Episode 7: Salon Pricing for Peace and Profit

Pricing for Profit: How to Raise Your Prices with Confidence and Clarity

💡 Are you nervous about raising your prices? Wondering how to do it without losing clients—or your confidence? In this episode, Debbie Mulhall tackles one of the biggest challenges beauty professionals face: pricing. She breaks down how to price for profit, overcome fear and guilt, and set your services up for long-term success.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- Why You Need to Raise Your Prices (And How to Know When It’s Time) – Debbie shares how her own salon’s Q1 decline sparked a necessary pricing overhaul.

- Overcoming Fear of Client Loss – How to shift your mindset from fear to strategy, and why losing a few clients might actually boost your business.

- Profit-Driven Pricing – Tips on ensuring every service generates profit, and why you must price based on your business—not the one down the street.

- Letting Go of Guilt & Impostor Syndrome – Why undercharging hurts your business and your confidence—and how to finally own your value.

- Communicating Price Increases – When (and why) you shouldn’t apologize—and how to handle pricing conversations like a CEO.

- A Real-Life Story on Doubling Prices – Debbie shares how a bold pricing move didn’t lose her clients—it actually improved her business.

- The Cost of Not Knowing Your Numbers – From wastage to underpricing, Debbie explains how hidden leaks could be draining your profit.

💬 Debbie’s Key Message: A salon should be more than a job—it should be a valuable, sellable asset. Without systems, strategy, and financial clarity, many beauty business owners face burnout and walk away with nothing. Start planning your exit now—so you can leave on your terms, with profit and purpose.

✨ Discover the 4 Biggest Profit Killers that could be holding your beauty business back 💸💔—straight from Beauty CEO & Mentor Debbie Mulhall 💄👩‍💼: https://www.beautybbm.com/signup

🎧 Tune in now to protect your passion, prepare your plan, and turn your salon into a sellable asset.

📩 Have thoughts or questions? Connect with Debbie on:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beautybusinessmasterybbm

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beauty_business_mastery/#

Website: https://www.beautybbm.com/

📢 Loved this episode? Subscribe, rate, and review! Your support helps empower more beauty entrepreneurs to build s

Chapters

• 1:06 Why We’re Talking About Pricing Now
• 3:17 Real-Life Financial Dip Prompted Change
• 4:02 The Fear of Losing Clients
• 5:34 Debbie’s Bridal Makeup Story
• 10:09 Pricing Should Be Based on Profit Per Hour
• 12:36 Strategic Pricing Adjustments
• 14:30 Product Waste = Lost Profit
• 17:27 Stop Apologizing for Price Increases
• 19:48 Never Base Pricing on Competitors
• 22:10 Premium Pricing Strategy for Simpler Business
• 23:06 Let Go of Impostor Syndrome
• 24:28 We Undervalue Ourselves as a Profession
• 26:51 Real Example: Undercharging = Missed Profit
• 29:15 Start Tracking Your Profit
• 31:40 Price Like a CEO, Not a Technician

Transcript

Debbie Mulhall (00:02.093)

Welcome to Beauty Pro to CEO. I'm Debbie Mulhall, and I cure a beauty or skin professional who wants to build a thriving, profitable business without the stress and burnout you are in the right place. I started in this industry just like you, working hands-on, passionate about beauty, but quickly realizing that passion alone does not pay the bills. I built my business from the ground up, learned through trial and error, and became obsessed with mastering leadership, systems, and strategies.

to create a business that works for me, not the other way around. Now I help beauty pros just like you to do the same. This podcast is your go-to for practical business tips, no-fluff strategies, and real talk behind the scenes. The highs, the lows, and everything in between. And because I'm all about mixing strategy with a little magic, you'll also get a little dose of Debbie DeLulu energetics and magic because mindset, intuition, and energy are just as important as the numbers. So.

Grab a coffee, get comfy, and let's dive in.

Debbie Mulhall (01:06.208)

All right, I am jumping into this week's podcast, and I'm going in on the topic of pricing your services and pricing for profit. Now, when it comes to pricing, I have been speaking to a lot of business owners and salon owners who are struggling at the moment with, I guess, needing to make increases, maybe fear around doing that.

