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 hairstylist, and this is the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
What is up? And welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Brit Seva, I name. So excited for this podcast episode. These have been bursting at the seams for a few months now, to let you know that we have a brand new pricing method, it’s now the nine factor method. So for many years we had the seven factor method. In fact, almost 20,000 stylists have used that method to radically increase their revenue, radically increase their demand, improve their schedule, all the things that seven factor method worked for us from 2012 until now. And now it’s time for a change, which is really exciting. So we announced to our Thriver Society members already that they’re getting new access to our brand. It’s a totally new calculator. It’s expanded, it’s improved. It’s much more detailed. It’s much more easier to decide what method you should be using.
You’ll now be priced properly for today’s market. Really exciting stuff. So our existing thrivers already found out they’re getting that tool. Very exciting. For those of you not in Thrivers, you’re not yet in Thrivers. I want to explain to you how the tool works, what the nine factors are so you can price yourself properly. I also wanna give a little bit of context. I know there’s 101 boys to price yourself if you search Thriving Stylist Podcast pricing, there’s at least a dozen, maybe more podcasts I’ve done on pricing over the years. The seven factor pricing episode I did over four years ago, I think it was 2021. And it is by far one of our most downloaded episodes. It’s a method that a huge portion of the industry is using today. And now with this nine factor method, I know this is gonna be the new thing, which is wonderful.
I know there are lots of other methods that people use. Hourly session based parts and labor level system, group pricing, salon pricing, all kind of, I think the charger worth movement pricing. We are finally stepping away from, which was always the bad idea, but there’s a gajillion different ways. Oh, legacy pricing. I know there’s a gajillion ways to price yourself. I understand. The reason we go with the nine factor method is because it’s designed for profit, it’s designed to position yourself for rapid growth in your market without taking a personal discount, without price gouging your clients or looking like you are mispriced. So being overpriced and being underpriced are equally as bad. Obviously being overpriced, we know just general knowledge. If you’re overpriced, it’s gonna be slow to build and grow, right? Underpriced can be the same. So for all of us in our mind, no matter what your budget is, what your lifestyle is, you have a price point that just logically makes sense for you based on whatever, based on your money story, your economic status, your history with whatever thing you’re about to buy, anything like that.
So for example, if I’ve been paying $50 for haircuts my whole life and I see somebody advertising a $35 cut psychologically, I’m not even gonna have to think about it. I’m gonna see 35 and say too cheap. Even if that person offering the $35 haircut’s amazing if I’ve always paid 50 or if I’ve paid 50 for the last 10 years and I’ve been happy, there’s a piece of my brain that’s wired to think 50 is good. Now, if I see somebody charging 60, my brain is gonna tell me a different story. It might say, you know what, Britt, you’re worth it. Pay the $10 more. You like this person’s work? Go for it. If I see somebody charging one 50 and I’ve been paying 50, my brain’s gonna tell me a different story. It’s gonna say, whoa, does it really make sense for you to pay three times as much as you’ve been paying?
After I look at that stylus work, my brain might tell me, yes, my brain might tell me a story of like, wow, you’ve probably been underpaying like this one 50 haircut looks worth it. Or my brain might say never. That is so unreasonable. One 50 for a haircut is bonkers. All of those stories are true based on the person who is seeing your prices, seeing your work. You are not for everybody. There’s not a single stylist in the world who’s for everybody. And I know there’s some stylists who are like, no, seriously, anybody can sit with me. Yeah, but not everybody would choose to. Everybody has their own ideal. And when you’re priced properly using the right pricing method, you will grow as quickly as possible. So this is not about price gouging, it’s about protecting profit margin and pricing yourself for rapid growth. When we say rapid growth for all of our members, we’re shooting for a target of 10 new guest requests per stylist per month.
