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 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 Siva, social media and marketing strategist just for hairstylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
What is up and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Britt Siva, and we’re gonna do a little throwback episode. This is something I did, it’s been a couple of years. And we’re gonna bring it back around and I’d love to hear what you think. We’re gonna do a you ask, I answer listener Q&A submission episode. We get asked questions every single day. iTunes rating and reviews is where we pulled most of these questions from. I get dozens of DMs on Instagram every single day asking questions. We get emails submitted to the business, I mean, all over the place. And we pulled some of the more recent ones. I decided on this episode I wanted to give back a little bit to everybody. So I’m going to do hot take Q&A broken down into four categories. I’m first gonna speak to salon owners specifically.
We’ll do a few questions submitted by salon owners about leadership topics. I’m gonna talk to commission/employee based stylists, and then we’re gonna talk to independent stylists and at the end it’s just gonna be like hot topics all the way around. I think this could be really fun. I’d love to know if you like this format, if you have questions you’d like to submit, we can keep this going as a regular thing. And it’s a nice way to give some rapid fire quick free coaching to all of you beautiful listeners without anybody having to do an in-depth one-to-one coaching session and to give back kind of at scale and at large rather than doing a deep dive. So let’s give it a shot. So let’s start by diving into our salon leaders/owners segment with question number one. This owner says, “I’ve owned my salon for 11 years with a team of 30 plus.
We have an established training program in place. A group of six or seven stylists joined us before that program even started, and now they feel stuck, left behind watching newer hires progress faster than they are.” In response, these senior stylists are pushing the front desk for accountability on how to get new clients distributed. How do I coach these veteran stylists through the mindset shift and get them motivated? Couple of things are coming up for me there. So one of the things I always say is I don’t consider myself an educator. I truly consider myself a coach. And whenever anybody asks me any question, I dissect the question in full before I respond because my goal is not to give an answer. My goal is to deeply understand the challenge and not always give what you want and instead serve up exactly what you need. I found that it was very interesting the phrasing of this question.
The phrasing of the question is that the veteran stylists are pushing for something. They’re asking for accountability from the front desk. How do I coach these veteran stylists through a mindset shift and just get them motivated? So this owner has already decided what the solution is. This owner has decided that the solution is that the veteran stylists just need to change their mindset and get themselves motivated if they want to have, it sounds like, more of the new guest request pool coming their way. I disagree. And so to answer this question, I have to start with some coaching for the owner. It is always going to be challenging for a veteran staff when you as the leader decide to change the structure of the business, which is exactly what happened when you put in this new established training program. The new established training program might be exactly what the salon business needed.
I have nothing against it. It’s likely lovely. That’s all wonderful. But you have this group of, you know, about 20% of your staff who did not experience that. And your take is those veteran stylists are watching the new stylists grow faster and are asking for a reward rather than doing the work. It, I feel like that’s what your perspective is versus those veteran stylists feel like you changed the terms on them. When they started at the business, it looked like X, now you’ve decided it runs like Y. They stuck with you through the change, but now they’re kind of in, if you watch Stranger Things, they’re in the upside down. Like they’re in this world that they didn’t choose because they thought they were entering a different reality. It’s okay that you decide to change the structure, but now they’re kind of lost in the sauce because to what you said, they did not go through the training program.
So you’re expecting them to have the mindset and the drive of the people who did go through the training program, but they did not. They had a completely different journey in the industry and in your space. So we can get them aligned, we can get them down with the culture, we can get them to feel good about how the front desk operates, but it’s not gonna be about getting them through a mindset shift. Instead, what I think you actually need is a cultural shift. And I would look at those veteran stylists and for me, I’d ask myself, do they have a growth plan? And then zooming out even further, how does the front desk decide who gets the new clients? Is there a system for that? And have you laid that out? Is the system whoever has the most availability gets the new clients? If that’s the system, I think the system is flawed.