And there's a lot of challenges that come with putting the prices up. So none of us like to have to change our business, but sometimes it's just a necessity. Okay, so I'm going to try and cover some of the topics that I see people struggling with around the topic. Things like, well, uncertainty about how to price their business compared to other businesses in the area or in their market. Definitely some salon owners struggle.

With communicating the price increase to their clients. And yeah, even just how to communicate that. Some business owners, and I think this is again, something I see a lot of, some salon owners almost have a guilt or kind of impostor syndrome when charging more. And then other things that I see cropping up is, for example, when you're handling long-term clients. So I've jotted down a couple of topics that definitely, if you're a salon owner, I'm sure you can relate to

Discomfort around, and I'm going to chat a little bit about it and see if I can give you some tips and tricks and tools and share some stories that might help you. Okay. So this week, we have news from the States that all sorts of things are happening politically with tariffs, rates, and taxes. It can be quite scary as business owners because obviously we have to navigate these new territories. I shared on social media this week. So

My company or clinic we have a few locations here in the midlands in ireland i shared this week on my social media that we did not have any growth and q1 in fact we saw a decline of close to ten percent in our revenue not in our profit margin our margin did decline and to be fair if i'm being honest our margins have been

Debbie Mulhall (03:17.989)

The last couple of quarters, our margins have been down. So definitely knew it was time to take some action on pricing. In another episode, I can talk a little bit about the overall management of revenue been down, but just what came up this week was very much around actually raising prices and how to price. So that's what we're going to focus on here. So this week in Urbaclinic, we definitely decided to have a good look under the hood.

To see where we were at pricing-wise. Okay. So we haven't raised our prices in a few years. We were trying to hold off, but I had known that we would need to do it early in Q1, probably should have done it in January, but anyway, it's better late than ever. So our prices went up on April 1st. So, at least for Q2 and three and four this year, they will reflect the true cost of running the business. So yeah, it just got me thinking about

ways that I can help you navigate this. Okay, so let's talk about fear of client loss when increasing prices. Okay, so when you are putting your prices up, you may have, and it's a very common thing to have the fear that you're going to lose some clients. Will you guaranteed not lose clients? No, I can't say that for sure. However,

I always encourage people to remember that this you're running a profit for-profit business like not a not a non-profit. Your salon is not a hobby. are running a company, you're running a business, and at the end of the day, the math needs to math and there needs to be a margin at the end of the month that you are happy with. Even though it's hard because you've built up such a good relationship with these clients. You're not doing people a favor by being there, you're providing a service and.

That service like every other industry needs to be viable and the business needs to be making money and you need to be you need to have a standard on what you expect in your business as a margin. You have to know that from the outset and you have to operate and work backwards from that figure, and then your business is viable. So you may lose clients. Really funny story. I always feel weird telling some of these stories on the podcast because I'm always afraid that maybe somebody

Debbie Mulhall (05:34.512)

From that era will know what I'm talking about or who I'm talking about. And this is not a bad thing. This is a good story to share. But when I started out in the industry, many years ago, I was doing a lot of bridal makeup. I was a pretty nifty little makeup artist. Back when I was doing it, nowadays, when you go to get married, there are so many professional makeup artists. But like all those years ago when I started, there wasn't a huge amount. You did have some like,

Michelle Ragazzoli was still makeup artist. There was a lot of the classic makeup artists that you still see on the scene were just emerging. The makeup artist scene was just becoming a thing. Up until that point, before I started doing makeup, probably if you were getting married and you're a bride, you would go to like your local salon that probably did your waxing, your tinting, your nails. And that person in that beauticians would do your makeup.

So obviously, that has evolved and changed. So I was kind of at the head of that trend and I had started to do mobile freelance makeup artistry for weddings. At the time I was a single mom to Bryn and I was just doing makeup and it was amazing because it was like, it was the first time I had been able to generate such a good stream of income as a solo entrepreneur and just doing my thing with my brushes and my makeup on my makeup gigs.

But what happened was as my business evolved and I started to offer services and then I opened, went from being freelance and I opened my clinic or opened my first salon. The very first one was a brow bar, doll face makeup, and brows. It became quite problematic insofar as I became one of the go-to girls in my area for bridal makeup, which was amazing. And I was becoming so busy.

