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 today we’re talking about money making, scheduling strategies. I have a bit of a different take, I think, on money making scheduling strategies compared to other coaching companies and programs, which is good and interesting. It’ll give you a different perspective if you don’t agree with me on all of these things, that’s great. I know there’s multiple ways to, you know, be successful in the industry and everybody judges success in a different way. I’m saying this at the beginning because I want you to understand, when I talk about stylists becoming wealthy, for me, it’s always gonna be an abundance of time and money. Physical health coming first, not breaking your body down, mental health being prioritized. If we’re not doing those things, I think we’ve kind of lost the plot.
Teaching you how to make lots of cash is actually relatively easy. Teaching you how to have a life that you love is, is where things become really exceptional. And, and that’s the arena I like to play in, in the industry of how do we ensure, like, you seriously have it all. Like, you know what I mean? Like, let’s be greedy. Let’s make the money, but let’s have the balance. Let’s have the life. Let’s feel like our body doesn’t hurt at the end of the day. And I think there’s a lot of stylists in the industry who still say, “I work super hard and it’s always such a grind, but I love it. ” Uh, you haven’t played the other side of the game sometimes. It’s, it’s easy to say that you love the grind when you have an experience still making multiple six figures and having a life balance and not having your back hurt and knowing that you can do this for another 20 years if you so choose to and that you’re, you’re not gonna develop carpal tunnel.
And there’s just ways to make a lot of money and have a lot of balance. And I, I wanna talk about things that we can do to our schedule as stylists to make as much money as possible while still preserving our lifestyle. Okay, so first things first, kind of the age old question, what are the best days for stylists to build on? And even as I pose that, for some of you, dates already sort of rolling through your head. Like some of you may have audibly said out loud, you know, days of the week, like, “Ah, I know what the best days are to build on. ” This has definitely changed over the years. There was a time when if stylists were willing to work Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays, they’d build really fast. Um, because generally speaking, a lot of stylists take Sundays and Mondays off, like old school, super old school.
Those were like the traditional salon closure days. Like you could expect a salon to be closed Sundays and Mondays. And so the thought was if a stylist was willing to work Sundays and Mondays, they’d be the only person willing to take clients those days because so many salons were closed. Like fill the gap. Totally get it. And then there was also the thought process that if you worked nights and weekends, you would build faster because the thought was that more clients wanted to come in after work or on the weekends, like nobody wanted to take time off of work. And so if a stylist worked those days and hours, they would build faster. I think there was a lot of truth to a lot of that pre- 2020. And I don’t believe in any of those things anymore, only because I have thousands of data points, like thousands of stylists I’ve been able to track for the last six-something years.
And there is no correlation between stylists working nights and weekends and building faster. I know plenty of stylists working nights and weekends growing incredibly slowly. I can only speak to my own daughter who only works Tuesday through Friday. She’s home for dinner with us most nights. She had a banger of a March 2026, and she’s been renting for six months now and has really built up a lot of demand on a Wednesday through Friday, primarily daytime schedule. And so it’s hard for me to say, “Oh, there’s only certain days, there’s only certain times.” I think it’s based on the effort. We have a lot more clients now who are working from home. I know, uh, one of the clients that she sees was texting her. She and I were sitting next to each other and she’s like, “Oh my gosh, this client is so funny.” She, her entire Friday morning is just meeting.
She’s on meeting after meeting after meeting and she’s like in their Zoom calls and she’s just sitting there listening. So this client comes to see my daughter on Fridays in the mornings because she can sit there and take all of her Zoom calls while my daughter does her hair and she still gets her workday in. Like that wasn’t possible six, seven, eight years ago. Now it is. And so to think that stylists can only build on nights and weekends doesn’t make sense. And we also, after 2020, a lot of clients, consumers, human beings are not willing to take so much time away from their family that they’re prioritizing being home and being present. And that was one of the big takeaways that a lot of people had coming out of the pandemic was how wonderful it was to be at home and how life is short and time is short and we don’t want to waste it and we don’t want to grind it and we don’t want to commute and we don’t want to spend nights away from, you know, the house and we, and on our weekends we want to be present.
