Are you a hair professional looking to grow your business? Of course you are! If you’re looking to gain new clients and entice current clients to return, sometimes you need to change things up and make things fresh. There are many ways to do sales promotions and get people talking about you. In this article, the ideas of Ivan Zoot, a JATAI Academy educator, will be shared. You can follow along here or watch the video here. Ivan is a known educator in the industry and has specifically built a niche for himself around business building for hair professionals. He is a big advocate of some sales ideas and not of others. Let’s explore those and find out why.  

FREE

Ivan loves free. In fact, everyone loves free. Free is exciting and it’s difficult for people to resist free. Free is more exciting than just a basic discount and so it grabs people’s attention. But Ivan specifically loves free in the beauty industry because you don’t undermine price integrity. What does this mean? Well say you do $20 haircuts but you offer a $5 coupon on your haircut. This means you really do $15 haircuts. And by doing this you are telling everyone that a $15 haircut is ok for you. However, if you do a $20 haircut and you do a special where you give something for free along with the service, your haircut is still valued at $20. When you give something away for free you maintain price integrity but at the same time offer a deal that can entice clients. In Ivan’s world you should do one of the two ‘F’ words…Full price or Free. When it comes to free, the giveaway can be whatever you want. It can be a free product (perhaps samples) or an added service such as a scalp massage. Or maybe you do a free upgrade or provide a beverage. Get creative with what you give away for free.  

DISCOUNTS

Now what about discounts? Discounts are different from free in that this is a dollar off amount which undermines your haircut price integrity. Participating on coupon sites is not good for the longevity of your business. The problem with sites like this is that they often draw the wrong kind of people. These are people who are only looking for deals. So if they get a haircut with you for 30% off the regular price, they will want this price to continue for as long as they come to you. Generally, they do not want to pay more on subsequent services. Also, these types of sites also take a large chunk of what the customer pays, reducing your overall take home pay. While it is a good way to gain exposure, these sites often create more problems and headaches than they’re worth. In the end, it’s in your best interest to not discount. And if you’re going to do anything, just give it away for free. You can use products or services as free incentives. But at least you’ll maintain price integrity. If you want to listen to Ivan speak on the topic of free, click here. If you want to listen to Ivan speak on the topic of discounts and coupon sites, click here.

If you’re looking to build and grow your haircutting business, look no further. There are endless ways to get more people in the door and in the chair. This requires, however, some thought and creativity. Let’s look at three great ways to earn more business: cross promoting, perks and effective sales promotions.   Cross Promotions: Cross promoting is one way to get the word out about your business. This involves 2 businesses helping each other out in a complementary, non-competing way. It needs to be a win-win situation for this to be a true cross promotion. An example of a cross promotion is if you have an agreement with another business to provide special coupons that are only available through each other. There are several ways to do a cross promotion. The easiest way is to look at what other businesses are located around you. Is your salon or barbershop located in a strip mall? If so, what business could you partner up with? Perhaps a pet store or even a food spot. People who frequent one store may frequent other stores in the same strip mall. Where else do your customers do business in the area? Look for other businesses that offer services in a similar space. For example, a nail salon, small beauty supply store or massage place would get a similar clientele if you’re in a salon. For barbershops, a smoke shop, auto store or men’s clothing store could be options. Think of other types of businesses you could partner with that are non-competing but would make sense to do a cross promotion. If you want to watch a video where Ivan Zoot discusses cross promotions, click here.   Perks: Perks are the little things that make the deal just a little better. There are ways to add perks to make offerings just a little more attractive. According to Ivan Zoot, he doesn’t like to offer discount on actual services, but he has no problems with offering discounts on retail product or giving something away for free. So one type of perk is to have ongoing discounts on products. This can entice clients to purchase desirable retail products at an attractive price. Many barbers allow walk-ins. One perk barbers can offer is walk-ins without waiting. Often walk-in clients need to wait a while to get a haircut. But not everyone can afford to wait. Offering this perk can be quite attractive. Another possible perk is to offer beverages with haircut or hair service. This can be water, soda or even alcohol depending on the rules and regulations of your business. A liquor license may be necessary. However, it may be possible to legally give it away for free without needing a license. One other type of perk is to offer special hours for select clients. This can be attractive for clients who are not available during your regular hours. There are many types of perks. All you have to do is get a little creative and see what gets people’s attention. Perks are a fun way to close the deal on your haircut services. Learn more about perks with these tips from Ivan Zoot by clicking here.   Effective Sales Promotions: Another way to be proactive growing your business is to provide effective sales promotions. Create special promotions around holidays such as Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day or even St. Patrick’s Day. There are many holidays you can choose from to revolve a promotion around. Sales promotions give you something different to talk about. It spices things up and keeps it fresh. If you are going to do sale promotions, make sure to plan ahead. Give yourself at least 2 months to put the promotion together, especially if it involves flyers, the need for inventory or special training. Having all the pieces in place when it comes to execute will make the process much smoother. If your team needs training, get them involved early so they are prepared for what’s to come. When the promotion is active, be sure to promote it even more than the time leading up to it. Give it a feeling of urgency so people will want to take advantage of it sooner than later. For example, perhaps it can be the first 20 people who book an appointment for a dad and grad haircut (both father and son) will get a free head and shoulder massage. There is no limit to creativity here. When the promotion is over, analyze the data. Did it work? What were your sales? How many extra appointments did you get? Evaluate what worked and didn’t work and then decide if it’s worth doing again. Or perhaps you’ll want to change some aspect of it for next time. Watch a video about effective sales promotions. Building and growing your business is work. It takes creativity, an action plan and execution. You must have some sort of marketing and sales plan in place in order to succeed in this business. If you’re unsure what to offer, look at what other salons or barbershops are doing or even look at what other businesses are doing and see if those types of promotions could apply to your business. For more business building tips, see our Education CONNECT videos and filter under the topic of ‘Business Building.’  

One of the biggest questions that stylists and barbers ask is ‘How much should I charge for a haircut?’ It’s a question that takes consideration. You don’t want to just use the same pricing as your fellow hair professionals. You want to price your haircuts based on your own personal goals and needs. But how do you do that? Many hair pros determine what they should charge by looking at what their fellow hair pros are doing. They might call up different local salons or barbershops and ask them what they charge. They might look at their websites to see if pricing is listed there. Or they might just ask their friends who are also hair pros what they charge. Then they might take an average of those costs and decide this is a good price to use. However, this is a terrible way to price your haircut. First off, if you are new to the industry, know that the price of the haircut you start with is important to your future pricing so take careful consideration. According to Ivan Zoot, you need to know 3 numbers about your business in order to determine a price.  

HAIRCUT CAPACITY

How many haircuts can you do? And what is considered full for you? Let’s just work with some numbers for the sake of an example. Say you can do 2 haircuts/hr, work 10hrs/day and 5 days/wk. This means you can do 100 haircuts/wk or 400 haircuts/mo. 400 haircuts/month is your maximum capacity. However, you don’t ever want to work like this because you need to take into account the time needed for lunch, to go to the bathroom, for adding services, for discussing with clients about take home haircut product or even just resetting your station. There are many activities that need and will be done outside of just haircuts. In the hair industry, if you are 80% occupied, you are considered to be full. Therefore, 400 x 80% = 320 haircuts/mo. 320 haircuts/mo would be your Haircut Capacity  

COST PER HAIRCUT

How much does it cost you to do a haircut? This is a very important number to calculate because you need to be able to cover your costs and then make a profit on top of that. So how do you determine the cost? You must take into consideration items such as rent, supplies, equipment, education, license, insurance and marketing. Of course there could be more, but let’s assign numbers to these just to stick with our example. Your numbers will be different, but hopefully you are following along! Breakdown: a) Rent - $200/wk x 4 = $800/mo

1. b) Supplies (neck strips, laundry, shave cream, razor blades, color, shampoo etc.) - $25/wk x4 = $100/mo
2. c) Equipment (new clippers, shears, blades, razors, combs, brushes, blowdryers) - $100/mo
3. d) Education (often is not consistent throughout the year so take your yearly cost and divide it by 12) – 1200/yr = $100/mo
4. e) License - $9/mo
5. f) Insurance (should have at least $2M insurance coverage) - $159/yr = $14/mo
6. g) Marketing (buying sponsored ads for Yelp, business cards, flyers etc.) - $250/mo

Total monthly expenses: $1373.00/mo total monthly expenses/haircut capacity = Cost per haircut $1373/320 = $4.19/haircut  

PROFIT PER HAIRCUT

How much profit do we need to reach our goals? First you have to have a goal. Do you want to earn $60k? $85k? $100k? Say you want to earn $60k. In order to take home $60k you have to first incorporate taxes. If you’re in the 22% tax bracket, you will need to make approximately $73,200 to take home $60k because: $60,000 x 1.22 = $73,200/yr $73,200/12mo = $6100/mo $6100/ total haircut capacity (in this case it’s 320) = $19.06 So in order to meet your income goal of taking home $60k/yr, you need to incorporate $19.06 in profit on each haircut Now you can calculate how much you need to charge per haircut in order to meet your goals: $4.29 (cost/haircut) + $19.06 (profit/haircut) = $23.25 (minimum haircut price) NOW, call 6 salons or barbershops to get an average haircut price in the community. If you discover that the average price in the neighborhood is $26, you’re golden because you only need to charge $23.25 in order to meet your goals and this is under the $26 average in the community. People will desire your services. But if you discover that the average price is $20.50 but you want to charge much more, you have to be unique, special and deliver fabulous service. To be more than the average in the neighborhood you have to deliver more than average service. Don’t just make the decision without intention. Do the math and the numbers will tell you what you need to charge. Say the math tells you that you need to charge $23.35/haircut in order to make your goals but the average haircut price in the community is $20.50. If you don’t think you can charge $23.35 you can lower your expenses where possible such as marketing. If you reduce your marketing budget to $150/mo. This will make your cost/haircut $23.03. If you need to lower your haircut price even more, you’ll have to find other ways to reduce your costs or make yourself more special. The bottom line is that pricing should not be arbitrary. It should be based on this system. This is how you price your haircut. If you want to watch the full Facebook Live with Ivan Zoot where he explains this all in detail, click here.  

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!

Being a hairstylist or barber you know that tips can make a difference in your overall income. While it might not be the bulk of your earnings from day to day, at the end of the year, it can add up. Like restaurant service, tips are at the sole discretion of the customer. Some people are great tippers while others are not. Some people are not even accustomed to tipping. So you’re going to get an array of tippers. For many people, what to tip can be confusing. Here in the US many service-oriented jobs rely on their tips to get by. From your food delivery person to maids to restaurant servers and more, tipping is subjective. So what makes someone tip more or less or even tip at all? Well, that answer is all over the place. As a hairstylist or barber you might think it’s obvious that clients should pay you 18-20% on each haircut or service, this might not be obvious to your client. Here are some reasons clients tip the way they do:

Reasons for Getting Higher Tips:

•  Great service
• Great results
• Naturally generous
• They know what it’s like to rely on tips for income
• Appreciate you and the relationship you have
• Price of the service was in a price range that affects their tip amount
• Have more disposable income

 

Reasons for Getting Lower Tips:

• Poor service
• Result was not what they wanted
• Naturally frugal
• Have never worked in a service industry
• They don’t have much or any experience as your client
• Price of the service was expensive which affects their tip amount
• Can’t afford a larger tip

 

There can be other reasons for why people tip the way they do. So how can you get higher tips?

One way according to Ivan Zoot is to basically forget about the tips. Meaning, don’t focus on it. People who focus on tips are what he calls ‘tip chasers.’ Ivan believes that tips are small money compared to the overall money coming in from the services and upsells. He has a point. If you can look beyond the tip and see the customer as a lifelong client who will come in for more than just one haircut, then you can see other possibilities. Perhaps you can upsell them on a retail product or other services. This can increase your bottom dollar. Instead of looking at customers as just tippers, look at each client as an opportunity to grow a relationship. The better the relationship, the better the tips (most likely). Really focus on taking care of your client, understanding their needs and desires and delivering the best you can. If the client feels cared for and you did a good job, most people will want to reciprocate that with a larger tip. According to Ivan’s experience in his barbershop, the largest earners were those who also got larger tips. These people really cared about their clients and worked on their relationships with clients. By becoming more valuable to your customer, the money will come. Be of service and serve your clients and they will return their appreciation in tips. You can watch a video with Ivan discussing tips here. Another thing you can do to increase your bottom line (not necessarily tips) is to increase your retail offerings and upsell your clients. A retail sale is a great way to substantially increase revenue. You can also make sure that when you ask for payment, make sure the software or receipt gives tip suggestions so that you are indirectly asking for a certain tip amount. Many software programs will show what the amount will be if they tip 15%, 18%, 20% or even 25%. This pre-calculation of tip has been very effective because it takes away the step of the client having to calculate what the tip will be in their head. When they see the amount pre-populated in front of them, they are more likely to select one of the tip options. Lastly, some people will never be good tippers. Even if you provide the best service and gave them the result they wanted. Just know, it’s not you, it’s something about them. You can’t make anyone tip more because remember tips are essentially optional. As much as a tip is expected, at the end of the day, it’s not a part of the service. Everyone has their own reasons for what they tip so the best you can do is be the best stylist or barber you can be, provide great service and encourage appropriate tipping in a non-pushy way. At the very least, don’t let low tips get you down or mad. At the end of the day, tips are not the bulk of your income and as long as you did everything you could to create the style they asked for and provide excellent customer service, there was nothing more you could do. You should take satisfaction in that. If there are other ways you think can increase tip amount, leave a comment below. We would love to hear your recommendations.  

If you’re a barber or stylist, are you analyzing your mid-year numbers? Meaning, are you evaluating the health of your business? Do you know how well you are doing? From January 1^st through July 1^st, this marks the half -way point of every year. So July 1^st is the best time to calculate and look at your mid-year numbers to see if you’re doing well, not as expected or exceeding expectations.   Year to Date Revenue One thing to note is that barbers tend to have different business ebbs and flows than stylists. If you’re a barber, it’s realistic to expect that your year-to-date (YTD) revenue is 50% of your total year revenue. This is because barber businesses tend to be more consistent throughout the year. However, if you’re a stylist, it is likely that the first half of the year revenue is less than 50% of your total year revenue because a bulk of your business comes in the second half of the year due to back-to-school and the holiday season. But it could also be that you’re busy in the first half of the year due to wedding season. So depending on what you specialize in, whether it’s hair color, wedding hair or just everyday hair your revenue throughout the year is different from other stylists. Now that you’ve calculated your first half of the year revenue, double that number. Does that number look good to you? This is what you would potentially make for the year. For barbers, this should be a relatively accurate evaluation. And for stylists, adjust that number according to your busy times of the year. If you’re not happy with this number it’s time to start thinking of what you need to do to get those numbers up.   Rate of Occupancy The other way to evaluate the health of your business is to calculate your rate of occupancy (ROO). This is the total capacity/total number of haircuts you did. So for example, if you can do 2 haircuts/hour, work 10 hours/day and 5 days/week that means you do 100 haircuts/week. If you actually did 75 haircuts, your rate of occupancy is 75%. Another example, if you can do 2 haircuts/hour, work 8 hours/day and 5 days/week that’s 80 haircuts/week. If you actually did 60 haircuts, your rate of occupancy is 75%. You can calculate your ROO for any given week. So to analyze your most recent numbers, calculate your ROO for each of the last 6 weeks. Then add them up and divide by 6. This will give you an average ROO. This is a true and accurate representation of the health of your business. For comparative purposes, do this for the last 6 weeks of the year or at any time of the year and it will give you real time data. The goal is to always increase your ROO because the more you are occupied, the more money you are making and the more in-demand you are.   Retail The third part of evaluating the health of your business is retail dollars. If you’re not selling product, then this doesn’t apply to you. But if you are, look at the revenue coming in from retail sales. If your retail dollars are growing, this is a good sign of having a higher revenue for the remainder of the year. However, if it’s declining, then you will need to take a look at how to increase it. Of course, evaluate your busy seasons and take that into consideration. Evaluating your mid-year numbers is important to get a pulse of your business. Keep a running record of your revenue, ROO and retail revenue from year to year. Then, you can evaluate these numbers on an even larger scale to see where you’re headed. You can watch a video featuring Ivan Zoot as he discusses this topic. Watch here.

Are you struggling to get more clients? Maybe you’re a new hair professional straight out of school. Or maybe you’ve moved and have lost clients due to the new location. Or perhaps you took a long break from the hair industry and now you feel ready to hop back in. Whatever the case, getting more client referrals is just one way to get more clients, but it’s the least expensive way to build your client base. Here are some ways to get more client referrals:   The Good Ol’ Business Card According to Ivan Zoot, barber and author of $100 Haircutter, one of the best ways to get more referrals is to pass out business cards. He as a three-step process anyone can do to gain new clients.

1. Express gratitude for the opportunity to cut their hair
2. Tell them you appreciate their business
3. Say to them “If I gave you 2 cards would you send me 2 friends?” Wait for them to say yes and then extend the cards. Don’t as for referrals. Ask for friends.

Set a goal to give out 100 business cards a day or month and you will surely gain new clients. Start your goal small and work your way up to sending out as many business cards as you can.  On your business card be sure to have your name, business name, phone number with area code, address with zip code, email address, website and important social handles. Keep the card as clean as possible so that the information is easy to read. Don’t use fancy fonts or a crazy background design. So who do you give business cards to? The ideal person to approach is someone with great hair because they probably appreciate good hair, pay more for hair service and probably buy hair product. The first thing you might say to them is… “OMG I love your hair!” Keep the conversation short and tell them to look at your work on Instagram, website or wherever you showcase your best work. If you are sending someone to your work, make sure the work posted is attractive. This is your portfolio and it represents an immediate snapshot of what you can do. You can watch the Facebook Live where Ivan discusses referrals.   Instagram Client Referrals Of course you should continue to market your work on social media. But one thing you should keep in mind is that your Instagram followers are either already customers or most likely they are never going to be customers of yours. Those who will never be a customer know who you are and maybe appreciate your work, but either don’t live close enough, are fellow industry professionals who admire your work, or they already have a stylist they go to. So it’s important to get exposure to people who have no idea who you are. How do you do this? For your current clients take before and after pictures. Then, send them to your client. Ask them to post their before and after picture on their Instagram. Why is this important? Your client’s follower are likely not following you already. So this is completely new exposure and the best referral you can get. When your client posts your work on their profile, all of your client’s followers now know who you are, where you are and they know that your friend is your client which is a powerful referral building tool. Be sure to ask them to tag you in their post. If they forget, comment on the post and tag yourself. Ivan discusses this tactic in a Facebook Live.   Referral Program Another great way to get referrals is to adopt a customer referral program. Give your clients an incentive for referring a new customer. The incentive could be a discount on their next service or a free product. You name the incentive, but it should be attractive enough for someone to put forth the energy to actually ask their friends and family.   Just be Amazing The best thing you can do to get the best referrals is to just be amazing. Build a reputation that surpasses others and makes your clients talk so highly of you that you don’t have to do extra marketing to get referrals. Your client base will just naturally build over time as you retain current ones that become loyal to you and gain new ones from their organic referral.   Networking Build relationships with other complimentary businesses and provide referrals to them. They in turn will appreciate the referrals and will refer their customers to you. One possible relationship is with a local makeover specialist or dating coach. These people are in business to help people look and feel their best. They can refer their clients to you and vice versa.   There are many opportunities to gain referrals. It just takes a little creativity and follow through. Getting new clients doesn’t have to be stressful or difficult, but it will take a little work on your part. So what are you waiting for? Go get those clients! If you have any other suggestions for how to gain new referral clients, leave us a comment below.

We’ve all seen it. Inflation. And it’s only getting worse. Since 1982, the inflation rate of 7.5% (as of February 2022) is the largest price increase in a 12-month period according to Bloomberg.com. Who’s to blame? Covid stimulus packages and the trillions of dollars put out by the federal government among some other factors. We won’t get into the deep economics of it all, but one thing is for sure, we are all feeling the crunch. Costs are going up and those costs are being passed onto everyone. Where food prices have increased over 7% in the last year, energy has increased 27%. With rising costs, hair professionals need to take hard look at their business numbers and ask themselves how inflation is affecting their business and livelihoods. For many stylists and barbers, the most obvious ways to make up for the inflation is to raise prices. But that might not be the best immediate answer. Here are some areas to review in your business. How booked are you? Are you 80% booked? 90% booked? If you are 90% booked or more, you can probably raise your prices and not lose too many clients. The increase should be determined by how much inflation has affected your business. If you are less than 80% booked you may want to hold off on raising prices just yet. Focus on doing more marketing and gaining more clients. Every time you raise prices you risk losing clients. However, if you have a fairly full schedule, losing a client or two won’t make much of a dent. Here's a great video on how to raise your prices. Where can you make more money in your business? Perhaps retail more product. If you can make a sale with your clients, you can increase your revenue significantly. By selling product you can make more money per client and make up for any inflationary offsets. Selling shampoo, conditioner, hair serums, sprays and hair vitamins can all be great money makers. A great marketing tactic is to you use these products on your client while servicing them. If they like them, they are more willing to buy them. If you need some tips on how to retail effectively, watch this video with Ivan Zoot. Are you ready to put in more hours? If you don’t feel comfortable retailing product, you can always work more. However, if you are already working a full schedule, this could lead to burnout. This is a good suggestion for anyone who has room to work more. More clients = more money. Where are you making the most money? Alternatively, review in your business where you are making the most money. If you’ve noticed you are making a lot more money giving straight razor shaves vs. regular barber cuts, push your focus to giving more shaves. By increasing the amount of money you make per hour, this can lead to a large increase over time. Where can you make cuts? Make cuts in areas that won’t affect the quality of your work or customer service. Perhaps there’s a better booking service out there for managing your clients that costs less. Or maybe you can split certain costs with other hair professionals in your salon or shop. Get creative. Only raise costs of services where the products you use for them have increased. For example, if the cost of hair color has increased significantly, then raise prices for hair color services proportionally. When evaluating where to make adjustments on the financial side of the business, consider different angles. Do what makes sense for your business and your clients. But one thing is for sure, if you don’t make any changes and inflation continues to go up, you are making less money than before and that’s not the direction you want to go. Costs will always go up over time. Unfortunately, we are in a time where the rise is significant. Evaluate your options and take charge.

It’s Gonna Cost You—Venmo Is Changing Their User Agreement!

Have you ever used Venmo or another person-to-person cash app to send or receive money? We’re betting you have…but do you use it for business, or pleasure? Here’s the thing: If you’re using Venmo to accept business payments, there are some big changes coming, and they could make things expensive. As of July 20, 2021, Venmo’s rules on payment for goods and services changed, and financial experts say these changes could hurt small businesses like stylists, nail techs and estheticians. At the very least, you could be paying transaction fees for every service your clients pay for via Venmo. At the worst, your account could be flagged and you could lose transactions entirely.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by KELLY TFN (@theforevernever)

Business Transactions & Fees On Venmo

Right now, business transactions are supposed to only take place through business Venmo accounts. The Paypal-owned app’s terms of service say that individual users cannot use a personal account for commercial purposes. If you use a personal account for business purposes, you’re at risk of getting your account suspended, or “loss of transaction”—aka, Venmo will literally take that money.   Keep reading on behindthechair.com for everything you need to know about Venmo’s payment policies and how much you’ll be paying per transaction as of July 20.

The deadline to submit your federal tax return as an individual is May 17, 2021. This means there is not much more time to prepare your taxes, so our friends at Behind The Chair shared a few helpful tips to make sure hairstylists and barbers take advantage of as many write-offs as possible! Disclaimer: We are sharing this info to be helpful, but we are not certified CPAs or tax attorneys. Use this info to discuss and analyze your own tax situation with a professional tax preparer. 

Want all 103 write-offs for stylists, PLUS Behind the Chair's entire guide to taxes for hairdressers and salon owners? Click here to download the 19-page PDF for FREE!

1. Business mileage

Using your vehicle to run work-related errands, like buying supplies or driving to classes? You can deduct the mileage at a rate of 56 centers per mile. This also goes for travel to and from clients on location. This deduction applies to small business owners and the self-employed. But remember—you can’t count the miles you drive to and from your salon or suite in mileage. That’s just a regular commute and won’t be a valid deduction.

2. Haircolor

You can deduct the cost of supplies you use in your daily business, as long as you would use those supplies within one year of purchase. So make sure you are keeping careful track of how much color you buy so you can deduct it!

3. Damaged aprons