So I would go back and look at the system first and foremost, and I would kind of agree with the veteran stylist that if it’s like whoever is the least busy gets the most prizes, I don’t know that I would go that direction. Of course, the goal as a salon owner is to fill the chairs of the newer talent, absolutely, but they’re operating at a lower price point. They’re operating at a lower skill level. It does not behoove the salon to only have new clients going to, to the most junior team members. That’s not the strongest business strategy. So I’d first look at the strategy overall and say, you know, do we have a, a process for how the front desk decides where new requests or, or salon clients go? Does the team at large know what the process is? If not, we’d start there.
Once the process is established, it’s not about anybody pushing pressure on anybody else to fill their chair. It’s this is how it works around here and decide if you want to work in a place that’s set up like this or not. Like it becomes more simple than that. When I find that veteran stylists are feeling frustrated in the way it seems that these team members are, they likely feel like they’re wondering if there’s a place for them in this business any longer. What is their motivation to stay? How can they grow? And if, what I have found in talking to stylists is if the, it’s the only way for them to grow is to increase their monthly service revenue so that they get, you know, the same commission, but on more money so it’s a, the same size piece of a larger size pie, that is a tough model to sell long term.
So when we say growth path, it’s what are the things they’re still working towards other than raise your prices, raise your average ticket, that’s considered growth. It has to be a bit more sophisticated than that. So I would look at the path and plan for new guests. What is the division plan for that? And then what is the growth plan for not just these stylists who went through the education program, but your veteran stylists who have been with you through thick and thin, who are still there, still wanna grow with you, but are for whatever reason, not feeling motivated. Question number two. I’ve owned a booth rental salon for six years and business is thriving, but when stylists leave, I’m faced with slander, bad reviews, sometimes even lawsuits, despite solid leases and fair treatment. And considering giving up the business out of fear, can you talk about the fallout owners face when stylists give notice?
I can. And what I will say is I’ve seen it from all sides. One of the things that is a bit unique about me as a business coach is I don’t just coach salon owners and I don’t just coach stylists. Most of the other business coaches in the industry only coach stylists or only coach owners when it comes to business strategy and success. I have a program for both. And what it gives me is individual conversations with all sides of the industry. I talk to booth renters every day, commission stylists every day, commission owners every day, independent owners every day, hybrid salon owners every day. I get to have these very diverse conversations and see all different points of view. I see salon owners who have stylists leave and there is not a drop of slander. There’s no bad blood. The salon owners is happy for that person.
Maybe they’re sad, maybe they liked working with that person, but at the end of the day, they understand that it’s rare to keep a stylist, you know, in one salon for their entire career lifespan at this point. And so turnover is kind of just part of the deal and it’s all good and the stylist doesn’t move on and doesn’t say anything negative and they just go their separate ways. Then there’s salon owners I talk to who have experienced multiple walkouts and have experienced definitely slander, sometimes lawsuits, definitely bad reviews. I have salon owners who have reached out to me and said that there’s Facebook routes and social media chats dedicated to bashing specific salon owners. Like I had just heard and seen all things on the extreme ends. Here’s what I’ve come to know for sure is that hurt people hurt people. And I don’t know why the stylists who are leaving you are hurt.
I am not there on the day-to-day, but when an owner has team members leave and the repercussion is slander, bad reviews and lawsuits, that person is mad, really mad, and has an ax to grind and is holding a grudge. And we as the owner can say, “But I have been a wonderful owner. I don’t know why they feel that way.” There’s either an element of lack of accountability and you as the owner are kind of living in the reality of, “You know what? I’m doing my best. Take it or leave it. This is how I am.” Well, that’s fine. And then people are gonna take it or leave it. And some people who leave it are gonna have a real bad taste in their mouth because they felt like maybe you weren’t showing up as a leader or maybe you lost interest in leadership. Booth rental is really hard.
