Burn Out and How to Rebuild Clientele, Our Changing Industry!

I am hearing and reading about so many Stylists struggling with leaving the industry. From burn out, shrinking clientele, and so many cancelations let's get down to why? 

Our industry is going through a shift, but it is a shift we can handle with some new skills. It's time to change how we approach the relationship we have with our clients. 

Are you ready to rally and become the best you? Let's get started.

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Want me to go more in-depth about anything? Let me know.

Send an email with questions to skahrhoff@live.com.

Transcript

Shannon Kahrhoff: 0:00

Hello. Welcome to Decoding Clients for Stylists. I'm Shannon Kahrhoff. Today I want talk to the stylists that are frustrated, losing hope in the career field that they chose. They might totally love, but they're getting frustrated. I see all over the place with the podcast I listen to with our career with forums on Facebook that I, I love to read. There are a lot of people struggling right now worried about their empty books, worried about not getting the pay that they need, worried that they need to lower their prices to draw more people in. And wondering what the heck is happening to our career field. Five years ago, people were begging us to get'em into our books, to hurry up and find a spot to get'em in so they could find space for the newest color or whatever technique they were wanting. Today is a little bit different because the economy has changed. One of my clients was talking about recession blonde, where it's still light, but it grows out softer and it's not a new thing. There's been people that want high maintenance and low maintenance, and in between my whole career. But it's, it's one of these things that it's freaking out a lot of the new stylists, the ones that have been in that maybe came in, they graduated from school and built clientele with social media, and it was easy. People were banging down their door trying to get'em to squeeze'em in one more appointment. It wasn't so hard to build in clientele. He post a few pictures on Facebook or Instagram and people would contact you book to appointment, and they were there. People had a lot of extra income coming in, especially through the COVID era when everyone was getting the checks. But things are changing now. I lived through the 2008. Bubble burst of our economy and that one was because of real estate, bad loans. No one had enough money to pay for everything and interest rates spiked and so did their payments. This one is totally different. I won't go into a lot of details'cause I'm not an economist. I am a hairstylist. Our world is different. People have the money. It's still the same money. They still have their houses, they have their cars. The difference is products are costing more money. So the normal things that they were spending their money on, they can't make their money stretch as far. So they're getting more cautious about what they spend their money on. They might wait and buy a higher price item because it will last longer. It's not as easy. More people are, are watching their spending by not doing the last minute blow off, purchase a little splurge here and there. They might put a little bit more thought and effort into where it goes. They might research a little bit more on who they're gonna go for, their Botox and fillers for their hair extensions, their new hair color. It's one of these things that they are more aware of who they're choosing to do the services with. So this is what is changing in our career. It's not so much that they're not getting it done. There are a few that are doing their color themselves or growing out their hair color into their natural gray. That's a normal occurrence in our career fields. This isn't abnormal. The difference is. People that didn't have to put in much effort into the career field are realizing that they kind of miss something that they didn't really connect with their clients. They might have splurged on the right drinks in their space or the coffee maker that no one touches anymore, and thinking that was enough of a pampering for them. And it might still work. It's no big deal. But I'm thinking more along the lines of people are wanting to get to know the person doing their services. They wanna feel like they are valued and understood, and this is where my whole podcast comes into play. I want people to understand how to relate to their clients more and how to make a difference in making them feel seen and heard. And by understanding your personality and your client's personality, this is the key to the future. You're gonna understand how to make them understand things, and you're going to choose how you approach different services and different things by which personality you feel like they are. By giving them that extra little bit of attention and understanding, or even just letting them feel heard. You are gonna have a loyal client because it's one of those things that everyone wants. But in the last probably 10 years, I would say, the world has been making more and more money, and they weren't as aware of where their money went. They just loved going for a service and in six weeks they were gonna come back and get it all over again. They were not as demanding as they are now. They wanna feel like they are getting every cent worth of their service by what they spend. And our prices have increased a lot because our services have gone up, because our products are going up, our rent is going up. Everything in our world right now has increased a lot in the last even five years. It's not just that our career finally has a understanding of our value. We have as much knowledge in our heads with the chemistry of hair color, with understanding the specific little tweaks that you need for hair extensions and understanding how to install it the right way so it doesn't cause any damage to your hair. How to make it blend so you can wear it straight or curly. How to make a color blend perfectly so you can get your recession blonde, and how to make your hair as light as we can without damaging it. This is an art, and we