Intro: Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hairstylist, like you got into this industry to make big things happen? Maybe you’re struggling to build a solid base and want some stability. Maybe you know social media is important, but it feels like a waste of time because you 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 hairstylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist podcast.
Britt Seva:
What is up? And welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Britt Seva, and today we’re doing a little mid-year predictions podcast. So I’ve never done this before, which is always so exciting. I’ve been doing predictions podcasts since, gosh, I think 2017, 2018, or something like that. Go back and listen. There’s tons of them up. And what’s interesting is actually when you go back and listen to see where the accuracy falls. One of the things that I pride myself on is I do think I’m good at predicting stuff.
And it’s not because I make guesses that happen to be right, it’s because I’m looking at the economy, I’m looking at the industry, I’m paying attention to what’s actually going on, and I’m able to piece the puzzle together and say, okay, based on the facts, as an industry, as a stylist, as a salon owner, these are the things I suggest that you do to stay out ahead of the curve. Go back and listen to them. They’re pretty dead on. And what I’ve never done before is a midyear podcast. I’ve also never been a business coach for stylists in the middle of a recession, which by the way is what we’re in.
Somebody commented on my Instagram feed recently. I was talking about something. I don’t even remember what it was, and they were like, “How about we talk about the recession nobody’s talking about?” And I was like, “Do you not listen to the Thriving Stylist Podcast? I’ve been talking about the recession since early 2023.” When this person says that nobody’s talking about, we have pretty much every single benchmarker for a recession. But I always say, where’s the ministry of recessions to come out and declare it?
Because you’re right. When you look at government officials, they’re like, “We’re on the up and ups. Everything’s going to be fine.” Do you think that they want to publicly be like, “And listen, the economy’s not doing great in an election year?” It’s just not going to happen. And so when you look at the facts, which we’re going to get into some of the facts, we are in a recession. Inflation is ridiculously high, and we need to change the way we operate as an industry. Compound that with the fact that this industry will never be the same as it was pre-2020.
It will never be the same as it was in 2016, ’18, ’19, 2003. None of that is ever going to come back again. This industry is in the middle of a revolution. And if you’ve been listening to the podcast, you’ve heard me talk about this great divide thing. We are in it. It’s no longer upon us. We’re in it. But I don’t think everybody is seeing the benchmarks. In two, three years when a lot of stylists have had to walk away from their chairs or reduce their prices significantly, or we’ve seen a lot of salons close, we’ll be like, “Oh, I guess this is it.”
You are still, if you’re listening to this podcast in real time, which is June of 2024, you are still at the point where you can make a positive shift and change. This point won’t stay around even for another year. You are at the crossroads right now. Heck, our industry is at a crossroads. And my point in doing this half year check-in is to say, I think we need to be much more mindful about the way we move, the way we operate, the way we market, the way we handle our clientele, the way we handle our money.
I think we need to be sharper now than we’ve been in the last decade. And so I want to talk about what’s happening right this second, and then I will still at the end of December or early January release my 2025 predictions episode as I always do. But this is kind of like my mid 2024 marketing state of the economy check in. So if you joined me at the Thriving Stylist Tour stop in Chicago, a lot of this is going to sound like a repeat. To those of you who are in that place in space with me in Chicago, that is a night I don’t know that I’ll ever forget.
There was something really powerful that happened in that place and space. Huge part of it was the people that chose to be there that night. Just the conversations we had, the breakthroughs we shared, the collaboration. I personally never experienced anything quite like it. It was absolutely beautiful. So thank you if you were there in person. Thank you to our incredible host salon, City & Shore Salons. If you’ve never checked them out, absolutely do. It’s one of the most gorgeous salon spaces I’ve ever walked into.
I want to recap a lot of what we talked about that night because I could see it resonated with the group, a lot of heads nodding. And so I hope this resonates with you as well. So let’s first start by talking about today’s reality. 1.64 million people were laid off in the United States in 2023. 38% of companies say layoffs are likely in their organization in 2024. Imagine if almost 40% of all companies in the United States lay people off this year. What’s that going to do to unemployment?
