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 life long 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:
What is up and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
I’m your host Britt Seva, and today we’re going to talk about why some stylists are choosing to leave salons.
Now, preface, I understand that stylists leave hair salons every day and always have, and we’re coming out of an era where from 2012 to 2023 probably, we did see a huge shake up in stylists where they saw this opportunity to go to a studio suite.
For many, many decades, definitely from the time I entered the industry, the goal for most stylists was to be in a great team-based salon, whether it be commission or booth rental.
It was like you wanted to work with a group of stylists that you enjoyed working with.
That was the goal.
What I didn’t realize was studio suites had been around since the early 2000s, but they didn’t really pop off until Instagram, social media, online marketing.
Because what happened was stylists became aware of these opportunities that sounded kind of exciting for some of them.
And potential franchise owners were looking for new franchise opportunities right around that same time.
Franchises have had a really big heyday renaissance as well.
So there was this opportunity to own these studio suite salon buildings.
Franchisers took advantage.
They were able to snatch up all of the commercial real estate, build these buildings, and there was a demand to fill them.
And so it worked.
And so for 10 years, studio suites was kind of like, I want to get into the industry.
I want to build my clientele.
Then I’m going to head to a studio suite and do my own thing.
We saw that growth path.
Well, that’s changing a little bit.
And I’m paying attention to the shifts happening in the market.
And one of the things I’ve said for a few years is our industry is cyclical.
And if you look back at the last 30 years, you watch it cycle.
You can see the patterns that stylists choose to go through.
And most industries are cyclical to a degree.
And what we’re seeing in our industry and in the cycle right now is that there is a very interesting shift back to team-based salon.
I’ve talked to a lot of stylists who were like, the sweet life wasn’t so sweet for me.
I want to be with a team.
The reason I went to a suite is the team I was at was toxic.
The leader I was at was burnt out.
The leader I was working with didn’t know what they were doing.
The leader I was working with was overwhelming or overwhelmed themselves.
One of the things I very rarely heard from those who went to suites is I went to a suite because I wanted to make more money.
And I think that that’s the narrative a lot of salon owners believe to be true is, oh, all these stylists go to suites because they think they can make more money.
Not usually.
I actually, when I talk to a lot of suite owners, they’re like, I knew it was an expensive decision.
Like going into a studio suite is expensive.
Like most people don’t think, oh, I’m going to save some cash going to a studio suite.
It is very expensive.
And if stylists don’t know that, they know as soon as they go for the tour, like, damn, this is expensive.
So generally speaking, it’s not because they want to make more cash now.
They want freedom.
Big time.
That was the common thing that I heard.
They didn’t like the way that the salon they were at was running.
We’re going to cover some of those reasons today.
But what I’m finding in the shift that’s different is, yes, stylists are still leaving team-based salons, whether they be booth rental or employee-based, to go to studio suites.
It’s still happening.
It’s happening at a bit of a slower pace.
What we’re actually seeing more of is stylists leaving mediocre salons for amazing ones.
And this often happens in an economic downturn.
It’s usually called the gap when you talk to economists or business strategists, and really great businesses are built in the gap.
And we are entering one.
And this is a time where a lot of stylists who are comfortable are starting to say, things are getting a little bit tougher.
I need to be very smart with my career.
Where should I go and what should I do to ensure I have longevity?
And people who were kind of settling for mediocre are not interested in settling anymore.
And so what I’m seeing in the conversations I’m having are some salons are all of a sudden starting to get a lot of very senior, established, driven stylists applying to work for them who used to be happy at the salon they were at and are now making sure that they are achieving all that they can.
They’re looking for the best possible opportunity for themselves and are not willing to settle.
They’re choosing discomfort over comfort in the name of preserving their career.
That is common when the economy changes and I’m starting to see inklings of it right now.
And so what I want to do is talk about why stylists are telling me in the DMs they’re choosing to make a move, why they’re choosing to look for a new salon home, where they’re looking and what they’re looking for, so that if you are a salon you can safe proof your business.
By the way, stylists who have DMed me and shared what they’re thinking about and why they’re thinking about going there, I’m not going to put you on blast.
I would never expose you to your salon owners.
You don’t need to be scared about that.
But what I wanted to do is come on here and almost generically share the feedback that they’re giving to me so that for those of you who are salon owners who don’t realize you’re about to lose some really amazing people, maybe you can walk it back, fixing things that aren’t working and safe proof yourself.