And people were starting to book me like two years in advance for their dates because there's X amount in Ireland, people get married in the summer generally. So there's only a couple of weekends per year when you're going to get a wedding. So people were booking me almost two years in advance. Now, what I didn't foresee and I took those weddings, what I didn't foresee happening was this. When my salon, my brick and mortar business, got really busy, being out of the salon the morning before a busy Saturday,

Debbie Mulhall (07:47.569)

became really, really, really tough for me. I became so tired because if you've ever done weddings, really, I never sat great before a bride because it's the most important day that you're like, you'll have made a really good relationship with this client and it's their most important day of their life. And now, as their makeup artist, you were there on the morning with their family in their home. I always thought it's such a special thing to do to be a part of someone's wedding.

But even though it was so special, it came with a huge amount of responsibility, meaning you could never be tired. You could never be sick. You had to go in full of beans, regardless of everything else. I remember getting awful news about my one of my family members had become quite ill right before a wedding. had to go and do the wedding. I remember having a stomach bug and doing a wedding with a stomach bug. I just had to keep going. It was awful.

And I'm sure so many of you who are, you know, in our industry are nodding your head and you can probably all think of your own time. Anyway, the story is getting so, I'm going so, so far down the wrong road. But essentially what happened was I realized that doing weddings was starting to put a strain on my brick-and-mortar business. It was putting a strain on my health. And quite frankly, I was a single mom. And after a few years, Bryn would travel to her dad.

For the summer, which meant obviously then I was working all summer. It was fine. I don't know. A couple of things had come up with people who would invite me to a vacation or go for a weekend away. And what was happening was I was never able to attend anything because I was booked for years in advance. I could like couldn't take summer holidays. So through the jakes and the reels, I decided I'm going to have to pull back on the weddings. And I'm going to because I would have had the fear that

If I put my prices up, people won't book me, and it'll slow down my rate of getting booked for weddings, and I'll fizzle it out. So I don't have to. I was kind of I wasn't brave enough to just stop doing them. And I know so many of you are like nodding your head, going, yeah, I get this. I think I doubled my prices. I didn't even like put them up by 10, 20, 30 percent. I'm going to just throw a number. Let's pretend like 15 years ago it was

Debbie Mulhall (10:09.974)

250 euros for a wedding call-out. Maybe it was three, I forget. Whatever it was at the time, I put it up double. So if I was 300 for the day, I made it 600 for the wedding. And I was so sure that this was going to solve my problem because people would look at my service and go, yeah, she's way too expensive. We'll get somebody else. And then by default, my diary will slow down. Well, here's the kicker. It didn't. Can you imagine how

pissed I was at myself that I did not put my prices up long before. So it was an interesting lesson to learn. OK, so it doesn't actually mean you're going to lose a lot of clients for sure. If you put your prices up, depending on people's budgets and circumstances, sometimes you can become out of reach. But what I see happening in the industry mostly is your really good clients will support.

You understand that you know you are running a business, and we're not providing. say this it's not we are an essential service but I mean if somebody somebody's budget to have facial or hair color or a haircut if their budget doesn't allow for it every six weeks maybe they're going to push it out to every eight weeks now obviously from a business perspective we don't want people pushing out their appointments but really what we have to do is we have to know.

That every hour on our diary that somebody is in and one of our therapists are booked or you are booked, that you are making enough money in that hour that you have generated a profit. So at the end of the day, you know, if you're trying to get your books busy and you're trying to, you know, increase people's visits, of course, it's a it's it's a consideration. But at the point of when you go to do your pricing, your only thing that you should focus on is that every service is priced to deliver a profit.

And that's it. And of course, you know, there's now when it comes to pricing strategies, I'm not going to go into specific strategies on this part. Of course, I do this with one-to-one clients. Of course, I do this in BBM inside my masterminds, all of that stuff. But it's very hard to give specific strategies on a podcast. But like, for example, a good rule of thumb could be this is not for every industry. What you could do is you could decide, OK, for example, I'm going to do an increase of

Debbie Mulhall (12:36.374)

And this is assuming that you've already done a very good initial pricing structure on your business. But let's say you've decided you're going to put in a 10 % or an 8 % raise, which is a lot, but if you haven't raised your prices in a few years, it's justified. You'll need it if you're not making your profit margins. One particular strategy you could deploy is for your main services that you know, or you're very busy with, you could definitely make sure that you have applied them to those.

