High Level View of a Successful, Automated, Hands-Off Beauty Business

Hello, my friend. So, I want you to picture this: a new client finds out about you in one way or another, whether it be their friend or their family referring you to them, whether it be a Google search, or maybe they find you on Instagram, wherever it may be. When they find you, they do not bother you, reach out to you, call you, text you at any time of the night. They go onto your website.

They go through your very curated psychological sales process, teaching them, showing them that you are to be trusted, that your prices, your high prices, are absolutely worth it because you are the perfect fit for this person. Then they're like, "Holy shit, I am so ready to book with this person. I will pay whatever amount it takes. Let's get it started."

So then they fill out a short form with every single thing that you need to know exactly if they are the right fit for you and what they need to book so you have the, um, right amount of time in your schedule, and they book for the right amount of time as well. You get the submission, you review this form, and buttons show up in which you can literally click one and send a pre-written automated email to this person telling them exactly what they need to book online. They book online by themselves. They get sent an automated welcome email sequence with multiple emails that are impressing them and blowing them away before they even walk through the door, and they come in and have a personalized next-level elevated client experience with you.

They refer all of their friends to you, the friends that are your ideal client getting your ideal services. They're walking around with beautiful freaking hair. They're like your walking billboard. And you have a client experience that is absolutely undeniable, that sets you up for scalability and so much leverage as a CEO.

This is possible for you. And these systems and this client experience and all of these things, all of these things wrapped together makes it so you have boundaries in your business in which you're not wasting time on your day off, or after a full day of clients on all the little time-sucking admin tasks or client communication. Your clients can reschedule things by themselves. They can answer their own questions.

Even in between the appointments, if they wanna talk to you or ask questions about their hair, there is fielded and very organized, consistent, beautiful ways for them to do so. And best of all, all of this is happening without having to pay somebody, an assistant, a virtual assistant, a receptionist, to do all this stuff for you. And that's exactly what happens when you have a fully automated beauty business. You create true scalability for yourself.

You make things absolutely possible for you that you never thought were possible before. You have a business in which you can think so much bigger and you have so many different digital touch points and so many points of leverage in which it makes it so much easier for you to grow. Social media marketing does not seem so overwhelming for you anymore. It doesn't seem, like, so impossible and miserable because you actually have the time and the white space to take it on.

Growth is easier for you because you have data points, real data that shows you exactly what you need to do to actually get ideal clients into your chair. So, we have a three-step proven process that has worked not only for me, but hundreds of my students inside of Pre-Visit Pathway. And for the first time ever outside of my program, I'm gonna be pulling back the curtain and giving you a high-level overview of what that three-step proven process actually looks like to create a successful, automated, hands-off, scalable beauty business. So, if you're ready to get into it, let's go.

What's the tea, friend? My name's Hunter Donia, industry business educator for hairstylists, but my friends just call me Hunty. Whether it be growing your clientele, making more money, or automating and streamlining your systems, in the next 20 minutes or so, you'll be hearing realistic, actionable strategies to create a beautiful career for yourself behind the chair. So, if you're ready to get into it, welcome to the Modern Hairstylist Podcast.

Okay, my friend, let's dive deep into what a high-level view of a successful, automated, hands-off beauty business actually looks like. So, there's three steps in my proven process. Um, the first step starts with your client experience. Now, here's the thing.

A lot of the times when I talk about automation and systematization and when people come into my course, they're like, "Why do I have to do all this client experience stuff, right? Like, I wanted to get in here and I wanted to streamline and automate and get things off of my plate." Here's the thing. It's super important that you understand, the experience does not start when they sit in your chair, okay?

This experience doesn't start when your client walks through the door. One of the most important parts of the experience happens before the appointment when the client is most anxious, when they are the least trusting of you, um, when they're coming out of their personal life, and maybe even when they are really overdue for getting their hair done and they're feeling really insecure and have a higher elevation of emotion and attachment around what they have going on, when they are about to invest money with you or spend money at all, right? So, you have a- a- a much higher level of sensitivity and emotions going on there, right? And for you to be able to create a pre-visit experience in which you are calming all of those nerves and you are really making it so that person is walking in with the most optimized mindset as a client, for not only just that client to have an excellent, amazing experience with you, but for you to have an amazing experience with them, right?