And here’s what I will say. A lot of salon owners who own booth rental salons feel like their job is to create a beautiful space where salists can build their own business and that’s it. That was true in 1997. That is not true today. When I look at really successful booth rental salons and booth rental salon owners, man, do they care deeply about their people. And I’m not talking about misclassification. There’s no funny business going on, but they are leaders. They’re not bosses or managers, but they are leading a team, they’re building a culture, they’re creating opportunity. Like they take their job as a salon owner really seriously. Booth rental leaders who are kind of just phoning it in are more likely to have stylists leave with a bad taste in their mouth who do retaliate. I am never a fan of team members leaving in retaliation.
I, I think it makes everybody look bad. I don’t think it makes the stylists look slick. I don’t think anybody wins when that happens. But when I look at salon leaders who do face that kind of backlash, it’s almost always a leader who at least in part is complicit in some of the frustrations. A lot of it comes from a place of just owners not realizing what stylists expect from owners these days, which has changed really radically. That being said, if you are an owner who’s facing slander, bad reviews, lawsuits, the lawsuits specifically get a great attorney on hand. I certainly have had to had one every single year that I’ve owned a business. I understand how frustrating that can be. The law can protect you from a lot of those things. If it’s true bullying, if it is true slander, there is a lot that can be done legally.
Don’t be afraid to call the sheriff if somebody is crossing a line. I certainly have. You have to do what you have to do to show that you mean business and you take your business seriously. That being said, what I have found is when stylists leave a, a salon owner or a leader who clearly means business and is very smart and knows what they’re doing and knows what they’re talking about, there’s not a lot of backlash because for anybody to go up against a professional leader, the other people who are still in the building will often stand up for that leader and it really discredits the claims. And so it stops being even an interesting conversation to host when several other people are gonna jump in and be like, “Yeah, that’s not how this leader operates.” And so what you wanna make sure is that you really are building a strong, solid reputation for yourself so that if somebody does come in and, and want to say negative things about you, I am certain there are people who have worked for me who weren’t a fan or aren’t happy now.
You want to have been a good leader and know what leadership looks like and do a lot of the things right so that your credibility and your reputation speak for itself. That overcomes a lot of these things naturally. But if somebody is talking about you, you have to hold your head high and keep plowing through. Whenever I have somebody say anything negative about me, I always use it as an opportunity for self-growth, for accountability, to see where I failed that person. Sometimes I never should have hired that person and it was on me. I made a bad hire and of course they’re leaving miserable. I was miserable when they were here. So of course they’re miserable and leaving. We have to look well-rounded at the entire thing, figure out what our piece in it was, have a defensive stance against the lies and things that aren’t true about us, but also have credibility and reputation that stands for itself so that those invalid claims can’t even stand on their own.
Question number three. I’m struggling to distinguish booth renters from employees in my branding and my booking. Should they be clearly differentiated on my website and is it worth giving each renter their own booking link even if it adds frictions for clients booking multiple services within one visit? The quick answer is yes, booth renters, in my opinion, should have their own booking sites and booking links even if it causes friction. That is for legal reasons more than anything else. The IRS decides employee versus contractor by looking at the degree of control and independence across three categories. So it’s behavioral control, financial control and relationship of parties. When you look at any independent group of stylists who are on a shared booking system, almost immediately misclassification becomes the decision the IRS makes. I have gone through an IRS audit in my business looking for misclassification. My experience was they were going to do anything they could to prove that I misclassified people.
And by the way, I legally didn’t and by the way, we got out and we didn’t have to pay any fines, but I will tell you we had to fight tooth and nail and I knew I had legally classified everybody. I did not have any funny business. And even though I had done everything correctly, they were absolutely looking for an opportunity to find misclassification. A shared booking system, I don’t know how you would walk your way out of that. Genuinely, from somebody who has gone through an audit, I don’t know how you would defend that. It would be very challenging. So I would have independent booth rental stylists on their own booking system. That being said, I would not have the website differentiate these are our employees and these are independent people. As a client, they just wanna come in and have a cohesive experience.
