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.
Why is up and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I am your host, Britt Seva, and today we’re talking about systems that hurt new talent stylists and team retention or overall stylist retention. For any salon owner, the goal is to hire a stylist, have them be happy working with you forever and ever, and they never leave. That is so incredibly rare. However, it is what we’re all hoping happens, right? We want people to join our salon teams and wanna stay with us forever, and that’s my hope for you as well. It’s my, it’s my hope as a business owner. Hey, that people choose to come and work for me and, and wanna stay for years and years and years. It doesn’t always work out, but when it does, it feels really good. And so for all of us, we want those we hire to choose to be team members for the long haul.
There are a lot of things that salons are doing right now that are hurting their new talent stylists, that are hurting their chances of keeping a team long term, growing a team, increasing profitability, creating a salon that doesn’t rely heavily on the owner of the salon or a handful of high performers to carry the financial burden. If any of those things sound like you, wow, if this podcast episode is not for you. I also want you to listen to podcast episode 308. It is from 2023, but it still is accurate today as it was back then, and it’s talking about the difference between salon assistants, mentees, and liabilities. I want you to go back and listen to that one if you haven’t already, whether you are a assistant yourself or you are a salon owner. It is a great listen. And the reason I’m talking about assistants, mentees, and liabilities is because in my opinion, there’s a huge difference between a salon assistant and somebody who is a mentee in a salon training program.
They’re not the same things. Those words should not be used interchangeably. And I talk about being a liability because for a lot of salons, they hire new talent stylists who go through assistant programs or training programs, or even just jump onto the floor as a stylist but have a bunch of gaps. And then the owner stresses the heck out about how they’re gonna pay this person and how to make them profitable. And they do things like they make the stylist take deductions in their own pay to pay the assistant’s wage. I don’t know of any other business. Or imagine my own business where if I hired somebody new to support my chief marketing and creative officer, and I said, “I’m gonna hire the support system, but you’re actually gonna have to pay her 5% of your salary to cover her wage.” She would say, “No. <laugh>
My earnings are my earnings. The help would be amazing. I certainly think it would increase productivity overall, but I’m your employee. If you’re gonna hire help, you have to pay for that person.” In every other business, that’s how it works. But in our industry, we do the thing that we do where we, like, scrap a business plan together. And so often I see that in salons, stylists who use assistance are having to take a pay cut to pay for the assistant. Y’all, the call is coming from inside the house. The reason why the salon is not profitable in the way that it could be, and the reason why stylists are choosing to leave and you can’t sustain your high performers is because the system is not good. Like, it boils down to that. And the reason why salons are having to expect their high performers and their stylists who use assistance take a pay cut in order to have an assistant is because the salon themselves is not set up to have a profitable new talent program.
And so this episode is dedicated to looking at what are the things that salons are doing that are making new talent stylists grow slowly, new talent stylists choose to leave, any stylists stay, you know, a nonprofit for longer than they need to. And what are the things that can be modernized so that stylists and salons all grow faster and profit margins grow and all the things. So first things first, let’s talk about the very scary titles that salons often put on new talent. So even the word new talent, I’m using that because I know when I say new talent, you all mentally know what I’m talking about. Baby stylist is another one of the phrases that gets used. Even when we use titles like assistant or associate or companion or I don’t know, there’s all these like lovey-dovey titles that the industry is normalized putting on stylists who are newer to the industry, which read between the lines for any client, they translate to not qualified.
And it’s very scary for any client to have to have their hair touch or worked on by somebody who has been deemed as not qualified, deemed simply an associate, deemed a baby, deemed new, deemed whatever, you know, adorable job title we try and give them. The message is resounding, “This person is not qualified enough to actually be a stylist, but we need their help and they’re going to work with you, but you should be nervous.” When we give job titles that are anything other than stylist, and even if you preface it with the word new stylist, it reads as sketchy. There’s no other way about it. If you are not confident in the person that you hired, we shouldn’t have hired them. And I won’t disagree with you. People who graduate from cosmetology school are deeply underprepared for the industry. I’ll be the first to say it.
There’s a huge lack in the quality of education. I totally agree. There are some schools who produce a more talented and more skilled stylist than others, of course. However, the industry is a shock to the system when anybody comes out of school and they see what it’s actually like to do here in a salon, it’s shocking. And formulations are more complex and cuts are more complex and they’re experiencing textures and densities and services that they, they’ve never experienced before. And it’s a huge learning curve and adjustment. I get it. That being said, they were hired to your team to grow as a stylist. Their job title should be stylist. If I’m hired for a company as a secretary, nobody thinks that one day I’m gonna be the ch- CFO. Like nobody’s confused on that. Maybe I’ll become an executive assistant or something, or maybe in, over years I’ll train in something else and, and make like a lateral move.
