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There have been many things ground into our brains since beauty school. Things that we have been told are essential to a successful career. One of those things is pre-booking.
You're tuned into Reviving the Stylist, a business podcast for hairstylists looking to build a dream career that creates financial freedom and flexibility. I'm your host, Kristen Lumiere and as a stylist I've had my share of successes. Building a successful six plus figure business working only three days a week while being able to prioritize my family, travel and buy my dream home. I know it doesn't sound easy, but if you put in the work, I guarantee you'll see results. No matter what your goals are. I'm super stoked that you're here so I can help you crush them. Let's start today's episode.
Kristen Lumiere 0:03
You're tuned into Reviving the Stylist, a business podcast for hair stylists looking to build a dream career that creates financial freedom and flexibility. I'm your host, Kristen Lumiere. And as a stylist, I've had my share of successes. Building a successful six plus figure business working only three days a week while being able to prioritize my family, travel and buy my dream home. I know it doesn't sound easy, but if you put in the work, I guarantee you'll see results. No matter what your goals are. I'm super stoked that you're here so I can help you crush them. Let's start today's episode.
Kristen Lumiere 0:41
Hey, friends, and welcome to Reviving the Stylist a first I just have to say I'm so stoked right now, because this is the very first episode that I'm actually recording in the podcast. And it is a banger if you cannot tell, I kind of have a less traditional view on things in the beauty industry, where we've heard things like you need to pre book from square one all the way in beauty school, they really ground that into our mindset, right? Well, for me, there were reasons why pre booking just really wasn't the thing, it made me feel like I was kind of trapped. And in this episode, I'm going to kind of go over all of the reasons why I stopped pre booking, and how it changed my life and just really opened up so many incredible opportunities. It helped me do things like double my income, I was able to balance my work in my life and actually spend more time with my family and not have to worry about things like me getting sick or meaning to go and pick up my kids early from school and rescheduling a whole bunch of clients than being upset. And me telling them that I don't have availability for six plus months. That was the thing that just kind of really sucked when I was pre booking is if I did get sick, heaven forbid, I would have to either reschedule people six plus months out, or I would feel like I had to come in on an off day and sacrifice my family time, just so that way I could make my clients happy. And that, for me was just a really toxic relationship. And I wasn't willing to deal with that anymore. So there's really three reasons why I stopped pre booking, I'm going to go over all of them in detail. But the very first one is I felt like a slave to my schedule. And maybe you're like me, I am a spontaneous butterfly, I like to fly around with my little wings, and I fly one way and then I like to change direction and fly another way. And there is no rhyme or reason. But sometimes I decided to change direction instantly and go a completely different way than I was planning. And when I had a schedule that was booked out six plus months in advance. And there was a time where I used to actually have my clients schedule multiple appointments at once, all the way till the year point because I thought for some reason that if I was booked out six plus months in advance, or if I was super booked out, I will have made it that is a factor in determining if a stylist is successful. And I will tell you right now that is a toxic thought it is not true at all. It is so incredibly false. How booked out you are does not mean that you are super successful. It is not a determining factor. So if you're one of those stylists, and maybe you are that you think, Oh, if I'm booked out six plus months, and I'll have financial freedom, and I'll have this and that. And I will tell you, when I was booked out six plus months in advance, I was still living paycheck to paycheck. And it was one of those things that it just kind of opened my mind when I was like, You know what I'm doing all these things. And I'm being booked out this far in advance, but I'm not able to raise my prices because I'm worried I'm not having the ability to bring more new clients in my chair. What is my return? Clients are like, well, we don't want to, you know, pay your price increase? Or what if they asked me questions, I kind of felt a little bit more self conscious at that time, where when I was able to open my books and see a lot more new clients still have an incredible amount of my return clients of course, but when I was able to bring in new clients, it made it so much easier to talk with them about those price increases or to change around my pricing structure. And it just made me open up the entire world. So that way I could see the changes in the differences that I could make and just doing one small thing. And for me, I will say that return guests are incredible. It does not cost you as much to keep a return guest as it is to continue to take new ones but at the same time. I will also tell you that you can build a full clientele and you can have a super successful business on taking mostly new clients. I will tell you from personal experience There was a time in my career where my business was fully new clients, they would typically come and see me for two or three appointments. And then once their hair was at the level that they loved, they would switch to a stylist that was more cost efficient for them that I trusted to maintain that maintenance in it. And I was totally fine with that. I actually love that because I'm like, Okay, I want to get you there. And then I understand that, you know, budget things, you probably don't want to spend four or five or $600, every single appointment, which not every single appointment of mine was like that. But for me, it made more sense to take higher level services that paid higher prices, so that way I could increase my income. So it was almost a trade off for me, I would see people two or three times, and then I would push them down to maybe a previous assistant, or a stylist that I really connected with and I really loved. And they were able to actually maintain that long term relationship with that client. So for me, that was kind of how I loved running my business return clients, I had a ton of them ones that were like, you know, what we want to be on, you know, more of a maintenance