E95. Half Booked to Booked Out - Client Optimisation

This is the FREE RESOURCE I promised

"I need more clients" is the number one thing beauty business owners say to Kimberley. It is almost never the actual problem.

Most of the businesses she works with sit at 50 to 60% booked. That gap is not a marketing problem. It is an optimisation problem, and it is far cheaper to fix than finding new people. Katie added $10,000 a month to her business without a single piece of external marketing, purely by looking at the clients she already had.

In this episode Kimberley walks through the five numbers that move a beauty business from 50 to 60% booked up to 80 to 90%: your rebooking rate, your retention rate, your average client spend, your visit frequency and your retail percentage. She covers what to do before you touch any of them, which is pricing, and finishes on the client journey, which decides whether any of it sticks.

If you are constantly chasing new clients, this is the episode that tells you why.

Are you looking to level up your salon in 2026? Every beauty business owner needs Beauty Business Foundation, this is the KEY areas you need to have a successful beauty business. Want to learn more? 

https://beautybusinessschool.com.au/beauty-business-foundations-2025/

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Transcript

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Welcome to the Beauty Business School podcast. Beauty Business School is proving beauty therapy is more than just a hobby. We're your new beauty besties, your partners in crime, your ride-and-die crew, with a sprinkle of Virginia George's confidence but none of the drama. Picture us as your personal cheerleaders, the BFFs you've always wished for as we tackle the beauty industry together. Beauty training taught you how to be really good at treatments, and Beauty Business School is here to teach you how to attract your dream clients by creating a beauty business that stands out in a busy industry, navigates salon owner life, and talks about the mindset shifts that you need to thrive in the beauty industry. It's time to become the CEO everyone is trying to marry. Let's get into the podcast with me, your host, Kimberly Howard. One of these days I'm going to have the most perfectly set up podcast studio, and everything is going to sound amazing, look amazing. But my friends, today is not one of those days. I am back. It has been a whole day since I recorded your bonus episode that I put on social media and said, "I don't know, it's a bit unhinged, should I post it?" And you all said, "Yes!" You like my unhinged shit, which is constantly wild to me, but I hope you enjoyed that little bonus episode. Today we're getting into the goods. This is kind of a two-parter, so I'm going to touch on client journey today, but I've decided that it deserves its own episode because it is so important. But what I'm going to start with today is: you don't need more clients, you need to do this instead. The number one thing that people say when they come to me is, "I need more clients." And I'm constantly bewildered by how many businesses are 50 to 60 percent booked. Actually, this is like my favorite situation: 50 to 60 percent booked. They're like, "I've got gaps, I'm inconsistent, some weeks they're amazing, some weeks they're shit, and I can just take that business and optimize the shit out of it." And that's what I want to talk about today is, maybe you think you need more clients, but maybe you just haven't optimized the clients that you have. And the amount of times this has happened that students have come to me and said, "I need new clients, I need more clients," and I've said, "Have you actually looked inside your business and figured out if inside your business is running at its full and optimal capacity?" It's where I like to start. Yes, marketing and external marketing is actually my zone of genius and it's my specialty, but every single time I'm personally having a money lull in my business, and they happen, they happen to all of us, I am privy to conversations from coaches, from salon owners, from industry leaders, from people that you would be like, "Oh my God, that's the tea." But I don't see it as tea, I see it as business. And the reality is, sometimes we have busy months and we're killing it and we're thriving, and then other times we have tougher months and things are not easy for us. And when that does happen, I always look internally. Who can I optimize for one-on-one coaching? Who maybe wants to come on a retreat with me? Who could I potentially get to have a different service? Or can I get my girls referring people because I know they already love what I do? So the amount of times I look internally before I actually think, "I just need more clients," is insane. So I do have a benchmark of how many people I want to bring into Beauty Business School. It is, it's high. It is one of those things where I'm like, "Oh my gosh, is that even possible?" But I'm constantly working on those marketing techniques to be able to do that. The difference between you and I is your marketing should retain your clients. It should keep them. Then it becomes an internal game of like, "Okay, well, how do we make sure we keep them? How do we make sure that they're optimized, having as many services with us as possible, as many things with us as possible?" And then once you do that, guys, it's just about making sure that the client is so damn happy with what you do that they stay. And