So number one, poor communication.
I hear probably every single time a stylist reaches out to me and they’re like, Britt, I think I got to go.
I got to make a change.
This is what my business looks like.
This is what the salon’s doing.
Poor communication almost always comes up.
Poor communication is tricky.
There’s a lot of leaders who were like, I felt like I was close to my team.
Being close to your team is not the same as good communication.
So good communication gives clarity.
It builds trust.
There’s no gossip.
There’s no misunderstanding.
If there is a misunderstanding, the owner takes accountability.
We talk about communication and thriving leadership, right?
It’s complex.
It’s like great communication in any relationship.
Anybody who’s been in a long-term partnership or is a parent or is a child, understands that communication is hard and it’s the basis for any good relationship.
If you as a leader don’t have effective leadership-based communication, you will lose good people.
There is only so much tolerance for misunderstanding.
There’s only so much tolerance for gossip.
There’s only so much tolerance for mistakes and misfires and all of that builds up and you lose trust with your team and they walk.
So if leadership communication, having hard conversations, holding yourself accountable is something that you struggle with as a leader, that would 1000% be where I start is learning what good leadership communication looks like.
And I’ll be the first to say, I think that can be really difficult because if you’re a salon owner who was never led by an amazing salon leader, you might not even know what great communication looks like from a leader.
You might not have had that demonstrated to you before.
It changes everything.
And if you don’t know how to do it, reach out to me and let me know.
Maybe that’s something that we can work on together.
But having great leadership communication is the foundation for all of your success.
Number two, lacking a clear growth plan with timelines.
So, booth rental salons not so much, but team-based salons, if you have any kind of growth plan.
So, whether it be you hire assistance and there’s a training program, or there’s progressive commission increases in the salon that you work in based on achievement or timelines or whatever, if any of that is gray or not crystal crystal clear, people will feel like you’re wasting their time, period.
I don’t know how to sum it up any other way.
If there is not an extremely clear plan with dates and deadlines and timelines, and you’re accountable to it and they’re accountable to it and you’re checking in on it, one of my favorite things is you can’t expect what you don’t inspect.
A business coach told me that many, many years ago.
I’m going to say it again.
You can’t expect what you don’t inspect.
So, you can’t say, well, I want my team to be doing this.
Okay, are you checking in on it?
How often are you meeting with your team?
Are those meetings structured or are they kind of just whenever a problem comes up, you have a conversation, which goes back to communication.
But lack of a clear growth path and plan, stylist do feel like you’re wasting their time, and they’ll just move on to somebody who they don’t feel like will do that.
Number two, lack of clientele.
This is a big shift.
In the last few years, we have seen a real shift back to it’s the responsibility of the salon to provide clients for the stylist.
Not 100% of the way, but I like to say it should be equivalent to the commission split if you’re a commission based salon.
So if you’re a stylist or making a 40% commission and you’re keeping 60, you should probably provide about 60% of the clientele and they should provide 40.
So if the salon is not doing their job in filling the chairs of the stylist, they will just go somewhere else because they’ll think that the grass is greener on the other side.
I know that that can be frustrating.
In most businesses, it is the responsibility of the business owner to make the business work.
It’s one of the unique things that existed in our industry for a long time, where we would have employees, and the employees were responsible for generating their own demand.
If you think about it in the way I just explained it, you can see how unique that is.
That’s not common.
And what we’re seeing is more of a shift back to traditional business, where it’s like, okay, you want to own this business, you want to make it work, you market it.
You grow the demand.
And again, as an owner, you don’t have to like that, but you have to understand if you’re not going to do it, your stylist will go to a salon that will, and salons are filling the chairs of their people.
And it doesn’t have to be hard to do that.
It just has to be strategic.
I actually think it’s much, much easier for a salon to fill a stylist chair than a stylist to fill their own chair.
So why not work together in partnership with that?
That’s a biggie.
Ooh, number four, illegal compensation.
Y’all, stylists are so much smarter than they used to be.
They’re so much more aware.
They have access to more education.
You know, when I joined the industry, I was young and stupid, and I always say I would have worked for next to nothing, just to get the…
And I did.
I worked for $8 an hour, right?
In California.
I mean, San Francisco Bay Area.
I couldn’t pay…
My husband and I shared a car.
We couldn’t even afford to have two vehicles.
Broke, broke, broke.
