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Marcy, owner of two-chair salon Rowan and Rust in Davenport, Iowa, shares how a sticky-note rebooking system quietly tanked her books — and the three-step automated follow-up system (checkout rebooking, text sequences, and "we miss you" campaigns) that brought clients back.
Marcy from Rowan and Rust — a two-chair salon in Davenport, Iowa — joins Eric to unpack how her rebooking rate quietly fell off a cliff, and the simple three-part automated system that put it back together. If you run a local service business and your follow-up lives in your head (or on sticky notes), this one's for you.
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Eric: ...so wait, back up. Sticky notes. You were running the whole rebooking system on sticky notes?
Marcy Holtkamp: I mean, when you say it out loud like that it sounds insane. But yeah. Little pink ones. I had a whole system.
Eric: A system.
Marcy Holtkamp: A SYSTEM, Eric. Pink was six-week cuts, yellow was color, blue was anybody who said "I'll text you." Which, by the way, is the kiss of death.
Eric: Oh no.
Marcy Holtkamp: Oh YES. Blue sticky note? Never seeing them again. I should've just thrown them straight in the trash and saved myself the paper.
Eric: Okay, so for anybody just finding us, tell them what you do.
Marcy Holtkamp: Sure. I own a little two-chair salon in Davenport, Iowa. It's called Rowan and Rust. I've been cutting hair for about eleven years, and I've owned the shop for the last four.
Eric: Two chairs. So it's you and...
Marcy Holtkamp: Me and one other stylist. Her name's Jo. She's great. She is not the problem.
Eric: So what WAS the problem? Because you reached out and the subject line was basically, like, "I think I broke my own business."
Marcy Holtkamp: Yeah that's about right. So here's what happened. My rebooking rate just... quietly fell off a cliff. Over about a year.
Eric: Quietly how?
Marcy Holtkamp: Quietly like I didn't notice. That's the whole thing. I was busy, the chair was full, I felt fine. And then one Tuesday was just dead. And I thought, okay, weird Tuesday.
Eric: Sure.
Marcy Holtkamp: And then the next Tuesday was dead. And then a Wednesday. And by the end of the month I was looking at my books going, where did everybody GO.
Eric: And they didn't go anywhere, right? Like, they didn't leave town.
Marcy Holtkamp: No! That's the part that hurt. I'd see them at the grocery store. Hair looking rough. And they'd go, "oh my gosh I've been meaning to call you."
Eric: Oh, that's brutal.
Marcy Holtkamp: It is SO brutal. Because they still love you. They just forgot. And I had nothing in place to remind them.
Eric: Okay so let me diagnose this a little, because I think a lot of folks listening are going to recognize themselves. You didn't have a client problem.
Marcy Holtkamp: ...no.
Eric: You had a memory problem. And it wasn't your memory, it was theirs. And you were counting on it.
Marcy Holtkamp: Yeah. When you say it like that.
Eric: Right? Like, every six weeks you need someone to remember on their own that it's time for a cut, in the middle of their actual life, and then ALSO remember to pick up the phone and call a specific small business.
Marcy Holtkamp: Which, nobody calls anymore.
Eric: Nobody calls anymore. So you're asking your clients to do a thing they don't want to do, to solve a problem you forgot to solve for them.
Marcy Holtkamp: Yep. That's it. That's the whole thing.
Eric: And the sticky notes, I want to be fair to the sticky notes...
Marcy Holtkamp: Please defend my sticky notes.
Eric: The sticky notes were a follow-up system. They just only worked on YOU. They were a reminder for you to remember to text them. Which means every follow-up had to pass through the single most overloaded person in the business.
Marcy Holtkamp: Which is me. On a Sunday night. With a glass of wine. Going, oh no, I forgot to text Linda.
Eric: And Linda went somewhere else.
Marcy Holtkamp: Linda went to the chain by the Target. I will never forgive the chain by the Target.
Eric: Okay. So let's talk about what we actually did, because I don't want this to just be me going "yeah that's hard."
Marcy Holtkamp: Please. Fix me.
Eric: So, full disclosure for the listeners, Marcy and I had been chatting for a while, and we moved her onto the all-in-one ops platform we run our agency on. Same thing we use with every local service business we work with.
Marcy Holtkamp: Which I was scared of, by the way.
Eric: Why scared?
Marcy Holtkamp: Because every time someone says "software" to me I picture six browser tabs and a password I can't find.
Eric: Totally fair.
Marcy Holtkamp: Like, I don't want a CRM. I want to cut hair.
Eric: Right, and that's actually the whole pitch of why we picked it. It's one login. The calendar, the texts, the reminders, the review requests, the little client notes, all in one place. You're not duct-taping five tools together.
Marcy Holtkamp: That part sold me. Because I had tried, like, a booking thing, and a separate text thing, and they didn't talk to each other, and I just stopped using both.
Eric: Classic. So here's what we actually set up. Three things. Just three. I want people writing this down.
Marcy Holtkamp: Three things.
Eric: Thing one. At checkout, every single client gets rebooked for their next appointment before they walk out the door. That's not software, that's a rule.
Marcy Holtkamp: That's a ME rule.
Eric: That's a you rule. But the platform makes it easy because the calendar is right there on the iPad at the front, you tap, you book, done.