that you build so much demand around how busy you are and that they connect with your identity and your brand and with you so well that they would never leave. Hence why I was like, "Client experience kind of needs its own podcast, really." So let's go through this. We are going to go through how to optimize your clients so that you don't need more clients. You can take yourself from 50 to 60 percent booked to 80 to 90 percent booked. I never like to say 100 percent. Please never rely on being 100 percent booked. That will exhaust you. You will burn out. Even 80 to 90 percent is quite high. The industry average is like, I think it's around 60. I don't actually have that fact in front of me, but I know it's not high. And I'm sure I've mentioned it in a past podcast. I really want to look it up now. I'm like, "No, we're not doing that again." But it is really important that you understand the bar is low. And I'm talking low. This is your opportunity to step over that bar and to create something really special, which is sitting at that 80 percent booked with the clients you already have. And if you optimize your clients and then you still need more clients, then you need more clients. But stop looking externally when internally you could be fixing the problem and blow your own damn mind quite quickly. I have had students who have done this. Katie was one, she's been on the podcast, where she did not need external marketing. We looked inside the business and we added $10,000 a month to her business just by looking at individual clients. Now today, quite literally today, I have created a resource for Beauty Business School. And basically it's, it's how to do this with every single client. So if you are interested in learning how to do this step by step with all the templates, with me holding your hand, then Beauty Business School is for you guys. It is $250 a month. It's insanely affordable and it includes all of these templates. I'm always adding to it. And it just makes your life so much easier. More than that, the girls say the community just blows them away. So that's my little pitch for you. There's probably an ad coming up in four minutes, but I really feel like I need to clearly state to you guys the value of Beauty Business School because I just, I think I under-sell it. I think I'm like, "Yeah, join, you know, when it's right for you." But it is world-changing and that is what I'm hearing more and more and more from the girls in it that they're like, "You've changed my life, you've changed my mindset, you have made it easy to understand how to run a business." And that is my whole goal, why I'm constantly working on Beauty Business School and updating it and putting new resources in. Anyway, that's enough on that. So we are going to go over the key drivers to make sure that you have optimized all of your clients. The first we're going to go through is know your numbers. Then we're going to go through pricing. And when I say know your numbers and pricing, they're kind of the same conversation, but I'm going to clearly spell out what you need to be checking in on. Then we have your rebooking and retention. Then we have your average client spend and your hourly rate. And then we're going to talk about retail and a little touch on client journey. Your client journey is integral to any of this working. And that means you need to know who that ideal client is as well. I'm not going to do that thing where I go off on a tangent. I'm going to keep these episodes really clear, really concise, really valuable, because I want you guys to be able to walk away from this and have the wheels turning in your brain on like, "Oh gosh, I hadn't considered that and I really do need to." Let's talk about knowing your numbers. Oh my gosh, this, this one. If you don't know your numbers, you are honestly letting your business down. And it is the, it's the part of my program that a lot of people stop at because they're like, "Oh, it's over my head, I'm not able to do this." No, you're not able to do it if you tell yourself you're not. But the reality is numbers are sexy. They are powerful. They will change the game for you in business if you actually understand what you are looking at and you actually make the time, and I mean make the time, put it in your calendar and actually do it to understand those numbers. You'll be able to look at how are we going in the future? What does the month look like in the future? What are we bringing into the business versus what's going out of the business? Are we in profit? Can I pay myself what I need to? Knowing your numbers and understanding where all these things come from is the sexiest thing that you can do in business. It's also the thing that will drive you forward. It is the thing that is going to allow you to be like, "Wow, we are making money, we are making money." And to really sit down and make strategic decisions for the business. Do we need to invest more in marketing? Do we need to hold back? Maybe we're in a period where we need to scale back and we need to cut costs and we need to really look at it. I have had so many people that I'm like, "There is like $5,000 worth of things that you've bought here that are not making the money, like making money in the business." And they're like, "What do you mean?" I'm like, "Well, you don't need to go to Kema. You didn't need a new makeup stand when you barely do any makeup. You actually need to truly understand where does money need to go in the business? What are we