But I was so desperate for the education and desperate for the opportunity.
I was willing to do it.
That does not represent the workforce today.
That was 20 years ago now, practically.
The workforce today is very different.
I was young and naïve.
I was a part of…
I want to be very careful what I say.
There were elements of the ways I was compensated at moments in time that weren’t fully legal.
And it wasn’t actually the owners that made that mistake.
So I want to be very clear on that.
If anybody knows the salon I work at, it wasn’t the owners who made a mistake.
It was somebody else.
And I said nothing.
I asked a question about it.
I received a response that I knew was wrong and I let it go because I was scared to lose my job.
There’s a lot of stylists today who don’t have that same fear that I had.
And if there is any sort of illegal compensation happening, you have to be really careful about whistleblowers.
You have to be careful about people going to lawyers and you having to do back pay.
In a lot of states, there’s certain benefits or certain pay procedures you can’t just opt out of.
You can’t just be like, well, we can’t afford it, so we’re not doing it.
The government doesn’t care that you can’t afford it.
Like it’s just the law, it’s just the way things have to go.
So if you are a salon owner who does not abide by the legal guidelines, not only are you screwing over your team, you potentially are screwing yourself to the point where if something comes back around to bite you and you can’t afford it, you will lose everything.
It’s way too risky of a business model to run.
Make sure that your compensation is fully legal in the state that you’re operating in, and let me tell you, your stylists are smart and they’re asking me questions about compensation.
And whenever a stylist asks, if you ask them, if you want to ask your teams, have you ever DMed Britt about compensation?
I always toe a very delicate line because I don’t want salons to be in trouble.
And often I say, I think you should do some more research on that.
I don’t live in your state.
I try and be delicate, but your stylists are very smart and they’re starting to do research and they know what’s right and they know what’s wrong.
Number five, lack of trust with the leader.
Again, I guarantee there are members of my team who will hear this podcast and they’ll have a chuckle.
If any member of my team questioned the legality of how I was paying them, believe you me, they would come knocking the moment they had a question.
Mostly because they know they can trust me.
They know that I wouldn’t do that, but that’s because of the trust we’ve built over the years.
I’m using compensation because it’s one of the things that people are looking for a lot of trust with.
But we also have really great communication.
There is, I don’t think anything that my team is scared to talk to me about, because we do have a foundation of trust in everything that we do.
We’ve built that through difficult conversations, good times, bad times, transparency.
All of the things that I’ve talked about on this episode, if your team doesn’t trust you, if they think that you’re sneaky, if they think that you don’t have their best interests at heart, they’ll just go somewhere else where they can find that.
Next, lack of quality education.
And quality education is tricky because quality, it’s like the beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Is that how that saying goes?
Quality of education is very much a perception is the reality thing.
So in some salons, quality of education is, they bring in educators a few times a year.
In some salons, this team gets to vote and choose one dream educator that comes in once a year.
In some salons, it’s every stylist gets a credit to go out and see an educator.
In some salons, the stylists don’t want to have an education requirement at all.
And when I talk about bringing in educators, there’s a lot of booth rental salons where the owner is bringing in education for the booth renters.
Now, did the booth renters have to participate?
No, it’s optional.
But when you look at really well cultured booth rental salons, imagine if you were a booth renter and part of your rent went towards, the owner asks all of the independent contractors, like, hey, I’m bringing in an educator.
Is there anybody you want to see?
And you get to see somebody who’s on your dream educator wish list for free.
That is happening.
That is happening.
And that often what I’m seeing is the booth rental owner will either sell tickets or allow the educator to sell tickets or bring in other people from the community.
So it might not be salon exclusive, but imagining a booth renter and you get to see a dream educator totally for free in your own backyard, it’s an amazing perk and benefit.
And imagine if you have a booth rental salon and the salon down the street is offering that, that’s pretty damn good.
You could lose somebody who is getting better educational opportunities elsewhere.
The other thing is mentorship.
And when we talk about education, it’s very well-rounded.
So it’s skill-based for sure.
It’s also business-based.
There’s a lot of leaders right now who are like, I’m so frustrated with my team, they’re not building fast enough.
And I’ll ask them, I’ll say, okay, as a leader, what are you doing to build?
Like, well, I’m kind of working on that in my capacity.
So it’s like, okay, well, you’re not doing it.
You don’t know how to effectively build today, but you’re expecting your team to do it.
