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 stylist and this is the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
What is up and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
I’m your host Britt Seva and this episode is very different.
I’ve never done anything like this before.
There’s a change in the air, like the changing of the seasons.
Part of what’s going on in the industry is because of what I’ve been referring to as the great divide.
It’s a big shift in consumer behavior.
It’s a big shift in our industry at large.
It’s a shift in the way that salons work with distributors.
It’s a shift in the way that marketing works.
It’s a shift in stylist’s awareness of how business works.
The industry is changing and it’s changing very, very fast.
Because of that, I’m getting a lot more messages of stylists who are feeling a little bit desperate about the place that they work.
I’m going to read you one of them.
This DM came in to me from a stylist who’s feeling completely at a loss.
She doesn’t want to leave her salon, but she doesn’t think that she can stay.
I’ve gotten different versions of this type of message over and over and over and over again, and if you’ve sent me one of these, you know that I never DM and say, yeah, get out of there.
That’s never my advice.
But with this person, there was an energy that was a bit different, and I asked a few more questions, and we ended up in a place where I said, you know what, I’m going to record a podcast for any stylist who feels like they want to give a gentle nudge to their owner, that it might be time for a change, that maybe people aren’t happy, and they’re not sure what to say without being offensive or without hurting the salon leader’s feelings.
Now, if you were sent this podcast episode by a member of your team, they might not be the person who’s upset at all.
So don’t go pointing fingers.
They might be a person who is super happy and loves where they work, and has overheard one or two or 25 conversations, happening in the back break room behind your back about a potential walkout.
This could have been sent to you by a stylist who wants the best for the salon, but knows that two of your top performers are about to go, and is looking to hopefully intervene before that happens.
This could be sent to you by a stylist who says, hey, I think you should hear this because they can tell that you’re tired, and they can tell that you don’t know where to turn, and they just want to give you perhaps a lifeline.
I want you to know what’s coming from that place.
If you are a stylist who’s ever said, I wish that I could just give my salon leader a bit more encouragement, and hope, and have them know that I do support them, and we all want the best for them, but the things aren’t going great, this episode is for you.
This episode is meant to be shared with the leader who needs to hear it about what their options could be, how your team is feeling, and what would need to shift and change, and how you might be able to get some advice on how to make that happen.
I’m going to first start by reading you this DM that inspired this episode and then we’re going to get into it.
This stylist says, please help me.
I currently feel so incredibly lost.
I started working for a salon in 2019.
At that time, the business was booming.
We were the salon in town.
Profitable, busy chairs were full.
The vibe was great and everyone was happy.
Then COVID hit and everything changed.
The majority of the owner’s attitude and vibe were awful.
She got into a really dark place for a while, which I completely understand it was overwhelming for all of us.
We had a couple of stylists leave right after reopening.
Then about a year after that, we had a large stylist walkout.
One of the stylists on our team opened her own salon and took several stylists with her.
I know that hit the owner hard and her energy sunk even lower.
Flash forward to now, the team is a fraction of the size that it was.
We try to hire, but we can’t keep anybody.
If you ask me, it’s because there’s no energy, no vibe and nobody wants to stay.
The owner of the salon doesn’t seem interested in adapting to what this next generation of stylists want or need in their salon home.
She says she will.
She says she wants to.
Nothing ever changes.
It’s very obvious she wishes she could go back to what it was like in the salon in 2010.
That’s just not how the reality is.
Our books are slow.
Everybody knows it.
Money isn’t flowing.
We’re getting desperate.
Nothing is changing.
Doing more of what we’re doing is clearly not going to work, but somehow she doesn’t make a change.
I don’t want us to be a dated salon.
I don’t want the salon to be in a financial pinch all the time.
I want new people to want to work here.
What the heck am I supposed to do?
What you’ve been saying in your podcast really resonates with me.
And in the past, I’ve brought your coaching program up to my owner, but she won’t even entertain the idea.
Instead, she continues to invest in other coaching companies that clearly aren’t working.
