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Tell me if this has ever happened to you before:
You have a client read and sign your cancelation policy, they schedule an appointment and then don't show up or cancel within the cancelation period (let's say they cancel 10 hours before their appointment).
You notify them that their will be a cancelation fee (because they breached your policy). You tell them the fee and then…they aren't happy.
They give you pushback on your policy, now what do you do?
If this is something that has happened, or you are afraid of happening to you then you aren't alone (trust me, you are never alone).
This episode is all about that sticky situation.
Check out the episode I did on Phorest FM!
Kristen Lumiere on Navigating Sticky Situations & Breaking Up With Salon Clients
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 0:00
If 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 lumir. 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. Welcome back, friends. No matter what you are doing, if you're driving on the way work, you got a busy day behind the chair. I am so happy to be here with you. I am coming in hot right now. It is literally hot outside in Texas. The weather is humid for some reason. It is like raining like in when it rains in Texas. What happens and I think this just happens in general. But it feels like at least where I live in Texas. It feels like I don't know so foreign to me because first of all, I just want to say I'm a Cali girl like I am from San Diego, where the weather is just like perfect all the time. It will be like overcast in the morning. So you'll have like just a super relaxed morning you'll be able to have like your tea or your coffee. I'm more of like a hot tea girl myself. I'm not really a coffee lover. Don't cancel me for that. Because if you're a coffee lover, I still love you. But I would wake up in the morning, it'd be overcast, you have that just like cozy feel. And then when it hits like 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock, it all burns off and the sun is out and it's like 70 degrees and like perfect. And there's like no wind, no insanely gigantic bugs flying around trying to like kill you. It's just incredible. So that is the difference between San Diego California and Texas. Now I will say I love me some Texas. I even though go back to my Cali roots. I still have a deep love for Texas because I just love the state. I love the people in the state like oh my gosh, people here are just like ridiculously friendly. And if you live in like a big city in like California or if you live in a big city, you know, I don't know, maybe even Chicago maybe Chicago's like, I don't know, but at least I know that San Diego people kind of just are on their phones all the time. No one really wants to have conversations with people they don't know. And I was like this when I first moved to Texas, like I'd be on my phone texting or something in the grocery line, and some random person and it didn't like age, you know, whatever didn't matter, they would come up and just start talking to me. And I remember thinking at first like what does this person want? Why are they talking to me? Do I need to yell stranger danger? Like what's going through your and what I realized is that people in Texas are just really freakin friendly. Like really freakin friendly. And I'm a really friendly outgoing person like I've always been friendly and outgoing. Now don't get me wrong, there's still like, you know, I still got a side to me because I'm a Gemini rising. I'm a Scorpio I'm a Gemini rising so I still got that other side you know where it's like don't mess with the other side. I always joke around with people and say like, don't make me bring California out because California come out and she is here to play you do not want to mess with Miss California thing. So always like joke around people about that. And of course, it's all a joke, right? It's all a joke. But you know, it's it's one of those things where I you know, days like today where it rains and it's hot and you walk outside at like 7am It's like 90 degrees and because it rain, all of that humidity is like evaporating all that water is evaporating up into that atmosphere and it's just humid and sticky. You walk outside and no matter what your hair is doing it's doing it 16 different ways and really incredibly frizzy and your girl got some baby hairs after having you know my daughter like she's about to turn three but you girls still got baby hairs growing back and those things are not attractive when it is humid, let me tell you they are not. Okay now, after I go over all that you know, tangent, thank you for bearing with me on that because I just unloaded I feel like in that instance, but I needed someone to listen to a little bit of my bitching just now. So I have to appreciate you for that and I have saved Thank you. Thank you so much.
