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.
What is up? And welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Britt Seva, and it’s that time of year where we start talking about how to create an organized business plan for the year ahead. The end of the year is kind of like this natural wind down and period of reflection and a time to really like center back around like family and home and really thinking about like where our business and career fits in with all of that. And it’s a time where my company and I slow down and start to think about the year ahead. And I encourage you to do the same whether you are an employee stylist or a booth renter or a studio suite owner, or you have a whole team. I like for you to spend the last 35, 45, 60, 90 days of any given year really thinking about what the year ahead will look like.
If you wait until January or February to do this, you’ve already lost potentially 20% of the year and we don’t wanna be losing any time. Now, historically, in years past for I think it was probably like eight seasons, I hosted a free goal setting workshop at the end of every year. I think there are still some educators who do that. I think that’s a really nice practice to get into. I stopped doing that in I think 2023 and the last two years we’ve shifted to more like strategic classes. We hosted one in October of 2024 and one in October of 2025. So those opportunities have closed for this season. But I wanted to give another little like free annual planning, deciding how to to set up your year for 2026 here on the podcast. A couple things that you’re gonna need before we get started.
You’re gonna want to get a journal or a notebook because you’re gonna be gonna be doing some work. I’m gonna walk you through some guided exercises, but also you’re gonna want to download a copy of the PDF support tool that goes along with this episode so that if you can’t keep up with the 25 minutes of instruction I’m about to give you, you have a PDF that’s gonna guide you every step of the way. So if you head to thriving stylists.com/eight steps, so E-I-G-H-T-S-T-E-P-S, don’t forget that S at the end, there’s a PDF that breaks all this down too so you don’t have to memorize it. Let’s dig in. So step one to creating your plan for the year is going to be pulling out that journal or notebook to plan with. So a lot of people say like, I like to do this digitally.
When you’re making an annual plan, I would not do it digitally. I think once the plan is made, if you wanna transfer it to something digital, I think that’s totally fine. I run 95% of my business digitally. Everything that we plan on paper gets put into a computer. But because of the way we’re gonna strategically look at your business, I have tried digital annual planning seven ways to Sunday. I’ve talked to people in very sophisticated businesses and I’ve yet to find anybody who does their full annual plan digitally. I don’t think you can use the notes section of your phone. I don’t think you can use like a good notes app. I just, I think it’s different when you look at like I, I truly don’t have an example of any successful business at scale who annual plans digitally. I like, you know, taking notes on my iPad.
I love, like I said, 95% of my business is digital. Annual planning is different. So some kind of physical pen to paper moment I think makes a huge, huge difference. The other thing is this is not like a stack of random pages out of your like printer or pulled from a desk drawer. I like very much mean an intentional physical notebook of some kind. Couple reasons why we do this. One, when we put pen to paper, it engages what’s called our reticular activating system. This is something that I learned this year when I was really doing a lot of research around what helps with goal achievement and what the top businesses do to progress forward. When we put pen to paper, there’s a slow dopamine release as a reward and our brains love dopamine. You probably already know this. It solidifies our goals to memory.
You don’t get that same release when you’re doing something visually like scientifically. It’s just not there. Technology’s amazing. There’s some things that just can’t pull off and this is one of those things. Number two, if you do this in a notebook, you can’t ignore it. It’s like this physical thing. You can shove it in a drawer if you want to, but it still very much exists there. Versus like a note in your phone or a page in your good notes or like that random scrap of paper you put notes on that could end up lost or forgotten or in the trash, a physical notebook of some kind. Unless you intentionally throw it away, it’s gonna live somewhere at least until you do toss it at some point. It’s this thing that kind of can’t be forgotten. The physical symbolism of it is really important when it comes to annual planning.
So that’s step one, gets some kind of journal or notebook to make out this plan with number two, we reflect emotionally. So I’m gonna walk you through a series of questions, about a half dozen questions. And as I ask them, I want you to think about them. Even if you’re driving in the car right now and you’re gonna do this later, I want you to reflect on them as I ask them. So when I’m coaching stylists or salon owners, like one-to-one or at scale, we ask a series of 26 reflection questions. We’re just gonna do you know, about 15% or so of those questions today to get the ball rolling. So the first question is, am I happy with my business right now? Immediately, what did you say? Don’t think about it too hard. Am I happy with my business right now is the first question.
