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Welcome to Suite Independence, the podcast designed exclusively for established beauty professionals ready to transform their careers and build the salon business of their dreams. Hosted by industry veteran Kristin Kienzle, founder of Utopia Modern Salon Suites, this show is your essential guide to thriving independently in the beauty world.
Kristin, with over 34 years of experience, understands the unique challenges and incredible opportunities you face. She created Utopia to be a supportive, inspiring community where independent beauty professionals can flourish, and this podcast extends that mission directly to you.
Forget the styling tips; we're diving deep into the business and personal development aspects that truly empower your success. Each episode offers insight, inspiration, and clarity to help you succeed and build your career in a healthy way. Whether you're looking to grow your client base, refine your business strategy, enhance your financial literacy, prioritize your well-being, or ultimately own your own salon, Kristin shares the wisdom and actionable advice you need.
Join a community dedicated to empowering beauty professionals to reach their full potential, ensuring their businesses thrive and afford them the lifestyle they desire. Tune into Suite Independence and start building the vibrant career and fulfilling life you deserve.
Ep06
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[00:00:00]
Introduction: The Unexpected Impact of Absence
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Kristin Kienzle: What would happen if you were suddenly and unexpectedly unable to come to work? How would that affect your family, your business, and your life?
Meet Molly from Empower Financial Group
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Kristin Kienzle: We had the opportunity to talk with Molly, with Empower Financial Group about how to protect your business and your family in this situation. You're gonna wanna stick around for this.
So we have this great opportunity fall into our laps.
Molly's Visit to the Salons
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Kristin Kienzle: We have Molly here with [00:01:00] Empower Financial Group. She is visiting our salons this week. From St. Louis where she lives, she travels all over the country.
She'll tell us more about that later. But we've had the pleasure of having her in our suites on Tuesday. She was at our, one of our east side salons on Wednesday, and today she's out here west with me. So we just decided to crash her meetings that she's having with our beauty professionals and get her on camera here for a second to do a podcast telling what she does.
So welcome to Wichita. Thank you for being here and visiting our salons. We are enjoying your presents. She's buying everybody lunch and bringing cupcakes, so that's always fun. We, we are all motivated by food.
The Importance of Benefits for Beauty Professionals
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Kristin Kienzle: But what I love about what they are bringing here is some opportunities for. Benefits that are extremely beneficial to beauty professionals.
And since you're the expert, I'm just gonna let you tell us about that.
Molly Henthorn: Thank you Kristen, for having me.
Empower Financial Group's Offerings
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Molly Henthorn: So, again, I'm Molly with Empower Financial Group. I'm an account manager with [00:02:00] Empower and we are focused on bringing Salon Suite style beauty professionals, access to benefits and. The tricky challenge is you're in business for yourself and there is a lot to protect. So Utopia has partnered with Empower to bring those benefits in and get the professionals access to things like health insurance, dental and vision insurance, life and retirement options.
Income Protection: A Critical Component
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Molly Henthorn: And then one of the most important pieces is income protection. Yes. Against accidents, sicknesses, major critical illnesses life event. Pregnancy and making sure that when life happens, because it will, it's not if, it's when you are able to protect your business and keep your business afloat.
Real-Life Scenarios and Testimonials
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Kristin Kienzle: I remember as a hairstylist for 35 years, every time I did something crazy, snow skiing, water skiing, anything fun, all I could think about was I can't break my arm.
I can't get hurt because my income would vanish. Yeah, it would go away instantly. And you know, you grow to depend on that income so. You, those things have to be [00:03:00] kept in mind. I wish that I had had access to something like this and had someone bring you in and share. Yeah.
Molly Henthorn: So what, I mean, when you think back to when, before utopia, when you were, had your salon or your suite.
when you hear the word benefits, what kind of price point comes to mind? What are you, what are you thinking about? I think I just didn't know. Mm-hmm.
Kristin Kienzle: You know, I've had the. Experience of being on my husband's health insurance benefit plan, but I didn't have anything in place for if I were to cut myself terribly or break my arm doing something fun.
So I think if it would've been brought to me and if I would've learned about what could be provided and what the cost would be, that would've been very interesting.
Molly Henthorn: Yeah.
Understanding the Cost of Benefits
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Molly Henthorn: So I actually just wrapped up a conversation with one of the professionals here over at Tyler Point, and. She was almost surprised today.
It was less than maybe a quarter of the cost of one of her average service costs for her to protect. 60% of her gross income.
Kristin Kienzle: Yeah.
Molly Henthorn: [00:04:00] Again, 24 7 against any type of accident. and a $20,000 payout if she has a heart attack, a stroke, a kidney failure any cancer diagnosis. So she, I think her eyes about bugged out of her head.
