research and find out we have tons of resources on that. If you’re listening to this in April of 2024 during Hair Stylist Appreciation Month, we have a resource that we’re sharing that helps you to do that.
If you need help on that, in Thriving Stylist Method, all year round, we have resources that help you to choose your method. But don’t just blindly pick something out of the sky. Choose something that really makes sense for your market and for your clientele. And number three, do not price yourself based on what others around you are doing. I did a series of classes recently where I asked, “How did you determine your pricing?” And I was shocked. So many people chose their pricing based on what other stylists and salons in their area were charging. You have no idea what they chose their prices based on. They might’ve just made them up. Maybe that’s a failing business. And you’re looking at that failing business and turning to them to anchor your prices. It doesn’t make any sense. Some people said, “Well, pressure from those I worked with” made them choose their pricing.
It’s like we’re getting strong armed into choosing our pricing. There is a strategic way to know based on data what you should be charging. So if you’ve not yet listened, again, listen to podcast episode 221. I think I’ve plugged four of my podcasts on this one, so lots of binging you can do. But episode 221 of the Thriving Stylist Podcast is called Seven Factors to Determine Your Price Point. Listen to that. Use those factors to determine where you should be priced and what that price point should look like. And number four, choose smart solid business practices over the trendy stuff. Don’t get caught up. If I had best words of advice right now, really focus on smart business strategy. I know this is an emotionally charged time. I know there’s scary stuff going on.
I know that people feel like the industry is shifting, that people are moving, clients are moving, markets are changing, trends are changing, social media is shifting. It feels like a lot of change at once. Center yourself. Choose to educate. Choose to find a person or people or a mentor or some kind of North star that can help you to be clear on what business moves to make moving forward. Do not be impulsive. And I want you to just… I want you leave you with this. Ask yourself, if you were a client looking for a stylist today, what would you want to be seeing? What would you want to be hearing? How would you want your stylist to show up? Would you want them to be arrogant or confident? What would you want their prices to look like? How would you want them talking to you about pricing?
Remember that you are doing good work with a human with a good heart on the flip side of every transaction you have, and let’s remember to always be heart centered. I’m a big fan of really great business practices. You know that I’m about you seeing your business as a stylist or salon owner being a true business, but we’re heart centered at the same time, and I think we can find the compromise in this. All right, that’s it for this one. If you have any additional questions, hit me up in the DMs. I would love to hear from you. As I always like to say, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one