Now let's go on to today's episode. Today's episode was actually a student request from my girl Megan. Megan is incredible. She has been in revive She's come to her weekend in person, she is actually going to teach in her salon in Montana, her salon owner salon. She's a stylus that works there. I'm going to actually teach at her salon in Montana this this August, actually, yeah, it's coming up like holy cow. But anyway, this was a request from Megan. And I just have to say, thank you so much. And I kind of want to go a little backstory as to why, you know, Megan decided to request this specific subject. Okay, so, Megan, when I posted in the lumir inner circle, which is my private community that's completely free, that is full of, you know, three plus 1000 hairstylist that go in and just support each other and it's just seriously the best community ever. She I posted in there, first of all, and I was just like, Hey, just wanted to, you know, get some subjects for, you know, for podcasts in the future. Can someone you know, say you'll answer these questions and if you have any struggles, you'd let me know, I'd love to support you. I'd love to, you know, create a podcast about what you're struggling with. So I can help you. Which by the way, if you join Lemire inner circle, you can actually go in and requests for, you know, subjects for podcasts, you can also go in and actually write me a review with what you would like to be addressed on the podcast. Like if you are struggling with something or if you would like more information about something, write your review. In that review, tell me what you need help with, and I will put it on the podcast. So Megan said, when new clients give me pushback about canceling, even though they signed my cancellation policy, which states deposits are non refundable, but are transferable then signing again, that they're that they fully read and agreed to the policy, I struggle with verbiage on holding my ground when a client is giving me pushback. Now, that is a struggle that I have absolutely dealt with. And if you haven't dealt with that, at this point, then let me help you with that type of situation. Now, if you have ever been a student of mine, especially if you've been in revived, maybe you've even gone to like you for a global or you have been in a you know, class of mine that was maybe I was a guest educator online somewhere. You know that navigating sticky situations with clients is just that it can get sticky. And one of the things I really pride myself on is giving Silas structure on how to handle those sticky situations. And I have five steps, which is called the five steps to resolve. And literally every single client situation, you need to handle it like this. Step one is you need to understand the client side. And I really go into all of the five steps to resolve in a podcast I was actually a guest speaker on which was with forest salon. And I don't know if you've ever heard of forest salon, but as a salon software, and they have a podcast with a whole bunch of incredibly helpful episodes on there for Silas. They have a lot of guest speakers and I was actually you know, part of this, and I was really able to dive deep into sticky situations on that episode. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to actually link it in this podcast episode. So you can go and listen to that one. That one's actually quite a bit lengthier. I believe it's about an hour long. So there's really great information in there if you're driving in the car, and you just want to listen to something that is going to give you really incredible information got a longer drive, or maybe you're working out or wherever you're at, you're like sitting and you're just like vibe, and you're just trying to like, focus on work and get out of your mind, then this is an incredible episode for you. Like I said, I'm going to link it in the show notes. But back to the five steps to resolve. Number one is understanding the client side, you have to know where that person is coming from. And I'm not saying that they're right, and you trying to understand that client side. But think about it, like think about maybe they are dealing with something personally and that money not being able to be given back to them or refunded to them is hurting them
financially. Maybe that is it. I don't know exactly what it is. And it's not our job to really dive into someone's life someone's personal life. But I will say that when you try and think like, we don't know what's going on with that person, and we can't assume assuming and you know, creating all these assumptions about someone, the only thing that that does is it breeds room for hate or room for misunderstanding, and we don't want that to happen. So number one is understanding the client side. Step number two, in the five steps to resolve is where did things go wrong? You have to see where things went wrong. And I don't know the details of that situation. So I can't say exactly where things went wrong but I guarantee it If you have a difficult situation, you're navigating that stickiness with a specific client, and you're really, really think about it, you'll be able to know exactly where and pinpoint where that wrongness happened, what went wrong in that situation? Now, for me, if I'm just going to like hypothetically put it out there, maybe you know, that client didn't read through the cancellation policy, and they didn't really think about it, I will tell you right now that I have had so many clients just go scroll down to the bottom and sign because they felt rushed or something they didn't like, want to read through it all. Maybe they just were like, whatever, on a sign this I mean, how many times we put our credit card information in a random website, we see something that we want to buy, and we put it in a random website, we don't even think twice about it, right? But then we get some kind of fraud happen on our card or a card gets compromised. And we're just like, well, dang, why the heck did that happen? Well, we don't read through like terms and conditions, or we don't check like to make sure websites are legit. Now some of us do, some of us been burned, like your girl been burned, your girl checks now. But I'm just saying like, we don't always think or read, like all of the terms and conditions on like, Instagram are all the terms and conditions on Facebook. I mean, those pages are long. And even if you only have a two page cancellation policy, or even just a one page cancellation policy, those things can clients will just breeze through and they'll be like, trust you just sign and whatever. So maybe that's where things went wrong for that client. They didn't read through the cancellation policy. Now step number three, is that you're going to find the solution. What is the solution in that situation? Is it letting that client know that the deposit is transferable, I know you cancelled within this period of time, or maybe the solution is you know, waiving that cancellation fee and allowing that deposit to be transferable because for me, I didn't allow deposits to be transferable unless I was actually able to fill that appointment spot with a service that was equal to or greater than the service amount that that canceling client actually had on my books. Because it would not work for me, if I had a full barley edge highlight that was on my books, and someone who was able to fill only a haircut portion of that. So I went from a three hour spot to a two hour spot that still needs to be filled. Does that make sense? So that was the only way that I would allow something to be transferred. But maybe for some reason, that client who came in or who was upset about that deposit not being refundable, or the cancellation policy being in full effect. Maybe the solution is to figure out like they're like, you know, my tire it popped on my way here or you know, popped yesterday, they don't have the ability to replace that tire until next week, there's no way that