Because that matters. The better experience that you have working on that client, doing the services that you love, the more you're d- only doing services and clients that you love, the better you're gonna show up for your clients. The better you're gonna be able to serve them, and the better you're gonna be able to serve your business because you're passionate about it. It doesn't burn you out.

And I think I'm— I'm a really big firm believer in most of the time, right, most of the time, only taking clients and services that actually make sense for you, that you're really good at, and that you absolutely love. Now, in the beginning of your career, normally when you're just, like, desperate for clients and you just need to pay the bills, absolutely, take whatever you need to take. But there comes a certain point where it's like, your experience and you have a really beautiful specialty and you're wasting time with all of these other ou- uh, services outside of your specialty that are literally holding you back from so much growth because now you don't have the content, you don't have the referrals, you don't have the continuous experience of the same specialty to be able to grow, to be able to get those specific referrals, right? So, like, think about it, like, if you're doing, like, um, pixie cuts and if you're doing just gray root retouch coverage and you're doing partial foil highlights up to the root, but your specialty is balayage, right?

And so you're spending a, uh, three-fourths of your time doing everything outside of your specialty. So then therefore you only have one-fourth of the time to actually get content and pictures and videos of that work to be able to post on social media. Then only one out of four of your clients are going around and being your walking billboard, and only one of, out of four of your clients are walking around and referring people to you for your specialty, right? So you're saturating your book with all of these people who aren't actually pushing you towards growth, and you're taking away a lot of large opportunity for growth.

You're— you're lessening the possibility of those natural referrals and you to have more digital assets and content to be able to grow within the thing that you love to do and you do the best and that is gonna create the most retention, and therefore the highest prices for you, right? To be able to charge and the most money that you can make. So to be able to have a client who you can make feel really safe and that you know you will serve the best and to give a little bit of an idea to your client about what they're actually walking into I just think is super freaking powerful. Having a client experience that is next level allows you to create scalability in your business.

Now, here's the caveat to this, is that as we know, client experiences, elevated client experiences, especially pre-visit and post-visit experiences, they all too often can take up a lot of our time. Like, it can take up a shit ton of time to where you are working 24/7, like, and it would— it's just ridiculous. And then you have to remember to send these emails and you have to remember to attach the digital welcome packet to that email, and then you have to follow up and write all these nurture emails and then write reminder emails and texts, and it's just too much. It's just unsustainable.

Especially if you're an i- an independent stylist, it is just too much. And it's way too expensive and unrealistic for you to be hiring out somebody to do this for you, especially when technology can completely automate this for you and personalize it to each and every one of your clients, right? And so that's exactly what I teach in Pre-Visit Pathway. Just before I get a little bit deeper into client experience, I want to just make it clear that none of this stuff is stuff that you have to do manually, and you shouldn't be doing it manually.

Because if you do it manually, then you forget. It's not consistent, right? And then your client experience is all over the place and then you're confusing your clients and then the one client is gonna say, "Oh, well, I got this amazing experience with Hunter," but then the oth- that client who's speaking to somebody else who comes to see you, that person is gonna be like, "Oh, well, I didn't get that with him," right? Because we're only fucking human and we have a life outside of doing hair.

I mean, we do h- uh, we do the hair. Our hair c- or... Doing the hair is our full-time job, but then we have a fucking business to run, and that's another full-time job. So if you want to have a client experience that is absolutely elevated and next level and sets you apart and justifies your high prices, then it's gonna cost you a shit ton of time unless you automate and systematize it.

But let's go back to what a client experience that's elevated actually looks like. Personalized experiences. You know that I talk about this all the time. Personalized experiences are the way for you to win in 2023, 2024, and moving forward.

I promise you, people do not want a cookie cutter experience anymore. And no matter how many cool amenities you have, no matter how many cool drinks you have, no matter how many snacks you have, no matter how amazing your scalp massage and shampoo bowl experience is, which yes, that is all important, no matter how cool all that stuff is, if you don't have a fundamental unique reason why your experience is absolutely excellent and why somebody wants to come back to you, such as a personalized experience, it's not gonna be enough. It's just surface level fluff, okay? I just...

