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The Messy Hairstylist
Whether you are a mess literally OR figuratively we are here to help you take imperfect action to find your success as a hairstylist. Each week we deep dive in to tough topics to address the struggles we face in our industry. We push the boundaries, break the stereotypes and go hard against the "norms" that make us feel inferior.
The Messy Hairstylist
The 30-Day Waitlist: How to Go from Overlooked to Overbooked with Instagram Ads
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Are you tired of relying on word-of-mouth and hoping new clients magically find you? In this episode, We are sitting down with Stephanie Mitchell, marketing expert and Instagram & Facebook ads strategist for beauty pros. She’s sharing exactly how hairstylists can go from overlooked to overbooked in just 30 days using strategic Instagram ads.
We’re breaking down:
✔️ The biggest mistakes stylists make when trying to book more clients
✔️ Why organic social media isn’t enough to grow your business in 2025
✔️ How to create ads that actually get clients to book – without wasting money
✔️ The right (and wrong) way to set up your offer for success
🚨 Join our FREE Masterclass! 🚨
Stephanie and Abby are hosting a live masterclass on Monday, March 24th, where we’ll teach you:
✔️ The 5 secrets to running ads that actually build your books
✔️ How to create an irresistible offer that gets dream clients excited to book
✔️ The exact caption, video, and strategy that works for ads in 2025
🔗 Sign up for FREE here: https://training.sunnystorm.marketing/freeclass-abby
Don’t miss out—this could be the strategy that completely changes your business!
Follow Abby on Instagram and TikTok at @theabbywarther
Follow Kelsey on Instagram at @kelseymorrishair
Welcome to the Messy Hairstylist Podcast. I'm Kelsey Morris and I'm Abbey Warther, whether you are a mess.
Speaker 2:Literally or figuratively, we are here to help you take imperfect action to find your success as a hairstylist.
Speaker 1:Oh, you're going to start. You can do this, I know you can. I know you can do this.
Speaker 2:I hate starting the episodes.
Speaker 1:You can't start another episode with I hate starting the episodes. You can't start another episode with I hate starting an episode.
Speaker 2:Well, I will every single time, fine, but I am today because I have a friend of mine that I've worked with in the, I would say, the digital online education space for many years, that I'm so excited to bring on to this podcast, so that's why I have to start it. But I'm excited, excited to bring on to this podcast, so that's why I have to start it, but I'm excited about this one. One of the things that we talk a lot about on this podcast is how to get clients in your chair, how to create client loyalty, how to just be seen. Marketing. We talk a lot about marketing and just how overwhelming it can be, and sometimes we feel like stylists are doing. We even right, feel like we're doing all the things and sometimes it feels like it's not working. So that's why I'm excited today to bring on my friend, stephanie Mitchell.
Speaker 2:Stephanie Mitchell, I just like to call her the queen of Facebook and Instagram ads for beauty pros. So we're going to talk with Stephanie today about really how to get butts in your chair as a beauty pro. So welcome, stephanie, to the Messy Hairstyles Podcast.
Speaker 3:Yay, thank you for having me, abby. It's always awesome to chat with you, to learn from you, to share new things with you. Yeah, and it's really nice to meet me, abby, it's always awesome to chat with you, to learn from you, to share new things with you. Yeah, and it's really nice to meet you, Kelsey.
Speaker 1:It's so nice to meet you too. I am probably the most excited person listening to this or being live on it right now, because I cannot wait to learn from you. Abby was giving me a little snippet about what you do and I'm like whoa mind blown, so I'm really excited.
Speaker 2:I think this is going to resonate with a lot of our listeners. So, yay, take it away. Yeah, yes. So before we get into, how do we get butts in our chair using ads? First, I just want to know a little bit more about you. I don't know if we've talked about this stuff, stephanie, but how did you even get into? Because you specifically work with beauty professionals and marketing their business through paid ads. Yeah, how do you get into that? Like, that is such a 2025.
Speaker 3:It's such a weird way because, like most people in the beauty industry like, who are educators started out as hairstylists or estheticians themselves, and that wasn't me at all. My background is in marketing. I was the marketing director for a couple of different tech startups in Canada. Um, both of them got acquired and, um, when the second acquisition happened, I decided to move to Italy and quit my job. They had offered me a job and I was like, no, you know, my heart is calling me elsewhere because, um, my longtime boyfriend we had been doing long distance for years and years we met in university when he was an exchange student very romantic stories. So in 2014, I moved to Rome, quit my job, was looking around for another job in Italy and couldn't find it. So I started my own business.