Even if you are fully booked with a wait list and you’re booked out for four weeks, we still wanna see a demand of 10 new guest requests per stylist per month, even if we are waitlist them or turning them away. Why? Because I know from years of experience in coaching tens of thousands of stylists and salons at this point that when I get a stylist to that point, I know we can have predictable revenue growth. I know we can always create a positive margin. I know there is financial stability there. Anything less than that. And we had, we had to start to get a little bit more wary about things like changing structure, changing service offerings, moving locations, changing branding, changing price, anything less than that. We have to be careful because if we
So that’s our benchmark is we’re that we’re looking for. If you are seeing 10 or more new guest requests per month right now, whether you’re taking them all or not irrelevant, we’ll get into that in a little bit. 10 or more new guest requests a month and you’re happy with your income level and you’re not burnt out or maxed out or overwhelmed with your demand that you can’t get everybody in. You’re not having scheduling issues. You more than likely do not need to change your pricing at all. Not everybody has to change their pricing. You might have a method that’s working great for you, I am here for that. This is for somebody where they’re not sure if they’re priced right, they’re not happy with their income, they’re not happy with their demand, they don’t know what their pricing means. This might be for you.
So what I like about this method is tens of thousands of people have applied it and it’s yet to backfire. It’s proven, it’s not trendy, it’s not gimmicky. It’s based all on facts and data. For a long time it was seven factors, now it’s going to be nine. This method will not fail you. The trick about this method is it takes out all of the emotion and it does not work in things like structured level systems. That is by design. I have watched things like annual salon wide price increases, structural level systems, team pricing, things like that sometimes fail. Not always. This is not an absolute, but I wanna explain why sometimes those things fail. If you do something like every January all stylists in the building take a 5% increase or a 10% increase, that might not be enough for some of your stylists.
So you are limiting their financial growth. It might be too much for somebody who’s struggling. So again, you’re limiting their financial growth. When you look at just like good economics and good business sense, there aren’t really brands that say, okay, great everything in our arsenal up 10% this year. Just raise the prices on everything. You have to take a look at all everything that you’re selling, everything that’s going on, and decide what needs to be removed from the inventory completely, what needs to be increased and what needs to be potentially decreased. Like that’s good business economics. And when we have things where it’s like everybody in the building is taking a price increase this year, it can be really damaging to the business overall and to every individual stylist participating. When I look at the reason I have issues with pricing hinged on promotion is ’cause to me they’re two totally different things.
You can have a stylist who has banging demand, like people are banging down the doors to get in with this person. Some stylists are seeing like 18, 20, 25 new guest requests in a month. Okay, I’m using extremes here for this example. Yet in some structures and systems, they can’t have a price increase because they’re lacking in something else. Pricing and promotion are not the same thing. When a salon holds a stylus back in price, everybody loses, the stylist loses, the salon loses. There’s not a lot of good reason to do it. And so when you have structure where you can only raise your prices when some other factor that has nothing to do with the nine factors I’m about to talk about are all aligning, everybody hurts. So when you look at these nine factors, it truly is based on what the business can withstand and withhold and sustain a demand of 10 or more new guest requests a month.
That’s the magic and that’s the sweet spot. So let’s get into the nine factors. So factor number one that we look at when we are looking to price somebody properly for rapid growth in their market without price gouging, without any issues, is gonna be the local annual income of the community being served. So for some stylists, you’re serving just your little tiny community. I live in a a town called Half Moon Bay, California. It’s a little coastal community. Our town is relatively small. There’s a specific income revenue point at this area. If you drive 25 minutes away, you were in a completely different economy. I’m talking 10 times the wealth than what you would see here. So if I’m serving the people in my community that I live in, my price point would be one thing. If I drive 25 minutes away and that’s the clientele I’m serving, it’s a totally different price point.
No matter where I live, it’s who I serve and my target market clientele, which is why in Thrivers we start with who is it you’re serving target market client because that’s gonna be a huge factor in your price point. Okay? So annual income of those that you serve, local annual income of those that you serve. Okay, next, your maximum available service hours. I don’t know of any other pricing method that takes this into account. And after years and years of tweaking and data and adjustments, we added this in a few years back because I realized how critical it was. If one stylist only works two days a week and one works five and they have similar demand, the stylist who only works two days a week might need to be at a significantly higher price point. And so we take a look at that factor and the way that our calculator works, we call it dynamic.