And so we’re seeing clients who are much more adaptable to coming in at normal hours. I’m the client who I would never go to get my hair done on a Saturday or Sunday. That’s my precious time with my family. I would never want to be in a salon at 7:00 PM. Now, that’s not to say nights and weekends are like doomsday. There’s plenty of clients who still want to come in during those times. The reason I share this is I don’t believe that there’s like golden days or times any longer. It’s about the target market clientele you’re working to attract, how you branded market yourself and what works for you and for your community. If you’re resentful of the schedule you’re working, it’s not going to be good for you or for anybody else. If you’re willing to put in the effort, I truly believe you can build on any schedule.
So that’s, that’s my take on it. I’ve just seen that proven to be true time and time and time again, that’s my take. I’m certain somebody feels differently based on the data I’ve seen. It seems to work whenever you want it to work based on the effort you’re willing to put in and the brand you’re willing to build. Is it a good idea to double book? When I joined the industry in 2007, double booking was called Working Smarter Not Harder. Like if I had to put a phrase around it, it was working smarter, not harder. That is oxymoron, the right word. How is taking double the amount of clients in the same amount of time not working harder? Of course it’s working harder. I understand you’ve improved the revenue generated in every hour of your chair. That is true. What we’re arguing is, is that easier?
That’s not harder to have twice as many guests come in to see you in a day. It’s not harder to see 16 guests in a day than it is to see eight. I don’t believe that. I think that you can make good money double booking, but you can also make amazing money, multiple six figures not double booking. So to each their own. I think that there’s also clients who are fine with double booking, they like it, and there’s some clients who are like, “I just want it to be you and I. I, I don’t want to feel like you’re racing between me and somebody else and that person runs long and am I gonna overprocess?” And there’s a lot of people who don’t like that anymore. I think double booking is fine. I don’t coach to it in any of my programs. If you like it and you do it and it works for you and your back is not breaking and you’re not stressed having 16 clients in a day and your retention is great, then by all means keep doing it.
I don’t think that the only way to make great money is double booking. I don’t think triple booking is the, you know, the way to make great cash, only because there’s so many other ways to do it. If you want to double book, that’s fine. I don’t think it’s like the schedule hack that we used to think that it was. I’ve watched double booking in particular and the pressure to see such a high volume of clients all the time really break people mentally and physically. If you watch a stylist who was double booked have to unexpectedly take two or three weeks off because of a medical emergency, the emotional overwhelm they go through is so real. It wouldn’t be easy for any stylist, but imagine having to cancel on 60 clients instead of 20. I mean, it’s just insurmountable. And so j- just something to think about and consider.
I don’t think double booking is the magic ticket. If you wanna do it, that’s fine. How far out is healthy to be booked? Again, I think there was an old thought process that the further out you booked, the better. I remember when it was trendy to be like, “My books are closed for the year or no longer taking new clients.” And then stylists and salon owners started running the math and they realized, “Oh my gosh, if I do those things, I start losing money.” What happens when you have a full book of business is you get this emotional security piece and it always looks better to have clients on your books that makes you feel like psychologically safe, like I’ve locked in the money, I don’t have to worry I’m gonna have an empty day. Totally get it. What we’re finding is that clients are not willing to wait as long to see a stylist as they used to.
It used to kind of be a flex when clients would be like, “I had to wait 12 weeks to get on the stylist books.” It’s no longer the flex that it once was. It’s just kind of off trend. Now we could see a trend back to that for sure. I have to leave room for that possibility, but right now it’s not on trend. For clients to have to wait weeks and months to come in to see you, they’ll just find somebody else who is more accessible. The reason why is because they start to panic and they start to think, “Oh my gosh, it’s gonna take me 12 weeks to get on their books this time.” I have to for sure pre-book with them and if anything changes in my schedule, the odds of me getting back with them are slim to none and stylists who are booked out that far say, “Yep, sucks to be you.