Not going to be great. Google, Paramount, Disney, Meta, and Apple have all committed to layoffs. And listen, we’ve seen a lot of these things shake out. We could say like, “Oh, they already did those things.” No, they’re committing to more. They’re committing to more. And the reason why this is important is when big companies like the Googles, the Microsofts, the Paramounts, the Disneys, the Metas, the Apples lay people off, that will have a serious impact on small business, on government agencies, on literally everything.
It all trickles down. And by the way, one of the stats that always blows my mind is that the average wage at a lot of these big companies is well over $200,000. So when people with $200,000 a year jobs are losing their money, do you think that they’re spending as much when they go to Target? Do you think they’re spending as much when they go out and buy clothes?
No, they have to make different lifestyle changes too. So if they’re not spending as much as Target, what does that mean for the Target employees? We already saw… Did everybody see Target’s campaign? Actually, we’ll probably unpack this on a feature podcast episode about how they’re slashing their prices for the summer. The indicators are there that we are in an economic downturn, and it’s important for all of us as stylists to understand that because your clients are feeling that pressure.
I’m watching the industry react to that pressure in a very unfortunate way. What they’re saying is, I’m watching the industry go, “You’re hurting. I understand. I’ll hurt alongside with you. You are in a financial pinch. I’ll put myself in a pinch. Let’s struggle together, and then we’ll come up on the come up together.” If that was how it was going to work, I would totally get it. The problem is, historically in our industry, when everybody else is on the come up, are we? The economy will bounce back.
You can go back. We hit recessions about every 10 years and have for the entire duration of American modern economics. So the economy will bounce back. Historically, our industry doesn’t have this great comeback. You watch the tech sector have this great comeback. You watch retail businesses, like clothing businesses, Sephora, have these major comebacks. You don’t watch that in our industry. So this idea of you’re struggling and suffering, I’ll struggle along with you, their chances of a comeback are not the same as ours.
We can’t afford to put ourselves in the state of struggle to get down in the grind with everybody else. It simply doesn’t work like that. The other thing that we have to balance that with is for pretty much every working adult I speak to, joy, personal fulfillment, and time matters more than ever. I want you to think about yourself. For most of us coming out of the pandemic, the collective great realization is that time is our greatest asset. I always say there’s two great resources in this lifetime, money and time.
Money is the resource that we can always learn to make more of. Sometimes we’ll have less of it. Time is not really a more or less thing. The clock is always ticking, right? I will never be the same age as I was yesterday ever again. Yesterday’s gone now. So time is a finite resource. Money is an infinite resource. It comes, it goes. Time doesn’t work like that. And we can say things like, “Oh, you can make better use of your time, like time management.” Sure, but the sand glass is always ticking down.
I understand you as a stylist or salon owner are prioritizing time more. The reason I’m hammering this home is your clients are prioritizing time more as well. So we have spent as an industry the last few years being like, what about us? What about our time? What about our family? What about our needs? Fair. Totally fair point. But your clients are saying that too. Responses from us as an industry have to be faster. Our response time of “message me and I’ll get back to you within 48 hours,” 48 hours is too long.
Customers today are not willing to wait 48 hours. I expect that the clapback from this episode is going to be like, well, so Britt, you expect us to be responding to our clients seven days a week? No, I do not at all. But I also do not expect your clients to wait two days to find out if they can have an appointment with you or not. There is a middle ground in that, and it has nothing to do with you responding to clients daily. Responses have to be faster. Appointments have to run seamlessly and on time.
So I have found myself on the side of TikTok where clients are complaining about stylists. And of course, in turn, stylists are clapping back at clients and being like, well, they’re getting defensive. This is why we do things the way that we do. Do you think that clients are watching those defensive explanatory TikToks and they’re like, “Okay, great, fresh perspective. Love that?” They’re not. So what we have to do instead is change the perception of our industry as a whole. We can’t just make a TikTok in defense and hope that we’re going to change their minds and hearts.
