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 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.
Britt Seva: What is up? And welcome back to the Thriving Stylist podcast. I’m your host, Britt Seva, and we’re on a roll with these exposé style podcasts. I think this is the third one I’ve done. It’s really interesting the direction that the industry is taking. So the reason I felt like it was important to do this episode is because there have been several mainstream media articles about basically the downfalls of hair salons in the last couple of years. The most recent one just came out, and I think it’s really important that we as an industry are on the pulse of what consumers are saying about us. So I’ve always openly said I don’t spend a lot of time at the hair shows or the big industry events because I’m trying to be involved in the marketing, the consumer behavior, and the economy literally on the ground. So if I’m going to go to an event, I want it to be based on what’s working in current marketing mainstream.
I want to go and hear an economist speak about what they see in consumer behavior. So this is of that lens in that vein of like we can stay in our little industry bubble and stay on Instagram and be influenced and talk to each other and hear each other. But when we open our ears up to what the world is saying about us, the conversation is starting to become a little polarizing. And I think it’s important to express on this podcast with the reach it has, the conversations that are happening at large about our industry. So let me tell you what sparked this episode. This is probably going to be a little bit of a long one, and when I started digging into the research of this episode, it actually took me down a little bit of a rabbit hole, and I encourage you to fall down the same hole and see where you land and see what comes up.
So March 19th, 2024, I woke up to a message from a member of my team who said, “Oh my gosh, we’re on Yahoo News.” And I didn’t realize she meant like us as a company. And I was like, “Oh, oh my gosh.” So I click the article and yes, it hit Yahoo News for sure, but it was actually a Washington Post article. So this Washington Post article was written by Tricia Romano and the title of the article was “Your hair looks gorgeous. It cost… what?!” And this article went fairly viral. It was picked up by NPR as an additional interview piece. It’s something that there’s been a lot of readership on and I think it’s important to break down the article and then share with you the other articles I happened to find as I was researching this one. This is not a new phenomenon is what I came to find out.
It’s just the largest feature that the industry has had to date, and I have a feeling it’s not going to be the last. So if you want to read the article in full, which I fully suggest that you do, if you do a Google search for Washington Post hair stylist price, it’s going to come up. So just that search or you can look up Washington Post Tricia Romano hair stylist that’ll pull up the article too. We will link to it in the show notes of this episode. But if you don’t know how to access show notes or you don’t want to do it that way, a Google search should pull it up as well. So I was quoted in the article and Destroy The Hairdresser was also quoted in the article. I can only speak for myself. Tricia and Washington Post did not reach out to us for a quote.
I believe they pulled my quote from this podcast as far as I can tell, and then Destroy The Hairdresser I’d imagine it was a similar adventure. They pulled quotes from their Instagram or their podcast, maybe they reached out for a quote. I have no idea, but my experience is I was not approached, I was just blindly quoted and this is how it hit my radar. Okay. So I’m going to read you to start this episode. I’m actually going to read you some quotes from the article. So rather than sharing my opinion to start, I’m just going to read you like sit down. Imagine I’m your kindergarten teacher, sit down and I’m going to read you a little bit of a story. That’s where we’re going to start. So the article starts with this, “Salons are implementing hourly pricing, billing more for basic services and handing hairdryers to customers, all to future-proof their businesses and prevent stylist burnout. Some customers say it’s out of control.”
So do I believe that first paragraph sums up what’s actually happening? No, but I do believe that’s the perception of what’s happening and like I always say, perception is the reality. And what I liked about this article is I do think it is a real clear snapshot of what customers think about hair stylists and salons today. I do. I think it was well-written in that sense. What I also liked about it is Tricia did not just say stylist and salons are the worst. She did make the effort to, from what I can tell, reach out to some salon owners and stylist and get quotes from them kind of defending their position, and I can really appreciate that she tried to bring the hair stylist and the salon voice into it. She definitely sums up the article saying that stylist and salon owners should question their policies, but I do believe that she did her best to share both points of view, and I can deeply respect that.