How can I present to her that we should try your program?
And I responded and we chatted for a bit.
And I have to be very honest.
My goal is not to actually even get this owner to join my program.
My program might not be great for her.
It could be.
I have no idea.
But my hope is that for the owner that this stylist works for, who this stylist very clearly cares about, and any owner who gets sent this podcast episode, my hope is that you become open to change and that you realize the industry has changed incredibly fast and in a huge way.
And if you don’t change along with it, you’ll be on a path to closure.
And that’s not where I want any salon or salon owner to end up.
It’s not what your teams want.
They want you to keep the doors open and the business filled and they really do want what’s best for you.
And this episode is in the spirit of that.
Whether you choose to work with me or anybody else, the point is changes needed to keep up with the times.
So I asked this stylist, I said, if I were to be able to help you in your salon team, what would that look like?
She says, I need my salon owner to check in, to act like she actually cares about this place, like she cares about us.
We currently have no goals, no direction, no inspiration, no drive.
I went from being 150% booked to 75% booked.
I’m ready to build the strongest clientele I’ve ever had, dot, dot, dot, even if at the end of the day, I’m going to ultimately have to do it by myself.
This stylist is at a breaking point.
And that’s usually when stylists reach out to me.
And somebody on your team is at a breaking point, which is why this episode was sent to you.
So let’s talk about, well, when I talk about change and why a lot of salons are suffering right now, I want to explain what has happened here and kind of let the air out of the room because I think things happened kind of slowly and then all at once.
And so now it feels like a blind slide.
I want to explain kind of the journey the industry has been on for over 30 years.
So the 1990s to like 2010-ish, the industry was relatively stable.
I joined the industry in 2007.
So I was a part of kind of the tail end of this generation.
What was normalized in the 90s and the early 2000s was relatively long training periods, a year, two years, three years in some kind of mentorship program for a new stylist joining the industry.
And they could be paid relatively low and they would sweep and do dishes and laundry and you know, learn by chance and just kind of like hang out and get to know everybody in the salon space.
And over time, they’d build a clientele even if it took 10 years to build a business and a life for themselves.
We kind of told these new stylists like, well, I had to walk 10 years in the snow to build my clientele.
So you have to do the same and it’s hard and it just takes time and you have to be patient and nothing in life comes easy.
And listen, from the 90s to the early 2000s, like we all bought in that was the game.
I get it.
I was a part of the game.
I remember it.
I understand.
And there was coaching companies who were founded around that time who really revolutionized that specific game.
And what they were able to do was tighten training timeframes, provide structure to salon companies which for decades, there was no structure to salons, like none whatsoever.
And so in the 90s and the early 2000s, there was a lot of coaching companies that came up and provided this much needed structure.
It was such good work.
It was very important stuff.
And those methods and companies became very popular.
And by the way, they really, really, really worked.
Then from 2010 to 2015, there was this technology revolution.
And it was the beginning of something.
And it’s when websites started to become popularized, email marketing became a real thing at scale.
We started to see internet marketing in its infancy, sites like Yelp.
And there was something called Foursquare, which I think is still around, but it’s not what it was.
Groupon.
There was just all of this new internet marketing fad that was mainly pushed by websites for businesses at their infancy and email marketing.
That’s when we started to see a real shift in the industry.
That was when, if you can believe it, it’s been almost 10 years that salon started phasing out the need of having a receptionist in the salon.
That’s not to say there are no receptionist in the salons, especially with salon teams, there’s still totally a desk team and sometimes absolutely necessary.
But the reason why it was able to shift is because we saw things like online booking, email confirmations.
It was so funny.
I was having a laugh.
This was about a month ago with somebody who used to work on my reception team at the salon.
We found our old Facebook group.
It was where we would have communications between myself and our reception team.
I think there was four or five receptionists in there, and then there was me.
I would push out messages to the reception team.
One of the messages that got sent out was, hey, it’s official.
We’ve made the shift in transition.