focusing on? What's our driver? What's our clear vision?" And when you do, you'll change the game for your business. You'll just understand what you're working towards and everything that you do will continue to work towards that. So the key things I want you to be looking at in terms of your number are your retention rate, your rebooking rate, your average client spend, your visit frequency, and your retail percentage. How many people are you selling retail to and at what percentage? Now, I have said this time and time again, but I personally believe that retail is the icing on the cake. I don't think that you should base your numbers on selling retail. I think retail is a sweetener on top and the cake itself is the foundation, which is your services. So when I work out pricing, I don't include retail in that at all. I think it's a completely different ship. It's a completely different thing that we need to factor in. But I do try to aim to sell to 30 percent of clientele. So it's a fun little fact for you. Everyone's always like, "Whoa, 30 percent." I'm like, "Look, there is a way to do it. I do teach it inside Beauty Business School, but if you aren't offering retail to people, then you're not going to be selling retail." The industry standard is 6 to 7 percent from the top of my head, and high performers normally sit at 20 percent. And I'm asking you to do 30. So yes, I have high standards, but I just don't think it's that hard when you really understand how to do it. I actually did a real yesterday, which will be now a few weeks, go back, how I'd make 1K retail in a day. It's a very good reel. It is very simple. There is more to it, of course, but selling retail is not as hard as you think, and it's why I teach it inside Beauty Business School, because it really is about shooting your shot. If you don't sell to people, if you don't solve a problem for them, if you don't tell them they need something, then they're not going to buy it. And you're sitting there being like, "But I don't want to feel salesy." You're not salesy. You're robbing them of the potential to have the best possible service with you. I have blonde hair, although not, you can tell it's in a ponytail right now, so it looks kind of brown. She's ombre. And if my hairdresser did not offer me something to strengthen my blonde hair, to make it shinier, and I found out months down the track that she had this available and never sold it to me because she was too scared to sell, I'd feel robbed of an experience. So what I'm saying to you is, by not offering retail that can solve a problem that can enhance my treatment, you are doing me a disservice, especially if it's based on your own money mindset. If you're sitting there being like, "Oh, she said she can't afford it." You are presuming, based on one conversation, one interaction, or a few interactions, that that's not a priority for me. If I say I can't afford it, I might be whinging about the general cost of groceries or petrol, but buying a $9 coffee or a $10 coffee from Starbucks or wherever you're getting your coffee from, that is a priority for some people, as is the retail for the service that they are choosing to invest their bloody hard-earned money into. They are choosing to spend that money. They don't have to. So give them the full experience. God, I could go on and on about this. Check your money mindset before you project onto others. Never, ever make the assumption that people can't afford things just because maybe right now your bank account doesn't allow for that, or you've had a couple of conversations that make you think, "Oh, they don't have the money." Having the money and prioritizing your money are very, very different things. Some people choose to prioritize their money into beauty, and they've already done that by coming to you. So finish the damn service. Give them the whole experience. Clearly, you should all come in and do coaching with me because I'm very passionate about this. I'm like, "We're going to make sure that you guys sell retail." Now, before we get into this, I really want to state that it is much more expensive to get a new client in the door than to optimize the ones you have. Yet, every single time I release a podcast, it's like, "How to get 30 new clients?" It has nearly doubled the listener rate. I shit you not, doubled the listener rate. Everyone seems to think new clients is the solution to their problems, yet it costs you more money, more time, and more energy. If you are 30, 40, 50, 60 percent booked, I could guarantee you that you could increase that by 10, 20 percent by just actually optimizing each client. So come into this with an open mind as we go through every single one. So the first thing that I want to talk to you guys about is pricing. There is no point in optimizing clients if your pricing is shit to begin with. And there's no nice way to say that. If you are not priced for profit, and that means you are having a 30 percent profit margin is the ultimate goal. Depending on where you're at, you may have 5, 10, 15, all the way up, but we're aiming to eventually get you to 30 percent. We have a calculator for this inside Beauty Business School because it matters so much. But essentially, if your pricing isn't done properly and you're trying to optimize people, you'll end up fully booked, burnt out, and not in profit. Now, there will be someone listening to this going, "But I'm already fully booked." If you're fully booked and broke, you need to change your pricing. You need