But that first paragraph that I just read you is the point of view of this article, and I do believe it’s the point of view of a lot of customers today. So Tricia goes on to share her own salon story. I’m going to read it to you. She says, “I was informed I’d need a color correction. And I would be charged by the hour. I sat in the chair and anxiously watched the clock, as if it was a meter in a taxi. The stylist stripped the demi-permanent gloss with a special treatment, added highlights and low lights, and gave me a haircut and blowout. I steeled myself for the bill. $398, including tip. The results were fine though, certainly not life-altering.” So when we read that, few things came up to me. She talked about being charged by the hour as being billed like a meter in a taxi and that she as a client sat watching the clock almost as if every second the clock ticked, her bank account was getting smaller.
The psychology of that is not great, and I don’t know if the reason why she was feeling that way was the way that the pricing was explained to her. I wasn’t there for the consultation. I have no idea what that looked like. All I know is this was her experience and then the other piece that stood out to me is she said the results were fine though certainly not life-altering. This is where I say clients need to feel like they’re getting what they’ve paid for. I’m going to reference back to lots of previous podcast episodes I’ve released over the last year. I’m going to give you some other podcasts to listen to at the end of this episode, but when I’ve been saying perceived value, people want to feel like they’re getting more than they paid for. Their perception is the reality. People want to feel like it’s worth their money.
People want to feel like it’s worth their time. This is exactly what I’m talking about. It’s exactly what I’m talking about. It doesn’t matter how good you as the service provider think the result is. It doesn’t matter what you think your time is worth. It is in the eyes of the customer and we don’t have to like it. We just have to understand that’s the way it works. It’s like bringing it back to us as consumers. It’s like an iPhone. There was a time where you could buy an iPhone for $600. Now it’s more than double that. I think you can get an entry level iPhone for around a thousand dollars price point, or you can spend $2,000 on an iPhone, I’m sure. Do I think that the cost of building iPhones has doubled? No, I just think that the demand has, and so Apple gets to charge whatever they want to.
It goes back to the Starbucks analogy, which we’re actually going to talk about in this article too. I can remember in high school I could go and get a giant coffee for less than $5. Well, now that’s going to cost me 10 or 11 bucks. Starbucks can do that though because people are desperate for coffee. People have to be that obsessed with you and your business for it to work out. And what this article is saying is a lot of clients just aren’t that desperate. Okay. So I’m going to read you a few more quotes from the article. She says, “Some stylists are doing this by adopting hourly pricing, charging at least a $100 an hour for cuts, color bleach, and balayage. Others are billing more for basic services and redefining once-included perks like blow-dries and toners as now costly add-ons.”
Here’s another quote. So this is from a different client that she interviewed for the article. She says, “I saw a stylist. She was fine until she started charging by the minute. Did she mean by the hour? No, she said by the minute. She would leave, so now I’m sitting in a room all by myself. I wasn’t getting a foot rub. I wasn’t drinking champagne. I’m overlooking the dumpster in the parking lot for 45 minutes while she goes on a walk somewhere. And I’m sitting in this room by myself and here I am paying her for it.” So much to unpack there. Again, this is the perception of the client with this pay structure that she was in. Do I think the stylist should have sat there and talked to her for 45 minutes? No. Do I think the stylist should have given her a foot rub? No. Do I think that someone should have been standing there pouring her a glass of champagne? No.
All I’m saying is this is the perception of this client. And we’ve just told two similar stories, I don’t think these are the only people that feel this way. Now, I will say that several times in this article, TikTok is mentioned and there’s no doubt that depending on what your TikTok feeds looks like, you may have seen some of these viral posts. And when I say viral, I mean viral. Viral posts from consumers, customers that are really coming down hard on the industry. So there are several of those TikToks that are shared as examples in the article. So if you haven’t seen them, you can go look at the article. There’s some that are referenced.
So here’s one example. This says, “A woman who goes by the name Dani Baby Duh on TikTok posted about a recent experience at a New York City salon she’d been frequenting for seven years. She got her color done, and after her shampoo, she said she was directed to a chair at the blow-dry station so she could finish the job herself. This was a first. She was even more surprised when she got the bill, a $100 more than she’d previously paid.” So she made a whole TikTok about how terrible this experience was. Thousands of comments. Now I don’t know what the laws are in New York. Technically in California, a stylist cannot hand a client a blow-dryer and suggest that they blow-dry their own hair. That’s a licensing infraction. Every state is different. So I don’t know, maybe that’s totally legal in New York. If not, I’d be really scared that clients would make public TikToks like that about me and that it would get in the wrong hands. That puts your business on the line.