She was like, oh my gosh, I didn't even think it would be. Much. So tell me again, it was what percentage of one of her services? Yeah. So her services, I don't know if I wanna share her average price of her services. Right. But for her services, it was about 20 a quarter of the cost of one of her services.
Kristin Kienzle: Wow. A week. So one client a month, one fifth of that revenue would cover all of these things?
Molly Henthorn: About one client a month.
Kristin Kienzle: That's interesting. Yeah.
Molly Henthorn: And. A peace of mind that mm-hmm. Her sweet rent would be paid. Mm-hmm. Any other business expenses that she has regularly. And also her income to pay her regular bills and her household bills.
And she had multiple kids. I'm sure when she listens to this podcast, she'll know what she conversation talking about. But, but yeah. So
The Value of Income Protection
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Kristin Kienzle: it's what stories, what have you seen happen? When have you seen your benefits fall into play for people?
Molly Henthorn: So empowered just.
Empower's National Reach and Claims Support
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Molly Henthorn: [00:05:00] To plug in power and power serves over 200,000 beauty professionals nationally.
Okay. So when you were saying, Hey, I'm here in St. Louis, I'm the closest agent for Wichita. So hey, I am only a few hours away. But all across the country we have claims happening every single day. We've got a claims manager who helps with those claims 'cause it's tricky when stuff happens. But yeah. So as far as where we see claims this week alone, we've had professionals that are out with. They're babies with for pregnancy purposes.
Kristin Kienzle: You're and how nice that must be to not worry and not feel strapped for your rent money, your income, and your medical bills.
Molly Henthorn: Well, and actually here, even at the Utopia, one of your east side professionals, her new baby is only a few months old. Mm-hmm. She didn't know about income protection for maternity services and she saved for her baby when she found out she was expecting.
But she also. Didn't have income mm-hmm. When she was out for the first couple months. So traditional delivery is six weeks. Cesarean is eight weeks, and then if, heaven [00:06:00] forbid there are any complications you can typically see some income protection further. That's amazing.
Kristin Kienzle: What I love about this, from my perspective, is that it ensures my rents.
Mm-hmm. You know, I, I like to try to work with people. You know, there's only so much we can do. So this gives me added peace of mind that they are protected. And so together, you know, they're, they're still going to be able to maintain their lifestyle and their
Molly Henthorn: business. Absolutely. And I mean, it ensures rent for them.
It also ensures peace of mind that you can go have that precious time. It truly protects their business. When you work for yourself, who's the biggest asset to your business in the beauty world? You as the, you're the only revenue provider mm-hmm. In your business.
We had another professional who. Actually I'll even speak the same accident coverage that you guys have access to here.
Personal Stories of Benefit Utilization
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Molly Henthorn: I've personally used, I hit my head on a shelf at my house, really lame story, but I hit my head on a shelf and I had my copays covered [00:07:00] and had a little extra boost to fill in some out-of-pocket expenses for something as minor as hitting my head and having a little concussion.
How nice. But yeah, I didn't forget about it unfortunately. But yeah, that the same exact accident coverage. That's just a personal experience. Something more really minor. Yeah.
The Financial Impact of Unexpected Events
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Molly Henthorn: One of the professionals that partners with Empower for Business Protection Services, she actually has a son who was diagnosed with cancer and her income, she was grossing over a hundred thousand dollars annually, and that stopped because she needed to be with her child.
Mm-hmm. And so that critical payout helped her stay afloat financially for a while while she was out, while her son was in treatment.
Kristin Kienzle: Yeah. We just had something happen. This past summer at this location, we had a beauty professional who is excellent at what she does, and her services were very specialized and she was the only one in the area who provided these services.
The demand for her was just [00:08:00] incredible, and she had, again, I'm trying to not be too revealing and protect her privacy, but. She had a autoimmune disease that affected her joints and, and ligaments and stuff. She literally woke up one day and the hand that she uses to do her job and provide her income wouldn't work. Oh my gosh. She, her fingers dropped and she couldn't work, so she went to the doctor hoping that it would just be something brief and simple that could be fixed.
Maybe, you know, rest a few days and it'll, it'll come back. And unfortunately she found out she needed major surgery that was the only way to fix this and that she would be out for three to six months recovering, and she's the sole income provider in her household. So that was really devastating.
And so when Travis with Empower reached out to me. I believe, if I remember correctly, it was somewhat of a cold call, but it happened. He reached out to me simultaneous [00:09:00] to that incident. So everybody in this salon space was aware of it. You know, all of a sudden, where'd she go? Why isn't she here? And we all know that that could happen. Mm-hmm. But we don't see it happen. And so when you don't see it happen very often, you kind of tend to not believe that. Well, it could, but it won't. But when it did, we were all affected. We noticed she wasn't here and she's someone who was here.
Every hour this salon was open, she was here and her demand was extreme, like I said. So that happened simultaneously with Travis reaching out, and that's a lot of what brought us into bringing you in.