Speaker 3:Just to kind of make a long story short, that first business didn't work out, but my second business that I started was a marketing agency, taking all my experience with online marketing and helping brick and mortar businesses, and I just happened to work with some salons and spas and absolutely loved it, like fell in love with the industry, like it was all female founders, like female business owners I love.
Speaker 3:Like the visual side, the social side, I love. You know, there's just so much to love about our industry. So I decided just to do marketing for salons and spas that I started working more and more with like small independent hairstylist estheticians. After a few years I burnt out working one-to-one, so I decided, like why not take my top service that everybody's asking me to do for them, which was ads, and turn it into a course so that I can teach them how to do it themselves? So I've been running my program, the Ad Lab, for almost five years now. I've had more than a thousand students graduate this program from all around the world and I teach them how to build their business from scratch or get to the next level, or maybe hire members for their team, help them get their books filled using Facebook and Instagram ads, which is one of my favorite ways to market and promote. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:Oh, that is so cool. Yes, yes, that is so cool. Yes, yes, that is awesome.
Speaker 2:We need more people like you, stephanie, that see our business as what it is an incredible business and teach us these next level things. I think that what you do is great for somebody. If somebody started out working with you, that would be incredible. But then for those people who have their businesses and want to take it to that next level yeah, getting into Facebook Instagram ads is, I think, the next step to go. So I'm curious what do you see? That is the biggest struggle that you're seeing hairstylists and beauty pros having these days. Good, question.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I actually it's interesting because I used to think that it was like a lack of knowledge of like, oh, I just need to like teach them the steps of you know that, here's how you make a video, here's how you write a caption, here's all the templates, like. And I actually realized recently, like just in the past couple of weeks, I'm like, wow, I think I've been going about this wrong the whole time, because actually what's standing in people's way? Of course they need to know, like, what are the step-by-steps, and that's what I do teach them in the ad lab. But actually, even before that, most people don't feel ready to run ads yet because they're lacking confidence. They really don't think that they have anything special. So they're like well, if I spend money on an ad and I can say whatever I want to anyone I decide to target, what am I going to say? Like I have nothing special to share.
Speaker 3:I I'm, you know, I'm just your stylist, like what I'm, you know they they literally are tongue tied because they're so and everybody has this problem in their own business. They're so close to their own like zone of genius that they can't even realize, like, what's special about them. So actually I need to go back to the drawing board and be like okay, how to, first of all, before we share, like all those really practical steps of like building, you know, creating your ad and launching it and all of that. It's like we need to like build that confidence first of like. Yes, you do have that gift to share. Yes, you do have something special that no one else does. We just need to pull that out and then we can share that in our ad and that will help us connect with the right type of clients who can't wait to book us when they do see our ads.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, wow, that's so true. Because that problem with us as hairstyles who just think that we're not good enough to fill in the blank, that's what it is. I'm not good enough to advertise. Do paid ads. I'm not good enough for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you feel like it's a bigger thing, that's someone that's bigger, bigger influencers and big name salons, and then it trickles down into I don't think I'm good enough to raise my prices Like that's someone that's bigger and high influencers and big name salons, yeah, and then it trickles down into I don't think I'm good enough to raise my prices.
Speaker 2:I don't think I'm good enough to start offering this specialty service. That is a real problem. You're right, you hit it. So once you figure out how to help them with their confidence in that, let us know, cause, yeah, right. That would be something great.
Speaker 3:I recently, like I don't do one to one work anymore. Like I said, I burnt out from it. But once in a while I do do like mini, like one-off projects, and the project that I'm working on right now is with new salon suite renters. So they're like they're new in their business, they're salon suite renters and they're advertising for the first time, and I knew that the issue there was going to be like again, what do I say in my ads? Like how am I going to convince people to book with me if I don't even know why people should book with me? So, instead of the great thing about working one-to-one with me which I don't do anymore, but it is a cool benefit is that I can see your genius, even if you can't see it, so I hopped on a.
Speaker 3:Zoom call with these hairstyl. A cool benefit is that, like I can see your genius even if you can't see it. So you know, I hopped on a zoom call with these hairstylists and estheticians individually and just ask them very specific questions to help them uncover, like, what's your story Like and how does your story relate to what you're doing today? What do you love about what you do? What's your clients say Like once they get out of your chair? What's your client journey like? I know you like to talk about this a lot.