That’s scary for me. But the reason I think that this client really feels that way is lack of communication. And if you watch the TikTok, she was totally blindsided about the blow-dry and then she was led to believe that she could have paid more for a blow-dry. One of the things that I coach to in Thriving Stylist Method, Scaling Stylist Method, Thriving leadership is charging for everything that happens in the salon. There was a very, very common place for stylists to inadvertently give away free blow-dries with color. I don’t think that was actually the intention. I think that the intention was like, “Well, of course you’re going to get a blowout. I’m not going to let you leave the salon with wet hair.” That was the intention. What happened was pricing was wonky. And so usually when people join my program, one of the first things we do is called price balancing.
It’s not raising prices, it’s not lowering prices, it’s balancing them. And a very common thing is stylists not accounting for the time it takes to blow-dry in the cost of their color. Now, I ran my pricing calculator with really high color pricing, like really high color pricing, like $600 root touch-ups. With my calculator, even if it’s a $600 root touch-up, the blow-dry after that root touch-up is not $100. Now maybe this salon can pull that off, but based on this TikTok video, I don’t know, and I think it begs the question of are people perceiving in the value in what you offer? Does that feel like a hundred dollar blowout? The other thing is too, I would never be telling a client that a blowout is optional or a blowout is an additional a hundred dollars. I think that’s also a positioning error.
I’m dissecting some of these challenges, but what I need you to understand is these are the conversations clients are having online about us. So then stylists and salons got a chance to either speak or be spoken about. And I don’t exactly know how these quotes got pulled. Like I said, I wasn’t asked to give a quote, but one was pulled for me. So I don’t know if it’s the same for these salon owners or not, but I want to share what was said. So here’s a quote from the article, “At the Rosewood Salon, located in Arlington, Virginia, customers can choose from stylists who charge $100 to $150 an hour. If they opt to see the big boss, owner Kat Scott, the hourly rate goes up to $250. Scott specializes in extensions and color and decided to define her skill set shortly after she opened her salon in 2020.”
We’re going to talk about that. 2020 was a pivotal time for our industry and we’re going to talk about it. The article goes on to say, “At the places she had previously worked, this is what Kat said, ‘You did all the services for everybody. You couldn’t say no to anybody, and it was just work, work, work, work, work, hustle, hustle, hustle,’ Scott said.” So essentially she chose to shift to a model where she felt like it created life balance for her. Okay. Now another salon owner, Jayne Matthews, who is the co-owner of Edo Salon, which is in my backyard, San Francisco and Oakland, was quoted as well. So here’s the quote about Jayne. “Jayne Matthews developed sensitivity to the chemicals and hair dyes a few years ago. She stopped doing color and began specializing in razor cuts. The co-owner of the salon, who counts Molly Ringwald and Zooey Deschanel as clients, has since become Instagram famous for her unique take on retro shags and French bobs and charges a flat rate, $300 for any haircut in her salon and $500 when she’s traveling. She also does many free cuts to post on her Instagram.”
Interesting. I’m trying to understand what the angle for sharing Jayne’s pricing model was. I think it’s great. I mean I think it’s the price point that Jayne now demands based on her experience, based on the demand of people wanting to work with her. But I couldn’t quite understand where the article was positioning her. I am hoping it was trying to celebrate because I really do agree with her price point. The piece that was interesting to me is that they felt it was important to note, “She also does many free cuts to post on her Instagram.” I’m not sure what the point of including that in the article was. You can get a free haircut as long as you allow her to share you on Instagram. I don’t know. I just don’t know where she was going with that. Or maybe Jayne’s method of doing business is she wants to do a community give back and some people are given free haircuts because she’s somebody who’s very much like a passionate creative artist in the way that she does hair and maybe she just does it to support her community, but that wasn’t mentioned.
So I don’t know. It was just an interesting byline like I almost wish they had elaborated on that a little more, but they didn’t and I didn’t write the article, so it’s neither here nor there. Then the article goes on to say, “She uses the analogy of a Starbucks coffee when it comes to the pricing of haircuts: ‘It used to be $3.50 to buy a Starbucks; now it’s $6.50.’ But in that time, haircut prices hadn’t been doubling.” That sentence, I think, is what clients are glomming onto. Overwhelmingly, the vibe I got from this article was that the industry played small forever, woke up at some point, well, at 2020, snapped out of it and then was like, “We’re going to double our prices.” I just feel like that’s very much the point of view of this article. I don’t think that’s what the industry did as a whole.