Do I understand that booking is more challenging when a client sees, you know, an employee for one thing and an independent for another? Absolutely. However, you’ve chosen a hybrid salon structure, that’s kind of one of the wrinkles in the plan. I would keep everything separate. However, I would still make it appear on your website and on your socials that you’re a cohesive team. It does not matter how everybody works. They’re all a part of the team. You all share space, you respect each other as professionals. It should still feel very cohesive from a branding marketing messaging standpoint, even though it’s separate from a booking standpoint. Let me take a quick break to thank Square for supporting today’s episode. I had a member Jocelyn tell me that she doesn’t use Square for booking because she was already established in another booking system that she loved, but she chose to add Square as her payment processor instead of the one that was built into her booking system because she found significantly better rates with Square.
She was worried that she’d end up making a mess of things having a separate booking and credit card processing system, but Square’s end of month reporting is so easy to read. She says she can use those reports to crosscheck against her booking system in just minutes and it’s easier than she even hoped for. We talk a lot about all-in-one solutions and Square offers those too, but if you’ve been hesitant to take a look at Square because you absolutely love your booking system, take a lesson from Jocelyn and see if you can integrate Square with the booking system you’re hooked on and lock in a better rate. You know me. I love Simple, but there’s nothing I love more than saving money where I don’t have to waste it. And if you haven’t compared rates yet, now is a great time to start. So if you’re just getting started or you’re running a business that deserves better tools than what you’ve got, right now you can get up to $200 off Square Hardware at square.com/go/thriver.
That’s S-Q-U-A-R-E.com/go/T-H-R-I-V-E-R. Run your business smarter with Square. Get started today. Now we’re gonna shift into our employee based stylist questions and brings us to question number four. What percentage should a commission stylist expect to take home? How long should they stay at that percentage before asking for more? And when and how should they ask? So much time back there. Again, it goes back to me being a coach, not an educator or a teacher. I don’t think an employee-based stylist should be in a position where they’re asking for more. I don’t think they should have to. I think there should be an established growth and compensation plan where there’s always an opportunity to be making more, whether it is an always growing hourly rate, an always growing commission rate, there’s just always opportunity for growth. Somebody who is doing $8,000 a month behind the chair as a stylist should not be making the same commission percentage as a stylist doing $15,000 a month behind the chair, in my opinion.
The impact on salon bottom line and all of the other things is significantly more impactful when a stylist is producing almost double the revenue. And so a salon can afford, in my opinion, to pay more. And when we look at those in thriving leadership that we’re coaching through their budgeting, it’s incredible to see people finding deeper profit margins when they compensate more over and over and over again. It’s not to the salon owner’s detriment. The stylists are winning, productivity is going up all the way around. It’s only a win-win. So when this stylist is saying what percentage should a commission stylist expect to take home, I will say, again, as somebody who has seen the backend financial statements thousands of times over of employee stylists, independent stylists, salon owners, when I look at independence and employee-based stylists, I would say the average is somewhere between 45 and 50%, even with booth rental stylists.
That being said, when I look at a high performer, whether they be a booth renter or a high-performing employee based stylist at let’s say a thriving salon, like a thriving leadership salon, I mean, I’m seeing take home pay percentages, 55%, 60%, 65%. And so whenever I see anybody on social media saying it’s impossible to make over 60% commission as a stylist when you’re independent, it’s simply not true. Like I’ve just seen hundreds of times over that being proven incorrect. So it does depend on what your production is. So when you say what percentage should an employee-based stylist expect to take home, it really depends on what your production looks like. If you’re a stylist who’s doing $3,500 a month in services, I mean, I don’t know, you might be closer to 32%, 33% because there is just not enough profitability to pay you more than that.
You probably couldn’t afford to rent a booth, right? So it, it really is very situational. Another related question I’m gonna add on to is a stylist who said, I’ve been a commission stylist for 10 years and I feel taken advantage of by service fees stacked on top of my commission cut. I’m considering renting a chair, but I’m scared. Is renting smarter than commission in the long run? I don’t think renting is smarter than commission in the long run. I think it’s two completely different ways to run a business in the industry. I love both. I think different strokes for different folks. I’ve met deeply successful independent stylists. I’ve met people who went independent who should not have because they don’t have the skill set to run a business and, and frankly, maybe they don’t even have the interest or desire to. And that being said, I know some employees who are deeply compensated and are like, “Why would I ever go independent?