It’s a yes or a no and don’t put maybe be definitive. What’s the answer? Number two, is my business allowing me to achieve all that I want for my life? Yes or no? Number 3:00 AM I proud to tell people about my business and my career? Number four, what is people’s perception of me professionally? And I want you to think about that, not your perception of you. What do other people think of you? And just know that people are judging us by the way that we dress, the way that we live, the car that we drive. Like it’s just the world that we live in. The way that we talk about ourselves, the way we carry ourselves, the way we speak. Those are all things that are taken into account. When somebody is perceiving how we are professionally, how many gaps are on your schedule when somebody goes to book an appointment with you is gonna change their perception of you, what your price point is, how your social media looks, all that stuff.
Number five, what do people professionally compliment me for? And number six, what are some things that I wish were different in my business? And number six is where you can kind of brainstorm. So the first five questions should have kind of helped you lead into that. And then by question six, you can just get pen to paper and really let it roll. And this is what do I wish things were different? So when we’re wishing I ask that you don’t be realistic like, well realistically or reasonably or I what I know I can pull off like don’t do any of that stuff. Wish was the key word. Like if you had a magic wand, if I was coming in as your fairy godmother, what do you wish could be different in your business? If you’re a leader, what would it be? Maybe it’s your team, maybe it’s your location, maybe it’s the revenue coming in, maybe it’s the profit.
Maybe you wish you knew more. Maybe you wish you were able to do more hair. Maybe you wish you able to do less hair. Maybe you wish people were more driven, more dedicated. Maybe you wish you were more driven or more dedicated. If you’re a stylist, maybe you wish your chair was more full. Maybe you wish you had more downtime. Maybe you wish you had more money. Maybe you’re happy with the money but you wish you didn’t have to work so hard to make it right. Those kind of things. Okay, step number three. Now we’re gonna reflect factually. So that was all very emotional stuff, very heavy emotional stuff. We’re gonna shift gears. Step three is where we analyze our business with no emotion. So we’re gonna turn that emotion switch actually all the way off. And we’re gonna look at real hard numbers. Sometimes when we do this, it’s eye-opening, sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way.
We often, as we’re going through our business, aren’t like in tune with what’s actually going on. We’re really good at making emotional decisions and emotional reflections about our life and about our business. But when we’re doing it factually, it becomes much more challenging for us. And hopefully this will be a good eye-opening one for you. So number one, what is your gross revenue to date? So how much money did you do in service revenue year to date? And it could also be retail revenue if you wanna keep that in mind. But how much money came in to your business or your chair this year, year to date, if you’re a commission stylist, this is even more so important. I, I can’t believe how many commission stylist I talked to were like, oh, I don’t even know. I’m not even sure. You should know and you should be sure.
So I want to know what your gross revenue is to date. So find that number. Number two, what was your take? Home pay could be total sum of all your paychecks for the year. Could be what you drew from your businesses profit. So anything like that. What was your take home pay? What was your profit margin if you’re an independent stylist or salon leader? So this is generally eyeopening. I will tell you whenever I coach a lot of people who go into suites or booth rent for the first time, for the first several years, they take home less. Um, not always. Not always. There’s some high performers who go into a a rental situation or studio suite information and immediately make more. Totally happens. It’s a little bit more rare and often they’re operating at more like a 25, 28, 30% profit margin. And it’s good to know those kind of things.
So what is your profit margin if you’re an independent stylist or salon leader? Number four, let’s evaluate your marketing efforts, not your results yet, just your efforts. How much are you putting into marketing? Be honest with yourself. Do you know what you’re doing? Are you, are you clocking in and marketing your business every single week? What are your marketing results based on your efforts? How are the results shaking out? Number six, what does your retention look like? And when we talk about retention, we talk about base retention and new guest retention. So both a different calculations for each and actually different calculations based on how your business runs. So we have some resources for this and wealthiest year yet and also in thriving Stylist method. But there’s different ways to run retention depending on how you operate. So if you’re somebody who sees clients every six weeks versus if you do lived in color, the way we run your retention numbers is gonna be different because your visit frequency is gonna be different and the amount of time a client is in your chair is gonna be different.
Your whole business is different. So how many new guests you would need to have and and and what visit frequency would look like would all change based on how your business operates. But there’s always gonna be two metrics. We’re looking at new guest retention and base clientele retention. Number seven, what is your new guest demand? How many new clients are trying to get in to see you every single month consistently? How many new guest requests have you had year to date? Number eight, if you’re a salon leader, you also want to analyze your team. So you’ll do this whole thing for everybody on your team as well. We need to know where everybody’s at. This was always an interesting one for me. It was interesting for me when I ran numbers like this to see, I call ’em like the big dogs or the um, the veterans.