I do think some people did that and when you do a price increase or a structure shift or a positioning shift that is not warranted, that your market’s not ready for where the perceived value doesn’t match the price that’s being charged, this kind of backlash is what comes of it and now we are in it. Then they start getting into social media. So I want to talk about that piece for a second so let’s shift to the social media chatter that came up in this article. It says, “Recent social media posts from stylists noting that salons aren’t as busy as they used to be have been met with clap backs from the general public, who say that hair has just become too expensive. In fact, that’s what prompted Dani, the woman who was left to blow dry her own hair, to post on TikTok. ‘Seeing on my For You page, hair stylists lamenting that people aren’t coming in at the rate they once were, it’s hard for me to empathize because the prices are going up, but the experience of luxury doesn’t feel luxurious.'”
I’m going to read that last part one more time. “Hair stylists are lamenting that people aren’t coming in at the rate they once were. It’s hard for me to empathize because the prices are going up, but the experience of luxury doesn’t feel luxurious.” Very clearly, and I will tell you, this TikTok, I think that the way that this TikTok specifically was done, I think this client did it really well. She didn’t look irate, she didn’t look… She kind of just stated the facts, and I think this point is valid. If you feel like you’re paying a luxury price point and then you’re handed a blow-dryer, that doesn’t feel like a luxury experience. Like A plus B doesn’t equal C on this one. I kind of get it.
I get where she’s coming from. If you’re going to raise your prices, and I coached to this in Thrivers, you’re perceived value is going to have to elevate too. You can’t just say cost of goods went up, it’s another $10. So there. It does not work in the mind of a consumer. We’re not a grocery store. We can’t pull that off the way that a lot of other businesses can. We simply cannot. We are a service relationship-based business, and we really have to keep that front of mind. So I want to sum up what this article was talking about and then I want to move forward to another article I stumbled upon while I was looking for this one. So this article does talk about the tidal wave of business that I’ve always spoken about that came on the heels of 2020. We lost 10% of our industry thanks to the pandemic, and I don’t mean thank you pandemic.
I mean that sucked. That was terrible. Losing 10% of an industry is massive and that’s what we lost just right around 10%. You’re talking over a hundred thousand people walked away. That led to a tidal wave of clients looking for new stylists. I talked about that very openly on the podcast in 2020 and 2021. Go back and listen. I talk about it over and over and over. I say, “This is a client surplus. We’re being artificially inflated. This demand won’t last forever. Don’t make permanent decisions to temporary problems.” I talked about it a lot. I also said, “This is the fastest, easiest time to build and grow a clientele. Don’t let it go to waste.” That was three years ago. So some people navigated that time really, really beautifully. In this clientele surplus, wind demand was high and some people made some impulsive decisions because they had to react to the way that the industry and the economy was changing but maybe weren’t quite sure how to do it.
So what we saw was a ton of boundaries being put into place. A lot of lack of customer service, very irrational pricing decisions were pulled, and I think that we as an industry got a little overly confident. I might even say cocky a little bit. The ego took center stage in a way where before it was like humility and connection. We lost it a little bit. And here’s the thing, that’s coming from me who has said for over a decade now, stylists should make great money. We do deserve to be well-respected. We should see our businesses as businesses. Profit does count. It’s cool to talk about money around here. I think you should make a killing. All that being said, you have to keep the ego in check as you do that or you’re not going to be able to reap the rewards. And I think that we got a little caught up in the surplus and stopped making really great business decisions.
And in 2022, I started talking about the great divide when I could see all those weird irrational decisions being made, the long-term decisions for short-term problems, I saw the triggers being pulled and that’s when I announced, I was like, “You all, our industry is headed for a huge divide.” We are in it. We are in the split. And these mainstream media articles are a huge indicator of that. So here’s another quote from the article that says, “Social media has provided a way for stylists to share prices and techniques, creating an online community that stretches from small towns to big cities. And when they started talking to one another, they realized they could look at their business differently.” Very interesting. So I’ve openly said that one of the things that makes our industry either weird or special or unique, depending on how you want to look at it, is that we are very interconnected.