to change your modeling. There is something wrong in the business. You should not be fully booked and broke. It is that simple. Now, an area of the industry that I see this a lot is nails. People constantly say to me, "Can't charge that in nails." Guys, I cannot say this louder or clearer to nails and lashes. There's no point in doing it if you are running yourself broke. You need to raise your prices. You need to be in profit, and you need to know your numbers in order to do that. And I hate picking on lashes and nails, but at the end of the day, this is where I see the biggest problems. It is in every section of the industry, though. But I like to make a nice little point to you guys, to inspire you and empower you to do it. You need to do it. I don't want you to work for free. That's not fair. That's not why you started a business. You started a business for freedom. You started a business to give you the lifestyle you wanted, working 38 hours a week, 50, 60 hours a week, and still having no money left over. That ain't it. That ain't the vibe. That's not what we're going for. So let's really dial this in and get to know our pricing and our numbers. Hey, bestie. Sorry to interrupt the episode, but we need to talk. How full are your books right now? Let me guess. You've opened your dream beauty business, set up the space, stocked the tools, even made an Instagram and Facebook page. But now what? You took the leap and finally you're working for yourself. No more making money for someone else thinking, "I could do this," because you did. But here's the tricky part. How do you get clients? What should you charge? How do you show up online? How do you pay yourself? Let's be real. Beauty School didn't teach you this, but you don't have to figure it out alone. That is exactly why we created Beauty Business Foundations, your step-by-step guide to building a beauty business that stands out, is in profit, and attracts dream clients. If you're interested in joining, send me BBF on Instagram and let's see if it's the right fit for you. Now back to the episode. The next one I want to talk to you about is your rebooking and retention. This is what we often refer to as the leaky bucket. Oh man, you put so much work into getting clients in the door. I know it. I know it's exhausting showing up on social media. I know it's exhausting doing the emails. I know it's exhausting doing the networking events and, you know, women in business and collaborating with people on the internet. I know that shit is hard. How do I know that? Because I do it. It's my literal full-time job. And I know that it takes a lot of work to release promotions. I know it takes a lot of work to put yourself out there. So the work that you're putting in to get these clients, just for them to walk out the damn door without rebooking, girl, please. Guy, do I think I was listening? If you do, if there was a guy listening to this, could you just like slide into my damn... That sounded so dodgy. No, I'm telling my husband I said that. But honestly, introduce yourself. I would love to meet you. Because I do have a general opinion that it's just women listening to this. But we definitely have men in this industry. So I just honestly, please stop wasting your time and money on getting clients in the door to not rebook them. Oh, they just book online. Fuck that. No. We want to book them in person in the salon for as long as possible. In fact, I always suggest three appointments ahead. If not three appointments ahead, a reoccurring appointment. I know Timely has a feature where you can actually just lock them into a reoccurring appointment. That's the aim. That's the aim of the game. Now, the amount of people, and there is no shame because this used to be me, but I speak to people and I say, "Okay, what's your rebooking rate?" They're like, "I don't know." "Okay, what's your retention rate?" "I don't know." Now, your rebooking rate matters because essentially it's telling us how many people have rebooked there and then in the salon. It is a tricky one though. Because if you book a client three, four, five appointments ahead, your rebooking rate's going to turn to shit. As your appointments go on, it's going to be like, "Oh, I did 90 percent rebooking rate," and then it dropped to like 60 because you didn't need to rebook any of those clients, particularly if you have a reoccurring. So I am a little gentler on the rebooking, but you need to think about it like this. Everyone always says, "Oh, if I just stick to like 90 percent rebooking rate, I'm going to be in really good stead." Well, no. For every month you sit at 90, you've lost 10. For every month you sit at 80, you've lost 20. You want to be having a 100 percent rebooking rate or as close to as possible. You want to get as many people as possible rebooking or in a reoccurring appointment because that is your livelihood. That is your assurance that next month is booked, that the month after is booked, that January is booked after December and you're exhausted because that's where the... We're heading there, guys. We're heading to December. I'm going to roll out those podcasts in October. That's terrifying. I'm like, "I'm not ready. I'm not mentally ready." And this is the thing, like I myself, now we're in September nearly. What date is it? 26th of August that I'm filming this. We are heading into September and I lose my income in December because salon owners are busy and they don't think they need a coach in December. It's actually the best