Hourly Pricing, Salon Marketing and Salon Business Skills

Samantha Lacoste is a hairstylist and salon owner and the host of the Secret Life of A Hairstylist podcast.  

She helps hairstylists grow their businesses, stay inspired and find that place to start. For the last 7 years, she has worked as an educator for Redken travelling to different cities educating on colour, working backstage at hair shows and fashion week.

She loves to help salon owners and stylists grow their income through marketing and know they're worth being behind the chair. I love that she is passionate about removing the word just in the phrase I am just a hairdresser because it’s time we change the stigma around hairdressing. Our industry in the last year has flexed, pivoted and learnt new skills faster than most individuals do in their lifetime. We are hairstylists, painters, photographers, social media creators, bloggers, leaders, team players and so much more. But we sometimes lack the skills to tell the world about this and I know Samantha has some marketing concepts to help you in your salon business.

Show notes for podcast episode 68

start making the money you deserve with hourly pricing

We are not double booking as much anymore. You have to consider that gap and processing times need to be accounted for within the pricing. If your business is single booking  (or in other words working 1:1 with a client as opposed to juggling several at once) it's time to review how your price out your services. Our industry has changed with covid and nobody's expecting you to grind like it's 2019. Never has it been a better time to work smarter & not harder with the end goal of running a profitable salon achievable.

Samantha shares the variables to consider with hourly pricing

I must admit my brain is a little boggled at the thought of how to start charging hourly, however, I am really keen to start exploring the concept. After chatting with Samantha I realised there were many ways of doing it & a little research would be necessary to find the right fit for my freelancer colourist business, which of course could be different to a large commission salon business

3 things you must consider before doing the switch to hourly pricing: 

1. Do your research with local and global salons to find a way that resonates with you and your salon 
2. Calculate a Base Price for all your services & then add your hourly on top to ensure your services are covered
3. Make sure you offer different levels for different levels of stylists, eg junior stylists and higher have different prices, plus faster stylists could be priced higher than slower team members

Listen to episode 68 of the Colour Kristina Talks Podcast to learn how to approach hourly pricing for profit.