It’s odd that we connect with hundreds of other people who work like this on Instagram. If you look at like a plumber’s Instagram, that plumber is not following a hundred fellow plumbers. But for us as stylists, we’re following 25, 50, a hundred other stylists and educators. And this is a very intranetworked industry in a way that truly most industries are not and that is being seen as a threat to consumers. They didn’t pick up on that until recently. What made them pick up on that? You all, we did that to ourselves. Think of all the videos that were coming up in 2021, 2022, even into 2023, making fun of clients, red flag posts, and then they could watch us commenting. They had their favorite stylist, maybe somebody they had wanted to go see for years, make this red flag client post and then see thousands of other stylists comment on it.
I truly don’t think that consumers understood how interconnected this industry was until we started making a fool of ourselves and then it became extremely obvious. So now they know and we need to work collectively to shift that perception because the perception is we all started talking to each other, made a collective agreement to do whatever we wanted and raise our prices and screw the guest. That is the tone of what’s being said. So you could look at this and be like, “Okay, that’s one article. Who cares?” Except for that, when I started doing, and I thought that for a minute too, honestly, you can ask my team. When I first chatted about it, I was like, “Oh my gosh, weird. This is a one-off.” No, no, it’s not a one-off. So this article got picked up for NPR. NPR did an audio piece on it.
I listened to it live when it came out, and it was interesting. Clients were calling in sharing their opinion on stylists and salon pricing and it wasn’t great. I looked for the recording of that piece. It was done just last week, and so I don’t believe the piece or the transcript is up on NPR’s website yet, but it’s worth looking for, for sure. Just so you could hear those clients calling in, I thought it was interesting. But while I was looking for that, I found a different NPR article and it features somebody named Brittany Luse, L-U-S-E.
And if you look up NPR hair braiding, this article will come up. So this article was republished by NPR on April 2nd, 2024. It was a little bit hard for me to find the source and the details. I think that this is actually something that was recorded a while ago and they are republishing it because this topic is buzzy and it seems like they’re trying to almost give the content a second life and give it another reboost, which just goes to show there’s buzz around this topic and they’re not going to stop talking about it.
Now, this wasn’t the only one when I searched this one, there were several articles. So there’s another article, How much should we tip? Plus, the hidden costs of getting your hair done. The tension behind tipping. There’s a lot of articles actually people upset about our industry and I just think it’s worth looking into, but I really, really want to talk about this one because again, I think it was really well done. This one, particularly to me, wasn’t written with a lot of bias. It was written very factually. So Brittany says, “This week we’re revisiting an exploration of hair braiding gone wrong. Online, women are looking to get box braids have gone viral with their complaints about confusing pricing structures, minimal care, and poor customer service.” You all, it’s the exact same complaints. This is a different article written by a different person written around the same time as the first one.
Or I really do think this is a reshare. I think this article is from a couple years back. I could not find the data, but that’s what my initial research was showing me. I could be totally wrong on that, but that’s how it looked like it was coming up. So different people, different specialties, different point of view, at the end of the article, gets to the same place in space that clients are frustrated with the price point versus the level of care and the level of customer service. It started off as like an audio podcast almost, so I’m going to read some of the quotes. So in the audio podcast, it’s doing audio clips from anonymous sources. So I don’t know if these were anonymous callers. I don’t know if this is pulled from social media posts, I’m not sure, but I’m going to read them to you.
The first one is, “I just called the Pennsylvania Cosmetology Board on a stylist because I read through her booking rules and it says she charges an extra fee for 4C hair.” Unidentified person number three said, “This lady’s prices go from 780 to a thousand dollars, and it does not include a wash, does not include detangling. You have to come in with your hair already blown out and straightened out.” Here’s another one, “Is the IRS aware of the fact that you stylists are charging a thousand dollars for braids?” People are coming for us considering reporting stylists to the board. “Should we notify the IRS?” This is wild, but this is the level of frustration that people have.