It’s too good here.” I’ve just seen it all. When you say being taken advantage of, you know, I don’t find that most stylists are being taken advantage of. Once in a blue moon, I do. Sometimes, and I always call an owner out on it when I see it, but usually not. Usually an owner is doing their best and they’re just struggling to understand their finances, and so they’re running compensation plans out of fear rather than fact. One of the things I’m passionate about is I don’t coach to service fees. You won’t find that in our compensation method. If we tell a stylist they’re making 45%, it’s not 45%, but then we take a service fee off the top of that. If we say 55%, it’s not 55% minus a $10 color charge. Nope. It’s if you did a $100 service and you’re at a 55% commission, you make 55 bucks.
It’s very, very clean. I think service fees can be used in a really manipulative way. I think they’re confusing. I think they create resentment and they’re also unnecessary. There’s just smarter ways to run business. I think that coaching companies started layering in service fees. I don’t know if it was like a temporary bandaid fix or just lack of knowing a better way, but it doesn’t need to be done that way. There’s smarter, cleaner ways to do it financially for everybody involved. Question number five. I’m a top producer at an employee-based salon. My boss is raising my prices, but the salon feels outdated and the other stylists are complacent. How do I justify charging more in a space that feels subpar, and what can I do to add value to the client experience so that I feel confident about the increase? I would need to look more at why that price increase was determined.
So when we look at price increases in thriving stylist method, we only do it one way, and it’s always using our eight factor dynamic pricing calculator. It used to be seven factors, now it’s eight. We don’t look at one thing, we look at eight different things and their relationship to each other. So if one of the eight factors goes up, but another one goes down, sometimes the price doesn’t increase at all, and that’s why we call it a dynamic pricing calculator. A lot of pricing methods will say, “Oh, pre-booking is up and service revenue is up, price increase.” Nope, that can cause somebody’s business to tank. Very dangerous. So instead we look at eigh different factors, and if you look up Thriving Stylist podcast, eight factors of pricing, I have a whole episode that breaks them all down. We look at all eight factors, their relationship to each other, and decide when somebody needs a price increase.
If you were to run yourself through that calculator, it were to say, “Hey, it’s time for a price increase,” it does not matter what the salon decor looks like. Like the, the pricing calculator will not lie, so I would trust that. I don’t know why your boss is raising your prices. If they’re doing it just because you took a new class or you have the most demand, then I don’t know if it’s justified. It’s not enough information for me to weigh in on, but what it sounds like is you’re nervous, and it sounds like you’re not confident in the stylists who are working to the left and to the right of you, and you’re not confident with the salon ambiance, perhaps the brand, perhaps… I mean, overall business sophistication, I don’t know. I don’t know exactly what the challenge is, but that’s the deeper question, like, is this a salon that you can grow at?
Can you reach the next level working here? Are there things that are making you feel like your business cannot scale to where you want it to simply because of the environment you’re in? Those are bigger questions that I would start leaning into and asking yourself, “Is my fear around pricing environmental? Is it because I don’t understand why my prices are being raised?” I would look at where that fear is rooted in and start there. Okay, next we’re gonna go on to question number six, and this is gonna be speaking to independent stylists in this little section here. So this stylist says, “My salon owner isn’t renewing the lease, and our team is considering starting a micro salon in a salon suite. Have you heard of this trend, and what are your predictions for the future of these small salons?” Micro salons are doing incredibly well, like, incredibly well.