But as an example, you might decide, OK, well, based on your own business. Let's say I looked at the upsells in Arba. I was already pretty happy that our add-on head massage and our add-on tension release massage, and our add-on helix service was already fairly priced for the time that it took. I was pretty happy with those. And also, there's no products associated with those upsells. It's really therapist time. because they're generally added on to an existing appointment,

As a strategy, we decided not just to put those up at this point. So that's something that, you know, you would need to look at your business objectively and really think about how you're going to do it. Every business is different, but at a minimum, you need to make sure that you have your products costed, that your team is trained on how to measure and manage the projects. If you have hair color or if you're doing advanced skin treatments, this is really, really important.

I mean, as a business owner, can keep an eye on disposables and it's quite easy to see all that. I think if there's wastage and you know, the difference between a color bill and a, if you look at your annual costs, let's throw a crazy number. Let's say you've spent 15 K in professional products in a timeframe. If your therapists or stylists are really overaging that that could easily blow up to 20, 25 K. That's 10,000 over the course of a period of time.

That goes into your bin, that comes off one thing: your profit. Like that's where it's coming from. So if you're not running a tight ship and if you're not managing all these things, the only thing that's going to suffer is your profit margin. It's just not going to be there. So that's why we want to try and avoid. It's just flipping the mindset a little. And yeah, if you lose some clients, I'm not saying it's a nice experience, you want to factor in

Debbie Mulhall (14:59.264)

That could happen. When I put my prices up, I'm assuming every year that somebody is going to say, this is not within my budget anymore, or they'll go to somebody who is cheaper. And that's their decision. If they want to go to somebody cheaper, then they are happy with that service and that's what they want and that's in their budget then fine.

This isn't just another pricing formula or spreadsheet. Beauty Profit First is all about flipping your mindset and creating rock-solid and simple habits that will protect and grow your profit week after week, month after month, no matter what stage of business you're in. I've also included a really, really handy plug-and-play Beauty Profit Tracker for you to install straight away from today into your business. So you don't have to go building any crazy, elaborate spreadsheets. It's all there, ready for you to go.

So, whether you're just starting out or you're already an established beauty entrepreneur, the difference between struggling and thriving isn't about working harder. It's definitely about working smarter and making those money moves. And that's exactly what I'm going to show you how to do inside Beauty Profit First. So if you're ready to start running your business like a true CEO and actually keep more of what you earn, then click the link in the show notes and grab Beauty Profit First today. All right, let's jump back into the episode.

But what's more important is that the people who do come into our business, at least when they're in and when we're doing it, we're making a profit. One thing that came up with my own team, we've just had this conversation quite recently, was a little bit around communication of putting prices up and how to manage that and handle it. To be perfectly honest, I really I always discourage business owners who are in my network or in my community not to apologize for putting your prices up.

I see a lot of salons have put social media posts up saying that they're putting the price up like it's your business, and everyone is different, and you have to do what feels right for you. I discourage it. And when I was, of course, in my earlier years in business, I probably did do that as well and put pricing increase notices up and apologize. But I stopped doing it because I just felt like any other service. Like I've never had an apology.

Debbie Mulhall (17:27.19)

from any other business that I attend or anywhere else that I spend money, when they put the prices up. Sure, might, you know, you'll obviously maybe get a notification if it's a subscription or something like that. But essentially, it's a non-essential service. We're providing a luxury in our clinics anyway. We're providing a luxury experience. And yeah, I think apologizing is just, I don't know, it's the wrong energy. Of course you want to communicate.

If somebody has an issue you want to communicate to them that putting the prices up is just a part of change that occurs in a business and you know it's not something that we want to do our businesses need to evolve and I guess what I feel is like if somebody is going to stand there and argue with you or I mean who is living under a rock and doesn't realize that small business owners

Are struggling, and everything has gone up, everything has gone up for everybody. mean, so if they take it personally or if they decide that you're a greedy business owner, that's really on them. You don't need to apologize or explain yourself, or justify why your pricing is reflecting your ability to make a profit each month. OK, the next thing I have on my little list is uncertainty around markets and competitive positioning.