So Luse says, “Hair braiding is ultimately a business. You know that. I know that, but some of us are not acknowledging that with a business comes a transactional relationship. Both client and stylist will always want to maximize profit and minimize expense.” I could not agree more. That is called perceived value, everybody. And that’s where we’re getting jacked up a little bit. And I also love that Luse said, “Some of us are not acknowledging that with business comes a transactional relationship.” This is the call-up that we are getting, that not everybody is understanding. I have said for years, your clients are not your friends.
This is a business. And some of you were like, “No, no, no, my clients are my friends.” That’s totally fine. But you are going to play a different game at a different price point with a different level of expectation, and that’s great. There are neighborhood salons that are making an impact where everybody’s happy and that’s beautiful. If you want to be a stylist who is at a higher price point, I think that Brittany Luse is right in saying that a transactional relationship, it is not a friendship and we kind of have to choose.
You kind of have to choose. This is part of the great divide. Are you going to stay the friendly neighborhood salon? Which is great. You may not make as much money. You might not be as set for retirement. Your career might not be as lucrative, but you won’t have to level up your experience. You won’t have to be pressured to provide amazing value to your clients. You won’t have to take additional education. You won’t have to structure your business in a way that where it operates like a business. You won’t have to do any of those things. You won’t make as much money, not even close to as much money, but you won’t have to worry about any of this stuff and you can be friends with your clients. That’s a choice too. But to this article’s point, you do have to make the choice. So then Luse introduces somebody.
She’s calling Jouelzy, so she introduces Jouelzy as a public historian and YouTuber. She’s been one of the few people online dissecting the Instagram stylist conundrum through a historical and economic framework. And I love that because it just goes to show that Jouelzy actually spent the time doing the research, like isn’t just spouting off or sharing an opinion like the description is dissecting the Instagram stylist conundrum, called it a conundrum, through a historical and economic framework. This was done professionally. Jouelzy says, “One wants to make money, and so that’s their focal point, and one wants the lowest cost possible to the highest quality service.” When I say perceived value, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. “And so I do think there are some justifiable complaints that stylists hold about how customers engage with them. I also think on the consumer side, there are very legitimate complaints about the lack of customer service that is happening because everybody’s trying to cut corners.”
Perfectly said, perfectly said. I would really read this article as well. If you look up NPR hair braiding, that article comes up. And again, the Washington Post article, if you look up Washington Post hair stylist price, that’ll come up too. Join me down the rabbit hole. I just think a lot of these articles are very well-researched and just hearing the different perspectives, whether you agree with them or not, it’s important to be a part of the conversation and understand what’s happening. So coming to how do we make sure we don’t fall into this narrative? Here’s what we don’t do. We don’t fight against it. I think that everyone needs to kind of put down their weapons at this point and listen. I think the most powerful people in this world listen more than they speak, and let’s slow down and listen and not be defensive.
Because when I first read this article and really dissected, I got to a defensive place too, and then I took a step back and said, “But there has to be truth in this. There has to be some truth in this.” And what can we do to change this perception? Where can we be held accountable and how can we change the narrative? And I think that’s the best thing we can do is like prove them wrong. You know what I mean? So few things I would suggest.
One, choose your pricing model based on your target market clientele. So there are three main primary pricing methods in the industry today, à la carte, hourly session based, and then there’s a hybrid model as well. I’ve got a podcast where I talk about those. Now, I’ll reference it in a minute. I want you to choose your model based on your target market clientele, not based on what’s trendy, not based on what feels cool, not based on what you saw in a class that one time, not based on what the salon down the street does, not based on a trend. Based on your target market clientele.
Now, in Thriving Stylist Method, we coach to all of those pricing methods. Why do I coach to all of them? Because none of them are one size fits all, but all of them do serve a market, and so we unpack and talk about it. Choose the one that makes the most sense for you and your business. Instantly, it’s going to push against some of that resistance. Two, don’t make desperate posts on social media. You’re fueling the fire. I want to go back and share that quote again. This was Dani. Remember? She said, “Seeing on my For You page, hair stylists lamenting that people aren’t coming in at the rate they once were. It’s hard for me to empathize because the prices are going up, but the experience of luxury doesn’t feel luxurious.” Let me tell you what desperate looks like. When you make posts talking about compromising on pricing, when you make posts about all the openings you have.