schedule. So we don't want to spend like four or $500. So we want to spend anywhere from like 200 to maybe like $300, and I definitely had that availability. But there were times for me where I had those new clients who really only wanted to come for a specific amount of time. And I will say that you can absolutely build your business like that. There's nothing wrong with it. And I think one of the things we need to get out of our mind is having this traditional thought and saying there's nothing else out there, we cannot do anything different. It's not true. And that's why this episode is so close to my heart because you don't have to prebook and you can have an incredibly successful business. And the opposite is true. Also, you can pre book your clients six plus months in advance, maybe you're more of a planner, there's nothing wrong with that you can build a business and have it be completely different than the person next to you. And it doesn't mean that it's necessarily wrong. There's not one way to do things. And I'm not the type of person who's going to tell you that it's this way. And it's the absolute best way because everyone's situation is completely different. And it's okay and it's great. And I love different, I love unique. And I hope that these lessons or these little episodes I'm giving you are going to just push you a little bit outside of your comfort zone and make you feel a little uncomfortable, I want you to feel some type of way. So that was the big reason number one, I know I kind of go off on tangents. So I have to apologize for that because I am an overshare I love sharing, and I love talking and I love helping my students. I love helping other stylists, I hope that this lesson helps you. So number one reason, of course, the first reason at least, was it made me a slave to my schedule prebooking did now number two, if I got sick or life just happened, and I need to reschedule a day, or heaven forbid, of course, if you're sick, you never just really need to reschedule a date, you kind of need to reschedule a week or two, my clients would be so upset because the only openings that I had were three to six plus months in advance. And if you think about it from the client perspective, someone's scheduled something and they have pre booked three or six months in advance. They're ready for their hair to be done. They're ready for their appointment. They are about to come in. Maybe they're like scheduled four days out, and they receive that text from you or an email or however you contact your client. They receive it and they see hey, I'm under the weather. Is there any way that you can reschedule? And they're like, Yeah, sure, not a problem. Like they're, they totally understand that you get sick things happen. And they're like, Do you have any availability next week, I really need to get my hair done. I have this big event coming up. And you look at the text and you think to yourself, Oh, crap, I don't have any availability until three months from now. And I don't even have any wiggle room in my schedule. I can't double booked them anywhere. I can't, you know, slip them in here. So now you're feeling guilty, even though you shouldn't because you're sick things happen. You shouldn't feel guilty because you're sick like that is lame. I think it's lame. But the same time your client when they see that response text, I don't have anything until three months later. Can you go on the waitlist? If I have a cancellation? I'll let you know or can you schedule here. They're instantly not feeling very understanding. They're feeling some type of way. And it's not because you are wrong for being sick. That's life. They understand that but at the same time, they have this event coming up or they need their hair done or whatever it is, they're going to be pissed off and they're going to be upset and it's not a fault of your own. But at the same time you feel guilty. You feel like wow, maybe I do need to come in on Sunday or maybe I do need to stay late or maybe I should come in early. And to me That is unacceptable. I am not okay with that at all, you should not be taking time away from your life outside of work because I truly believe that we work to live, we don't live to work. Living to work to me is like, Oh, I love work so much my family, whatever my friends, whatever my, you know, hobbies, whatever, I'm gonna do all that I can to work, work, work, work work because that is my life. And for me, that's not the case, I am not the live to work type of person, I am the work to live type of person, I am trying to work enough so that way I can live my dream life and be able to have the time with my family that I've always wanted. And if you're that type of person to then we get each other. Okay, so that was the second reason why I just cannot stand or could not stand the pre booking schedule and being so booked out. And then number three was, I was turning away new clients left and right, because I didn't have any space to accommodate them in any future appointment that was realistic to them. If someone calls you or someone sends you a text or sends you a dam, or send you an email, however they reach out to you to inquire about an appointment. And the first thing you tell them is hey, yeah, I would love to see you. But I don't have any availability for three to six months. Are you able to come in for a consultation? And then we can possibly see what I have six months down the line? First of all, that person is going to say hard? No, that is unrealistic. And I will tell you that the majority of clients will absolutely say no, there may be a select few who are going to be like not a problem. I don't care because you're the best. And I want you to do my hair. That is a very small percentage of clients who are actually going to and when I was in this position where I was turning clients way left and right, because I was receiving anywhere from 50 plus new client requests a month. And that's a lot of new client requests. At the height of my career behind the chair, I was turning them away left and right. And I maybe it was only seeing like three or four of them who were like, yeah, we'll go and we will definitely, you know, be able to schedule three to six months in advance. Only three to four is less than 10%. Now, if I added them, if I added some math to that, if I was turning away, like let's say I was turning away 45 clients a month, if those clients were just $200, and I turned away 45 of them, that's $9,000 I'm saying no to. And that just kind of sucks. I know that we kind of get in our head and say, well, we need to keep people on like a really stringent schedule. But for me, I'm lived in colourist, there isn't necessarily a need for every single clients come in on a super rigid schedule. So I like to keep things really flexible