The Simple Guide for hairdressers to charge their worth!
Self sabotage comes in many forms, we have touched on this before in a previous blog about common self sabotaging traits which are very common in hairdressers.
One thing that we get asked a lot is “how to price hair services?”
The thing we talk about at HEIR education is charging for your services profitably.
As, let’s face it, we have all chosen this path to earn money, so without charging profitably, what’s the point?
This is something that we are passionate about, as lots of salon owners and self employed hairdressers unfortunately get this wrong.
Let me explain…
As hairdressers, we are taught our craft and then off we go on our way into the big wide world of hairdressing.
Some people choose to continue to develop their skills and attend further education well into their careers, but, what we have found, is that lots of hairdressers spend alot their time crafting and fine tuning their skills, but only a few learn how to run their business.
Us hairdressers simply want to get stuck into the fun and creative stuff, not spend our time working on computers and spreadsheets, that’s boring right?!
Besides, surely if we attend that amazing balayage course and put it all over our social media then that will gain us more clients and we will be busy and make loads of money?!
Right?
I’m afraid to say, this tactic is wrong, and it’s a trap that we also fell into…
We have decided to share this story now with a simple aim:
We want to help other salon owners and self employed hairdressers to have the confidence and understanding to price correctly, without fear and without anxiety.
Let me ask you a question…
How did you determine your prices for your services?
Did you:
Inherit your prices when you took over a business?
See what your competitors charged and undercut their prices?
Just charge the same as what you charged in your last salon?
Let your clients or staff dictate to you what the price should be?
Let your suppliers give you recommended prices?
Are you part of a salon group and they made suggestions on your pricing structure?
if you have answered yes to any of the above then I urge you to read on…..
So, let’s go back 11 years…
Opening our first ever salon was one of the most exciting times in our life. We just new we were going to be ‘the best’ (insert cringe!), and we couldn’t wait to open up and make loads of money and live happily ever after!
Little did we know, at that time we were making some of the most shocking decisions we ever made in our lives!
Yes, we had a team of fabulous hairdressers, clients waiting to book in, amazing suppliers, a great location and a brand new shiny salon but what we failed to do from day one was, understand how to price properly.
In all honesty, we had never seen anyone implement clear pricing strategies in our careers to date, so we did what most hairdressers do when they start in business, we researched our competitors and took some advice and decided that we wouldn’t be the cheapest but we didn’t want to be the most expensive either.
Feeling pretty chuffed with ourselves on making such a significant business decision we implemented our prices, plucking numbers from thin air and went on our way…. For NINE years!
During these nine years, we were the epitome of ‘success’.
The salon was always busy, we attracted good staff, we won awards, we scaled to a second location (and implemented the same pricing strategy!) and turned over hundreds of thousand ££’s in turnover each year.
What more could we ask for?
In all honesty, our business was a leaky bucket!
Whatever money came in, went straight out, leaving very little or nothing left over every month.
We did what we thought we needed to do… put offers on to attract more clients, bought in new product ranges, took on more staff, opened a second salon.
Surely all of these things would turn things around and make us properly scale this ‘successful’ business?
No, they didn’t, not one of these strategies worked.
You might be wondering, did we ever raise our prices?
Well yes of course we did, like most people do, after taking some more advice we raised our prices by £1 on every service every year!
That was our strategy and we stuck to it. Always looking at other reasons why our business was not scaling up.
So what changed?
After 9 years of trying various methods to grow our business in ways that we thought would work.
We finally decided to invest in ourselves and learn how to run our business PROFITABLY!
July 2019: whilst attending a social media course (remember I said hairdressers are always trying to learn new exciting skills, well this was one of them!) we met three business coaches, they all gave their pitch on stage and then waited around if anyone wanted to chat to them afterwards.
It was that exact moment in time that we realised that we were learning the wrong skills!
We needed to cut the crap, and finally take the bull by the horns! Remove all of the bullshit.
It was time to stop focussing on growing a business via social media training. A business with fundamental flaws, will always have fundamental flaws, no matter how many followers you have on Instagram!
We chatted to all three business coaches that day and went away wondering what we should do,
It was a ‘big investment’ after all, there wasn’t much money in the pot every month so could we really afford this?
August 2019: Lots of discussions later we decided we didn’t have anything to lose and we chose to work with a business coach called Jessica Crane.
We had seen Jessica on stage and she really seemed to understand our pain and our problems even though we had never, ever met.
Whats more, she seemed to have very simple solutions to our pain and problems with proven methods and strategies.
She seemed to know a “secret” which we were desperate to find out!
We signed up to the Systemise For Success Program and got to work.
We made the decision that we would invest into the coaching program and we would be all in.
And we did… we put our ALL in to learning new skills and understanding our business on the deepest level.
We strictly dedicated time each week to the course and focussed on implementing the frameworks and strategies which Jessica taught us.
What blew us away was the realisation that we weren’t the only ones that had a really crap pricing strategy!
In fact, we are yet to connect with another salon owner who hasn’t made the mistake of pricing without profit in mind.
We implemented everything we learned with Jessica Crane and can honestly say that her strategies have changed our business for the better.
Arguably, we wouldn’t have made it through the pandemic without Jessica as our business coach.
Now, we have a clear pricing strategy in place.
We have solid benchmarks in the business that help us to maintain a profit, (which is not just on the accountants year end report but actually physically in a bank account!) that has meant we have been able to diversify our salon to now running three businesses.
We have bomb proofed our business and this means we will survive any winter (or pandemic!).
Our prices are based on our own individual business costs, stock costs, wages and profit margins and now we never, ever worry about what others are charging!
After all, if we base our prices on what other people charge then really all we are doing in driving the price down further and further making it nearly impossible for any new salons or existing salons to charge profitably.
In our opinion pricing is the highest form of self sabotage in our industry, and what is scary, salons opt for this strategy every single day.
We undercut our competitors, run ‘offers’ which cause the business to make a loss.
And the end game is, there is little to no money left! There are no winners in this game!
This is certainly not what we signed up for! Why do we do this as an industry?
perhaps we:
have poor money mindsets?
have anxiety about charging more?
suffer imposter syndrome?
lack confidence?
lack knowledge?
or all of the above?!
Well, I can tell you all of this disappears when you finally see the leaky holes in your business bucket, you will want to patch them up quickly and when you do… oh boy, fasten your seat belt you will fly!
What a different feeling it is to make business decisions based on your numbers!
You will confidently be able to put your prices up when:
your supplier prices increase
you become vat registered
NMW increases
Salon overheads increase
Don’t wait nine years like we did! Charge your worth today! To find out more about the exact strategies we have implemented to help us grow into three businesses then check out:
“A Simple System to charge your worth”
We share our exact pricing strategy, which we paid £££s for and took us years to figure out and implement!
We also provide an exact price breakdown of a real and bespoke colour service.
We will share how to charge correctly from consultation so that you never have to worry about undercharging ever again!
Almost an hour worth of content which can change your business! For just £9.99!
If you resonate with any of our story, please comment below, we would love to connect with other like minded salon owners.