We’re not. So instead, we have to change our behavior. One of the big complaints I keep seeing is that my stylist was running late. My stylist made me wait in the lobby. My appointment run long. It seems like everybody was waiting. Big complaint right now, and time is so valuable. Your time is valuable. Your clients are as well. And lastly, perceived value has to soar. So one of the big industry…
Well, some of the big industry mistakes I’ve seen made over the last three years specifically, I’m talking 2021, 2022, 2023, there are several mistakes that I think put our industry in a bind and set us in this position for this great divide that we are now a part of. And what do I mean by the great divide? If you’ve not heard me talk about the great divide, what I mean is a certain chunk of our industry, and I don’t know if it’s going to be 50/50. It might be less than that. It will be 50/50 hopefully at best, if I’m being honest, which is such a scary thing to say.
But I think a portion of our industry will continue to grow and do really well, will continue to be able to put food on their family’s table, grow forward, stay out ahead of the economy. A certain portion of the industry will. What I think will be a larger portion will set into a state of struggle, and a state of struggle unlike anything we’ve seen in recent years. I think it’s going to be really crunchy for a few years. And when that happens, stylists and salons who are in a state of struggle are going to come for the salons and the stylists that are not.
If you’ve heard me talk about the Ninja Turtle concept, I think it was the 2024 predictions episode. Go back and list it if you didn’t hear it already. It’s going to be uncomfortable, because for so many years we’ve been in this community over competition. We all love each other. Let’s all support each other as stylists. And it’s been so gorgeous and I loved to see it. That works when everybody’s on the up and up. Everybody’s not on the up and ups anymore. And when there is a downturn, the conversation usually shifts and it gets a little bit nastier.
We’re already starting to see it. I think it’s going to get worse. And I share this because there is still a chance for you listening to this to be a part of the industry that stays on the ups. It may not prevent you from experiencing the chatter and the negativity, but it will allow you to keep putting food on your family’s table and grow out ahead of the economy and all of the things. So here’s the big industry mistakes that put a target on our back, posts showing off high costs services.
Remember the post that we did a few years ago where it was like, “You want this look? It’s going to cost you $800.” And it was something that we did in a way to build confidence of like, no, we should be able to make money too. The intention was great. It created a bit of bitterness in the client’s mouths because it was kind of like, ooh, damn. It shocked them, which was the whole point. It was shock and awe content to make clients realize, well, the cost of color on this for me was a hundred bucks.
I got to pay my rent. It did. It showed them what it was all about. And had we stopped there might’ve been okay. The problem was we pushed too far. So that movement in and of itself made clients say, “Maybe hair is just a luxury.” I also see posts saying that. I see posts saying, “Getting your hair done is a luxury.” When you go back in time and look at the history of hair services and getting them done in salon and salon culture, it’s always been something that not everybody had to do.
But for a long time, being in the salon was community. It was connection. It was emotion. It was ritual. It was routine. As soon as we as an industry start promoting hair services are a luxury, you are just deepening this divide, I think, unknowingly. But man, are we making it harder for ourselves? We don’t want the narrative to come out of our industry to be seeing us for a cut and blowout and color is a luxury. We want hygiene to feel like a necessity. We want that community and the connection, the collaboration, and the validation.
All of the things that people get that are so beautiful from the salon, we don’t want to minimize that. And when we say things like coming to the salon is a luxury, we’re working backwards. Now, some price points are luxury price points. That’s fair. But when we make blanket statements like getting your hair done is a luxury, ooh, psychologically if that’s not working against us as a whole. We don’t want to be saying things like that. But posting those high ticket prices did sticker shock clients, and it made some clients say like, “I’m not even going to reach out for a price quote.”
Because maybe you in where you work, you can do a blonding service for 200 bucks. But if they see on Instagram that a blonding service is $800, now they’re not even going to reach out to you because they’re like, “Oh my gosh, $800. What has happened?” They don’t even think to make the question because they’re so embarrassed that they couldn’t even come close to affording the $800, they’re not even going to ask. We have to slow our role on that. Posts making fun of clients.
I saw one this morning. I thought we were done with this. And when I say posts making fun of your clients, it’s the ones where it’s like, my response when clients cancel at the last minute, and then it’s something snarky. My response when clients won’t pay a cancellation fee. My response when clients DM me to book instead of using my online booking system. My response when clients show up late holding a Starbucks in their hand. It’s funny to us. It’s backroom chatter. I get it. I get the joke.