So the reason we call it dynamic is because all the factors relate to each other. So it’s not just like one thing happens now your price adjusts, it’s okay, you’ve changed your schedule. How does that impact demand? How does that impact how far out you’re booked? It looks at all the things and the calculator speaks to all of the factors all at one time. And that’s how it’s able to do the perfect positioning is it’s not just based on pull the trigger, this happens, it’s the relationship between the factors. And that’s why we call it dynamic. So your maximum available service hours. So are you scheduled to be in the salon 24 hours a week, 16 hours a week, 45 hours a week When your schedule changes, your pricing more than likely will need to change. So that’s the second factor that we always take a look at.
The third factor is the services that you offer. This is something else that’s adapted with the system over the years. If you are somebody who specializes in extensive blonding services, color corrections, vivids extensions services where the client is sitting in your chair for 3, 4, 5 hours, often your pricing and the way that the dynamic factors work together has to be different than somebody who primarily just does cuts or somebody who even just does cuts and colors. The average cut and color client is gonna be in the chair for two, two and a half hours, something like that. So nice less, sometimes more, but that’s significantly less than somebody who’s averaging four hours per guest. So because of that, that factor also impacts pricing method. And this is something I’ve seen cause tension in salons is there’s stylists who will say, I am producing a lot for this salon, but I’m only able to see half the clients that the person next to me sees because we’re offering different services and because my client volume is low, even though my service revenue is high, they won’t raise my prices misfire, right?
So the services you offer is factor number three, number four total guests you see in a month. And now you can start to see the factors relating to each other. So if we’re taking a look at max available service hours plus the services you offer factoring in how many guests on average you’re seeing in a month, now we’re starting to get somewhere. So we look at that total guest average per month. Then we look at how far out you are booked. And that’s part one of our demand factors. So there’s two demand factors we look at. The first is how far out you’re booked and the next is total monthly referrals. When we add those things together, we get a good sense of your demand. Factor five, how far out you’re booked gives us a sense of retention. And six is your monthly referrals. That’s demand factor two.
So we look at the marriage between those two pieces that lets us know how in demand you are at any given time, retention wise and external demand wise. So back in the day, there was a time where experience was a factor. Experience is no longer a factor in pricing. Do you know what changed that? Social media, sorry to say it, but we can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube on that. For a long time it was like clients wanted to see the most experienced person because the person who had been doing hair the longest was obviously the most talented. Well, social media and being able to see stylists work online really turned that on its head. ’cause it was like, wait a minute, my stylist has been doing hair for 20 years, but they’re not pulling off color like this stylist who’s only been here for four.
And I know experienced stylists don’t love that. I know that’s irritating, especially for those who it’s like took classes 20 years ago and learned those techniques. But techniques have evolved and changed so much that trying to keep up the learning curve in our industry is becoming larger and longer and longer all the time. And when you, when you see people who are only two years, three years, five years in the industry running laps around more experienced people, it’s frustrating and I totally understand. But that’s why we don’t take years of experience into price point. This is also something I hear that a lot of salons are struggling with, is newer stylists being priced higher than more? I’m doing quote unquote senior stylists like veterans. And I, I understand how frustrating that would be for someone to be like, I’m sorry, I’ve been doing hair for 12 years and this person who just got here three years ago is gonna charge more than I am.
Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes that’s what literally makes sense. And it doesn’t mean you’re bad and it doesn’t mean they’re good, it just means it is what it is. I also see salon owners worry and wonder like if their stylists are charging more than they are, that’s called living the dream. If you wanna scale as an owner, you need stylists who are charging more than you are. That’s a good thing. It’s like parents who want their kids to have a better life than they did. It’s kind of like the same. You want that. So don’t don’t let that freak you out. Okay. So those are the first six factors. Then factor VII is your product cost. So we started adding in product cost to our pricing many, many, many, many years ago. I know there’s other ways to do it. Like you can add the product cost on after, as you know, on top of the ticket or whatever.
Instead of doing that, we just bake it into our pricing. And then we also have an opportunity for any client who’s being checked out to pay an additional color charge or an additional styling extension charge. Those have always been things that are in there. So if there’s an additional product cost used, you can add that in. But having it be stably baked into services allows pricing, predictability, pricing transparency on your website, easier transactions, less chance of you forgetting to adjust a ticket. So we bake in product costs to each and every service individually. So you’ll use our tool and it’ll take a look at like, okay, what did you enter in for your cost of permanent color for a root touchup? What did you enter in for? Average cost of gloss on hair length? What did you factor in for average amount of lightener and peroxide used for?