I'm a big firm believer in client experience, obviously. I talk about it all the time. And yes, elevated amenities that really set you apart, that are, that blow your clients away on the surface level, such as, like, cool drinks, right? And i- i- i- it's all great and fine and dandy, but I see people focusing way too much on that stuff, and I feel like it's almost like a Band-Aid.

Like, people will get, like, back massagers for their shampoo bowl chair. It's like, that's fucking cool. Like, it's amazing, but it— it's not really fundamentally to its core woven into your experience as to why somebody actually comes back to you. Creating customized personalized experiences for every single client every single time in which they're able to choose their own adventure and— and feel comfortable with you in every single visit, like, optimally, right?

It's just... It is just absolutely the way to win. And there's so many surveys and studies about consumer behavior that are out there right now, you can google them if you want to, talking about how important and next level a personalized experience can be for your customers.So setting yourself apart from the rest of your area, th- this is how we all do it.

We- we- we create a n- next level pr- pre-visit experience. We have a great onboarding strategy. We connect with our clients in between the appointments as well too, and that's super important because we have a bunch of companies, right? We have a bunch of people out there, Madison Reed, Amazon, DIY YouTube influencers who are ch- who are affiliates for Overtone, right?

All of those people are connecting with your clients in between the visits, right? So we need to be able to show up and stay top of mind in between all of that competition to remind our clients who the hell the expert is, right? Because otherwise your client is getting marketed to and bombarded with all these emails and literally these box color companies such as Madelyn Reed, they are specifically using language that is trying to get your client out of the salon, to get them to do their hair at home. So what are you going to do to ha- be just as badass and have an amazing marketing strategy and connect with your clients in between the visits to stand out from that competition?

It's not just about the salon down the road, and honestly, that's not really who you have to worry about. It's really the box color and the fucking brands and the fucking pharmacy and all these people that are marketing to your clients in between, this is how you can set yourself apart. So that is an amazing client experience. Although it's marketing, it's still client experience, it's still part of your fulfillment because then your client feels like you actually give a shit, you know?

And when you market to your clients in between the appointments, there's so many different easy ways that you can do this. Um, things that can be super hands-off and pre-planned and batched and they don't have to be over- overly overwhelming or too much, and I teach all about that within my programs, but to be able to check in with your clients and offer them some value in between the appointments just keeps you top of mind and shows your client that you actually give a shit. People don't want to feel like just a number and people don't want to feel like they're just contributing to a hair factory. They want to contribute to people and, uh, people and salons that actually give a shit about what they're doing and are really passionate about what they're doing and passionate about the clients that they're serving, right?

So yet another way for you to make your client feel like it's absolutely justified for you to be charging high-ass prices for you to make a lot of money. Now let's talk about making your excellent client experience actually sustainable, and let's talk about how to make your business a scalable one, one in which you don't feel like you have to be working 24 freaking 7 to stay on top of it, to maintain it, to grow it, to have an excellent client experience, to serve your clients very well, one that sets boundaries between you and your business but doesn't jeopardize the professionalism or the personal touch of your business. Another big misconception that I feel like people have a lot of the times when I talk about automation and systematization is that we're gonna remove the personal touch. We're going to make it so our clients feel ostracized and that we're just like robots, right?

And we're just like every other thing and we're just making them feel like just a number. And honestly, it is quite the opposite. Like, it is the opposite in the way that I show you how to strategically set this stuff up in PVP. So let's get into it.

The tea is introducing systems to maintain the beautiful experience that you've created is absolutely vital. It keeps you consistent, it makes sure that you have time freedom in your life, it creates scalability, it has foundational things built into it in which you are able to then go into your next venture and not have to worry about that always time sucking and pulling you back into the weeds So let's say you- you have a big dream, right? Like, let's say that you even just have a- a little, big next step in your growth as a business owner. It's like, let's say that you want to hire an assistant, right?

Hiring an assistant takes a lot of time and effort. Let's say that you want to open up your own salon. That takes a shit ton of time and effort. Let's say that you want to get into education, right?