I would really discourage you from setting your pricing based on the market and positioning of other salons. And if you do do that, do it very carefully because very often, as salon owners, we don't realize what we're doing, but we could be comparing apples and oranges. You cannot compare somebody who's working solo with no team in, you know, a small studio rental or a sublet to

somebody who's working from home with no rent and what, who knows what way they operate their taxes or whatever. Then to somebody who is to a salon that has like a team of 15 and it's this like, you know, flagship store, high street, like those businesses will all probably the pricing will reflect, you know, the pricing will reflect, and you have to make sure that you remember this.

Debbie Mulhall (19:48.086)

You don't know if they're making a profit, and you don't know if that business is really doing well. So I always think it's not okay. You don't want to be, know, unless it's your strategy to be the most expensive, and you know, you just want a very small client base. Like that's an amazing strategy. If you're in your forties or you're starting to slow down, I love the idea. And I just spoke to this with a hairdresser. So there was a hair salon owner in a town that I used to go to, and

She was years and years in business, and she was amazing. She did have a big team, and she decided to scale back. I think she had health complications actually and she decided to scale back and when she recovered and when she got well again, she was still quite young, you know, like mid forties and she loved doing hair and she kind of made up her mind that she didn't want to not do hair anymore. She wanted to go back into business. So what she did was she did up this beautiful studio.

Didn't hire any team members, and she put her prices up to, would say she was definitely double. She was a really good stylist, so she cut her and she put her prices up to double what anyone else was. And it was clear to say she had her prices up. There was no frills. And I think, you know, that for her, that model worked really well because she decided I want to work three days a week. I only want to work with my VIP clients. I only want to work with.

Styling hair, cutting hair. I don't want to do color. I don't want to do anything else. And she just decided how much money she needed to make for her to be viably happy to do that three days a week. And she put her prices up and done. And that's really how pricing should work. I know that like maybe let's say 50 people a month went on to her website and said, couldn't go to her. She's so expensive.

For all the world, that lady really, they're not our people, they're not our clients. So if a hundred people land on your website and you're not the person for them or not the service for them, that's fine. It's free market, free agency. People can go where they want. So that's something that I do encourage, like as a strategy, maybe that's where you're at in your business that you really want to work less, earn more, and just, you know, take on less people. So it does, it really does work that way.

Debbie Mulhall (22:10.3)

What I'm saying is just to be careful that you're not setting your prices based on other people's businesses. The reality is so many business owners are not actually making any money. They're just washing their face with their business, or there are so many things could be going on behind the scenes. I don't want to get into too much, but there's definitely like different things going on in different businesses. You just have to price based on your model, based on what you're doing in your house with your team member.

Do you have a management level? Do you have marketing? Do you have front of house? All of those things need to be factored into your overheads, and they reflect in the price. this one. Guilt and impostor syndrome when charging more. Yeah, look, I really want to encourage or discourage you, or encourage you to flip your mindset on this. Like, can we all, for a secon,d understand that in our industry

We massively undervalue ourselves and our services, like the amount of time and money and practicing and courses and upskilling and, my God, like, yeah, like, how long does it take to become a skilled hairdresser or a skilled skin therapist? Years and other industries, people go to college and get a master's or go to business school and.

They don't undervalue their three to four years to become a master. For some reason in our industry, we do, and it's so sad, and I really wish that we would, yeah, as an industry really sort of stand up and be a little bit more unapologetic for our services. And this is just something I don't know. I see, I think in Ireland and the UK, I think things are going to change dramatically, dramatically over the next five, 10 years. And I look at other

Industries around the world, in Australia, New Zealand, things are different there. They're taking their industry and they're taking their salon ownership and their salon businesses a lot more seriously. They are pricing properly. They're paying their teams better. They are able to get a commission for their teams. They have health insurance in place, and I don't know if they have unions like it's, it's, it's kind of across the board, and it's a much healthier, much healthier place to have a salon business. So definitely.

