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Maggie from Birch and Bramble salon in Duluth loses one chair every Saturday to no-shows and late cancels. Eric diagnoses it as a memory problem, not a policy problem, and lays out a three-step fix: card on file, automated confirm-button reminders, and a written late-cancel policy.
Maggie, owner of Birch and Bramble salon in Duluth, is losing one Saturday chair in six to no-shows and late cancels. Eric walks her through why it's a systems problem, not a policy problem, and the three things to set up Monday morning.
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Eric: ...so wait, back up. One in six. That's your Saturdays?
Maggie Thorsen: One in six. Sometimes worse in January. I did the math on a napkin last winter and almost cried into a cold brew.
Eric: Okay, for anyone just dropping in, tell them who you are and what we're actually talking about.
Maggie Thorsen: Yeah. I'm Maggie, I own a little salon up in Duluth called Birch and Bramble. Four chairs. Been open eleven years, cut hair out of my basement for like, basically my entire thirties before that.
Eric: Love it.
Maggie Thorsen: And the thing that is slowly killing me is no-shows. And late cancels. The "hey girl so sorry something came up" text that lands forty-five minutes before a balayage.
Eric: Forty-five minutes before a balayage.
Maggie Thorsen: Forty-five minutes before a four-hour balayage, Eric.
Eric: Okay.
Maggie Thorsen: That chair sits empty. I can't fill it. That's a car payment.
Eric: So how many a week, on average, right now?
Maggie Thorsen: Saturdays, I'd say one to two. Across the whole week, probably four or five that are either full ghosts or so-late it may as well be.
Eric: And you've been eating that for how long?
Maggie Thorsen: Eleven years. Give or take.
Eric: Okay. And no deposit policy, no card on file, nothing like that.
Maggie Thorsen: Nothing. I know, I know. I just... I started in my basement. Everybody was a friend of a friend. It felt weird to be like, give me your Visa or you can't get bangs.
Eric: Right.
Maggie Thorsen: And now I have actual clients, actual overhead, and I still haven't done the thing.
Eric: Can I diagnose for a second?
Maggie Thorsen: Please. That's why I'm here.
Eric: So you said something that really stuck out to me. You said, "I know exactly who the repeat offenders are in my head."
Maggie Thorsen: Mhm.
Eric: In your HEAD.
Maggie Thorsen: Yeah...
Eric: That's the whole problem. The problem isn't actually "I don't have a deposit policy." The problem is you have no system that remembers for you.
Maggie Thorsen: Oh.
Eric: Because every Saturday morning, you are the system. You are the one going, "oh yeah, her, she did this last time, I should've asked for a card." And then it's seven a.m. and you've got coffee and you just... book her.
Maggie Thorsen: I just book her. Every time.
Eric: Every time.
Maggie Thorsen: Because I like her. She tips well when she shows up.
Eric: Right, when she shows up.
Maggie Thorsen: When she shows up.
Eric: Okay so here's the thing. When we started running our agency, we had the exact same shape of problem. Different industry, same shape. Clients who'd ghost a discovery call. Prospects who'd book and bail. And I kept thinking it was a policy problem.
Maggie Thorsen: And it wasn't.
Eric: It was a memory problem. It was a "nothing talks to anything else" problem. My calendar didn't know who my repeat flakes were. My intake form didn't know. My texts didn't know. It was all in my head and in like, four different tabs.
Maggie Thorsen: That's me. That's literally me. I've got a paper book, I've got the little salon app, I've got my notes app, and I've got my brain.
Eric: Four systems. None of them talking.
Maggie Thorsen: None of them talking.
Eric: Okay so what we did, and what I'd want you to try, is we moved everything onto one platform. The all-in-one ops platform we run our agency on. I'm not gonna name it on the show because that's not the point, the point is the SHAPE of it.
Maggie Thorsen: Okay.
Eric: It does your booking, it does your texts to clients, it does your intake, it holds the card on file, and it does the little automations between those things. One place. One brain.
Maggie Thorsen: One brain. God, that sounds nice.
Eric: We also use Notion for the sort of internal, SOP-level stuff. Like how do we actually run the thing. But the client-facing operation lives on this one platform.
Maggie Thorsen: Okay.
Eric: So here's what I would set up if I were you, Monday morning.
Maggie Thorsen: Okay hold on, let me actually get a pen. Hold on.
Eric: Take your time.
Maggie Thorsen: Okay. Go.
Eric: Three things. That's it. Not twelve, not a whole rebrand, three things.
Maggie Thorsen: Three things.
Eric: Number one. Online booking goes through the platform, and the booking form requires a card on file. Not a deposit necessarily. Just a card. The client enters it, it's stored securely, nothing's charged yet.
Maggie Thorsen: Just the card.
Eric: Just the card. That alone, in our experience, cuts a huge chunk of the flake traffic. Because the person who was gonna no-show doesn't want to enter the card.
Maggie Thorsen: Oh that's sneaky.
Eric: It's not sneaky, it's a filter. You're letting the system filter for you so you don't have to.
Maggie Thorsen: Okay. Card on file. Got it.
Eric: Number two. Automated reminders. Text goes out, I'd do forty-eight hours before and then again the morning of. And the morning-of one has a confirm button. They tap "confirm" or they tap "need to reschedule."
Maggie Thorsen: And if they don't tap anything?