Marcy Holtkamp: And if they say "oh I don't know my schedule yet"?
Eric: Then thing two. If they won't book in person, they get dropped into a little follow-up sequence. Automatically. A text goes out a few days later. Hey, want to grab your next spot? Here's the link. One tap.
Marcy Holtkamp: And I don't have to send it.
Eric: You don't touch it. It just goes.
Marcy Holtkamp: Okay this is the part that broke my brain, by the way. The first week it was running I got a booking at like 11pm on a Thursday from a client I would've DEFINITELY lost.
Eric: Yeah.
Marcy Holtkamp: She was on her couch. She got the text. She tapped the link. She booked. I was asleep. I made money while I was asleep. I know that sounds dumb, I know you people say that all the time...
Eric: We do say that all the time.
Marcy Holtkamp: But when it happens to you with your actual tiny salon it feels like magic.
Eric: It's not magic, it's just that the follow-up isn't bottlenecked on you anymore. That's the whole shift.
Marcy Holtkamp: Right.
Eric: Okay, thing three. This is the one that I think moved the needle the most, honestly.
Marcy Holtkamp: Mm.
Eric: The "we miss you" message. For anyone who hasn't been in in, like, ten, twelve weeks. One short, warm text. Not salesy. Just, hey, it's been a minute, we'd love to see you, here's the link if you want to grab a time.
Marcy Holtkamp: I cried about that text.
Eric: You cried?
Marcy Holtkamp: I cried because the first batch went out and I got replies back like, "oh my gosh I was JUST thinking about you." And I thought, you were thinking about me, and I was thinking about you, and we were both just not doing anything about it.
Eric: Yeah. And that's the thing I want everybody to hear. Those weren't lost clients. Those were clients in LIMBO. And limbo clients come back if you give them one easy door to walk through.
Marcy Holtkamp: One door.
Eric: One door. Not a phone call. Not "find us on the socials." A link. In a text. That opens the calendar.
Marcy Holtkamp: It's so simple when you say it.
Eric: It's always simple. The hard part is building it once so it runs without you.
Marcy Holtkamp: And we also, we moved all my client notes into, um, into Notion. Which is separate but you set that up for me too.
Eric: Yeah, Notion's just where we keep the brainy stuff. Formulas, color notes, what she doesn't want you to do to her bangs ever again...
Marcy Holtkamp: The bang graveyard.
Eric: The bang graveyard. That lives in Notion. But the client-facing stuff, the booking, the texts, the reminders, that's all in the one platform.
Marcy Holtkamp: And it's one login. I cannot stress this enough. I have ONE login now.
Eric: Okay so let's talk results, carefully, because I don't want to make a bunch of wild claims.
Marcy Holtkamp: Right.
Eric: What have you actually seen change, in your words.
Marcy Holtkamp: Um. My Tuesdays are not dead anymore. That's the big one. My rebook rate at checkout is way up because now I just... ask. Every time. And the ones who don't rebook at the chair, a bunch of them come back through the text follow-up a few days later.
Eric: And the "we miss you" ones?
Marcy Holtkamp: We got a chunk of people back in the chair who I genuinely thought were gone. Not all of them. But enough that I noticed in my week.
Eric: And how do you FEEL on a Sunday night now?
Marcy Holtkamp: Oh. I don't do the sticky note panic anymore. That's gone. I'm not sitting there going, who did I forget to text. The system remembers.
Eric: That's the real win, honestly.
Marcy Holtkamp: It really is. Because I thought I needed more clients. I didn't need more clients. I just needed to not keep losing the ones I already had.
Eric: Say that one more time, I want it on a t-shirt.
Marcy Holtkamp: I didn't need more clients. I needed to stop losing the ones I had.
Eric: Yes. Okay. For the person listening to this in their car right now, who is you from a year ago...
Marcy Holtkamp: Oh no, that poor woman.
Eric: What's the ONE thing you'd tell them to try this week? Just one.
Marcy Holtkamp: Just one?
Eric: Just one.
Marcy Holtkamp: Rebook them at checkout. Before they leave. Every single one. Even if it feels pushy, which it won't, because they want to come back, they just forget.
Eric: I'd add to that, if you want my one, write the "we miss you" text. Just write it. You don't even have to automate it yet. Open your phone, write one warm, short text, and send it to ten people who haven't been in in a while. This week. That's it.
Marcy Holtkamp: And don't make it salesy.
Eric: Do NOT make it salesy. "Hey, it's been a minute, miss your face, here's my link if you want to come in." That's it. That's the whole text.
Marcy Holtkamp: And then watch what happens.
Eric: And then watch what happens. Because I'll tell you what, the follow-up is the business. The haircut is the product. The follow-up is the business.
Marcy Holtkamp: The follow-up is the business.
Eric: Marcy, thank you for coming on and being real about the sticky notes.
Marcy Holtkamp: Thank you for not making fun of me. Much.
Eric: Only a little. Hey, if you're listening and this one hit a nerve, do me a favor and hit subscribe so the next one finds you. We've got more operators like Marcy coming up and you're not going to want to miss them.
Marcy Holtkamp: Bye everybody. Go rebook somebody.
Eric: Go rebook somebody. We'll see you next week.
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