The Role of Empower in Business Protection
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Molly Henthorn: Well, and even so, like for anybody considering working with Utopia and working, partnering with you, having peace of mind if.
Your hand stopped working. Mm-hmm. Whether it's because of an accident or a sickness, that individual would've had 60% of her gross income, whether it was three months, six. That would've six months. That would been a game changer in life. Her life. Life, life changing. Wouldn't have to touch [00:10:00] savings, maybe tap into retirement.
Yes. Or. Or ask family or friends who they may not have those funds to help. It could have really, I mean, you can always say that it could have, but you can't rewind the clock. But she heard, I wish we could, her financial situation would be so different. Yeah. And that stuff happens all the time.
But one of the professionals that works with one of my fellow account managers seven days after her policy started, she got in a car accident. She was out of work and she. Could seven days into the policy, she had a claim happening. Nobody plans for a car accident. It's, it's extremely likely to happen for the car accident, but, and we all drive every day, so we're at risk of that happening.
So not only the accident policy, accident protection helped with the out-of-pocket expenses with the accident. But the income protection also helped with any time she was out of work. There is no waiting period at all for an
Kristin Kienzle: accident. Wow. I have a question. So I think the burning question in our minds when we're talking about something [00:11:00] like this is, what does it cost?
And I know you can't give me quotes, but can you give me a range of, of the cost and how it compares to other things and explain how you make it affordable to these people?
Molly Henthorn: Yeah, so health insurance is kind of be your biggest elephant in the room. Health insurance, unfortunately. Is relatively expensive.
And so there's no way around that. There's no way around health insurance. Our focus, depending on if a professional, a beauty professional's income level is, Hey, can we help subsidize that cost? Can we take advantage of any credits for health insurance so we can help in that space? Dental and vision.
Dental and vision is the cost of a coffee a week.
Kristin Kienzle: Oh wow.
Molly Henthorn: A nice coffee a week. It effort to protect yourself with dental, vision, and hearing all in one. And that is directly as a result of empower working with carriers and negotiating the pricing because it's over 200,000 professionals instead of just one person going to apply or going to search for a policy.
The business protection portion from a pricing standpoint is gonna look at how old are you and [00:12:00] how much is your gross income. But from a pricing standpoint, it's gonna be about the cost of one service a month. Oh, wow. Yeah. And so when you think about, Hey, I have this whole bus business riding on my back.
I can use one service a month or part of a service a week to protect my business and protect me as the asset to my business. I think the peace of mind is what gives it the most value. Well, and, and I and personally in the insurance world, most account managers or insurance agents are independent, just like a beauty professional.
I carry the same exact type of coverage. Mm-hmm. Because if I can't go do my job, I'm not being able to pay my bills and feed my family and mm-hmm. And my husband and I are relying on my income too. Yeah. So, same exact experience.
Customizing Coverage for Beauty Professionals
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Kristin Kienzle: So for someone who's just starting out as a business prof, as a beauty pro, so for someone who's just starting out as a beauty professional, what is the basic plan you [00:13:00] recommend? What is the minimum coverage that you recommend for them? So when you
Molly Henthorn: view yourself as the asset to your business, you need to protect your income.
The now that can look a couple of ways, but the focus is. How long could you go without being able to provide your services?
And no one's ever planning for something to happen to them. I didn't. I, we aren't planning for that. Anything unexpected. So really looking at income protection, helping against accidents, helping against major diagnoses, but that income protection piece should be an absolute priority.
I mean, and quite frankly, if they're just starting out, their gross wages may not be where they want it to be in five years. It's going to be.
Very reasonably priced. And I'm sitting here saying that looking at pricing every single day, it is extremely reasonable. A
Kristin Kienzle: question. So as the beauty professional grows and his or her income increases, do the rates [00:14:00] adjust alongside that? Yes.
Molly Henthorn: So if I'm sitting here today and I wanna partner with Empower.
As with Utopia being my access point, I'm gonna look at my gross wages as I sit in this chair today,
Kristin Kienzle: okay?
Molly Henthorn: But if in six months or a year, my gross significantly changes, well we get used to spending the money that we earn or we get used to saving or whatever it may be. Based upon our gross going up, you can then adjust your policy based upon your next set of gross wages.
We always suggest at a minimum, reevaluate that every year. Every single year because it's never gonna go backwards. You know, once you're locked in at that initial gross, you gross wages and in, let's say it goes up thousands of dollars a month.
That is the goal with building a business, right? Mm-hmm. Or maybe not. It depends on your household, right? Mm-hmm. But if you have that increase, you're able to adjust that upwards of 60% of your gross.
Kristin Kienzle: So do you follow up and stay in touch with them or is that something you put on them to update
Molly Henthorn: you as things change?