But in any other industry, you’re hired for one trajectory and that’s kind of like the path that you stay on. Even in a restaurant, somebody isn’t hired as the server and then the thought is one day they’ll be the head chef. Every once in a while it happens, but that’s not the plan. If the goal is to hire somebody to one day be a stylist, their job title is stylist from the day they start working with you. And if you shift to something like that, you suddenly become the salon that’s hiring more qualified talent from the start. It’s simply a shift in perspective and it makes a huge difference. Mistake number two, lack of representation on the website. Often when new hires are put on the website, they’re put on with the scary job title that make it abundantly clear to, you know, the world at scale that this person is unqualified and we’re doing them a favor by letting them work for us and they don’t know what they’re doing and you shouldn’t trust them, but they are here, so you will see them.
So, you know, caution, but you’ll see them, so here’s an introduction. That’s often the positioning I see on a website. Giving them representation on your website is if they are a member of your team like everybody else is only going to help build trust. It’s gonna ultimately build their books faster and it’s gonna be a stronger representation of the salon you’re building overall. Which leads us into number three, slow promotional paths. Now, I know for some of you, listening to this episode, in the first seven and a half minutes that I’ve been talking, I’ve already freaked you out and you’re already saying things like, “But they’re not qualified, but they’re not educated, but clients can’t trust them yet, but they don’t know what they’re doing.” I understand. And that’s why they’re coming to work for you is to hope to learn some skills, right? And when you look at any other trade, somebody who becomes an electrician, somebody who becomes a plumber, somebody who does become a chef, right?
They go to culinary school and they’re trained to be a chef, but they’ve never worked in a Michelin star restaurant before. And so there is a learning curve. When you look at any other trade, the person is thrown in the fire. If you talk to people who have gone through electrician apprenticeship, it’s not two years before they’re allowed to start working on homes. It’s not six months before they’re working on the job site, hands in it, being asked to execute to completion. When you talk to somebody who graduates culinary school and they get a job at a restaurant, they are giving a station to work from day one and they’re expected to do it. And when they mess up, there’s a conversation about it. And yeah, it does cause somebody extra time to make up for the thing that they did wrong, but the on- the-job training in any other apprenticeship is much faster, it’s much more efficient.
The person in the trade is expected to perform quickly, and what’s nice about that is the businesses and any of these other trades know within 30 days if someone is gonna cut it or not. And so when you look at any other trade other than ours, they’re hiring faster, they’re firing faster, they’re getting people to a place of profitability and promotion faster, because they’re not wasting months and months and months keeping this new person living in the sandbox. They’re putting them out there and saying, “What do you got?” What is happening I think at scale is a lot of salon owners are hiring new talent with the intention of mentorship, wanting to train them, wanting to pour into them. I know all of that is there. And you’re, you’re saying, “I don’t want them to have bad experiences. I don’t want my clients to have bad experiences.
I want my clients to be able to trust that any chair that they sit in in this salon, they’re gonna get a great service today.” I totally agree. I think one of the gaps is that new hires are not getting enough aggressive education from the time that they are hired. When a new hire came to our salon, for two weeks, they spent eight hours a day in training, eight hours a day. There was no, there wasn’t a lot of sweeping, there wasn’t a lot of like tidying up. They were, in their first week, our new hires would probably do 30 shampoos. They were doing blow dries in class by week two. They were in education and aggressive education all day long from the start. They were applying root touch-ups on clients by the end of week two because they had spent, I don’t know, 30 hours in mentorship on color applications by the end of their second week.
So to have them doing clients’ roots on week two, I could trust them wholeheartedly because I had educated them to that skill level. It should not take three months for a new stylist to be able to effectively apply color. Like it did, that doesn’t even make logical sense. The problem is you do not have the capacity to train at the rate in which you need to train. And so you’re holding new talent stylists back because of your capacity limitations. When you look at stylists who are hiring the best of the best talented new stylists, they are training them quickly, they’re pouring into them from the start. And then by the end of six weeks working with you, they should be allowed to be taking root touch up and blowout clients. They should have enough skillset to pull that off. Cut clients should be there. Maybe they’re not doing complex blonding services, you know, chemical texture services, maybe those are the things that we hold back on, but they should be building a book of business within the first two months.