” But, but it doesn’t suck to be the client. The client will just go to see somebody who is able to serve them and their lifestyle in a way that makes more sense and now you just lost out on money, which we’ll talk about in a minute because it, I think there’s also this misunderstanding that if your books are full, your bank account is full. If your books are full, there’s a real chance you’re losing 10,000 or more dollars a year in what could be growth revenue. So we’ll talk about that in a second. Um, when we’re looking at how far out is it healthy to be booked, two weeks seems to be the profitability and lifestyle sweet spot. It allows us stylists to do what they need to do lifestyle wise, reschedule clients. If anything, hopefully not, you know, happens, you have to take a day off sick, something happens in your life, you have to reschedule people.
Two weeks seems to be enough flexibility for the stylist, and yet it still allows clients to say, “Oh, okay, I can wait two weeks to go in to see them, that’s doable.” It’s like reasonable for both sides. That seems to be the sweet spot. Here’s a comment that somebody left in our community recently. I’ve had multiple clients lately, both new and returning mentioned to me, “It’s been hard to find appointments because I’m so booked out. ” I’m consistently booked out two to three weeks in advance. I wouldn’t have thought that that was being overly booked, is it? And to that, I think that we are settling into a new standard of two weeks kind of being the sweet spot of how long clients are willing to wait to see a stylist before they start getting antsy and start to think about other options. We did some big research just a couple of weeks ago looking into the, the industry and 67% of stylists report cancellations have increased.
67%, that’s a lot. So if you are booked after the moon and back, you know you’re gonna have gaps in cancellations. I hope you’re running a wait list and I hope that you’re tapping into that wait list all the time and giving wait list updates all the time. That’s more complex for you to manage, but it would be one way to do it. And just remembering that what’s booked isn’t guaranteed. What is guaranteed is if you call out sick and you’re booked out for weeks and weeks and weeks, you’re now going to have to work extra days stay late to make up for it. It’s your responsibility to get that client taken care of, right? So then the question becomes, isn’t that risky? To say you only are booked out for two weeks, that feels kind of gappy. Like for a lot of people that sounds insecure, they like to see bookings much further out than that.
Remember that my rule in business is demand comes first. That is, if there was one saying that we talk about more than anything here in Thrivers, it’s demand comes first. The top priority in your business right now is creating demand. So our demand sweet spot that we coach to is eight to 10 new guest requests a month. If you are a booked and busy stylist or a brand new stylist, if we can get you to eight to 10 new guest requests a month, I promise you that your revenue will grow significantly year over year. That is the marker. And if we get you up and above and beyond that, we have a structural issue. Like if you’re seeing 15 or 20 new guest requests a month, we got a problem. And if you’re seeing less than eight guest requests a month, we also have a problem.
Eight to 10 is that, is that real sweet spot and that’s where we go to. If you have solid retention, so an 85, 90% base clientele retention and a 30% new guest retention, being booked at only two weeks is not risky. It’s healthy. Um, your demand will take care of you, your clients will be able to get in to see you. They’ll have some lifestyle flexibility, you’ll have some lifestyle flexibility. It’s a sweet spot. There’s only two ways to grow your income in this industry, refine your structure or increase your demand. When we talk about refine your structure, we’ll get into it in a minute. Price increases do not make the tangible difference that we think that they will. I’m gonna run some math for you in a moment. Price increases are important. They’re a necessary part of the industry. They don’t solve all the world’s problems.
It’s not the only structural thing that stylists should be adjusting, but if we think that we can just price increase our way out of demand challenges or being overly booked, we are wrong. So if we’re looking to grow your income this year, which we should, we either need to increase your demand or shift your structure. So coming back to the point I was making, uh, some of you might be asking, how is it possible that if I’m booked out for weeks or months, it’s bad thing. Like that feels good. I must be in demand. Clients must want to come in to see me. My retention must be good. These are the emotional reactions we have to seeing a full book of business. You are losing money and you’ve lost the flexibility in your own life. So my question to you is, if you’re the stylist who’s listening to this right now and you’re booked out for the next 16 weeks or 12 weeks or whatever, what is your plan to make more money in the next 12 to 16 weeks?