When we share posts, I know we’re trying to connect socially. Believe me when I say I understand, but do it in a private community. When we share open posts on social media that say things like, “I have a lot less extension requests, how about you?” It’s like giving fuel to the narrative. If you want to fuel the narrative, I’ll let that be your choice. For me, I would prefer that like as… I tend to think that let’s imagine that Apple is having an issue with their iPhone. I don’t think they go on X or Instagram and say, “Is anybody else having problems with their iPhone?” I think they talk about it behind closed doors. That’s what smart business does. If a dentist is having issues with one of the tools he’s using, I don’t think he asked his clients, “The last time I did your filling, did it hurt too much?”
I think he talks about behind closed doors. I think that we need to be smart and have these conversations in a professional setting instead of airing our dirty laundry on social media. I personally have never coached to sharing pricing information on social media, price increases, cancellation policies, openings that are unexpected, like never ever, and certainly not now. So I think we need to take a giant step back from that. That would be my suggestion too. There was one more quote about social media also that I think is important to say.
This comes from the Washington Post article. “Social media may be playing a part in fueling the price hikes. There’s a genre of TikToks and Instagram Reels showing extravagant hair transformations purportedly costing thousands of dollars seemingly designed to get clicks and generate outrage.” So basically trying to go viral is what this is insinuating. “‘I call it a scam,’ says Brace of those videos, adding that in many cases, the clients are not even really paying for the service. It’s the brands that want to be featured that are underwriting some of this content. ‘They basically are paying them for product placement,’ she says. ‘I can tell you I’ve been to a ton of salons and people are not coming in and paying $1,500. It’s just not a thing.'”
Well, I know for a fact the clients are paying $1,500 to get their hair done, but it doesn’t matter what I know to be a fact. All that matters is the perception, and I don’t think that whoever Brace is the only person who believes her statement to be true. Okay? So the storyline is the perception, the storyline is the reality, and we have to be aware of that. Next, use the seven factors of pricing to determine your price point. If you go back and listen to podcast episode 221, I talk about the seven factors of determining your price point.
Listen to that. I have calculators available in Thriving Stylist Method that come totally for free. If you want access, we have a professionally engineered dynamic pricing calculator that literally balances all those things for you and tells you how to be positioned in your market, whether you want to be hourly, à la carte, or session-based, and we help you choose which method is right for you. Don’t just raise your prices because cost of goods goes up. Don’t just raise your prices because the person down the street did it. Don’t just raise your prices because it’s January 1st. Don’t just raise your prices because your rent is more expensive. Don’t just raise your prices because now you’re in a suite and everything’s higher. You can’t, you can’t. You fall into this trap. I don’t think you should take a profit loss as your business changes, but I do think you have to do these things in a strategic way.
Okay? So use those seven factors. Don’t just go pulling triggers. Always increase your perceived value is point number four. This article went so in hard on experience, on luxury prices with a non-luxury service, on not getting what you’re paying for. All of that comes down to perceived value, and let me tell you, everybody, there’s not as much perceived value as there used to be in drinking a beer while you get your haircut. We used to lean in heavy to like, “Oh, I offer snacks. Oh, I have wine. Oh, I’ve got custom music and playlists.” I don’t think that that’s what clients today are looking for. I don’t think they’re looking for icing on the cake. I think they want a really good cake recipe, and I think we’re trying to throw glitter sprinkles at them when they’re saying, “Can you use a higher quality flour? Thanks.”
I think that we’re tackling the wrong components. So episode 99 is called Perceived Value and Charging Your Worth. Listen to that if you haven’t already done so. Also, episode 270 – Pricing for the Market Shifts as a Hair Stylist is a really great listen as well. I’d suggest you go back and listen also. But if I can suggest one thing, literally listen to these two, or read these two articles that I just mentioned and form an opinion about them, have a conversation about them. I’m okay if you get angry about them for a minute, but then I want you to choose to be a part of the constructive narrative.
Choose to take accountability where you probably should, if you should. I don’t know. I don’t know what your business looks like, but consider owning the pieces where you may have gotten a little caught up. Consider asking yourself like, “Has my ego been making any choices?” Consider asking yourself like, “Could my clients be feeling any type of way?” Ask yourself where could your communication improve. If you need any help or support, I’m always here to guide your way and as I always like to say, so much love, happy business building. I’ll see you on the next one.