It would be interesting to see veterans who were starting to be outperformed by newer people because they started to slip in one area or another and they could be the most, um, tenured, like having the most years behind the chair. But it doesn’t always mean that they’re the most successful, efficient, utilizing utilization as well. So when you look at numbers like this, it sometimes can change honestly, like the landscape of the salon to be like, whoa, just because this person’s been here the longest doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the highest performing or deserve more or anything like that. One of the things that we really have to start looking at as a business leader is not just loyalty but like true performance. And, and this forces you to do those kind of things too. Okay, step number four. Now I want you to zoom back out and get inspired for a minute.
So I want you to pull out your phone and use it for good and do some market research and see what top stylists and salons are doing today that maybe you’re not doing. Like what are the gaps and blind spots in your business? I know you’re working hard, I totally get it. But imagine working hard and doing all the wrong things so that your hard work didn’t pay off. Like some of you are truly living in that reality. Some of you are stylists who you’re like, I’m so talented, I’m so educated, I know I do good work and I’m overlooked, like overlooked and underappreciated. That has to be frustrating. So we wanna take a look at like, okay, when we start to do research and, and look at people that we’re inspired by or that we aspire to be more like what are the things that they’re doing that you’re not?
And when you do this, it’s gonna be easy to be like, well, but they can do that because like giving them almost like excuses to succeed and like holding yourself back. Don’t do that. You don’t know actually what their backstory is. And a lot, a lot of today’s fastest growing and most successful stylists came from nothing. And yes, I’m asking to judge where they’re at now versus like judge their come up story. But I, I want you to really take a look at like, okay, if I was more like the people I aspire to be more like what are the things I’d be doing in my business? That’s step four, step five. I want you to think about what could be different in your life and in your business. This is another one where I don’t want you to say, well realistically I want you to just like dream for a second.
Don’t be so unrealistic. Like, well I could be flying on a private jet next year. Like maybe that’s a little bit out there, but like what really could change in your life and in your business in one year? One of my favorite quotes of all time is we overestimate what we can achieve in a day and underestimate what we can achieve in a year. You can change your entire life in a year. Seriously. Top to bottom whole thing. Be living like a whole new person in one year. It’s lack mindset that says like, well it takes years to find success or years to turn your life around. No, it doesn’t. There’s countless stories of people do it in a period of months. I think that there was a time where it took years, not now. We’re just living in the age of information and the age of access.
And when there’s a will, there’s a way. And if you’re willing to really get clear on what you want and then work it backwards to figure out what would need to happen or change to get there, you would be shocked by how quickly your life could change. Okay, so dream big there. Then we have step number six. And this is where I want you to create tactical goals. Now a lot of people say things like, well they should be smart goals. And let me actually look up what their acronym stands for. I actually don’t totally believe in it, but I’ll look it up ’cause I know somebody’s gonna say it. Hold on. Okay, here we go. So smart goals stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. I don’t agree. I know that’s like very old school way of doing goals. I think there’s some things in that are good.
I think specific is good ’cause we should know how it’s gonna get done. Don’t just say like make more money. Be like really clear. Like make an extra $18,000 next year. Perfect. So then 18,000 divided by 12, how much more is that per month? Great. Divide that by week. Great. Like break it down that way. I think it’s great. Achievable is where you lose me. I don’t think it should be totally unachievable, but I think the word achievable makes people play small. Like, oh, if I make an extra $500 a month, that’s like literally nothing for most of you, that’s not gonna make a massive impact in your life. And so we work hard all year to end up making extra six grand at the end of the year. Like truly, for most of you, no matter what your income level is, six grand is not gonna massively move the needle.
Like we need to really think about what big moves we can make to change our life. Like when you look at people who are frustrated and feeling stagnant and burnt out, they’re having those like little wins of like, oh, I made an extra six grand in a year and listen, $6,000 is real money. I’m not saying who cares. But what I’m saying is if you want your life to feel like it’s growing forward, it’s gonna take more than $6,000. And to make more than an additional $6,000 a year, you’re gonna have to work with real focus and real drive and know where this is all happening. The other thing is the time bound thing. I’ve been coaching to goal setting and goal achievement for many years and I continually watch people make unreasonable goals for themselves. Like I said, you can change your whole life in a year and I seriously believe that, but I don’t think you can do it in the next 60 days.