finally, as a career understand our value, and I know that the clients don't really understand what they are investing in every time they sit in your chair. But this is part of the issue of what you need to educate your clients on, because we go to so many different classes, or we should go to so many different classes. Hopefully you're constantly learning and growing. We can open up Instagram. Or TikTok and follow a creator or someone with a product line, and we can watch their knowledge. We don't have to sit in a color class or go to a hair show to understand the greatest things out there. They put out information just for us so that we can spend the 15, 30 minutes that we might have to understand a new technique like, oh look. We can do this just a little bit different and we can cut down our service time, but get more of the look that we're going for and create less damage. We spend a lot of our downtime learning and growing and looking for the next thing because most of the time we love it. This is something that a client don't always understand. I've explained how it is going to an educational class in another state and I'm self-employed. I am my own business. Who's gonna pay for that class? Me. Who's gonna pay for the travel? Me? Who's going to pay for the hotel and the food and anything else I have to have for that? Travel me. I am my own business. I am my boss. No one takes care of me but me. And every cent that they spend on that hair color, most of it goes towards expenses or my health insurance or hopefully retirement. All of this money doesn't go straight into our pocket. We have a lot of bills we have to pay. We have to invest in our education. We have so many different things that we do, and. We're not just focused on in our own little region anymore. We cross our country and we cross into other countries to get the education we are hungry for, to bring back into our towns and to create the beauty and necessities that most people want. But we finally understand our own value that we have and that we understand that we can charge our. True amount that we need to make a profit. We don't have to live in the poor house while we are making everyone beautiful so that they can go make a six figure income. It is okay for us to create wealth for ourselves by working hard, investing in ourselves, and becoming more. I learned this in the last two, three years. Someone opened up the ideas in my head of knowing that. Just because I work in a small town doesn't mean that I have to charge small town prices. It is okay that I raise my prices because I am investing in myself and I'm investing my time in my clients. I am trying to be the best person for them, and I love getting to know my clients and being there whenever they're having a hard time between losing family members, going through a divorce, the excitement of getting engaged and getting married and finding out they're pregnant. We are all blessed to be a part of their lives and sometimes we don't understand how big of a effect we have on their life because we see'em every four to six to eight weeks, and we are a consistent thing. I see some of my clients more than my own family, and I know that with my weekly clients, there's times I know information that their own family don't know yet because they don't want to cause problems or stress them out until they know more information. So I'm sitting there while I'm doing their hair, letting them talk it out to someone that knows them, someone that cares, but it's not a direct influence on my life and their life by me knowing. This is the little details that you need to get better at to make a relationship with your clients. This is what is lacking in the stylists that don't have the full book that they did two years ago. Do you have a relationship with your clients or do you treat'em like a business, like a bank teller? Come in, drop off your cash, and out the door you go, here's your receipt. That's not what people want anymore. They want to be seen, to be heard, get the look and the style that they actually want, and in a timely manner. The people that wanna sit there for three, four hours for a service, those days are gone. You might have a few of them left, but most people have a million places they have to go. So they want you to be as quick as you can, precise as you can, and listen to'em the whole time. That's a tall order for a lot of things. You have to learn how to do things one step at a time, but it is so worth it. So if this sounds like something that you're having issues with. Take a step back, figure out how you actually speak to your clients. How do you work with your clients and figure out how to improve it. Make a connection with your clients and make sure that you are aware of how you're talking to your clients. Okay, so here's how to help yourself to not hit the sinking point. To not get to the burned out, freaking out, worried mindset of a stylist, not making enough money. First. Set goals. Figure out exactly what you wanna make, what you need to make, break it down to monthly to weekly. To daily understand how much money you need to make to pay your bills, to have the extra income that you need, and start with looking at what your books look like now. That's a good step. I just worked through this with one of my, coworkers. She's building up clientele and she needed that extra motivation to work harder to work on herself. Sometimes you have to play mental games with yourself to motivate yourself, but you need to break down what you wanna earn and see what you are estimating right now. How you want to increase it by posting pictures of your services that you're interested in doing, that you wanna bring in, post it on Instagram, on Facebook, on TikTok. You don't have to do reels and crazy creation of things. Just posting some of your work and products that you use. Introduce yourself a little bit on, on social media. Will help build a name for yourself. Make sure you have the pictures on there so the client's, future clients can look at your pretty much portfolio that you have on your account and understand what services you do. If they like it, then they will contact you. Make sure