You don’t need to do confirmation, phone calls, and messages anymore.
We’ve shifted fully to email reminders.
That was in like 2013, 2014, and it was huge.
A lot of stylists were really uncomfortable by it, but it was the way things are headed.
Well, now, I think, I could be totally wrong.
I think it’s pretty rare to have stylists and salons who still do phone confirmations and voicemails for all of their clients.
I would say less than 3 percent of salons in the nation do it, and I don’t think the salons that do it have an upper hand.
I think people are much less likely to answer their phone, and much less likely to check their voicemail.
People want like a text or an email.
That’s how the world operates now, right?
So that was kind of the beginning of this revolution.
Then 2016 to 2019, we had the social media boom.
Remember those three years where I was preaching to social media, and I was like, jump on the train.
This is not going to be here forever.
Now that’s all really changed.
But that was when you could be like a digital influencer or an Instagram star in the industry, right?
That was 2016 to 2019, and that’s how Stylists were really filling their chairs.
That was a huge shift for all the coaching programs of the 90s and 2010s because it made the way that they were encouraging business to grow, not obsolete, but in some ways it made it irrelevant because the systems and the model they were coaching to got blown out of the water.
And suddenly, there was these Stylists who were brand new to the industry, came out of nowhere and were more successful and booked faster than somebody who was senior.
And we had never seen that before.
That was only 10 years ago, everybody.
And veteran Stylists were pissed off.
I mean, for lack of a better word, it was irritating because it was like, are you kidding me?
I have put in all these years, all this education and all of this training, and I’m so much more experienced.
And this kid comes in and they fill their chair in 18 months and are making more money than I am.
Like, that’s not right.
That’s real.
We’re not going to go back in time on that.
That’s how the industry looks now.
It’s not about how many classes you’ve taken.
The truth is, clients don’t care.
And I get DMs from stylists and salon owners all the time.
Like, I’m so educated.
How can I raise my prices?
Your prices have nothing to do with the education you’ve taken anymore.
They used to.
They don’t anymore.
But there’s all these things that changed.
The coaching companies of the 90s, 2010s did not change and adapt and in many ways still haven’t.
So then in 2020, the pandemic hit.
I mean, we’ve really got taken for a ride.
The industry kind of stalled.
Coming back to 2021 and 2023, there was this huge market flooding.
And what I called from the jump, artificial inflation, I made announcements in 2021, 2022 and 2023 that we were in a false period of artificial inflation and that clientele were flooding our salon spaces because so many salons had closed during the pandemic.
So many stylists had walked away from their chair that there was all of these like abandoned clients who needed a place to go.
So if you were booked and busy in 2021 to 2023, that was fake, temporary, not fake.
It really happened.
It was temporary.
And it was always going to be.
But I think as I was saying it, it sounded so unbelievable because you were in it and it felt great.
And you’re like, oh, well, not for us.
We’re going to be fine.
And then the water receded.
And now we’re kind of here where we’re at.
2024 and 2025 is the new normal.
And stylist expectations have changed.
Oh, by the way, I didn’t even mention.
Then there was the studio suite explosion.
Hello.
That was huge.
So we saw that coming out of 2010, 2013, 14, 15 as well is this new evolution of studio suites.
So now the options weren’t only be a booth renter or be an employee.
It was have your own space.
The landscape of what it looks like to be a stylist has changed.
What needs to happen in the salon for you to retain great stylist so that you can be profitable and growing and attracting clients has changed.
If you have not changed your compensation plan, your growth plan, your model, your structure, your KPIs, your KRAs, your evaluation points, your hiring method based on what is working today, you will be left behind and more than likely the stylists who were deciding that you needed to listen to this episode feel like it may already be happening.
And they want to make sure that you get out ahead.
So here’s some of the expectations that stylists are seeking today.
You don’t have to like them.
You just have to understand this is the truth.
And this is not my preference.
Actually, a lot of these things are things that I didn’t coach to for years, but I’ve now had to adapt to as well, because this is how consumer behavior has changed, is how stylist behavior has changed.