Speaker 3:Abby is like what's your client journey like? What's your client's experience like? Who is that ideal person for you? What is it if someone were, if someone did have a hairstylist and they're switching? What are those reasons that they would switch? Like, what do you do better than anybody else? And sometimes it just takes having someone else like prodding us a little bit for us to be like oh, yeah, yeah, that is true. Like I had one of the estheticians, for example, has a background in biomedical science and she understands skin care like at a scientific, like chemical level and she wasn't making that come through in her marketing at all and it's like no, like you have this special story that makes you uniquely qualified and you're not even sharing that with anybody. So, yeah, it can take a little bit of like external prodding for us to really understand that we do have that something special.
Speaker 2:We all have something that helps us stand out, and standing out is the most important thing in our industry in order to build. But I every single person listening needs to go back and listen to all those questions she just threw out there that she was asking them and write them down Right and answer them yourself.
Speaker 1:She took the question from me because I was like, okay, so like what's something that someone can? How can we help someone see this in themselves, like in our own teams? And you literally took the question right out of my mouth and answered it. So, yeah, go back and listen to that and just start making taking notes. It's a great place to start.
Speaker 2:So so good. Or maybe boosting posts like Kelsey. Now, we talked about that a little bit earlier. What do you think is some of the biggest mistakes that stylists are making with marketing, Even if it's not paid, just marketing in general, what? What mistakes do you see people making?
Speaker 3:Yeah, a lot.
Speaker 1:She's like where do I even start For those that are actually marketing too?
Speaker 2:because so many stylists don't market themselves at all.
Speaker 3:They don't host online, yeah, and usually the reason that they're not doing that is because they're lacking confidence and they're afraid that people are going to judge them.
Speaker 1:Oh, like yes.
Speaker 3:Like even you know, I was asking my company members, like what's holding you back? And they're, like you know, my competitors in my town. What if they see me? I was bullied in junior high and like I'm still in that same small town. What if they see me Like my friends, even my clients, like just anybody? We're so afraid of judgment that we hold back and it really prevents us from growing professionally too. So obviously, again, we're going back to that like mindset thing.
Speaker 3:But when it comes to like practical marketing mistakes, what I would say is well, you know, my, my real zone of genius is in advertising, like paid ads and Facebook and Instagram, and I see like quite a few mistakes, and the first one I would say is like we want our ads not to look like an ad right off the bat. And so a lot of people, when they do ads, they all of a sudden get in this like, oh, I need to put my business suit on and, you know, write in my businessy language and make a flyer. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Let's go on Canva and make a flyer. And you know, even if it's only me, say we, I used to do like I did that for a long time Say like, oh, we at Sunny Storm Marketing we are, so it was just me. You have a giant team with you, uh-huh.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think, like you know, if you go through your Instagram um feed and you look at like some posts that you've done, that have done well, they're probably more on the personal side. It's like sharing you your story, um, sharing, you know, one of your clients journeys, um, that kind of thing, and those things do really well as ads. So, the less that we can make it look like an ad, the better. That includes the visuals. So, like I always tell my students, use Instagram Reels while you're making your ad video and make it look like a Reel and then you can download it and use that as your ad.
Speaker 3:Your caption is so, so, so important to get people to actually take action. So, to get them to want to book with you, your caption needs to grab their attention in the first couple sentences and then give them a good reason to take action right now. And that reason is a special offer, which we can talk about in a bit in more detail. But having something limited time, limited quantity offer gets people, when they see your ad, to be like, oh my gosh, like you know, she's offering this and it's only until, like, june 30th. I need to do this now.
Speaker 3:And most people don't do that in their ads. Most people just say like hey, I do balayage. If you want to get your hair done, here's how you can call me. Here's how you can get in touch with me. I'm now taking appointments and that's it. That'll get you some likes and comments and like a follower too, but it's not. It's not the best way to get people to take action right now. So, um, I mean, there's, like I said, there's lots of different things that people are kind of like making that mistake with their advertising, but those are just two of the big ones that stand out for me oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have to create urgency. That's what I was going to say. It's a sense of urgency, yeah, Even in the hair salon, because I think we've talked about this a lot. Kelsey on the podcast of it's like posting like oh, I have openings constantly and so if you write your ads like that. You're almost saying like I'm just open, I'm here here.
Speaker 1:I am here. I am when you want. Please come see me.