you put a way of contacting you to book your appointments on your social media accounts. I got to learn all this stuff through my classes that I learned the last few years. And holy cow has, it made a huge difference in my business and my confidence level. It's just incredible what those little tweaks in your career can create. It's just amazing. So once you have the motivation for yourself, goals for what you wanna bring in, and then you create. Your social media for a business, for people to get to know you, keep it professional. You can do some personal things on there also, but make sure that you are someone that you show yourself as someone that is a professional and someone they would trust to do their hair. And then you need to work the hours and the days to welcome these new people in. You might have to increase your hours a little bit to get new people in if you're, if your clientele is shrinking and you're working. Nine to three but you need more income. You need more clients. Sometimes you have to suck it up and work the hours that these new clients need to come in. I love evening appointments. I'm a night owl anyway, so most people need my evenings because it's after work. It's just evenings and weekends were always my thing anyway. But I have increased my days. I come in a little bit earlier than I ever did before, but I'm still not there super early. Just because I offer the evenings, I'm not working 10 hour days if I don't have to. So be ready to put in a little bit more effort and opening up your schedule a little bit more to create the hours that you wanna work. Because if you suck it up now and make it a little bit more painful for yourself while you're building these clientele back up, it'll make a huge difference. And then as your books are full, you can. Shrink it down to where you wanna be, but you have to work hard to get the lifestyle and the career that you really want. And this is self-employed with commission and, chain salons, it's a little bit different. You have to work a little bit differently, but you can always increase your hours if they're willing to let you be there. And with commission, you might not get paid for the full hours that you're there. I know we didn't. I know they pass laws now that the salon owner has to pay you hourly. If you don't make so much money, that's fine, but you really have to put in the effort behind it to create your own magic. With this industry, you can't expect someone to do all the hard work for you. You have to do your due diligence also. Go learn some new skills. Go take a class. Go follow some new companies on Instagram or TikTok and watch their training videos. Watch their educators that drop hints here and there. While you have downtime. If you have it from a slower schedule, take that time to learn new skills. Learn some business skills, some marketing skills for our career. It's amazing how much. Differently. You run your business once you understand the business mindset of profits and investments, and it's incredible. Why did I never think of this all those years of my career? I have no idea, but I really encourage the younger stylists, the people that want the long haul in this career to do it. Go figure out how to maximize your money coming in to create the lifestyle that you want. Don't spend every dime you earn. Make sure you put it towards something that increases your value. Everyone is gonna be different with the services you offer and the knowledge you have, but figure out what excites you, what makes you want to go to work every day, and that can make the biggest difference. If you go into work upset and stressed because you have to make this much money today, it's not gonna help. You need to work smarter and figure out the steps behind it. Don't think poor, think rich because everything is an opportunity. When you have downtime, use it. Invest in yourself. Don't sit there wasting time, reading a magazine, scrolling through, social media mindlessly. Focus, improve yourself. It is so worth it. You won't regret it. So hopefully some of this helped. I know our career is in a big change right now. Everyone is worried. Everyone was worried about everything because everything is changing fast. But invest in yourself. Focus and start listening to other podcasts that have the business mindset on our career field. Go search'em out. There are so many good things out there that can help you break down how to make your finances stretch a little bit farther. How to be smarter with how you spend your money and how to. Market yourself. There's so many resources at our fingertips in these days, so just go and search and find things and be hungry to learn new things. I'm just here to try and help you understand how to change your thinking. Go find the intelligent people out there that can break down step by step. How to pay off your debt so you actually have the money in your hands for that moment and you're not paying off the money you spent already. You'd be amazed how just changing those things can make a huge difference in your life. Go find someone on how to build the clientele that you really want. I've done it so anyone can do it. It's just a matter of going out there and looking for something new and ready to change your life one step at a time. Just don't overwhelm yourself. It's totally possible just because our world is changing, it doesn't have to be scary. It's okay to change yourself to become a better, stronger person, it's okay. So go out there, learn some things, go investigate some things for your better knowledge and have fun with it. Go encourage someone else in your salon who might be struggling. Go do a challenge and work together with figuring out new things, because when you have two people hungry to learn new things. Your algorithms are totally different on social media, so the people that you're gonna find might be different than your coworkers, people that they find, and then you collaborate with it and you're amazed at the different ways that you can learn different things from different people. It's great. So go have fun, learn some new things, and don't give up on yourself. Have fun and have a good week. Bye.