Some of you said things like sell more retail. I’ll have to share the data on this at some point. What we’re finding is the profitability on most retail purchases lands somewhere between eight and 14%. So if you sell $100 worth of retail, you’re making an extra eight to $14. When you look at nuts and bolts and everything at the end of the day, so selling retail, it’s not that it’s like no money, it’s just not significantly increasing your money. So then we look at things like add-ons. Well, generally speaking, the stylist who’s booked out 12, 16 plus weeks, the only add-ons you can do would be things like insulin conditioning treatments or other things that don’t take up a ton of time. If you’re doing those at volume and at scale, you could increase your income and revenue to a degree, but as we step into an economy like the one we’re kind of dancing into right now, things like insulin conditioning treatments, even things like gratuity, that starts to be the things that clients start to take a pass on and say, “You know what?
I’m gonna do it next time.” You’re gonna start to hear a lot more of that. So leveraging add-ons and just increasing the ticket on the people we already have is gonna soften a bit. It’s not the winning strategy that it is in some other markets. So as hairstylists, we always wanna shoot for 15% service revenue growth year over year. The cost of business in 2026 is reported to increase by 3.6%. Do a Google search, say, you know, “What is the, what is the cost of business expected to grow by in 2026?” 3.6% is the data that I’m seeing. Generally speaking as a stylist, whether you’re in a studio suite or you’re a booth renter or you’re a commission stylist, you’re taking home between 40 and 50% of what you produce, some less, some more, but somewhere in the 40, 50% range.
So if you’re financially growing at 15% top line based on what you’re going to take home and that 40 to 50% and knowing that the cost of business is gonna increase by 3.6%, we need to be at at least 15% service revenue growth year over year for your lifestyle to feel like it’s improving. That’s simply the sweet spot. So let’s say that all the clients from last year, all your bread and butter people, all your faves continue to come in to see you. You had 100% returning guest retention. Statistically, you don’t see a lot of stylists with 100% guest retention. I would argue that there’s none, but I know every time I say that, people say, “It’s me. If I was to go in and really audit your books, I’m certain you’ve lost a few clients over the last year. It just happens, life happens, but let’s say that there is a stylist who out there who is retaining 100% of the clients that they meet, and they all book out their visits.
So there’s getting all the same stuff you’re gonna make about the same amount of money that you made last year, unless you raise your prices by 15%. The average stylist is only raising their prices by five to $10 per service. That seems to be the emotional threshold for most. And, and there’s also data back behind that. I’m not saying that that’s not a good idea. I, I think it’s often what’s the most tolerable for clients, but it’s not gonna get you to that 15% increase that we’re looking for. So imagine that you had a 15% price increase. I’m telling you, you need to make 15% more money in 2026 than you did in 2025. Sorry, let me rephrase. You need to make 15% more in service revenue in 2025 than you made in 2026. So if we were to raise your prices by 15%, if somebody had a ticket of 150 bucks in 2025, in 2026, they’d need to pay 172.
In 2027, they would need to pay 197. In 2028, they’d be needing to pay about $225 for the exact same service set. And for most of you, when I talk about jumps like that, it sounds really expensive. It sounds like asking people to pay significantly more visit over visit. That’s more of like a 2025 dollar ticket increase. And for a lot of you, when I say you’re gonna raise your ticket by 20 or $25, it sounds scary because candidly it is and, and you will certainly lose some clients if you choose to do that. So that’s why we can’t just leverage price increases to get to that 15% growth. You will need to see new clients. Like there needs to be ability for new business and new life and new energy to come in. We need fresh revenue coming in. There is no profitable business on the planet that says,” We don’t want any new customers.
“I, I don’t have an example of a business that doesn’t want new customers. You need fresh revenue, you need more money, you need more bank accounts. That’s how the business grows. That’s how your profitability increases. There has to be new business coming in all the time. Price increases can’t get you there. So if you are booked so far out five weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, 10 weeks, 12 weeks, it is gonna have a negative impact on your demand. And when it does have a negative impact on your demand, even if you do raise your prices by five or 10 dollars per ticket, it’s simply not going to get you there. We need to have the ability to have more services coming in for your books to become more dynamic and for you to increase revenue beyond just trying to increase the average ticket or doing price increases, it’s gonna take more in order for you to get that 15% service revenue increase, generally speaking.