Speaker 2:Yes and so. Oh, I'm so excited. Okay, So-.
Speaker 1:I know, but I hold on hold please. I also love that she said don't get on Canva and create a flyer. And I had to like laugh, I'm like. Well, one time I made an ad and it was 100% a flyer on Canva, followed by some other weird stuff, and I also didn't have a sense of urgency or any special offers. So already I'm feeling like I've learned something. We're doing good.
Speaker 2:But what I find is that, as stylists, we will, we'll hop on Canva and we'll make a little thing. And why do we do that? Because we don't want to show our face.
Speaker 1:Right, we spend like an hour branding it and making it look so pretty.
Speaker 2:And nobody knows what we look like no exactly. Yeah so. I love that you say make a reel.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so like, even like, one of the bonuses that I have in the ad lab is something called the faceless video formula, which is like I think there's like 230 got a cute space. You can show just you, you know setting up your station. You can show folding towels. You can show, um, you know, more detailed zoomed in of you massaging a client's head. Or I know, Abby, I remember you said that you have like a warm, hot towel therapy.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Call it hot towel therapy or just hot towel, just hot towel.
Speaker 2:No, but I should call it hot towel therapy.
Speaker 3:So that little marketing show. You know setting that up. There's so many different things that you can show like take those clips, whip them into a 20 second video. Don't make it too long. Um, put your, put some text on top of it, put some cute music, make it look like a reel. That can be the start of your ad campaign.
Speaker 2:That's your ad. So okay, Already, I know that Kelsey, you literally she's the queen of like B-roll and doing videos, just like that.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, she's the queen.
Speaker 2:That is her whole Instagram, and her Instagram is insanely good, and so you can like just take those videos and turn them into ads.
Speaker 3:Yeah, kelsey, do you have any tips for making great B-roll videos, because I think that those do work really well as ads.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love B-roll. I mean I will B-roll anything, and it's so hard to give a tip on that because I think it's such an organic thing, like we just have tripods set up in our salon and I'll just put my phone on and run it all day long, just keep clicking on and off. But like even little things that you wouldn't think are exciting. Like I like to B-roll, like if someone's like making coffee in our cute little coffee bar, or like just the girls in the back room like mixing color, like the. I find that the little mundane things that we just do every day are better than like B-roll of you doing hair all the time. Like I like the added things, so, because I mean that's what you're going to see most of the time is B-roll of doing hair. So I like the extra little bonus things. I mean silly things.
Speaker 1:See, most of the time is b-roll of doing hair, so I like the extra little bonus things. I mean silly, even like a little candle burning in the front with you know, just um, like you were saying ambience things, what makes you your space special, or so I mean that would be what I would say for for b-roll, and it doesn't have to be anything special, honestly, like it's like the little things that do better than I've spent hours making of a whole reel of hair where I have. I have filmed the entire hair process start to finish, and I've cut and pasted and added and I was like, oh my gosh, this is going to be so good. And then I get nothing hardly any comments, views, likes. But I have a burning candle and and some and some good music and words and that thing goes viral.
Speaker 2:So true the more we mess with something I feel like, the worse it does Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and well, two things I was thinking of is, first of all, like it's good to have that B-roll, and then you probably do this to save it in a folder on your phone called B-roll, so that in the future, whenever you want to post something but you don't know visually what to show, you just pull up that folder and just choose one of the videos. And then the other thing that I was going to say is that you mentioned like you, you know your simplest video could go viral. Like it's the same for ads. You really sometimes are surprised at the ads that do well and blow up. So whenever I launch an ad campaign and I teach this to my students too don't just make one ad, make at least three, if not five, different ads with different captions, headlines and videos. And then Facebook, the meta ads manager, will kind of mix and match the different options and find the ultimate ad that really converts. So so, so well.
Speaker 3:So you get more leads, more results for less money, and that's another thing that people don't do?
Speaker 1:I just got my phone so you can, so hold, I'm so new to this. So, if you are, you're going to create your an ad. I'm say I've never done this before, cause it seems like I haven't. You're going to create an ad and what you can do is basically make five different templates and put it all into that one ad.