If we’re holding off longer than that, you are operating at a deficit. And this is why we can’t afford to have new talent come in because you’re not allowing them to build the book of business that they’re craving that they need to be building in order to build forward. We all know if you’ve been in the industry for any amount of time, where do you learn the most as a stylist? By doing. Very much so, this is a trade, this is a craft, this is a skill we do with our hands. A chef is only gonna learn so much, you know, watching somebody else filet the salmon, like, and they need to get in there and they need to do it. When you look at, I’m, I’m watching the show The Pit. This is just like a PSA for the show, The Pit. If you’re not watching that already, it’s our favorite show every Thursday, that’s where we’ll be.
We’re obsessed and in love with it. And you watch it and there’s doctors who are at all different stages of their residency, right? So there’s first years, there’s R2s, there’s, um, people who have just become doctors, then there’s the residents who have been doctors for many, many years. You watch the doctors who have just shown up, the nurses who are their first day there and they are expected to take care of patients. And it’s like deer in the headlights, but this is what you went to school for. Figure it out. And there’s enough senior people around where they’re, they’re watching to make sure that you don’t fall completely on your face. Like this is an industry where people literally have lives in their hands and from day one, they’re in the mix. And if you think that’s a TV show, my husband happens to be a paramedic firefighter, he worked in a hospital, he worked at a teaching hospital.
He’s like, “No, this is actually what it looks like. ” Like, you’re in it and you just figure it out. And when you look at trades and those who learn to be the best and do it quickly, it’s not months and months and months and months and months before they graduate and get their hands in there, they’re doing it fast and our industry moves way too slow. If it takes more than a year from somebody to be hired as a brand new stylist to graduation from your program, you are at fault. As the owner or the mentor or the educator, it should not take that long. It is not that complicated. We’re not doing open heart surgery. You should be able to train somebody from brand new out of school to proficient in a skillset in a year. It should be very possible. Next, we go into unclear education and graduation requirements.
This is something I hear from new talent stylists all the time. I get a lot of DMs from stylists who are like, “I’ve been working at the salon for nine months. I love everybody here, but I’m just not progressing at the rate I want to. I’m driven, I’m hungry, I’m motivated.” And one of the first things I say is, “Okay, well, what are the things that you need to complete in order to be able, done with this program and able to just build your clientele?” And nine times out of 10, they say, “I’m not even sure.” Because either the finish line moves or the program is not really defined in full and it’s kind of like, “Well, we’ll know when you’re ready.” Nobody wants to work based on vibes. Like, am I, when am I done? What, what do I have to prove to you in order to be promoted to achieve the next step?
If that’s vague, somebody’s going to be very unmotivated to work with you. And then I get DMs from salon owners who are like, “It’s so annoying. My team has downtime and they’re in the back scrolling on TikTok. They should be doing X, Y, or Z.” I guarantee that’s the same stylist who has no idea what needs to happen to promote. They don’t have a solid growth plan. They don’t feel like they can make more money. They don’t feel like there’s any point in working harder because for what? So growth paths, expectations on graduation, expectations on completion, quick growth, tons of education, and the opportunity to learn while doing as quickly as possible. I wanna read with you another comment, this came up in our community really recently. The salon owner says, “Hi, everyone. Salon owner here looking for some input on how to position our apprentice stylist.” In the day four Q&A, she’s relating back to a bootcamp I just recently hosted, Britt mentioned it may not be a good idea to advertise that our apprentices are in training.
We’ve always marketed them as apprentices. Again, it’s that scary title thing at a discounted rate, which also reads as unqualified, right, where the client does sign a model consent form before beginning the service. The service is overseen by an educator and they’re guided through the whole process. I’ve always looked at this as a way that people in our community can come experience our salon without the higher price tag, but I’m rethinking this model after hearing Brit say yesterday, “I’d love any thoughts or input on what’s been working for you. I don’t want our apprentice stylist to come across as scary.” So I want you to think about how you would feel if you went in to have your eyebrows waxed and you had to sign a waiver before your eyebrows were waxed that says if anything goes wrong, you have to come back to the same person who ripped your skin off under your eyes to do the correction and that the business isn’t liable because you know that they’re still in training, so please sign this.
You’re gonna be nervous. Imagine if somebody comes to your house to fix your leaky sink and you have kind of a senior plumber there and somebody who is new, they’re introduced as like, “Hey, I’m here with, you know, my co-plumber, blah, blah, blah, or James and I are gonna do this project together today, whatever.” And maybe just visually you can see maybe James’ title is plumber, just like Mike’s is, but you can tell James looks like a younger guy and it looks like Mike is, you know, mentoring him through it. Imagine if as they walk into your house, Mike says, “Hey, James is gonna be doing your sync today. I actually need you to sign this. James is new here and he’s only been working with us for a year and we’re gonna give you 20% off, but if anything goes wrong, he’s gonna have to come back and fix it and we’re not liable.” You’d be like, “No, thanks.