That takes a f- shit ton of time and effort, trust and believe. And if you don't have your current circumstance as streamlined, delegated, and consistent as possible, it's gonna be really difficult for you to give that new venture or whatever that big next step in your growth is any sort of proper focus for it to actually grow, right? You're gonna be pouring from an empty cup because your original circumstance, the daily operations in your business are always going to be pulling back, pulling you back into those daily operations and taking away all that time. The value of your time is so absolutely infinite, my friends.

Like, it's so important that you understand the value of your time the same way that you place the value of money, because time is non-renewable. Time is a non-renewable resource and time is money. Time is going to allow you to make money, but it's gonna be important that you take what you have now and streamline it as much as you possibly can. And like I said earlier, when you have things that are delegated and consistent, where you can turn it on and you can set it and forget it, those other things that take you time, such as social media marketing, such as taking education and actually implementing the education, those things that really overwhelm you, they don't overwhelm you nearly as much anymore because you actually have the time, space, and energy to pour into it It's such a game changer.

I would have never been able to get into education and do what I'm doing now and scale both my businesses to the point where they are at now if it wasn't for me first streamlining my operations and gaining my time back. And I would never have had the motivation to continuously be consistent in my growth and my social media and my marketing. It wouldn't have happened. I would have been burnt out.

I would have given up and I would have been falling behind. I would have been slowly bleeding outSo, that's why this stuff is so important, because it allows you to focus on the big things, the things that are important, the things that actually move the needle forward. So, this is the part that allows you to execute that client experience and execute the daily operations in your business without hands-on work. The piddly admin and communication tasks are taken care of.

No longer are you going back and forth with your client on Instagram in the DMs for weeks and weeks, and for, just for them to ghost you, right? Um, no longer are you having to beg your clients to give you pictures because you have them uploaded onto a form. No longer do you have to manually onboard clients. Now, you have a system that creates boundaries between you and your client because you're not the one doing the booking, they're booking themselves.

And you can trust them to book the right thing because you've streamlined your systems, you've streamlined your menu to where you trust that your client is going to book the right thing because they have to, 'cause you set it up that way. You trust that your online booking can absolutely do the work for you. You have booking procedures that are fit for your lifestyle, fit for you having time freedom, and you don't screw yourself over because you're not squeezing somebody in and coming in early, staying late on your days off. It's funny when I say this, when I say, "Coming in early, staying late on your days off," people will tell me that they don't do that.

Girl, you do it. I promise you, you do it. Y- i- i- if you're sitting in front of Sally at the end of the appointment and Sally's like, "I need this date and time," and you literally don't have anything in your schedule, you're gonna squeeze them in. It just is what it is.

We are just human, and it's so important that we have systems and technology in place that are going to catch us when we are in our human moments, right? When we're not taking the best care of ourselves because we're just humans. When we have, um, signed and dated policies every single visit, right? When we have cards on file because we do things digitally, and because we have those consistent procedures that are easy to roll out to our clients, we reduce our last minute cancellations and no-shows.

We protect ourselves legally, which is so freaking important. We have emergency contacts from our clients, so that way, just in case they have a seizure in our chair, we can call the, their c- their close family member and let them know what's going on. This kind of stuff, you having these systems set up, these procedures, these assets, this leverage allows you to actually treat your business like a business. If you actually care about treating your business like a business, if you wanted to think way bigger, beyond the standard and the norm of this industry, you would understand that this shit is important and it is worth investing in.

It is worth learning, and I'm here to teach it to you. I would love to hold your hand through this process, very much so. And I do that in pre-visit pathway. So automating and systematizing sets you up for a lot of leverage and scalability, protects your business, and allows you to think beyond the chair because now you have time freedom and energy.

You have white space to actually focus on the things that are normally overwhelming, normally you don't have time for. But now you do, right? Now you do, and it's a lot easier for you to implement those things because you have these leverage points. Lastly, rolling out your systems and your client experience to your clients and continuously using them as leverage points.