Eric: If they don't tap anything by, say, two hours before the appointment, the platform flags it and sends YOU a little notification. "Hey, Jamie hasn't confirmed." Then you can decide what to do.
Maggie Thorsen: That is... I didn't know that was a thing.
Eric: It's just a workflow. It's a little if-this-then-that. The platform has that stuff built in, you don't have to code it.
Maggie Thorsen: Okay. Reminders with a confirm button. Got it.
Eric: Number three, and this is the one you're not gonna want to do.
Maggie Thorsen: Oh great.
Eric: Late cancel and no-show policy. Written down. In the booking confirmation. "Cancellations within twenty-four hours are charged fifty percent. No-shows are charged in full."
Maggie Thorsen: Eric.
Eric: I know.
Maggie Thorsen: Eric my clients will revolt.
Eric: Will they?
Maggie Thorsen: ...
Eric: Will they though?
Maggie Thorsen: Probably not most of them.
Eric: Probably not most of them. And the ones who DO revolt...
Maggie Thorsen: Are the ones costing me the chair-day.
Eric: Are the ones costing you the chair-day. You're not firing them. You're just saying, hey, my time is real.
Maggie Thorsen: Yeah.
Eric: And here's the key thing. You don't enforce it. The platform does.
Maggie Thorsen: Oh.
Eric: You don't have to be the bad guy at seven a.m. on a Sunday texting someone "hey I have to charge you." The automation does it. The card's on file. The policy was agreed to at booking. It just... happens.
Maggie Thorsen: I don't have to send the awkward text.
Eric: You don't have to send the awkward text.
Maggie Thorsen: That's the whole thing. That's the whole reason I never did this. I didn't want to send the awkward text.
Eric: Nobody wants to send the awkward text. That's why the system sends it.
Maggie Thorsen: Okay.
Eric: And then the last little piece, which is more of a bonus. The platform keeps the history. So the client who late-cancels three times in a row? You can see it. It's not in your head anymore. It's in a little tag next to their name.
Maggie Thorsen: Oh.
Eric: And you can decide, you know what, this person books prepaid only from now on. Or this person doesn't book Saturdays anymore. Whatever you want.
Maggie Thorsen: So I stop rebooking her by accident because the system remembers for me.
Eric: The system remembers for you. That's the whole move.
Maggie Thorsen: Huh.
Eric: That's really it.
Maggie Thorsen: That is... that is embarrassingly simple.
Eric: It's always embarrassingly simple. That's the thing about ops. The answer is almost always "write it down and let a computer do it."
Maggie Thorsen: Write it down and let a computer do it.
Eric: Yeah.
Maggie Thorsen: Okay I have a question.
Eric: Go.
Maggie Thorsen: What about the existing clients. Like, the ones I already have, who have been with me for years. Do I just, hey, surprise, card on file now?
Eric: Great question. I'd do a soft rollout. You send a note. Something like, "Hey, as the salon's grown we're updating our booking system. Starting on whatever date, all appointments will go through our new online booking, which keeps a card on file. Nothing changes about how I take care of you, this just helps me hold the chair for you."
Maggie Thorsen: Mm.
Eric: You frame it as, I'm holding the chair FOR you. Not, I'm punishing you.
Maggie Thorsen: Holding the chair for you.
Eric: Because that's actually what it is. When Jamie no-shows, you can't give that chair to someone else. You were holding it for her.
Maggie Thorsen: Right.
Eric: And most people, honestly, will go "oh totally, that makes sense." The ones who freak out... you learn something.
Maggie Thorsen: You learn something.
Eric: You learn something.
Maggie Thorsen: Okay. Okay okay okay.
Eric: And look, I don't want to put a bow on this and pretend it fixes everything. You'll still get the occasional one. Weather in Duluth is weather in Duluth. Life happens.
Maggie Thorsen: Life happens.
Eric: But the shape of your week changes. You stop losing a chair-day. You stop being the memory. You stop sending the awkward text.
Maggie Thorsen: I'm going to cry. I'm going to cry a little.
Eric: Please don't cry on the podcast.
Maggie Thorsen: I won't, I won't.
Eric: Okay so if you're listening, and you're Maggie-shaped, meaning you've got a service business, you book appointments, and you're losing time and money to no-shows, here is the ONE thing to try this week.
Maggie Thorsen: One thing.
Eric: One thing. Card on file at booking. That's it. Don't try to redo your whole operation. Don't rewrite your policies. Don't rebrand. Just, this week, figure out how to require a card at the time of booking.
Maggie Thorsen: Even if the rest of the system isn't there yet.
Eric: Even if the rest isn't there yet. That one change alone will do most of the work. Because the people who were going to flake... a lot of them just won't book in the first place.
Maggie Thorsen: And that's fine.
Eric: And that's fine. That's a win. You got your Saturday back.
Maggie Thorsen: I got my Saturday back.
Eric: Maggie, thank you for being honest about the napkin math. That took guts.
Maggie Thorsen: It was a bad napkin.
Eric: It was a bad napkin, but it was an honest napkin.
Maggie Thorsen: It was an honest napkin.
Eric: If you liked this one, or you know somebody who's running a small shop and bleeding time to this exact thing, send it to them. And hit subscribe so the next one shows up for you.
Maggie Thorsen: Thanks Eric.
Eric: Thanks Maggie. Go get your Saturday back.
Maggie Thorsen: I'm going.
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