with my clients saying, Hey, you may need to come in in three weeks, you may need to come in in for for your base touch up. But you also may be able to come in, you know, eight weeks because your hair doesn't grow super fast, we do more of a Demarai coverage instead. So we conceal the Grays when they grow out, they don't look super crazy, you can't see any lines of demarcation. So you can go a little bit longer. But I know that there are stylists out there who are like, well, if I get them coming in faster, then I'll be able to maintain my income. And for me the way that I thought about it behind the chairs, I really like to make sure that my clients and their budget and their timeframes were really taken care of, I was really time conscious, and especially budget conscious for them, because I understand like spending two to $300 per service isn't typically, you know, inexpensive. So I really wanted to be able to think about their time and think about their schedule and give them the ability to stretch their appointments in between with their hairstyle looking great, I will say that their hair looked incredible. And I never pushed someone far out if they need an appointment earlier on. So those are really the biggest reasons why I stopped pre booking. Number one, it made me a slave to my schedule number two if life happened, and I needed to tell someone that they needed to reschedule three to six months out and they'd be pissed. I didn't want to deal with that. And then number three, I was turning away new clients left and right. And when I was able to stop pre booking, not only did it open up my schedule to where I could spontaneously live my life, take a vacation in a week or be able to you know, reschedule my clients to a reasonable time. If I got sick or something happened. I was able to change the way that I felt mentally to instead of looking at my schedule, seeing that was booked out so far in advance and thinking about my mental health because there's times where we actually just need to take a little bit of time and move some things so that way we can take time for ourselves because we don't spend nearly enough time Taking care of our mental stability, right? Our mental health is something that we do not like think of, we do not eat lunch, we will skip breaks, and we will be on our feet all day, and we will not take care of ourselves. And that is such a tragedy for our industry. If stylists took care of themselves more, they would be behind the chair so much longer, I guarantee it. And there is a statistic that 70% of students who go to beauty school will not be doing hair in three years. And it's because it is a very hard, very, very hard career. But at the same time, it's an incredible career. And if we set boundaries for ourselves from the get go, it would be so much better for us and so much better for the longevity of our career. Now I know this episode may have, okay scratch that definitely has gone against the grain when it comes to all the things you were told since Beauty School, pre booking is how you are successful, not the case. 100% not the case. And I will tell you that because I live it I also teach my students in my business course revive, I teach them how to stop pre booking super successfully. And listen, you don't have to take my word for it because of that. And I have this one message that I received because I posted on my story recently about stopping pre booking and how incredible it was. And I got a message from someone who is not a student of mine. And they actually don't pre book and I wanted to kind of talk about that message. And it stood out to me so much. Her name is Jen. And she said when she stopped pre booking only opened up her schedule eight weeks in advance and move to online booking only her life completely changed. Her regulars now plan ahead, which is incredible. And she sees three to six new clients per week and takes three days off every other weekend. Wow, first of all, wow, that change has helped Jen, work less, make more money behind the chair and live the life that she's always wanted. And that is my goal for you. That is absolutely my goal for you. And listen, you can do that even if you don't pre book. And you can also do that even if you do pre booked. But for me. And for other styles out there, stopping pre booking was absolutely the answer. And that is the reason why I've taught so many of my students in revive how to change that part of their business. So that way they can work on also taking care of their mental health while being able to really thrive behind the chair and take care of their clients too. I hope this episode made you feel just a little bit uncomfortable. Because we all have been told out of habits since we started our career, I absolutely challenged those. And I love that that is my like part of my job description to be able to challenge those traditional beliefs. And I want to leave you with two things. The first is Don't knock it till you try it. And the second is don't get sucked into too much of those industry norms.
Kristen Lumiere 18:03
That's all for this episode. But I'm coming back very soon with part two, where I'm going to share how I went from being six plus months booked out down to six weeks. And I know that was a really hot topic, especially when I shared on my Instagram. How do we go from being booked out this far in advance to only being booked out this far in advance. And making that transition can definitely seem scary, but it's not, I promise it's not. And there is a way to do it to make it seamless and also still be able to take care of your clientele at the same time. Especially if you have regulars who are used to pre booking who like to have their schedule being planned in advance who like to have that schedule planned far out in advance maybe, but I'm going to teach you how to be able to transition them and part two is going to be a really good one that you don't want to miss I Guaran damn tee it. Bye for now. I'll see you on the next one. Thank you so much for joining me today on Reviving the Stylist. If something really resonated with you during this episode, take a screenshot share it to your Instagram story and let me know what you love most don't forget to also send it to a friend so that way they can reap the incredible things from this episode too and leave me a rating and review. I'd also absolutely just love to connect with you outside of the show too. So you can find me on Instagram at Kristen Lumiere that's L u m ay er E or my website, Kristen lumiere.com. And before I go, I just want to leave you with one reminder. It isn't about living to work. It's about working to live. And that is my goal for you, friend, because you deserve it. I'll see you on the next one.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai