If you’re a stylist or barber who wants to make good money in the business, meaning at least $100k, you’ll need to understand the dynamics of how one gets there. It’s not rocket science but there are some key points that need to be made to fully understand the pathway to making $100k per year.

And if you’re someone who doubts this can happen for them, you have to realize that you are the only one stopping you from getting there. So have an open mind and listen up, because you probably haven’t heard this information before…or at least you weren’t told in this way.

To start things off, our good friend Ivan Zoot has come to build his reputation in the beauty and barber industry as someone who is knowledgeable about business building. He has published several books and has done MANY videos for us at JATAI Academy. It is true, he makes you think differently and helps you gain new perspective on how to grow your business.

As a stylist or barber you’ve been trained to cut hair. But little has been learned on how to grow your business. This is a completely different skill set that requires you to understand sales, marketing and economics. Just cutting hair isn’t going to get you to $100k. The thought should be intentional and the actions you take to get there should follow this intention.

Ivan likes to talk about pricing. Pricing of your haircuts and productivity are topics he loves to dive deep into. So we’re going to explore one of his formulas on how to get you to earning $100,000 per year.

The formula is: Work up to and down from 3 haircuts/hr

The essence of this formula is that to be a $100k haircutter, you have to get slower to get faster. We have a full video on this topic. So if you’d like to bypass the reading, you can always watch it on video here.

The life of your business looks like a bell curve. If the X axis is Time and the Y axis is # of Haircuts/hr you would expect this shape because in the beginning you are starting out as a haircutter and you’re probably pretty slow and bad. Let’s be real. Graduation is just the beginning and it can be tough to get started. So in the beginning of your career you might be able to do 1 haircut/hr. Say you charge $20/haircut.

Now over time you do things to improve yourself and you get better. At some point you are able to do 2 haircuts/hr because you’re getting faster. You figure out what works and what doesn’t work. You become more efficient and more productive. Time has moved forward, you’re more experienced and you stick to what’s working. You continue to take better care of customers and identify mentors. So now you charge $35/haircut. You’re making more money and are more efficient.

But then, one day you are able to do 3 haircuts/hr and charging $50 per haircut. You are much faster and making over double per haircut from when you started. Good job! You keep up the work but then realize that you can’t get faster than 3 haircuts/hr. Because when you tried to do 4 haircuts an hour the quality of service went down.

It’s important to acknowledge that every hair professional should be able to deliver a quality technical experience and deliver world class customer service in 20min at any price point according to Ivan. It doesn’t matter if you are in a low or high end place. If you don’t find that to be the case you have some work to do. At any price point, a customer can be very satisfied with the technical quality and service in 20 min. If you go faster than 3 haircuts, the quality drops. The haircuts are not as good and the customer service tanks.

So what you do now? You’ve earned the right to slow down. You can start creating a higher value experience. You’ll find yourself at 2 haircuts/hr again but now charging $65/haircut. The real gain is substantially increasing customer experience. That’s the payoff here. Keep doing what’s working and keep giving customer service. Keep going until you find yourself at 1 haircut/hr again but charging $100/haircut. At this point you’ve become a $100k haircutter. You are making good money because you’ve earned it.

But of course, people want a shortcut. So is there a shortcut? Yes! Anywhere you happen to be on the chart, you can cut across to the other side of the chart. What does it take to shortcut the game? The answer is your USP. USP stands for Unique Selling Proposition. This means that what you offer has to be something special. You have to find out what makes you magical. It needs to be compelling so that your friends and family will recommend you.

Many times your USP comes in the form of specialization. If you specialize in hair color, short haircuts, pixies, bridal hair updos or men’s haircuts (just to name a few) people will value you more because you’re an expert at that one thing. But you should also be really good at it. Some people have figured out how to be so unique, special and amazing, the marketplace is allowing for it in a short period of time. The ability to use technology (specifically social media) to communicate uniqueness in powerful ways is helping to speed the shortcut across the bell curve.

On the contrary, everyone is a dot along the chart. Those who get stagnant along the way of the bell curve are generally complainers and don’t take responsibility or accountability for what they can control. Complainers just blame other people. So don’t be that person. You’re the driver. You can be anywhere on the chart you want to be. It’s all up to you.

So now that you understand the life of a hair professional, where are you on that chart? Where do you want to be on that chart? And how do you plan to get there? These are the questions you should be asking yourself. We want every hair professional to earn what they deserve. It takes motivation and drive to make it happen but it’s definitely doable. So get out there and show the world what you’ve got!