Next, money making scheduling strategy. Remove forms, text to book and call to book, having all clients book online. We’ve coached online booking for 11 years. Uh, it has worked at scale for stylists to make more money. It is worked at scale for stylists to get their lifestyle backed. It is work at stale for stylists to not feel like they’re living on their phone, worried that they’re gonna miss a DM, miss a text, miss a phone call, miss a voicemail. It saves you time. It increases efficiency and it will increase your bookings. For every client that you are booking by phone or DM or by text, I want you to imagine losing three. In a recent workshop that I taught, I had tons of data points on the research behind consumers and what they like to experience when they’re booking an appointment. And overwhelmingly, unless your clientele is primarily Gen X, clients like to book online.
When we look at millennials, when we look at Gen Z, when we look at all of the other younger generations, they like to book online. When you get to Gen X, 70% like to book online. So there’s still that 30% who prefer to book by phone, but you’re missing out on such a huge portion of your potential business by saying,” You want a book, send me a DM. You want a book, fill out a form. You want a book, send me a text, you want a book, give me a phone call. “It’s taking up too much of your time, too much of your client’s time, and you’re losing out on opportunity. And we’ve seen over and over and over and over and over again when we coach stylists and salons to pull away forms and texts and calls, business does increase pretty much immediately, okay?
Next, lack of website. If you want to increase your bookings and have your schedule work more effectively, please, please have a website. The reason I’m going to website is because a lot of online booking systems are set up in a really confusing way. As I’m doing funnel reviews and brand audits and I’m looking at stylists and salons booking systems, I’m catching a lot of things that stylists and salons didn’t even realize were so confusing. I’ll go to book an appointment and I’ll, I won’t be able to do it. Like it’ll be fully impossible or the descriptions don’t make sense. And I’ll go back to the stylist and be like, ” I just tried to use your booking system and it’s broken or it doesn’t make sense. “And the amount of times they say,” Oh my gosh, I didn’t even know that was happening. “So many of you have booking systems that are confusing or the descriptions don’t make sense or you have way too many services.
There needs to be a website that gives more context. The website is gonna build trust. If you want to have scheduling that makes more money for you, your website is gonna be a piece of that. Next, something that people ask me all the time is what is the best booking system? You know what? There’s so many great ones. I’ve chosen to this point to stay brand agnostic when it comes to booking systems because I don’t think there’s one that’s perfect for everybody. I think there’s so many incredible ones out there. It’s like trying on a pair of shoes. You gotta find the one that fits for you. What I will say is if the booking system is free, it’s probably not the best. Generally speaking, free of anything is not anybody’s best. It can be good, but it’s probably not gonna be what builds your business the fastest.
When we look at some businesses that are kind of front runners for me, GossGenius is a good simple one. It’s very simple in its execution. Vagaro is very robust and customizable. It’s one that people can get themselves a little tangled up in sometimes, but it does have a ton of features. What’s interesting is it’s kind of like pay for what you use, like pay for what you want, so there’s that. Huge fan of Forest, huge fan of Mango Mint when it comes to Teams and salons overall. Boulevard is another one that I know a lot of salons like as a whole. What I would suggest you do before you choose any booking system is attempt to book appointments with other stylists using the different booking systems that you’re looking at. There’s some booking systems that I know that stylists and salons are like hooked on because they like the backend features.
I don’t want to drop names. Sometimes the front end function as a client is like tragic. And so even though on the backend as a stylist or salon owner, you’re like, ” I love it. There’s so much great reporting or I like the way it organizes or I like that it lets me do this one thing. “If it’s a nightmare for the client, it doesn’t really matter how much you love it, you’re gonna lose business and you’re gonna lose bookings. So attempt to book on the systems that you’re considering as a client before you like sign the dotted line. That’s kind of like a quick hack strategy I would certainly put into play. Some of the features I would look for in a booking system are cluster booking, meaning gap free booking. I did not realize that, that not all stylists and salons knew this was a feature.