Both. So, the [00:15:00] reason I say both is empower in partnering with Utopia wants to be at the salon locations at minimum every year. But life does happen. And so if we're not exploited to be in person for six months mm-hmm. That doesn't mean you're not family planning or you're not wanting to protect your business starting the next month.
So you can also you know, Kristen can share the contact information and you can reach out and we can enroll you even if we're not physically on site. So the answer is a little twofold. We can't be a mind reader and know when someone starts their suite with Utopia, but we will also be on site every single year.
Kristin Kienzle: So what is the advantage of us partnering with Empower to offer this over other competitors?
Molly Henthorn: Yeah. So I will definitely defer some of that. I don't wanna steal the funder of our leadership team who has spent years developing Empower, but. When you sit down with an Empower account manager like myself, you are sitting down with someone that cares passionately about your business. So [00:16:00] if you're just going online and looking at insurance coverages, you don't have someone talking to you about how can this impact you financially.
Mm-hmm. What is, what is your health background like and what is your family's situation? What is your personal health history, your family health history, and diving into what is so important to you? Because if people wanted to get coverages, they can just go online and take a look. But one step further with that empower with having over 200,000 beauty professionals has rates on these coverages that you cannot get on your own.
You also are going to see benefit structure or payouts on different claims that, hey, yeah, maybe you are able to get income protection elsewhere, but is it going to protect as much of your income or is the policy gonna start right away when you're out of work? So you're getting access to plans that are more than likely lower cost.
Because of empower's access to the [00:17:00] carriers and also. Exactly how does this fit my business? You're getting a one-on-one consultation for what is my business like? Because no two beauty professionals and their salons are going to be the same.
Kristin Kienzle: I love how Empower has really immersed themselves into understanding our industry.
Mm-hmm. So that you can better provide Yep. More tailored coverage. Beauty industry professionals. Yeah, that's, I'm not aware of anyone else who does that. There may be someone, but I think that's very unique and I always appreciate partners who do invest and get to know. The business and the risks that come along
Molly Henthorn: with it.
Mm-hmm. And it's absolutely an honor to be able to be here in Utopia. And Kristen, just to plug Utopia, I have been so impressed with the professionals. Thank you. Just the look and feel and just the energy when you walk into your salon. So thank you for the opportunity to live power. I appreciate that
Kristin Kienzle: coming from you.
You've been
Molly Henthorn: in a lot of salons and Yes, I have. And but your salon is [00:18:00] just fantastic and well thank you. It really. There's a lot of passion in your salons and it's awesome.
Kristin Kienzle: Well, great. I appreciate that. We are happy to have you. It's been fun having, we're all motivated by food, so when you say you're bringing lunch and cupcakes, we get excited.
It makes for a better day and I love that. You know, as I brought you in, I have the trust of these people and so I had to be careful. I never want to. Offer them up to someone who's going to solicit them or, bring them something marginal. So I've appreciated that. They trusted me enough to talk with you and trust you.
And I hope that you are setting a lot of people up for success. Thank you. Even in their worst day. And this has been very valuable to us. You've been fun to have in the salons. Thank you. And we, I didn't know that you were coming back every year, so I'm excited about that. Well, I,
Molly Henthorn: yep. Hopefully it'll be me, but I, it could be a, a peer account manager of mine [00:19:00] handling schedules and all that stuff.
But the other thing too that I'll say is. Your culture that you've built at Utopia, I've, you know, got a text from your professional saying, let me get on your C calendar. I trust what Kristen's bringing in. Oh, I'm love that. So I, I hadn't told you that yet. So there's your thank you candid reaction to that text.
But I got a message this morning saying, what time, what time can I meet with you? Mm-hmm. Because I trust what Kristen brings to us.
Kristin Kienzle: Is that unusual
Molly Henthorn: when you're going into these spaces? The tru, I mean, obviously we're a trusted partner that you're bringing in with Utopia. But a lot of times it's me coming in and saying, Hey, what time works for you?
So it is a little, not unusual. We do have it happen, but mm-hmm. Just to hear how much they value your relationship.
Kristin Kienzle: Well, thank you, Molly, for being game, for being very spontaneous and being in when I said, Hey, let's quick do a podcast.
Conclusion and Future Opportunities
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Kristin Kienzle: Yeah. This is an opportunity I wanted to capture. I love what you're bringing. I've enjoyed having you in the salons this week, so. [00:20:00] Thank you so much for all the information you've shared. I think it would be really interesting if we could bring on the founders and set up something where we can dive a little deeper with them and share their story
yeah.
Molly Henthorn: Thank you so much for the opportunity, and I know that the founders would absolutely love that opportunity as well. That'd be
Kristin Kienzle: good.
Thank you for joining us for this episode with Molly, with Empower.
We hope you will subscribe to our podcast, and if you enjoyed this episode, please share it.