And when I watch people do like these time bound goal, they’re, they’re like, well, in the next two weeks I’m gonna do this and then 30 days I’m gonna do that and then 90 days I’m gonna do this. And what happens when you’re too strict on that time bound part is that if one little piece of the puzzle doesn’t go how you planned, you lose momentum on the whole thing. So I understand that with goal setting, like smart goals, it’s like a really popular way to do it. It’s just not what I to, I’ve seen it fail too many times. So I would make specific goals, I would make motivating goals, I’d push way beyond achievable. And I’d really think about like what tangibly could you change in your life in the next year to change your life? And go back to steps two and three about the emotional reflection and the factual reflection to like get really clear on that too.
If you’re finding you’ve lost your way, go there. Okay, step seven, once you’ve done all that, you’re gonna create a goal tracking system. This is super important. 365 days is a really long time. We think of a year as like, oh, one more year. 365 days is a lot of days. And, and you will forget. It’s amazing. You’ll plot all this out. You’ll forget it probably two weeks from now. The details and the odds ends of what you put in here unless you create a goal tracking system. So for example, what I just rattled off a minute ago, let’s say you wanna make an extra $18,000 a year. That’s nice. That’s, that’s a good measurable tangible goalpost, but break it down. So, okay, $18,000 in a year, that breaks down to an additional $1,500 a month. You wanna create, let’s say that you work, there’s I think 4.2 average weeks in a month.
So that’s an additional $357 a week. And let’s say that you work four days a week. So then you need to be making an extra $89 a day to make an extra 18 grand this year. Like when I break it down like that, aren’t you like, oh my gosh, like $89 a day? It’s not that much. And when you get really tactical like that, it starts to be very possible. So I want you to create a system for tracking this. Don’t just like break the goals down, but how are you gonna track it month over month? You should be checking in on these things. I’m amazed when I’m, when I’m talking to a stylist in the dms and I’m like, okay, well how much did you do in services last month? And they’re like, oh, I don’t know. Let me look it up. What, how do, how do you not, how can you not find that in like 12 seconds?
They gotta go to their booking system and they’re pulling the reports. Again, it’s going back to that like pen to paper thing or that journaling thing. You need to write it down. What would happen if you lost for whatever reason, your digital records or your you changed booking company? Uh, oh my gosh, how many times does this happen to people? They change booking software and they’re like, oh, it’s so annoying. I don’t have access to all my old records. Not everything transferred. These are the things we don’t think about that are happening. Like I’m a full blown believer in digital booking. I don’t think anybody should use a paper book anymore. Like the risk on that is wild. And you’re missing out on so many marketing and growth opportunities. It’s like 1996 called they want their booking system back. But you still need to have a physical accounting record of what goes on in your business.
Like I said, I run this business 95% digitally. I work from a computer all day long. It doesn’t mean I don’t have a huge filing cabinet of physical things that are required for this business that there are just some things you should have physical record of. And I do believe at the end of every month having a physical accounting of what happened in your business. So you know, are you growing? Are you not growing? What’s going well? No, it’s not going well. What’s a waste of your time? How many new guests did you get in February of this year? These are the things that we should be able to pick up on really, really fast. And so having some kind of physical goal tracking system every single year I think is really important. And you can totally do that in a journal or a notebook or something like that.
And last but not least is gonna be step number eight, which is my favorite. And that’s gonna be reward yourself. So when we track our annual progress, we use a color-coded system in our business still. We’re a group of adults and we like color-coded goal achievement markers every time we achieve something. So every month we go through and using our color coded system, we’re marking off when things have been achieved. You can do that with stickers in your planner. You can use it with color markers. So we wanna have a time sensitive reward system using digital color coding or stickers or markers. I prefer the physical if you possibly can. And then what I want you to do is decide what you’re going to treat yourself with as you make these things happen. For example, if you make an extra $18,000 in your business next year, let’s say that’s increasing your revenue by 25%, that’s significant.
I want you to do something to really market. Maybe it’s a day at the spa for you. Maybe it’s an incredible date night at a restaurant that you love. Maybe it’s buying that new pair of shoes you’ve had your eye on. I think it’s important to mark big achievements with some kind of celebration because otherwise we’re living in a rat race and it starts to become exhausting and overwhelming and unmotivating. And so we always like to have little reward systems for what we can do to really celebrate those milestones and events in our life. Okay, if you’ve never done annual planning before, I think this is a really great place to start. Like I said, if you want a full copy of exactly what we have here in the episode, if you go to thriving stylists.com/eight steps, you can get another copy of this PDF that’s gonna break the entire thing down. So thriving stylists.com/eight steps to get a full breakdown. And as I always say, so much love, happy business building and I’ll see you on the next one.