So number one, salons should build the majority of a stylist clientele.
That’s brand new.
So in the 80s, 90s, early 2000s, stylist had to, we call it pounding the pavement, had to like get out there, network, referrals, word of mouth marketing.
If you ask a senior stylist how to build a clientele, those are the things you were told.
That’s how it’s going to happen.
Get experience, get education, referrals, word of mouth are your best friends, pound the pavement.
Then the internet really changed that game and it stopped being about that.
And stylists were like, whoa, if I can learn this internet marketing thing, I can fill my own chair.
So then they did.
And then they said, if I can fill my own chair and I’m doing all this myself, why don’t I just go into a studio suite?
And they did.
If you want stylist to stay with you, marketing has to be your number one priority.
You have to be marketing to attract stylist to work for you.
So all the time, not just sometimes when you have an opening all the time.
And you have to be marketing to fill their chairs.
If you’re not going to do it, what’s the advantage of working for you and your team?
What is the advantage?
We have a great culture.
Do you have a great culture?
That becomes a bigger question.
Like you have a great culture because you celebrate birthdays or because you do team get togethers every once in a while or because you’re happy, or you provide good retail.
Like what is it that makes the culture so great?
We all love each other.
There’s a lot of like dysfunctional relationships where people love each other, but the culture is actually not that great.
You know that it’s like a song, like an old song, like sometimes love just ain’t enough.
Like culture is different now, and that’s not generally speaking going to be enough.
And stylists would say like, okay, but what else do you have for me?
Like culture is nice.
I have a family to feed.
And if there is not enough demand provided by the salon, it’s going to be very difficult for you to attract and retain stylists.
So that’s going to be number one.
Digital marketing is critical and expected.
Stylists are looking for salons who understand digital marketing at a sophisticated level, not at a basic level.
If your website is bad or basic or dated or has formatting issues or does not showcase stylists effectively, it’s going to be tough to attract and retain great stylists to work for you.
Quick growth is crucial.
You’ll be hard pressed to find a great, driven, motivated, dream stylist who wants to be in your training program for two years.
You’ll find people who are like can kickers who are happy to do it.
They won’t be the motivated ones.
They will not be top performing employees, but they’ll be humans and if you want someone to do shampoos for you for two years, you can totally hire somebody like that and put them into your education program.
If you want somebody driven and a badass stylist, they’re looking for something way more structured, fast moving, hands-on, much deeper levels of mentorship, lot more guidance.
When we see stylists that are growing fast and salons that are growing fast, that’s what it looks like.
Exponential growth and flexibility is desired over stability.
I was at a live event recently.
This was so interesting and it blew my mind.
We were talking about benefits.
There was a salon owner who was saying, I’m really focused on benefits for my team and we did a poll and I said, how many stylists in the room are looking to work for a salon that offers health insurance?
It was like two people.
And I was like, oh, wow, OK, what about is it critical for you for your salon to offer retirement benefits?
I think it was one person like it was so dismal.
Traditional benefits are not what a lot of stylists are seeking anymore, which is so different than it was 10, 15, 20 years ago, because there’s so many other options for those things now that didn’t exist.
Stylists are looking for more non-traditional benefits, time, time wealth is the number one priority for all of us.
Time off, paid time off, flexibility, freedom of schedule, like there’s nothing that’s going to beat that.
Actually the only thing that’s going to beat that is rapid growth.
So those are the things that we want to be marketing and offering in our salon structure.
If you’re not working with a coaching company or you don’t have a salon structure now where those are top priority, those are things that could be holding you back.
So here’s the signs that it could be time to consider a new coach or some kind of coaching if you don’t have a coach right now.
One, if you’re spending more than $5,000 a year on coaching and you’re not seeing revenue grow by at least 15% annually and a profit margin of at minimum 8%.
If you’re not seeing both of those things, and by the way, when I say revenue growing more than 15% annually, I don’t mean your revenue.
I mean salon revenue.