Speaker 3:So you're paying one time for that and then, oh my gosh, and then they yeah, it's called dynamic creative and it's something that I use all the time and essentially, you go into the meta ads manager. You can't do this if you're boosting posts, which is another reason not to boost posts. Uh, you go into the meta ads manager when you are setting up, um, your ad, you there's this little switch called dynamic creative. So I press that switch, I've enabled dynamic creative and then I just dump in five captions, five headlines, five videos, and then it goes and finds the best match of all of those that converts the best, and it really really makes a huge difference in getting results, because the candle that's burning, the caption that's like super silly and weird, the headline that's like kind of obvious and simple, like sometimes the things that you don't think will do well are the ones that do well.
Speaker 2:Wow, so exciting. So like when you run an ad like that already it's like, oh my gosh, I don't feel like I'm throwing all of my money into one thing, because a lot of times we'll create a post or an ad or whatever and be like but did I word this wrong? But now you're putting in different options, so it's like it doesn't matter if you worded it wrong.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's why I tell my students they always ask for feedback in our Facebook group. They're like should I do this or should I do this? And I'm like do both. In fact, try something else too. Like you really really never know, and that's like one of the things about social media and online marketing in general just once you feel like you've figured it out, it goes and changes again.
Speaker 3:And just like when, on Instagram, once you finally feel like you're like, oh my gosh, I understand what the algorithm wants for me, the next week week they change it again. So that's why trying to crack the code isn't all it's hyped up to be. We're all just trying to throw spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. So testing out lots of different types of ads is the best way to get really good results when things change so fast.
Speaker 1:Well, it feels like you just gave us a tool to test things, right? You're saying you don't have to test it on your own, just put a bunch of things together and put it here and it's going to test it for you, which is so actionable for anyone who's listening right now. If this process overwhelms you because if you're a lot like me, hurricane Kelsey, who just does something this helps you kind of narrow and really let the AI do the work for you. I love that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, it's funny. One of my good friends she's a business owner too. She's an osteopath and she we've been friends for a long time. We were, we just were thrown together as roommates in university and then we ended up becoming besties, which like never happens. Usually your roommate ends up becoming like your arch nemesis, anyway. So she's an osteopath and she said yesterday we had a chat and she's like I'm just feeling so down because I spent pretty much four hours of my day making a reel and like re-recording it, re-recording it, re-recording it, and it just sucks and I just feel like I wasted so much time, I put so much effort into something and it just makes me never want to post again. And I realized that with social media whether it's organic posting on Instagram or advertising like we just try to make everything so perfect for that one thing. We feel like we're putting all our eggs in that one basket. If this reel doesn't go viral, then that's it. I'm never posting again. Like it's like no, no, no, make it easy on yourself.
Speaker 3:Spend those four hours, for example, making five videos that are just, you know, okay, or you know, you don't know whether they're perfect or not, and then and then let let all of that, like you said, kelsey, let the AI work in your favor to then figure out, okay, which one of these does best, and then, as you do more ads, you'll kind of get a feel for it of like what tends to work the best for your ideal clients. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:This is everything that the messy hairstylist says, because we always talk about taking messy and perfect action, and that's what you're saying to do.
Speaker 3:You're giving permission to do that with ads.
Speaker 2:So I have two questions when it comes to running these ads. For anyone that's thinking okay, I think maybe I can do this, because that's how I'm feeling. I've actually never have run ads for my salon business.
Speaker 3:Oh, really Well, you never had to, because you have such amazing customer service that it kind of just grows itself right. Thank you.
Speaker 2:You're so sweet, but I've run ads for my education business, so I'm curious to know you said one of the things that you do is you don't just run the ad and say book the appointment. You say there's an offer, there's a timeline. So what do you see for 2025?
Speaker 3:or some of the best offers that are converting well right now, you see, for 2025, or some of the best offers that are converting well right now. Yeah, that's a good question. So, um, we're talking. Well, you know, I deal with hairstylists and estheticians and spray tanners, so it depends on the type of business. But because we're dealing with hairstylists, um, one of the suite renters that I'm working with, jacqueline right now, we put together her the works color package, so it's like a balayage package, but her special offer is her head spa. So nobody really else in her smallish town kind of offers that.
Speaker 3:Um, she does the scalp steaming, she does the waterfall hair fountain, she does, um like a scalp detox treatment. What else does she do? I can't remember all the things, but it's a 45 value and she adds that on for free in a limited time. Normally she does charge 45 for it. Um, for anyone who books this like big color, that's incredible. Um makeover package. So I do think that you guys probably know those head spa services are like becoming more and more popular, and then another thing that I teach my students to do is to add on some little extras. They could even be products that they actually normally don't resell. So have you guys heard of FAIR before?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yes, I own a boutique as well, so we shop on Fair. Oh cool Fair wholesale.