Debbie Mulhall (24:28.414)

The work I'm doing, I'm trying to help you kind of step into that mindset a little bit more yourself. We don't have all the unions and all the things, but we can certainly, as a collective, start to be more proud of how much work we put into becoming masters. Like, can you all remember in 2020 when we reopened our businesses? Do you remember how valuable we were to everybody back then? People didn't understand. It maybe took...

Having a brow artist or a hairstylist for granted until all of a sudden we couldn't have them. So it's something that I want us to embody and embrace. Yeah. And just to value your own services a little bit more. OK, next thing, personal relationships and dynamics with clients. So I get this. You're one-on-one with the person. It's the first time you pull out the stripe, or you go to have them pay. I get it.

There is the point where you kind of the first few times you do it, you're going to feel like you want the ground to swallow you up. And I get that. But you know what? I worked with a salon owner. I coached her through this, and I said, look, you're going to feel this little bit. The first few times, I said, I promise you by the end of the first day, you'll stop feeling it. And I think she was nervous because she was, she only had one other team member, and it was just herself. Very busy salon-like.

So busy, so skilled, honest God, so talented, so talented, this woman and her and the girl working for her. In my opinion, I couldn't get like, even when she did put her prices up, I still feel she was massively undervaluing herself. But anyway, it's baby steps. And maybe I'll be able to encourage her to go up a little bit more in the future. But yeah, even to get her to take that first step of that small increase, it took her a day or two to understand her clients adore her because she's

class at what she does, like she's an absolute legend. And she messaged me and she's like, my God, like, I'm starting to wonder, did I put them up enough? Like, should I put them up a little bit more? And I was like, I know, and we can still do it. And then she backed off. Anyway, we're not, we're not done yet. We're still working together. So it might, it might be a case where we can get her to where she needs to be. But yeah, that particular lady, she 100 % is not making enough profit at the end of the year for that simple reason. She runs a good show. Her salon is perfect.

Debbie Mulhall (26:51.784)

There's no big spillage because she doesn't have a big team to manage. Like everything is already a well-oiled ship. Everything in her business, she is primed to make an extra 50 to 100 K in profits if she just prices her services profit. When it's sometimes, when we're in our own business, we don't see that. You nearly need somebody to take a look at your business and say, I don't know if you realize this, but if you do this, this and this, this is going to dramatically affect your bottom line. And that's kind of what I'm hoping this podcast is going to do.

I hope that you kind of will take a step back and maybe put aside some time in your diary and actually sit back and really take an objective look at how your services are generating profit. Now, I created a program called Beauty Profit First, the mini program that you can find access to it in all of my links, anywhere any of my material appears, you'll get a little link for it. It's currently only 90 euros to do this mini training.

So if you're a business owner who doesn't actually know, let's say you don't really track your profit, and you're just kind of going month to month. And when there's money in the bank account, you pay for things. And when there's not, there's not. So let's say you're running your business like that. That's fine. Many beauty and hair professionals start off like that. And many are still like that years in until they just decide, OK, enough is enough. want to I want to really make some money here. I have that course designed to get you started, so you can follow the principles in that program for about three months.

And you'll know what your profit margin is. So if you don't know, you don't need accountants, you don't need a bookkeeper to do it. You do not need to be savvy with spreadsheets. I have everything in there. I even have a plug-and-play tracker that has all the formulas that you just put in your numbers. So in that program, I teach you a very, very, promise it's so simple strategy to start tracking your profit and start understanding where you're at. And that's, I think, the key to mastering anything is

being very aware and clear of where you are, then deciding where you want to be. So, what do you want your margins to be? And then you take all those steps, get business help, get mentorship, work with someone like me, do something like the BBM program, talk to your accountant, talk to, if you have mentors in the industry, take those steps. Go on Chat GPT, learn how to do a costing, like whatever it is you need to do. Once you hit that goal and you know where you are, just keep going over the next, you know,

Debbie Mulhall (29:15.368)

For eight, 12 weeks, until you get your profit margin to where it needs to be. So that at the end of this year, you can give yourself a pat on the back and say, I took action those months ago and now I have a profit in my bank account. Don't let the whole year go by, living month to month, up some months, down some months. And then at the end of the year, it's like a miserable percentage. I've been there. I've done that myself. Like it's not, it's not good. And we work so hard. So don't do that. And remember, of course, you know, we're passionate about our businesses, but

At the end of the day, said this at the beginning of the show, we're not running these businesses. These are not our profitable. These are not our legacy businesses. This is not like our impact businesses. These are not our charitable contributions. The world will survive without your hair salon and without my skin clinic. These are businesses that are just to generate a profit. OK, so don't forget that, you know, as much and all as you love doing hair, love doing brows, love to make up, love doing skin.