But again, that goes back to poor leadership.
You remember how, if you are like me, I have been working for, oh my gosh, let me do the math on this, 25 years, I think, or something like that.
I started working as a teenager, basically, as young as I could.
And there was very much a culture when I entered the workforce of do as I say, not as I do.
That’s not going to work right now.
If you as the leader are not doing it, are not willing to do it, it’s going to be very difficult to get a team to follow you into some uncharted territory that you’re not willing to dance in.
It’s tough sell.
And stylists will just go somewhere else where the leader is more knowledgeable and can help to guide them and help them to solve their troubles.
That’s exactly what a leader is, right?
A leader is somebody who the people in the building can follow.
If the people can’t follow you to success, you’re not really a leader, you’re a manager or a boss.
And most people today aren’t interested in working for a boss.
They really want that leadership.
Lastly, demotivating compensation plans.
I have always danced around this topic.
I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about compensation plans for Stylists.
I’ve started to say very openly in the last 18 months that I do think that there’s a lot of compensation plans out there that screw over high producing Stylists.
I don’t know how else to say it.
I think there’s a lot of compensation models that are based on the high producers’ makeup for the inadequacy of the low producers.
That wouldn’t work for me.
Like as a high producer, I’m going to get to a point where I literally am going to go off and do it my own way because I’m not the owner.
I don’t want to be financially responsible for the team underneath me.
And the way that it was explained for many decades was we’re all in this together.
And that’s where that whole idea of we’re a family because you don’t abandon the family.
That’s why I don’t like verbiage like that.
I think it can be very manipulative.
Make no mistake, your salon is not a family.
Your salon is a business.
And everybody who’s in that business has a life they’re trying to support.
And if you do not have a compensation model where the stylist in your space, particularly your high producers, can earn and earn and earn and earn and earn as high as they want to, they’re going to get to a point where they are not interested in playing the game with you anymore.
And we see this a lot where a lot of salon owners will be like, I don’t understand.
They’ve just kind of tapped out.
They have so much potential and they don’t push themselves anymore.
They’re not motivated by your compensation plan.
If they were, they would do it.
Think about yourself.
Think about how all of us are wired.
Anybody ever tried to enter a fitness journey and you dabble with it, you don’t really do it, and you don’t really care?
It’s because you’re not motivated.
Enough.
You’d like to do it.
It sounds like a good idea.
It would be great, but you just don’t care enough.
Versus you see people enter fitness journeys when they’ve been told by their doctor that if they don’t lose 30 pounds, they’re in serious trouble.
That’s very motivating.
They’re going to lose the 30 pounds.
You watch people enter fitness journeys when they’re on the verge of becoming a diabetic.
Oh my gosh, it’s too scary.
The consequence is too severe.
I need to dial this in.
You watch people enter a fitness journey when they’re getting married, right?
Biggest day of their life.
They want to look the best possible.
All of those are motivating things.
If your compensation plan doesn’t make somebody want to be performing at their best, then they won’t.
They won’t.
So I want you to think to yourself if you’re a salon owner or a leader.
Let’s step away from these things for a moment of why stylists are leaving.
Why should somebody stay?
What do you offer that’s different?
What do you offer that’s better?
What do you offer that makes somebody say, damn, I’m not going to find this somewhere else?
What do you offer that is positive?
What do you offer that’s motivating?
What do you offer that’s aspirational?
What do you offer that’s unique?
What do you offer that’s a selling point?
What do you offer that would make the stylist in your building say, oh man, when you graduate cosmetology school, you have got to come work for us because?
What would make the stylist in your building reach out to a peer of theirs that’s working at the salon at town over and say, oh man, I know it’s a tough move, but I think you should make the leap and come work with us.
How many of you are getting a lot of personal referrals from those who work in your building, wanting to bring their friends in?
Probably not a lot, right?
And why?
So I want you to think about if you as a leader are really providing the best possible opportunities for those in your building or if you’re just phoning it in, take this as a word of warning.
One of the things I’ve been really good at as a business coach is sharing information six months, a year, two years before it becomes a problem.
I have a feeling this episode is going to age very, very well.
And in 2027, it’ll be one re-reference.
And I’ll say, remember when I told you, don’t be a part of that fallout.
I want you to listen to this now.
I want you to think about the changes needing to be made.
And if you have any questions, leave me a rating or review on iTunes.
I’ll help as much as I can.
As I always like to say, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