So either I’m going to say you’re working a program that you’re not working in full, like you’re cutting corners, you’re not going all in, something is off if you’re not growing at that rate, or you’re not getting good advice, like one or the other.
Number two, if your coaching company is trying to force you into their system, rather than helping you understand what works for your market, your vision and your team, it might be time for a change.
I’ve never seen two salons that are identical ever.
And so, when I go into salons and they’re both failing at working the same system, it doesn’t surprise me because I believe every salon operates differently.
Every owner has a different vision.
Every styling team is different.
The size of the business is different.
The financial goals are different.
The overhead is different.
The clientele they serve is different.
If you’re working with a coach who’s trying to shove you into a box, to me, that’s a bit of a red flag.
Number three, you have stylists on the team whose growth has stagnated.
If you’re not able to get them moving and your coach is not able to help you do that and or you don’t work with a coach and you don’t know how to do that, something has to change.
There needs to be more guidance, more training so we can get those people moving.
If you’ve lost 25% or more of your team in the last year, huge red flag.
That’s like a bleed out.
And we need to figure out what’s going wrong there.
If you don’t understand digital marketing, digital marketing is not optional.
I know social media feels like a heavy lift.
Usually, it’s only hard when we don’t fully understand what we’re doing.
Understanding and education is the key to overcoming that one.
So finding a great coach who can help you to do that effectively.
And by the way, just posting is not effective digital marketing.
If you’re not getting regular applicants who want to work for you, if you’re not getting enough demand to fill your chairs, whatever it is you’re doing digitally is not working.
If your coach can’t help you with that, probably something to think about.
Clientele demand is lower than you’d like it to be.
That goes hand in hand.
And last but not least, if you’re scared about your future and your current coach isn’t calming your fears or giving you practical solutions, it’s hard for me to understand why you’d continue to work with that person or those people or not seek out help.
So those are some of the things to consider.
Again, you were sent this message by somebody who listens to me.
And I know there’s fears around working with me and my coaching company and my coaches.
And I want to talk about some of the known fears that I experience.
So one of the things that makes people hesitant to work with me and my company is I’m not funded by any big hair care or distribution company.
To me, that’s such a green flag.
I don’t have any ulterior motive.
I’m not trying to line anybody else’s pockets.
I poured the vast majority of our profits back into this business to pour into our students.
We’re the only coaching company I’m aware of that sends thousands of gifts to our students every single year, that does reach outs and acknowledgments, that has personal relationships with those that we coach.
We are interested in making a difference and making a change.
When we are reinvesting everything back in, and there is nobody backing us, and because of that, our only game is to help you make more money and attract more stylists.
There is no other interesting motive.
I don’t believe all other coaching companies can say that.
It’s just something to think about.
Another hesitation is I haven’t been around long.
I’ve been coaching for 13 years, and I’ve helped 17,000 accounts.
You’ll be hard pressed to find another coaching company who can say that.
And if you are interviewing or are working with other coaching companies, here’s a great question.
Say, hey, can you give me three referrals of salons I can talk to that you’ve currently helped to transform their business in the last 18 months?
And of the accounts that they have transformed in the last 18 months, I want you to take a look at their businesses and see if they look like yours or if they don’t.
See if it makes sense.
See if the businesses that are sent to you as referrals are businesses you’d like to be more like.
It’s just an interesting question.
Number three, you want to work with a business, not just an Internet person.
I’m the face of my company, so I know I look like an Internet person.
I use the Internet to push our brand forward.
I am a real full company.
Our company is called Flourish Salon Business Development.
I have a full team of employees and a seven-figure payroll running this organization.
I’m the face for sure.
I have incredible coaches who work for me.
In many ways, are more brilliant than me.
We are a very real coaching and consulting company with a real team here to support you, here to help and here to guide every step of the way.
I understand another big fear is that a big deal salon shouldn’t trust some random Internet coach.
I think there are a lot of random Internet coaches out there.
They scare me too.