I’ll just have Mike do it. ” Like, “What? I just want it to be done properly.” Like you’re already nervous. As soon as the waiver comes out, it’s like waving the flag that we’ve brought somebody unqualified to do the job that you’re paying for today. Hope you’re okay with that. And if you’re not okay with that, you can only go back to the person who messed it up the first time to have it fixed. Like it just has red flags, nerves, looking for a problem all over it. Versus if James and Mike came in together to do the job and it’s like, “Hey, we’re both here. We’re doing this together today. It’s just gonna make things more efficient for you. ” You’d say, “Great, like, faster seems better.” And if you can tell that, like, James is mentoring Mike, but nobody’s really made any mentioning of it to you and the project seems to go well, you’re probably not even gonna watch to see who did the job.
Was it James? Was it Mike? Did they do it together? You’re probably not even listen to their conversation. You’re gonna go in another room and do something totally different. You’re not gonna question the price. Everything’s gonna be fine because you’re happy with it in the end because the kitchen sink is fixed. And if something goes wrong with the kitchen sync, you’ll call the company back, Mike and James will come out again and they’ll fix it. And again, you’ll book that company the next time something goes wrong and you won’t think twice about it. When we do things like waivers and scary titles and super discounted pricing, it’s like you’re asking for somebody to be mad. I don’t know about you. When I can tell I’m getting something done by somebody who is new, I’m like waiting for the other shoe to drop. Even if it’s somebody who’s like scooping an ice cream cone, and I can tell it’s their first day, I’m like, “I know it’s not gonna be enough ice cream.
I know it’s not gonna be packed into the cone properly.” It’s like your mind does those weird goofy things where it’s an ice cream cone. Who cares? Even if your newest stylist messes up a root touch up, generally speaking, the consequence is not gonna be, and then the client’s hair falls off. Usually not. That would be pretty extreme. And when I talk to these owners who have these like policies and these scary titles, and I say things like, you know, it sounds like for your newer stylists, they’re being supervised by somebody who’s senior, maybe an educator or something like that, or maybe it’s yourself. Are they messing up a lot? And always, the owner’s always like, “Well, no, not really. Usually it goes totally fine.” Okay, so then why are you psyching the client out like to be looking for something to go terribly sideways?
If you’re educating well and you’re pouring into these stylists and you have good hiring practices and you’re attracting amazing people, they’re going to do amazing work. Like nobody wants to show up for you and suck. Everybody wants to do good hair. Everybody who joins the industry wants to build a clientele, they want to make more money, they want to do their best, give them the chance to do it. The longer you hold somebody back, the more you’re going to decrease their confidence. When I talk to, to stylists who have been in assisting programs for 18 months, two years, the mind games they’re playing with themselves are so sad. Their self-worth is in the trashcan. They’re convinced that they’re never gonna make it, that the people that they work for think that they’re incompetent, that clients know they’re incompetent because they’ve been assisting for years and years and years.
Maybe they’re just not cut out for this whole thing. When they finally do get on the floor, they’re so burnt out and their confidence is so in the trashcan that you should not be surprised when they leave or they build slowly because they’re made to feel two inches tall. If you build your program around empowering people, quick growth, lots of opportunity, lots of education, you will make so much more money. When you look at salons that are hiring new talent stylists, that new talent stylist is what I call a liability or a cash suck to the business until they themselves become profitable. They themselves will not be profitable until they have a book of business that pays their wage, right? It behooves you and everybody else to allow them the chance to build and take clients as quickly as possible. Programs where somebody has to completely finish their training to finally get some days on the floor, you’re losing money on that person for such a long time and you’re losing their motivation and you’re losing their confidence and it’s going to be so much harder to build and grow them when in two years they’re finally on the floor, it’s, you are making it so much harder for yourself than it needs to be.
Think about job title, think about speed, think about positioning, think about marketing. You want clients to think that your new stylists are the shit. Like the best, they know new techniques, they’re more savvy on social media, they’re taking a ton of education, they’re learning new stuff, send them to education, showcase that on social media. Like, I want you to position your new hires as like, dang, if I want like the trendiest, newest, like most up-to-date stuff, like maybe this is the person I should see. Your established stylists are already established. They’re good. You wanna build up the new talent and you wanna position them to win. So I hope I’ve given some food for thought. I’m gonna expect this one to give some questions. Please feel free to leave me a rating or review on iTunes with any questions enclosed. And as I always say, so much love, happy business building, I’ll see you on the next one.