Speaker 2:Yes, fair, wholesale oh yeah, I buy from Fair as well.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, yeah. And so they've got so many cool products and especially like seasonal products. So for Mother's Day, which is coming up, for wedding season, for fall season, for Christmas, like there's so many cool things that you can get, whether that is even just like under eye patches or candles, or like hand cream, any sort of like lip gloss, um paraffin wax treatments for your hands, any like take home gifts. Anything that like is a gift or a bonus, like something that you can do during the appointment, something that you can gift them in like a little gift box. Those are all, um amazing ways to elevate the experience, give extra value, and it doesn't necessarily have to cost you that much, especially if you're advertising a package that's like 300 plus dollars. Even if you spend like $15 on products from Fair or Amazon or your local beauty supply store and you package that up, it's still an amazing way to create that special package that has some urgency and scarcity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. I do too. So I think when we Abby, I don't know, you can speak for yourself, but I'm going to say we, when we think of like that sense of urgency or like what that little special thing is going to be, my mind didn't originally go to like a little gift or something like that. I went to like a dollar amount off or an extra service or something like that, a treatment or something, but you hear that all the time.
Speaker 2:It's boring. It's always like a conditioning treatment.
Speaker 1:Okay, I know I mean, I'm so guilty of that, but let me say I think she's onto something, somebody's onto something. We in my boutique, which I just had, we would do like these big events. So we'd be like the first 20 people here get a gift bag. And this gift bag was like tiny little things. It had like a lip gloss and earrings. But I'm telling you, we would have a line wrapped around the building to try to get in there to get the darn gift bag.
Speaker 1:So you are onto something people do love, a little freebie and maybe something a little different. Oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:And it's nice to do it seasonal too. So, like I asked my community members, like, for example, last year, I asked them, like, what did you guys do for Valentine's day? And a lot of my students, especially my students cause, like my students know that this is how I'd like to package up offers. They said, like I gifted my clients, everyone who came in for their special Valentine's day package, um cookies from a local bakery and flowers. That's cute.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Or, like you know, mother's day. Like I said, mother's day is coming up. You could put together like a little special mother's day package, um, for anyone who either books on mother's day or just with this special mother's day package leading up to mother's day again, flowers, candles, cookies, um anything that they can take home.
Speaker 3:That's like a beauty or wellness product, like go on fair and explore. There's so many cool things and you get wholesale pricing, as you know Kelsey, so the pricing is very advantageous and you don't even need to have like a high like minimum order quantity.
Speaker 2:Okay, so can you guys um, you, both of you are more experienced with fair than I am. I just buy seasonal things to sell in the salon. Can you guys explain what fair is for anyone who doesn't know?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so fair is. I mean actually, kelsey, I haven't actually ordered for them, so you guys know more. I was like I got this, this is you.
Speaker 1:I got this. So it's like a. It's an online wholesaler, I basically call it. It's like there's thousands of retailers on there and so what they do it's almost like a gigantic shopping mall for wholesale, but it's all online, so there is some legwork into it.
Speaker 1:When we first opened our boutique, you had to, like, go through and find different brands and different you know stores that you like, but there is a search bar. So let's just say, for this, I'm searching for gold eye masks or some under eye masks. I could just type it in the search bar and it would pull up a bunch of eye masks that I could purchase at wholesale. But then if I were to go dive deeper and click on that actual retailer, I don't know what you, what the word is off the top of my head. I'm going to call it a retailer brand.
Speaker 1:Yeah, brand retailer. They have their own store on there. Then there's like they have hundreds more items that you might like too. So then you kind of start to narrow down to the different brands that you like and, um, you know, you keep going back to those and you find like they all run different promotions. So, like, if you buy a certain amount, there's free shipping. It's really cool and it's all wholesale, so it's a lot less expensive and there's places that are like US based or something they can get overseas.
Speaker 3:Let's say it's a lot better quality than what you could find on Amazon typically find on Amazon, typically A thousand percent.
Speaker 2:It's the cutest stuff. Yeah, it's great. It's FAIRE F-A-I-R-E. We'll put it in the show notes for people to click and see how they can start their own account there.