Uh, highlight whatever. It adds all that up for you and spits it out the other end. And then you can also make adjustments per service too. So however you wanna calculate that is uh, the world is oyster. And then you can also add on additional color charges as well as needed. Okay, so that’s the first seven. Those have always been there. That’s not new. Eight is your service timing. So that has been a part of our pricing calculator forever, but we didn’t transparently talk about it like this. So timing is going to affect your pricing as well obviously. So if somebody is in your chair for 90 minutes versus 60 minutes, that’s gonna change how something is priced. Now that being said, we in our pricing calculator coach to a la carte pricing, hourly pricing and session-based. And the calculator gives you options for all three.
What’s exciting about the new calculator is it now does it in the column format. So you can take a look at what your prices would be if you were charging a la carte session-based or hourly ’cause they would be completely different. Now the other thing is we coach to how to choose which one is right for you. You can’t just pick and choose which one is your favorite. You have to choose your pricing method based on the clientele that you serve, because different methods work well for different clientele, right? So you’re able to see them all side by side and then based on other factors that we teach you, you’re able to understand, you know, what is my market position? What is my perceived value and which of these methods is right for me? You’re able to see them all side by side and then based on your timing, create a service menu, which is another really cool factor.
You’ll click little check boxes and it’ll head on over and create a service menu for you and you’ll be able to have all of your pricing showing up there. Now the ninth factor that we never had in before that we have now is utilization. So before we took into account how many guests you see in the month, how far you’re booked out, total monthly referrals. And that was pretty good for demand. But with utilization, it’s kind of like that final puzzle piece because what we were finding as stylists were saying like, well technically I’m booked out for the next six weeks, but it doesn’t mean I don’t have a 30 minute gap here. A 40 minute gap there. And we released a really cool tool in early January of 2026. It was free when we first released it. Now it’s included in thrivers and in this calculator that shows you how much money you’re losing every month in the gaps.
It’s really cool. So now if you’re really gappy, that could take an impact on your pricing as well, which was, I do believe a missing piece. Is it gonna change somebody’s pricing dramatically? No. But it is this factor that wasn’t really talked about and now it is. So before slus would say like, well, I’m pretty much booked out for six weeks, but this here and this there and this and the other thing, utilization takes care of that. So that little bit of gray area has now been tightened up with utilization. If you do not know how to calculate utilization, again, built into the calculator is a tool that will do that for you every single month and report it for you. I know there’s a lot of booking systems that do that as well. So however you wanna track that. Great. So if you are pricing yourself, I know this sounds probably more complicated than just looking around at what other people do and kind of doing the same, but imagine if you priced yourself based on the budget of the average person who sees you.
And we know to a science what the average person could afford to pay for personal services based on their average annual income. There’s a calculation for that. So we start with that. The schedule you choose to work, the services you choose to offer total guests you see in a month, how far out your booked, how many referrals you get, and your utilization factoring in your product costs and your service timing. You could not be more price perfectly for your market. And then like I said, we would then take a look at if you should be a la carte, if you should be session based or if you should be hourly. I will say for the most part, probably about 70% of our industry should still be a la carte. You’ll grow the fastest, it’s the easiest. You can still be just as lucrative and profitable as anything else.
When we shift to things like hourly and session based, it’s more of a structural change. Sometimes it is the right thing. There are certain market positions where they should do it. It’s the minority, but it does happen. So we take a look at that too. But if you’re somebody who’s like, I don’t know, my pricing is based on, I don’t know if this makes sense for me. Could I be losing money? Am I overpriced? Maybe I priced myself in a way that made sense two years ago. Does it still make sense today? Checking out and trying the pricing calculator is a great way to do it and you can always learn more thrivingstylists.com. Check out Thriving Stylist Method. The calculator tool comes free when you join any of our programs and memberships. If you don’t want to join a program and membership, what I want you to do is just think through these nine factors and ask yourself like, based on these things we talked about, do I think I’m maybe overpriced, underpriced, lacking in demand, maybe overcharging in a certain area, something you haven’t thought of before. Just give a little additional thought as I always like to say. So much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