There are some micro salons in studio suite buildings that have been there for years, and I look at them and I’m like, “These people are not going anywhere.” It is such a successful concept. People are very interested in working in a space like that, and I think clients like it too. It’s enough buzz and energy that it’s a bit more dynamic than let’s say a solo studio suite, but it’s not as busy as, like, a 14-chair salon. It’s just a different environment. I don’t think it’s necessarily better or worse. I think it’s different, and I do know them to be incredibly successful. Anything with, like, five chairs or less, I think, could be considered, like, a micro-salon, but even at five chairs, it’s kind of like, well, no, you just have a salon. When somebody says micro-salon in its Truist form, what I find is it’s often, I guess you would say, a co-op where there’s multiple owners.
They’re not necessarily one leader, but several people sharing space working together cohesively. That’s what I most often see when a, a salon is classified as micro-salons. What I will say that I see often happen is that let’s say three people or four people are in a similar situation to you and decide to go off on their own together and open what they’re calling a micro salon, and it’s four independents and they’re all kind of leaseholders on the space, or maybe one person signs the lease and… But we’re all in this together, and we’re all partners, and we’re here as friends, and it’s gonna be kumbaya and amazing. That has had a lifespan in every situation I’ve seen. I’m, I’m trying to think of… I- I’m sure there’s some collectives of three or four that have made it past five years together. It would be more rare.
Usually what happens is somebody has to define themselves as the leader, like having four people each with 25% say in the business is pretty much a recipe for disaster. It’s hard to get four people to fully align on everything, and so rifts form, somebody decides to be part-time, they want to have to pay less than everybody else because they’re not gonna be there as much, they wanna sublease their station. “I wanna be in charge of marketing. I don’t like the way you’re marketing. “It’s just, it starts to be complicated as more opinions become involved. When I see micro salons go well, usually there’s still one person at the helm who is respected as the primary decision maker, and at the end of the day, their say goes. That’s where I see more of the longevity. You can still work with three other people that you really respect and that you have some level of partnership with, but at the end of the day, there kind of has to be somebody who’s a decision maker for the longevity to make sense, because as all businesses do, it will grow and change, life changes.
What if somebody in this micro salon decides to move across the country? Now what? Do they get bought out? Do they just pick up and go? Are they responsible for filling their chair? Are you three now on the hook for finding somebody else you wanna work with? What if you don’t like the person who comes in? It, it just starts to become complicated. So micro salons are very successful from what I’ve seen. They are generally the most successful, have the most longevity when one person is at the helm. Business partnerships are incredibly difficult to run successfully. It’s unfortunate. I’ve seen some of the most healthy business partnerships crash and burn unexpectedly. Like I’ll look at people and I’m like, “Ah, see, there’s a super successful salon partnership.” And then a year later, they’ll message me and be like, “Yeah, we broke up.” And it’s just hard.
It’s just hard. And so I do think micro salons are the best when one person is at the helm. Question number seven. “I’m booth renting with a decent clientele base and some schedule gaps with seven to 10 new guest requests a month. I have a chance to open my own salon in a nearby town of about 1,000 people versus my current town of about 3,000. This new spot is close to a bigger city. How much does location matter? Is social media and advertising enough to thrive somewhere small or should I look for more traffic? “I have to tell you something. So I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to travel to a very rural part of the US. It was in a city and state I’ve never been to before. Shout out to the salon team who I got to visit. I had just the most amazing three days out there.
I was mind blown. This was a community that, that is the… It’s the most rural place I have ever been to. I am in California, but the community I live in is population 11,000. So I know we’re not the smallest community ever, but we’re also not a big town, big city. This was population probably 10% of that. It was much smaller, so much more similar to what you’re referring to. And then there was pockets where there was a bit of bigger communities kind of around the parts and pieces, but I was like, “Wow. I mean, this is really a more rural area.” What this salon is pulling off is unbelievable. And they are pulling in interest from towns an hour away, 90 minutes away, and the clients that are coming to the salon have the option to go to the salon in the big city and are instead choosing to go to this, I would call it more of a destination location.