I can get there, whatever the excuses, because let's be honest, it's all excuses. But maybe there is a reason behind it that you're like, Okay, I totally understand life happens, I'm going to transfer that deposit, even though I normally don't, to your next appointment. So maybe that is the solution. Number four in the five steps resolve is offering the solution. So whatever you decide the solution is you then offer it to that clients, if it's you can come in later have an appointment time later. Or if it's we're going to transfer your appointment to a different date, you offer that to that client in a written form. So you write it out, and you don't text it to them. Email is definitely the most professional way to go about this email communication. You know, if you've like, listened to the podcast, or if you've like, really been on Instagram, or if you're on my email list, or if you're a student of mine, you know that this is what I preach. Do not give clients your phone number. Email is where things need to be because people don't expect an instant response on email, people understand that it's going to take a day or so to get back to an email. So it's important to keep it there. That way your expectations and your clients expectations are set, right? So you're going to offer that solution to that client, you're going to offer your and say, Hey, this is what I'm going to offer you and you're going to put the ball in their court. And then step number five, which is the fifth and final step, you are going to implement that solution. Maybe the solution is transferring that deposit to a different date even though you normally don't maybe that solution is Nope, this is the deposit and you lost it because you cancelled last minute so I apologize we can get you scheduled for another appointment time. Now that's happened to me and 50% of the time I got clients that are understanding and know that my time is worth money and the other 50% people are upset, not happy I'm telling like me off telling my ear off saying how unprofessional it is all that. And I will tell you right now that if that person comes at you, it is not true, you are sticking to your business policies. So you shouldn't feel bad about that. Now, maybe that is the solution. Or maybe the solution is, you have a client that is upset, that's not hearing you out, that doesn't want to deal with that solution that you've offered them, it's not good enough, they are going to raise hell, no matter what you do, you are either going to have to suck it up and refund them, or you're going to have to bend over backwards to try and make them happy. I will tell you right now, I do not bend over backwards, it's either we have a mutual respect for each other, we value trust and respect each other on the same playing field, or you are not a client of mine, you do not look at me from high above, like I'm so blow you that does not work for me, I may be in the service industry, but I am still your equal. We are both humans, we both make mistakes. And at the same time, we both deserve grace. And if you're not going to give me any. And if you're not going to understand my business policies, you just got up, you just got to get up out of here. So that is where blessing and releasing comes in. If my person doesn't respect me, they don't value they don't trust me, then they got to go. And that's the same thing with my policies, if they didn't trust or respect my time, and they didn't have enough value for me to let me know ahead of time that they need to cancel, then I don't want that person taking up space, I want to find someone else who actually values trust and respects me and knows that my time is money, and is able to keep their appointments on time. Or if they aren't, they understand. And they are totally willing to pay that cancellation fee, and they're still going to come back. Those are the people that I want in my chair. So those are your five steps to resolve that you're
going to use for every single sticky situation with the client, no matter what, if you follow that structure every single time, you don't have to worry about the stress that comes with those clients that don't understand and those sticky situations that you're going to have to navigate perpetually throughout our career. It's a constant constant struggle that stylists deal with, of not understanding what to do with a sticky situation. So if you follow those five steps, I guarantee you'll be successful. And if that client writes you a bad review, then you're going to outline those five steps to resolve in your response. First, you're going to take about 24 to 48 hours, no more than that. And you're going to calm yourself because I guarantee you're going to feel some type of way after saying that that client had the audacity to write your one star review. Even though they're the one that messed up, trust me, I understand, you are going to wait 24 to 48 hours to just chill and WUSA yourself, get your vibe, right. And then you're going to outline in your responses, five steps to resolve. If you do those things, I can guarantee you are going to be feeling great, your vibe is not going to be off, you're not going to stay awake late at night, you're going to keep it professional, you're not going to need to tell that person off, you're not going to need to worry about people going and reading that review and thinking oh, wow, that's just crazy that that style is no people are going to read that review, look at that person and be like, well, that person sounds a little bit crazy. And that silence was so professional with their response. It's very clear what kind of business they're running. And I'm all about that life. So those are my recommendations for you. If you have a client that is not understanding your cancellation policy, they are not listening to your recommendations, or whatever it is they're making excuses out of the bank. Those are my recommendations. Now on the next episode, what I want to do is I really want to go in and do a little quickie nitpick of your cancellation policy and make sure you got everything in place. That way, if you do have a sticky situation with a client, you don't have to worry so much because you're gonna have everything outlined in the cancellation policy. So, so important. So next time, we're going to come together. And we're going to talk about the cancellation policy and what you have to have in place in that cancellation policy to make sure that the client understands exactly what they're getting themselves into when it comes to working with us. Now we have enough value that it's going to be well worth it to have those stakes in place. And also we want people sitting in our chair who respect value and trust us and value our time enough to where they're going to give us plenty of time if we need to or if they need to. So shift or cancel their appointment, they're gonna give us plenty of notice. So that way we can make appropriate choices in our schedule at that time. So that's it for this episode. Again, make sure that you write me a rating review. And in your review, on this episode, make sure that you give me a suggestion as to what you want me to talk about in upcoming podcast episodes. Because I'll tell you right now, I want to make sure that I get any of your questions in there that I help you and support you in any way. Or even if you just want to know about something a little bit more, you let me know, because even if I don't have the answers, I'll find someone who can be a guest on the podcast that will absolutely have the answers. So again, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. I'm going to see you next Friday because I decided that Friday is going to be my new podcast airing days. So Fridays are going to be when you can hang out with me. So I will see you next Friday, baby. Have a blessed weekend. 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 dot Lumiere that's L u m i e r 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