Speaker 1:To have your own account through FAIRE, you do have to have a retail vendor's license. Vendor's license, yeah. So I mean that's something you can do pretty easily, but just to be aware of that, yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, oh, I love that, yay, okay. So here's my other question. The thing that I think about when it's like, okay, I want to start running ads for my salon, for myself, if they're independent is I can't afford this. How do I like, like, how can I easily start running ads without wasting a ton of money? Is that possible? Or do I need to have a thousand dollars to invest into running ads?
Speaker 3:no, you definitely don't need a thousand dollars. I tell my students I used to tell them five dollars a day.
Speaker 3:Now I'm saying seven dollars a day, um, so seven dollars a day for one week is 49 dollars, um, so less than 50 dollars. And I would hope that in your first week of running ads you'd get at least one booking, like I just had one of our students, katie, who posted in our group a couple days ago that said, like hey, just wanted to update you guys, I just made $2,000 in bookings for my first week of running my ad. So it's absolutely possible to get a really good return investment even in a short period of time when you're running ads. And I also it's funny I got an email today from my student, gordana, who is in Croatia because I've got students all around the world, and she told me her story and I had no idea. She said I had to like cry to my husband to get him to let me join. Like my husband didn't want me to invest in this course.
Speaker 3:Essentially, um, I didn't. You know, my business wasn't doing very well, um, but I had a really good feeling that ads could help me. I didn't have like barely any money. I spent my last bank account money on this course and then, because she had bought my course, which it's not super expensive, it's $650. But essentially she didn't have money in her bank account after this so she to pay for her ads. She paid with her personal bank account, she put her personal credit card into the meta ads manager and she's, like she like, essentially crossed herself and she's like okay, I'm going to spend a hundred euros because she's in Europe.
Speaker 3:I'm going to spend a hundred euros on ads and I really hope that this works out Well. She emailed me and, um, I was like Holy beep. So this is what she said. She said cause I literally just got her email today, so I only had 100 euros to invest. It was for my personal savings.
Speaker 3:The ad brought in several leads and from those leads I booked three clients. One client initially booked 1,000 euro package, but then she ended up spending 2,000 euros and 834 euros in retail products. The second client also booked a thousand euro package. Since then, she booked another thousand euro package. On top of that, she spent 215 worth in retail services. And she said and it was just up from there. So she I mean she took a risk right, like not everybody is willing to put their personal credit card details into Facebook to say like okay, it's getting personal. Like you know, I'm not going to buy that sweater this week. I'm going to spend money on ads. Most of us are like digging into our business bank account for that. But point is is that if you do them right and also if you test multiple ads, if you keep a good eye on your analytics, you're not going to waste money, because if that first ad, and I don't it doesn't usually happen that you publish five ads and none of them do well.
Speaker 3:But just in case it does happen, like you'll find out pretty quickly if it's working or not and you can pivot, like you can try out pretty quickly if it's working or not and you can pivot, like you can try something different, try a different video. If all else fails, you can try a different offer, because maybe your offer isn't, you know, exciting exciting enough.
Speaker 3:Yeah, um, that's what I tell my students, like if all else fails, then it's probably your offer. But my guess is you just need to test a different caption video. You just need to dig a little bit deeper into who that ideal client is, make that come across in your caption, like really attract their attention with your video. Um, so I mean, long story short. Of course there is no guarantee with ads, there's no guarantees on anything in business. But when you test, when you've got that irresistible offer, when you've got a great video, and when you keep an eye on your analytics, it's very unlikely that you're going to be wasting lots of money in ads. When people tell me, before I did your course, I had spent $1 thousand dollars in ads and I didn't get anything, I'm like wait, how is that possible? Like once you spent 500 and you didn't get anything you thought oh, if I do 500 more like it'll eventually work.
Speaker 3:It's like how did you get to that point? Yeah, well, they probably made an ad on Canva and then they just said book an appointment, right they did all the things wrong that you just talked about, but also, just like you look at your numbers and you've already spent, like, say, you're advertising a package that's $300. If you've spent $300 in ads and you haven't even booked one appointment, it's not going to work.
Speaker 2:It's not going to work for you. I think I'm sorry to cut you off. I think that's a good point to make. Is that when you do ads, you don't say, okay, here's a thousand dollars Facebook, you it it. You can turn it off anytime as as the money is, as you're spending your $7 a day.