I understand the punch line. I totally get it. We’re making clients feel like crap over and over and over again. Name one other business that is doing that, one other industry that is doing that and is being successful doing that. We’re hopping on these TikTok trends that are funny to watch from an entertaining perspective, meanwhile sticking our own business foot into our mouths. We got to cut it out. The charge your worth movement. I don’t believe in charge your worth pricing. That’s called emotional pricing.
So we talk a lot in our industry about emotional discounting. Can we talk about the flip side of that? Emotional price increases? Everybody’s on board with the emotional discounting thing. I started talking about emotional discounting in 2016. Everybody’s on board with that at this point. Why aren’t we talking more about emotional price points? And here’s an emotional price point. Well, I got to be able to cover my cost of goods. Well, the cost of me to run my business has gone up.
What do you want me to do? I want you to look at the seven factors of pricing and price yourself properly for your market. If you do not like where that calculation sticks you because you’re like, “Britt, if I charge that, I wouldn’t be able to cover my overhead,” then we have some options. We either need to find a way to reduce the cost of your overhead or find a way to increase demand to come in to see you. But we don’t just get to pop on whatever price tag we need in order to pay our bills.
It doesn’t work like that. We’re not in an industry where that’s possible. Next, emotionally based pricing decisions, we covered that. Slow to adapt. Our industry has historically always been very slow to adapt, slow to change, slow to be open-minded. And because of that, it puts us behind consumer trend. Burnout. Burnout has been a real buzzword in our industry for the last probably four years. I think we’ve been grinding for a long time, probably more like six, seven, eight years.
The industry hit a fever pitch right around 2016 and was like, “We’re going to own our futures. We’re going to work hard. We’re going to change the narrative.” That’s a long time to push. I understand that we as an industry are tired. Unfortunately, this is not a point where you can put your foot on the brake. You can’t even take your foot off the gas. As we’re looking at the state of the industry and the state of the economy, when we say things like the greatest businesses are built in recession, yeah, but also a lot of people lose their homes, a lot of people lose their businesses.
The average lifespan of a small business is 10 years. It’s something like 90% of businesses don’t make it past 10 years. Y’all, we’re on that 10-year cycle right now. This is make it or break it. The other thing that I think we’re doing as an industry that’s a big mistake is being overly guarded or gated. I think that coming out of 2020, there was this huge surge in demand to come in to see us as stylists. And it was like, remember if you were in a state like I was, I live in California, and we were shut down for I think it was like seven months.
Stylists were unable to work. I mean, the financial impact, the emotional impact was just devastating. And we kept saying, “We are essential. We are essential. We’re an essential industry. Let us work. We are essential to people’s lives,” because I truly believe that we are. But now look how we’re working it backwards. We’re like, well, we’re not essential though. We’re a luxury. You don’t need to come in to see us. And then we’re gating ourselves. We’re like, well, to come in to see me, you got to fill out an application.
Do these things. Wait three days. We’re making it so hard to be a part of our business. That had a season and a time. We are not in that season or time right now. So that’s an overview of the things that I think are holding us back. I want to talk about what we need to do to shift forward. My priority suggestions as you close out 2024 are going to be the speed of booking has never been more important. So we need to allow clients to be able to get on your books within an hour. Clients aren’t willing to wait a few days, a few hours to figure out if they’re able to be a part of your clientele or not.
They want to know now. So speed of booking is critical. Cancellations and rescheduling will increase. If you’ve not already seen that in your business, you will. I’ve talked to thousands of stylists at this point who are saying that, yeah, they’re seeing more reschedules. They’re seeing more cancellations, more moving appointments, more stretching out appointments. So just know that that’s coming. The counterbalance to that is having more demand to come in to see you so you can fill those gaps.
You’re going to need to get more flexible. And by flexible I don’t mean let go of your boundaries. By flexible I mean like a little more empathy, a little more compassion, a little more understanding. And then lastly, retention will wane through the industry and having a high new guest flow will be critical. Now, that’s an interesting stat. Because if retention wanes… So retention is our ability to sustain a clientele. If I’m a stylist and a client leaves me, where are they going to go? Well, they’re going to go see you and they’re going to go see you for a period of time.