I’ve made bad investments into random Internet coaches, so I understand that fear very, very tangibly.
The average revenue of a salon I coach one-to-one is $3.8 million in annual revenue.
So for me, and I don’t take very many one-on-one coaching clients anymore, I work with high-performance stylists and salon leaders.
That’s what’s of most interest to me at this point.
That’s not to say that we don’t coach stylists or salons who are just getting started or are more at the $40,000 mark.
We coach businesses like that too, and that’s really fun to be able to grow those businesses super fast.
But because of the way we operate and the size that we are, we’re able to help high-performance salons break through their blind spots in a way that I think a lot of other coaching companies can’t.
That’s been our cutting edge.
Another fear is there’s no proof that what I coach to works.
Again, it goes back to that whole random Internet coach thing and the fear I think a lot of us have.
We have something called the X Club.
We had to create an entire club dedicated to those who double or triple revenue working with us.
We had to create a club and an award for salon leaders who increase revenue and profit with us.
I don’t know of any other coaching company that’s able to say things like that.
All of the accomplishments are documented using tax records.
You’re not taking a chance.
You’re working with somebody who has proof that what we do works.
I also know that there’s the real thought that I’d rather work with a company more established that’s not been around for 13 years, but has been around for 30.
Being with an established company is only good if the company is evolving forward.
Are their methods decades old or are they established and they’re continuing to innovate and they’re growing forward with the times?
Those are simply things I’d ask.
Going back to the point and purpose of this episode and why did your stylist send you this?
Because if you were sent this, you might be having some feelings about it and I totally get it, four reasons.
One, they want the salon to be successful.
If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have bothered sending you this.
They would have just kept on keeping on until they left one day.
But they care about you and they care about your business, and they want the salon to be successful and happy.
Number two, they want you to be happy.
They care about you as a human.
If they didn’t, again, they would just let you do what you do and leave you alone and never say a word.
Number three, they don’t want to leave your business.
And often when a leader hears team members who are unhappy, this is for myself as well.
The immediate panic is, I’m not a good leader.
Nobody likes working for me.
I’m not cut out for this.
Everybody’s leaving.
And then like imposter syndrome comes in and you’re like, forget it.
I’m just going to give it all up.
Don’t do that.
If you’re sent this episode, it’s because your team knows you’re already at a breaking point.
They’re already getting feelings of lost or confusion or frustration or lack of effort put in to building the business.
And they don’t want to leave and they don’t want you to lose your energy around the company.
They want to stay.
They’re partnering with you in this and they’re handing you a life raft so that you can get the relief you need.
And number four, they feel like something is missing.
So accountability and self-awareness, I think, are the two hardest skills for any adult to have.
And when I talk to people, the traits I see the least in most adults I interact with.
Accountability and self-awareness.
I know the natural tendency when you listen to something like this is to be defensive and to say things like, well, they don’t understand.
They don’t understand me.
They don’t know everything that goes into this.
They don’t know how hard this is.
What do they know?
I’m actually doing a great job and I’m doing everything right and everything’s totally fine.
I want you to remember that whoever shared this with you doesn’t feel like everything’s right and everything’s fine.
And their truth is that something’s going on that you might not be aware of.
They too are worried that you’re lacking self-awareness.
Something is not right.
And this is your chance to be eyes wide open.
And just consider the possibility that maybe it’s time to make some kind of change.
Like I said, I don’t care if you work with me or not.
I would love to help support you in your business.
My advice for next episode, if you were sent this episode, is to just listen to a handful more episodes.
Hear what I have to say on the podcast.
Check out some other coaching companies.
See what might be a good fit for evolving your salon company forward.
If you do have questions, if you were sent this by a stylist and you have questions, you can always find me in the DMs at Britt Seva.
But more than anything, I just want you to win.
I want salons to win.
I really do think we’re stepping into an era where we’re going to see an explosion in the trades.
I think trades people are going to make more money than ever before, but only if they make the right choices and head that direction.
I hope I get to work with you one day.
So much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