Speaker 3:So if you get, like I said, if you get to the point like say you're advertising something that's a hundred bucks, like the way I teach my students is like you can absolutely advertise like higher price point packages Like look at Gordana, she booked like clients for like a thousand a thousand euros each. But if you can advertise something that's $250 and under that's the sweet spot because it's profitable but it's also not so expensive that it's hard for people to like make a decision to book you. So if you're advertising something that's $250 and you've already spent like 125 on it, like half of the cost of that package, and you haven't booked anything, like there's something very wrong.
Speaker 2:Okay, see, that's good things to know, that's good. Those are good things to know as you're running it, so you're not just like blindly throwing money.
Speaker 1:That's what I was thinking too. Just blindly throwing money. Yeah, I love that. I love this too. This is so informative.
Speaker 2:Because I have something exciting to share that Stephanie and I are doing together. But first, are there any other questions that you have, kelsey?
Speaker 1:that pop up. I mean, I feel like we could do this for another hour, but in we usually try to keep our episodes between 20 and 30 minutes. We're at 45. So we're doing really good.
Speaker 2:So good yeah it's so good.
Speaker 1:I would love to talk forever, so, but I honestly feel like Stephanie did such a great job of like answering the questions we had without us even having to ask her. So thank you so much, stephanie. It's been honestly so informative.
Speaker 3:I love talking about ads, so you guys are doing me a favor by letting me talk about them.
Speaker 1:I love it. I'm over here on chat GPT like okay, give come up with five captions. Okay, we're doing great.
Speaker 2:Use chat GPT to help you. Okay, so I'm super excited. So, like you said, we could talk for hours about this. So, stephanie and I, we are hosting a masterclass together coming up at the end of this month. So, stephanie, will you tell us about this masterclass that we're hosting? I'm hosting, but she's doing, it's all her.
Speaker 3:So we're co-hosting it, right? Yes, You're like the Vanna White of the situation. Yes, I love it. So I mean, Vanna White is the real star. So it is on Monday March 24th. I'm getting that right, right, yes, Monday March 24th.
Speaker 2:You're correct.
Speaker 3:Monday, march 24th, and it is called the 30 day wait list how to go from overlooked to overbooked in one month with Instagram ads, and it's a live class that Abby and I are co-hosting. It's one hour long and I'm going to teach you, step by step by step, all the five different steps to launch Facebook ads that actually work. We're going to be talking about what your video should look like, what your caption should look like, how to really dig into your client's desires so that your ads click and connect with the right people. We're going to be talking about ad testing, like. So today's podcast is kind of going high level and we definitely gave you a lot of good tips, but this is like your systematic approach to booking and people. We're going to be talking about sales, psychology, all that stuff. So, yes, you guys are all invited to come.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm so excited. So who is this perfect for?
Speaker 3:This is perfect for, besides Kelsey Kelsey's going to be there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yay. So you know I like to tailor my things for independent hairstylists like who are working on their own, who are a suite renter, booth renter They've got like their own small space. That said, like I do have students and community members from all you know points in their career. Maybe they're starting over again and they're a little bit slower. Um, maybe they, you know, went on maternity leave and they're trying to build their books back up again. Um, maybe they are a new salon renter or, sorry, salon owner and they've got employees and for the first time they're like oh my gosh, like I need to help advertising my employees. So great for really anybody in the hair or beauty industry who wants to go bigger, where, whenever you need to get to the next level, like ads are a really good tool to help you get there.
Speaker 2:I love it. Okay, so what I, what we're going to do is we're going to put the link to sign up for that. It's a free masterclass in the show notes here, um, and is there any, any other details you need to know about signing up?
Speaker 3:Uh, nope, Uh.
Speaker 2:I think that that's everything that pretty simple Click the link, you'll get the dates.
Speaker 3:We're going to be doing a Q and a, so if you have some questions that came up while you were listening to this podcast, bring them onto the class.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm excited. I'm so excited because I always learn from you. We've done these in the past and I'm excited to do it again because you're oh, I see you, I'm on your email list. You're always reinventing what you're doing and updating it for what's working now, so I'm excited to learn some more new things from you in this masterclass.
Speaker 3:So come join us everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can't wait to see you there. This was so wonderful, thank you for being here today. Our minds are blown. Kelsey's in chat. She's so excited.
Speaker 1:Literally it's up. It's up right now for the class.
Speaker 2:So thank you for being here, thank you for showing us hairstylists how to truly run our businesses like businesses and be the professionals that we are, so that we can have the careers that we want. So thank you so much, stephanie.
Speaker 3:Yes, thank you, ladies.