You are essentially, even if you've only got a team of one or two, or even if you don't have a team, you are now a business owner. So this is where I'm always trying to coach people to have that like CEO mindset. This is how you make your living. This is how you provide for your family. This is your kids future college fund. This is this will determine what sort of vacations you get to take next year. OK, so keep all of that in mind. What else have I got on my notes? So, yeah, I'm just flicking through here. Yeah. So I suppose.

I would say, as a final point, getting financial clarity and financial literacy, something that is top of mind for me at the moment, right now, I invest in stocks and shares. manage my own. Well, I have somebody manage my pension, but I manage my own investments. I'm not trading, but like I definitely do manage my long-term. So I am on the stock market, and something that I always feel like I want women to know more about is long-term financial stability.

and financial literacy when it comes to reading your statements and understanding a cash flow or a balance sheet, and just looking at them and being confident to know what you're looking at, and starting with costing your services is a great one to do. So you really just need to get a little bit clearer about what your goal is. Invest some time in your education, like spend if this is your first year to do it, spend a bit of time learning more about it, and talk to people who can help yo,u and then really

Debbie Mulhall (31:40.338)

Focus on treating your service men,u as you know, it is a business plan and price based on the income that you want to reach for that service. Okay. And it's so empowering again, as females, I love to see females become more confident at this. You can't really depend on your accountant to set your pricing. Like your accountant is going to look after your taxes and file your taxes, and do your returns.

But essentially, we have to depend on ourselves. Now, of course, you can get a financial advisor or get somebody to have a look at it. But I think we know our own business is better than anyone. And when you have a little tool, you know, when you have that simple strategy to go along and follow the formula for all of your treatments and cost out your cost, your products, your overheads, figure out how, you know, there's a, there is a formula to do it. I don't want to start going into it now because it is obviously a podcast. couldn't possibly maybe understand.

But you can find resources online. It's something I do at my clients inside BBM, but just cost out each service and know where you're at and its own power. And just set aside a day or two to do it. You need to pull up all of your purchase invoices where you're buying your products, a little bit of math calculating, you know, how much each product costs per mil. But yeah, it takes a bit of time. It's pain in the bum. You don't really want to do it. But just remember, once you do that the first time,

Year one, you keep that spreadsheet on your computer, and then each year as your products go back up, you can actually have it built in so that you just update the products, and it will help keep your prices relevant. Well, I think that is enough on the topic for today. So, yeah, I hope it helped. If you are loving these episodes, do me a huge favor and give them a share. Stick them on your stories. Share them with other salon owners.

And for sure, if you're if you're feeling really generous, give me a little, give me some love on the stars. I love to see it. And as always, if you have any questions and you want to send them over to me, I will try and keep the pod nice and engaging and helpful and relevant for you. So that's all for today. And I will chat to you all next time.

Debbie Mulhall  (33:55.986)

That is a wrap on today's episode. Hope you're leaving with fresh inspiration, new ideas, and the confidence to take some action in your business because trust me, you are so capable of building something amazing. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I love having these chats, and if something in this episode lit a fire under you, please let me know. I'm always up for a good conversation, so feel free to reach out, ask questions, or just tell me what you're taking away.

And remember, sharing is caring. If you know another beauty pro needs to hear this, send it their way. Let's spread the love and help more beauty business owners step into their CEO power. Before you go, don't forget to check out all of the goodies in the show notes. I've got some incredible resources waiting for you, including my free guide on the biggest profit killers in your business. Trust me, you will want to these. Plus links to my programs if you are ready to deep dive or work with me.

Alright Beauty Boss, that's it for now. Keep growing, glowing, and I'll catch you in the next episode.