And basically what you need to understand right now is when a client comes in to see you, it’s an interview. They’re trying to decide if the value of working with you is there for them, if you’re the person they should stick with, or if they should see you for two visits and move on to somebody else. But I think collectively we’re going to see a lot of shifts and movements amongst clientele. I think they’re going to date a little bit. I think they’re going to try new salons, try new stylists, see what’s up.
This is where the great divide comes in. The strong will not just survive, they will thrive. Some salon businesses will explode and some will implode. And you’re at the precipice of deciding where you want to be in that. As far as marketing priorities stepping into the last half of the year, Yelp and Google are your number one. Instagram is your number two. I’m going to stand by that. If you have more questions about that, leave me a rating or review here on iTunes, just an honest rating or review.
And then in your comments, ask me what questions you have about social media. But I’m going to leave it at that. If I was building a local small business right now, Yelp and Google would be my number one. Instagram would be my number two. Everything else would be third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh. Vulnerability and showcasing features and benefits is your number one marketing strategy. I’ll say that one more time. Vulnerability and showcasing features and benefits, features and benefits, is your number one marketing strategy.
Not after pictures of finished hair. That’s not vulnerable. It’s not a feature, and it’s not a benefit. It is time to really stand out in the marketplace. Every stylist and salon I know is showing photos of beautiful hair. So what does that say to clients? Everyone does good hair. What else do you have? Have you ever said to yourself, “I wish I had more referrals.” But if all your clients have to say about you is, “They are so nice. They are so kind. They really care about me, and they do great hair,” okay, next.
That’s on the resume of every stylist I know. Most stylists are trying to hit those benchmarks. What else do you have to offer? Well, my space is beautiful. Most salons are trying to create that. What else do you have? We have snacks. Okay, that’s very standard. What else do you have? So again, that goes back to the perceived value, but showing on social, on your website, vulnerability, features, and benefits of working with you is your number one marketing priority. Next, quit hiding in plain sight.
We talked a lot about this at the tour stop. Show who you are. There are so many stylists and salon owners out there who are like, well, I don’t want people stealing my intellectual property. I don’t want to show off our technique in the salon because I don’t want anybody else to take it. Well, not only is no one else going to take it, no one else is going to know what exists. So if you are doing cool stuff in your salon, don’t hide it. If you are unique, if you’re unique in the way you communicate with clients, the way you serve them, the way you do their hair, the results achieved, show it off.
Do not be afraid of being real, raw, and honest. It’s the best thing you can do right now. Focus on speaking just to your target market or markets. Let’s not try and go viral. Let’s not try and make a big juicy statement. Listen, unless that’s how you’re trying to grow and maybe get a sponsorship or something, I don’t know. But if your goal is to gain more local clients in your community, focus on that positive, positive impact. Lastly, it’s less about the engagement and more about the result.
Less about the engagement and more about the result. I connect with more stylists and salons right now who have a decent following, not even 10,000 followers, a decent following, maybe a thousand, maybe a little bit more followers, who are getting 6, 8, 12, 30 likes a post and are getting 100 new guest requests a month. It’s not about the engagement, it’s about the result. When I say 100 new guest requests a month, you’re like, “Well, no salon is doing that.” I shared earlier on the podcast a few months back, I know a salon that got 11,000 new guest requests last year.
And this is not a 20 chair salon. So if the idea is that some salons aren’t having massive demand, that’s just not true. It’s just that we are in the middle of this great divide and some salons are busting at the seams. Some stylists are busting at the seams and some are treading water. You get to decide what side you want to be on, but complacency is not an option. I hope this has been helpful. I know this was a passion driven podcast. I started coaching the industry in 2012, 12 years ago now, and I did it with the mission of empowering one million six-figure stylists.
In order for that to happen, we need as many stylists as possible to choose to prioritize business building, to choose to be on the upswing of this, to choose to really focus on serving their community, making a positive impact, building a sustainable long-term business, and attracting the right clients to it. All right, y’all, I hope you have additional questions. If you do, leave me a rating or review on iTunes. I will come with some follow-up episodes shortly. As I always like to say, so much love. Happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