A lot of booking systems now have a feature where if you toggle the, the feature on, online booking will not create gaps for you. Meaning if I was a stylist and all I had on my books for next Thursday was a haircut at 11:00 AM. And a client went in and they said they wanted to book a root catch up. The only appointment times that would be showed to that guest are, let’s say at 90 AM, because it would, let’s say I, I put in my booking timing as two hours. What that guest would see is a 90 AM or 12 noon. And they wouldn’t see anything else because my booking system would say,” Let’s book this tint from 9:00 to 11:00, so butts right up to that haircut she already has, or have that color client come in right after she finishes the haircut.
“It wouldn’t show a 4:00 PM, because if I were to have a 11:00 haircut and a 4:00 PM color, I’d now have this huge gap that may or may not be filled. I’m calling it cluster booking. All booking systems call it something different. It’s like gap reduction booking factors. A lot of online booking systems have that now. That’s a feature I’d be looking for. The ability to customize. When I talk to stylists and salons who are frustrated with their booking software, it’s the inability to customize like being stuck in a function or this booking software makes me do this, that or the other thing. Watch out for things like that. When booking systems require users to create a login or a profile just to see your schedule, you’re gonna lose clients on that. If the client is able to at least see your schedule, and then when they go to book, then they have to log in or create a profile, that’s fine.
If somebody has to create a profile or spend their time building out their own data before even seeing your schedule, people are going to bounce. So just make sure that they can at least see your calendar before having to do that. If you have a complex pricing system or menu, you wanna untangle that. And again, going back to the no website. So updating all of those things in your online booking will help you to make more money with the schedule that you have. Last money making schedule strategy, please stop charging for consultations. Stop it. Yeah, remember years ago, like when people, when people charge for consultations, I wanna be like 1996 called and they want their free consult back. We really swung the pendulum in the last five years where a client is not able to have an ounce of our time unless they’re swiping their credit card.
Clients today need to build trust with you. And the irony is, I know that stylists today wanna have trust with their clients. And the reason I know that is because you want to see photos of their hair before they come in and do a personality test and do you fit my vibe? And like, you wanna screen them as much as they wanna screen you. And given the opportunity for somebody to come in and sit down and talk to you and connect, you will gain more business. I was talking to a stylist the other day and she was like, I kind of got into a, a bit of a bind with one of my coworkers because this coworker doesn’t have free consultations and a client was DMing questions to this stylist and, you know, the stylist was answering the questions in DMs. I can only imagine how long that took, probably 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes going back and forth with this person.
Ultimately, the client booked a free consultation with a stylist in the same salon that simply offered free consultations, and the free consultation stylist got the booking, and the stylist who had been going back and forth with this client did not. And the stylist who took the free consultation had no idea that the coworker, the other stylist who worked in the building had been DMing with this person. The, the client didn’t bring it up. There was no way that the stylist would know, but after the client left, the stylist came up and was like, “I’m kind of annoyed because I’m going back and forth with this person and then she comes in and books with you. ” That client, and this is gonna be a multi-hundred dollar ticket. The reason why the client booked with the stylist is because they wanted to sit in the room and have a conversation.
Do you know that most businesses, when somebody is interested in your business, like if you wanna talk about this like mainstream marketing, they’re called a lead. If somebody is interested in your business, they’re called a lead. It’s your job to close the lead or close the sale. There’s a reason why businesses offer free sales calls. They don’t say, “If you wanna hop on a sales call with our team, it costs you $20.” Nobody would pay. The reason you can hop on the sales call for free is that’s how trust is built, that’s how relationship is built. You have to look at the business the same for you as a stylist. You should allow clients to come sit in your chair and be in your space and have a conversation with you and you both suss each other out and decide if you’re a good fit or not.
The more clients you can meet, the more opportunities you’ll have to build business and the faster your revenue will grow. So blocking clients from sitting in your chair to have a 15-minute conversation unless they’re willing to swipe a credit card is a scheduling mistake, in my opinion, unless, again, you are so booked and busy that you cannot possibly take any new clients, in which case you’d only be looking to take those, you know, two or three new guests a month that are really willing to pay your, your rates and are willing to come and see you just simply based on your incredible, you know, demand and reputation and all those other things. If that’s not you, please allow people to come in for free consultations, advertise that you’d love to have them sit in your chair and chat. It’s only gonna help you grow. Okay.
I hope you got some good takeaways on this one. So much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