time to sign up for a coach, just so you guys know, because it prepares you for the year ahead. But hey, that's a whole different conversation. But essentially, I now have to think about that reoccurring revenue for myself, and I do that all year anyway, but that's what carries me through. This is what's going to carry you through. This is what's going to make sure that you come back from the December holidays, if you don't have memberships, to carry you through, and you come into full books. It is making sure people are retained. So that's what we talk about retention rate. Now, retention is essentially when clients have come back. Retention is a bloody tricky one again, because depending on the booking system, they mean different things. In my personal opinion, retention is the client returns within a six-week period. In a lot of booking systems, it's within a year. So you look like you have this fan buck and tastic rebooking rate, and honestly, the clients just returned within a year. That's not a fantastic rebooking rate. Getting clients in every three to six weeks, obviously if you do brow lams and things like that, maybe eight weeks, although I suggest a little sneaky appointment between just to catch them up. But you're essentially not optimized if that's what your rebooking and your retention looks like. So I really want you to think about this. Like, do you have your clients coming in, which kind of leads me to your average client visits, which is another stat, but how often are they coming in? What is the regularity of these clients? Because that matters. Even getting clients going from eight weeks to coming in every four weeks suddenly doubles your bookings. It is genuinely that simple. Which leads me to a little bit of a tip for you guys. If you have a dormant list, a list of people who haven't returned, and you're now like, "Oh my gosh, there must be a massive list of people who haven't returned," go and contact them. Call them. Reach out. If you're quiet, be like, "Hey, Sally, it's..." I don't know why it's always Sally and Susan. "It's Kimberly from Beauty Business School. I really just wanted to reach out and see how you're going. I've missed you in the salon, and maybe you have an offer for them." Show them you actually care. I would love to get you back in. We have an offer going right now, and I actually thought of you because I know that you'd mentioned X in the past. Reach out to that dormant list. Make them feel seen and special. Make them think you give a shit about them in a world where they don't feel like many people give a shit about them. It is an absolute game changer. This also leads me to service gaps. So if someone is having their brows done by you and you do lash lifts as well, why are you not then offering for them to have lash lifts? Now, I'm a big believer in niching, so being really good at like brows, for example, but that doesn't mean you can't have other services on your menu that you cross-sell them to. This is really easy if you did like brows, for example, and then you're taking a client on a journey, you're growing their brows in, and you also do tattooing, and you're like, "Look, we're going to need to do some tattooing in order to grow this particular area back in." Or, "Sorry, this area is not going to grow back in. So we're going to do some brow tattooing there to give you the shape that you absolutely love and desire." That client's then coming in once a year for a $600 plus treatment to have them maintained. You're also still getting them in for brows because we know that just because you get your brows tattooed doesn't mean they don't need waxing and tinting. So we're continuing that regularity, but optimizing them to another service. You can do this with so many bloody different services, guys. It is really looking for the gaps. Lots of people do upsells as well, where they have little upsells. If you have collagen eye masks or maybe you have a special facial mask that you're doing or you're adding an LED and it's exclusive in-house, you only offer it to the clients that come in. That's a really great way to boost sales as well. But the simplest first one is, are they having as many services as possible with you? Are they? Because if they're not, they're crazy. You're the best at what you do, and they bloody well should be. This leads me to your average client spend versus your hourly rate. So we want to look at how much our average client is spending. Most people say to me, "I need to earn $120 per hour." Actually, the average at the moment that I am personally seeing, this is not a stat, is between 150 and 250 per hour. Yeah, that's the average I'm seeing for most people who need to be earning a good income, which I recommend earning the award wage, the minimum wage, if not above. And it's sitting around 150 to 250, depending on if they're at home or in a commercial space. So this is real, guys. These are real conversations. You are handling real money and you need to make sure that you are running your business like the professional that you are to receive that level of money. So if you need to earn 150 per hour, but then you go look at your average client spend and you're like, "Okay, my average client comes in for an hour and I'm only earning $86." There is a mismatch in pricing and service. Maybe you're discounting somewhere along the road, but you really need to be looking at getting that average client spend up. So understanding how often they're coming in and also how much they're