So now, you have these systems that have set you up for scalability. Now you have these digital points where you're collecting data that allow you to make really great decisions. You now understand how well your website converts clients from lurkers into actually butts into your chair. So you're able to make tests and you're able to actually see if the efforts or the changes on your website or in your social media are actually making a difference for you.

You're able to collect information of where your referrals are actually coming from. So you can say, "Okay, I'm getting the majority of my referrals from this place, so we're gonna invest more in that." Right? Let's say that you're getting a shit ton of referrals from Google My Business, right?

Hey, if you're getting a bunch of referrals from Google My Business, why not throw some ad dollars behind that? Why not pay, pay for that, right? Because then it's just gonna absolutely skyrocket. Let's say that you're getting a lot of referrals from social media, and that's where the majority of your, your inc- um, your income and your referrals are coming from.

Let's pour more resources and more education into what's working. Any successful CEO will tell you, "Do more of what's working instead of trying to fix the broken piece in your business." And then it'll also, on the contrary, it'll also show you where your blind spots are. It'll also show you what your weak points are in your business.

So that way you can be aware of those things, right? And then you can either decide to chuck it and stop spending so much time on it if it's just a lost cause, or you can figure out what you need to do to fix it, and you can test it. There's so many different things I can talk about here. There's so many different ways that having these things set up and actually rolling them out and having them in place and having them all work together, ugh, there's so many ways that can help you in your growth.

And it's so many ways that it can, you can start to treat your business like an actual business instead of just another salon, 'cause we're, quote-unquote, "just hairdressers," right? You're not just a hairdresser. You are a fucking CEO, and you have the capability to create a business that just absolutely explodes, even if it's just you for the rest of time. You can be independent and you can take a two-week trip to Europe without even having to think about it or reschedule people or make up days, like I've done.

You can do that. It's absolutely possible for you, but you have to set up these fundamentals. And in today's day and age where client consumer behavior is changing so fast and the pace of business is so different and things are so competitive and your clients are so inundated by a bunch of marketing, this stuff is what sets you apart. It's what keeps you ahead of the curve.

It's what allows you to implement things easily and focus on the big growth tasks. So now, you have these systems that also protect you as a business owner.You have these systems that serve your client better, consistently. And I think that when we talk about changing the ways that we're doing business, so like, let's say that, like one of the things that I teach too, is, um, having your clients only book online with you.

So instead of them reaching out to you and you, over the phone, booking their appointment, now they only book through online booking. I get it. That can be really scary. Like you think about how your clients could be pissed about it.

They're only gonna be pissed about it if you haven't set it up strategically, if you haven't done your homework and followed a roadmap, a proven roadmap, to make it so that that is rolled out in a way where your clients are actually on board. I show you how to roll out automated systems in such an excellent way where your clients are celebrating you and they're absolutely on board and confident about the way that you want to do business moving forward. So my friends, the result of having all of these amazing systems in place is your retention is so much higher. You have flexibility.

No-shows are basically eliminated or very much lessened. You've created an experience that they cannot find anywhere else in your area. And most importantly, you have the time back to enjoy your life outside of work because you're not consistently checking your DMs, finishing up the time-consuming tasks, or worrying about whether or not you remember to get back to a client while you're supposed to be spending time doing what matters most to you. You can pursue scaling the business and any other ventures because it's all set up to scale without burning you out.

So my friends, I'm here to support you in this journey. It's my mission to make sure that every single hairstylist never says that they wish that they chose a different industry, never lets the fast-paced changing world that we live in and industry that we live in get the best of them and feel like they're getting left behind. I'm here to pull you up to the future, and I'm here to get you past where everybody else is. I want you to be so far ahead of the game that in two, three, five years from now, you're like, "Huh?

I did that already." So I'm here to help you. You can check out my resources, hunterdonahue.com.

Pre-Visit Pathway is my signature course in which I teach people how to do all of this stuff. I hold your hand through every step of the way. I give you the confidence. I give you the tools.

I give you the tutorials. I give you templates that you can plug and play. I give you everything that you need. If you have any questions, please feel free to DM me on Instagram @hairbyhunti.

So much love to you. Peace out, girl scout. Bye-bye.

End of transcript. © 2023 Hunter Donia LLC.