It’s not even like a vacation community. It’s, it’s really a destination going there though, and it’s because what they’ve created is exceptional. Often imitated, never duplicated, it was second to none. I looked into their competition. Their competition to me appeared to be incredibly soft compared to what they had built, and they had built something that was worth driving to. They had built something that was worth talking about. They had built something that was simply a cut above and it worked. Financially, it worked. Hiring, it worked. Demand-wise, it worked. Expansion, it worked. Like it just worked. So from what I’ve seen, location matters, but perceived value, brand, messaging, knowing your target market, pricing, positioning, guest experience matters more. That’s what I have seen play out in real time. Okay, section number four, hot takes for everybody. So question eight, how do you feel about a la carte pricing?
Should haircut pricing be based on length, long versus short? And does a women’s shortcut count under the men’s cut category? So first things first, I have only ever coached to gender neutral pricing. I have never coached to men’s cuts versus women’s cuts as a general stance. That being said, I do know that some people choose to price and charge like that. I also know that it’s illegal in some states. So if you do charge like that, I would look up the legalities in your city and state because you may not actually be able to, even if it’s your preference to do it. So definitely look into that first. In episode 160, I was talking about haircuts and pricing and price differentiation. And one thing that I made clear was that if you’re cutting a man’s hair and it takes 45 minutes and you’re cutting a woman’s hair and it takes 45 minutes, they should be paying the same amount.
It’s the same end results, they’re in your chair for the same amount of time. That is the value of your time, that is the value of the end result they’re receiving. I’m of the belief that clients are paying for results, not process. That being said, when you’re doing a service that’s a complicated process, it is a complicated result. So it’s naturally going to end up costing more. But rather than looking at the parts and pieces of what happens in a visit, when you look at all of our pricing models, we are making sure that the value of a stylist time always makes sense and they’re never being undercut or overcharging simply because, you know, of who’s sitting in their chair or the nuts and bolts of the service being done. We just look at value of time and cost of services overall. When it comes to length and density, it’s actually interesting.
There are some state guidelines on this that I think maybe people aren’t even aware exist. So there’s all different ways to look at pricing and timing. There’s equitable pricing and timing. There’s straight up, you know, value of your time pricing and timing. We talk about all of those different options and thriving stylist methods. So whatever, you know, values aligns for you, you can do. I found an interesting article from the New York Department of State. Their guidance is different hair, different price. The example shared was a client with shoulder length hair versus a client with short hair requesting different cuts can and should be charged differently because the time and, and skill to achieve the results might be different. I though that was interesting because often we’re saying if the end result is a haircut, it should be the same price. But when you looked at this legal government website, they were saying not always because if somebody does need to be in the chair longer or there is a different level of sophistication, that is not necessarily equitable.
And it kind of like flipped the idea on its head of what is really appropriate charging and timing. End result matters. And if the end, at the end of the day, walking out with a great haircut is the goal, then of course it’s the same end result. However, level of education, level of confidence, level of skill and level of time are factors as well. And it was interesting to see from a government website stating actually it doesn’t make sense to have the price point always be the same simply because the end result was the same. It’s just interesting. And it was another nod to like look up your state guidelines because you never know what’s mandated in your area when it comes to timing pricing until you look it up. And it does vary so much state to state. That being said, I like a la carte pricing.
I like session-based pricing. I’m fine with hourly pricing. It’s not my favorite. I think that hourly pricing is the easiest way to get shortchanged in my opinion, in the research that I’ve seen. But that being said, there are some people in the way in which they work that it’s fine. And so in Thriving Stylist Method, our calculator does speak to all three of those methods. What we talk to is market position. So in some market positions, a la carte makes the most sense. In some market positions, session-based makes the most sense. And we have tools that kind of walk you through how to decide what is best for you. Question number nine. I’m a licensed cosmetologist, not currently behind the chair. What’s your take on stylists joining the MLM movements and selling these products to clients? Could partnering with an MLM benefit a stylist business or does it do more harm to their reputation long-term?