spending when they are coming in is a really important metric for you to be optimizing as well. This then leads me to the retail conversation, which I know I said is the icing on top of the cake, but this is a really important metric to be optimizing. For client experience, which we're about to just touch on at the very end here, it matters that you are selling client retail. Now, I would suggest if you're not selling any retail at all, figure out how much of a percentage you are selling to your clients. Like on average, is there a 5%, a 10%, a 20%? And aim to work towards 20%. That is the gold star for the industry. My personal gold star is 30%. Like I honestly think you can do that. But if you're like, "Kim, I'm not even selling any," just be like, "Okay, if I can sell to 5% of my clientele this week, I'm killing it." Then I'll aim for 10. Then I'll aim for 15, so on and so forth. Work yourself up because retail is a really important metric for optimizing client experience and also optimizing your bank account. Retail's its whole own conversation. I did a masterclass with one of my girls the other day, one of my one-on-ones with her team, and we spoke about this, and it just, I could see it rewiring their brain. They were like, "Whoa, I've always thought it was salesy. I never thought to look at it that way." You know, their own money mindset played in, their own thoughts about like whether a product was valuable and worth it or not played in. And you've really got to check these things. You have to see it as problem solving. You have to see it as, "This is going to help my client, and this is going to finish that journey off for them," that they're like, "Wow, they were absolutely incredible," because you are the expert. So finally, let's have a little conversation about client journey, but don't worry, the next podcast is going to dive into this in a much deeper way. The client journey is the make or break of whether or not they stay with you. You could do amazing lashes. Actually, I'm going to give you a personal example here. My gosh, words. I'm going to shut my little laptop with all my notes. I had this amazing hairdresser back in the day, who shall remain nameless. She was freaking incredible. She was so good at hair. Everyone wanted to go to her. She had this thriving business. But she was quite inappropriate in our conversations. She was unreliable with time, so she would always run extremely late. She would cancel. She was extremely hard to contact and be involved with. So basically, over time, I watched her from having and being the number one hairdresser in our area to not having a business because she was hard to work with. And then when you went, even though she was so good at hair, and I remember people saying this to me like, "Oh my God, do you go to this person?" I said, "Yeah, I do. She's amazing." And they're like, "Yeah, but gosh, she's hard to get in with." Oh my God, the other day she was talking to me about, and true story, her drug dealer. Like these sorts of things impact the client journey. And what a lot of people forget is that the client journey is about the client. It's not about us. It's about giving them an optimized, incredible experience. So if your clients aren't staying, they're not being, they're not having more services with you, they're not retained, they're not regular, it may be that you need to look at that client journey and what is actually going on in the business. Your ideal client wants a certain kind of experience and identity by coming to you. Are you optimizing that or are you letting them down? And I know that this is a really big conversation, but it's one that matters so damn deeply that I want you guys to be very, very aware of. So today was a bit of a checklist for you to go through. In fact, maybe I will give you guys a checklist. Maybe when this launches, I will have a free resource for you so that you have a checklist to go through. I'm like, "What should I call it?" Maybe we'll just call it optimize. That's a bloody long word, but I'm like, "Optimize. How does one spell optimize?" I will have that resource available and ready for you. If you guys DM me, I will have it ready to go so that you can have a copy of it. I'll also put the link attached to this podcast. Go through and actually see and do a self-audit of where the gaps are in your business. And if you need help with it, my DMs are open. I'm here to help. Beauty Business School is literally designed for you guys. I want you to optimize these clients because I don't want you to constantly be in feast and famine. I don't want you to constantly have to find new people. And I don't want you to feel exhausted by your marketing because you're constantly in, "I need 30 new clients. I need 60 new clients. I need new clients." If you always need new clients, something is wrong. And this should be triggering to you. It's time that we patch those gaps up for you and we fix it. And guys, that is it for me for today. So until next time, I'll speak to you soon. And that's a wrap on today's episode of the Beauty Business School podcast. If you love what you heard, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. It helps us keep bringing you the best beauty biz insights and juicy industry tips. Remember, we're more than just beauty business besties. We're here to help you build a business that turns heads and breaks the rules. Until next time, keep shining, keep thriving, and keep showing the world what a beauty boss really looks like.