So I have a sense of where this question is coming from. On episode 424, I was talking about a certain haircare brands model and I mentioned that it was progressive. And it was progressive in the sense that stylists and salon owners could sell this retail brand without having to stock inventory and product was shipped directly to the client. And I wasn’t weighing in on if the product itself was good or bad. What I was saying was it was disruptive and it was shaking retail norms in the industry. And I though putting pressure on retail brands to really rethink this concept that there’s only one way to have retail sales happen in the salon. Of course there’s not. And we see this brand who is being disruptive and changing interest in selling retail in salons do it effectively. That being said, I never named a brand name for 100,000 different reasons.
I, I don’t know enough about the brand. I’m not sponsored by the brand. I, I don’t care to try the brand. It’s not my bag. I was really focusing on what had happened because a brand was bold enough to try and do things differently and I’m seeing people take interest in it. And that was my point of view. One of the things I will say is the brand that I was talking about, this nameless brand that I didn’t get into, openly says we’re not an MLM. And if you look at regulations on multi-level marketing brands in recent years, there has been massive shift in regulation and what is legally allowed. And most brands and companies that were formerly considered to be multi-level marketing have had to radically change the way they were set up to comply with new laws and regulations. So I can’t even say, you know, that that was an MLM.
I’m gonna assume that they’re in compliance with all new regulations and the term MLM is actually really changing. So look into that for certain. What you may have though MLMs were likely has changed. When you ask the question, does working with a company that’s set up like that harm a stylist’s reputation long term? I don’t know. I think it depends on their approach. I think that any stylist who is bad at sales will harm their reputation. Any stylist that takes a bad approach to anything could harm their own reputation regardless of what it is they’re selling or the actual company they’re selling with. If they’re not doing it in a way that feels effective and feels self-serving and doesn’t feel like it’s actually in good faith, then yeah, they’re gonna harm their reputation. If a stylist is working with any brand that they believe in and selling in a way that is highly effective from the heart, no, I don’t innately think that, that a partnership like that would harm a reputation at all.
Now, when you say, is it of benefit to a stylist business? What I will say is that most companies set up like the retail company that I can only assume you’re referring to, most companies like that have to do legal financial disclosures every year, and this company does. And you can look up in 2025 what the average representative of this company took home. There’s always gonna be outliers on either side, right? People who sold nothing and made nothing and lost money and people who have made multiple six figures. I’m, I’m certain. And then there’s the average. And what I would say is inform yourself, educate yourself and then decide what you’d want to do with it. Candidly, I think that partnering with a retail brand that is set up like the one that we’re referring to could be as successful as partnering with another retail brand.
If the other retail brands created profitable commission structures for stylists, I’ve said this very openly, for such a long time, retail and haircare companies gave salons the best possible deal. For so long, there were haircare brands that only were sold in salon. You could not buy them on websites, you could not buy them at Sephora. They were not available at Ulta. There was no direct to consumer. If a client wanted a specific shampoo or styling product, they had to go to a salon. And that’s when retail was extremely effective and deeply profitable for salons. We moved tens of thousands of dollars in units in retail every single month in our salon. I was there in the early 2000s. It worked. I don’t imagine we would be able to pull off that volume today because the competition we’d be receiving specifically from like a great haircare brand’s own website would be too strong for us to compete against.
I think there’s opportunities for any haircare brand to choose to partner in a more effective way with salons. I have yet to see a, a s – a haircare brand do it in a meaningful way. I’m still waiting. I’m still here, ears wide open to find a haircare brand who’s willing to, and I’m interested to see what that would look like. But I think that there’s an opportunity for any stylist or any salon owner to have success selling retail products, haircare products if the agreement and arrangement is profitable, makes sense, and it’s a brand that whomever’s selling it is passionate about. Okay. I said I was gonna do 10 questions. There was only nine I was excited about. That was it for this episode. I’d love to know what you think of this question mashup. Let us know in our iTunes ratings and reviews. Let us know on Instagram.
Let us know in all the places. As I always say, so much love, happy business building. I’ll see you on the next one.
