How To Phase Out Services That You No Longer Do

Hello, my friend. Welcome back to The Modern Hairstylist podcast. So whether it is that there are unprofitable services in your chair right now, right? Unprofitable services that you could be filling with services that would make you more money, that would bring you more joy, that would make more sense, right?

Um, that could be a reason why you're listening to this episode today. Maybe it's your body telling you, "Hey, you gotta stop this. I can't take any more of this," which is completely justified and completely important for you to be listening to and taking in consideration. Maybe it's just that you have earned the right to not do services that you absolutely love and enjoy anymore.

Whatever your reason is for listening to today's episode, even if you're just curious about this and you're not at this place yet and you just wanna learn, I'm super excited to break down to you how to phase out services in your b- in your business behind the chair that you no longer do. Now, I understand this can be so emotionally scary. There are a lot of different moving parts to it, and you wanna make sure that you go about it the right way, and you also wanna know if it really is the right decision for you. So we're gonna be walking you through so many tangible steps today, so many things that you should just take in consideration.

I've done this myself in my own business, and I've coached hundreds of people to do it in their own business as well. And so I know it's scary, I know it's difficult, but in this episode, we're gonna break it all down for you. So if you're ready to get it poppin', 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. So the tea is, is there's a lot of different reasons why you may end up in this specific situation, and a lot of the times, it's because you have something that you specialize in, right?

Like, you have a service that you specialize in, and you want to focus on making room and space to do more of that. And I think that's beautiful, and I think it's super important to take in consideration. Now, depending on where you're at in your journey, you may not be ready to do this yet, right? So it's gonna depend on why you wanna go ahead and b- and do this, and then, depending on where you're at in your journey with this, you might want to approach it in a different way as well.

So we're gonna be talking about all of that. But first, I want you to consider, if you're gonna phase out a service that you no longer are going to do, right? If you're gonna phase out a service at all, what is the why? If it is because you want to make more room on your schedule to do more of something else, then you need to make sure that you have the demand on your time for the other services that you're going to keep.

Because if you have, like, 80% of your book is those services that you're getting rid of, or something like that, then, you know, you better have 80% of people to replace those people. Can't just get rid of services and stop doing them super early on if you're not going to be able to financially prosper. And if there isn't enough demand in your time for that specific service, but you need to make room to be able to do more of it to get more of it into your chair, then that's when we consider just making a price increase, right? Like, if there's a lot of demand in your time just for general services across the board, then you should be mitigating that with a price increase, right?

So that way you have just space in your, in your schedule in general to be able to take in more of those specialized services. But if that's not the case, if we're at a space where it's, like, a price increase isn't really gonna help you, and you have a lot of demand for, let's say, color, but you keep getting all these haircut-only services that are messing up your book and not allowing you to have enough space to fit in these colors, then that's when we do wanna hundred- 100% wanna consider actually just removing the service altogether, or increasing the price, right? Increasing the price. There's these two different options that you have here, and you wanna make sure that w- you're, you're considering the why and the demand of your time when it comes to deciding whether or not you want to just price people out of that service, or if you actually just wanna completely take that service out of your book in general.

'Cause if you just have, like, a handful of people that, uh, that, you know, you're like, "Well, I do this service every now and then, and I really don't wanna do it anymore, and I don't like the people that are getting them," then just remove the service, like period. Like, just say goodbye, "I'm not doing this anymore, it is what it is." But let's say that you have a lot of people that get that service done. Let's say that you have people who you absolutely love that get that service done, right?

Um, then maybe you'd wanna consider increasing your prices a lot and pricing people out of that specific service instead of completely removing it. I would say that's a little bit more of, like, a classic way of going about it. Like, I think that a lot of more, like, conservative, safer coaches would probably coach more to just pricing people out instead of completely removing it. But the tea is, is we know that sometimes people will pay whatever they can, if you are really good at that service or if people are really loyal to you or you have a great client experience, right?

And so if you just have to remove the services, I wouldn't give you the permission to do so, because if that's truly what it's gonna take and you just genuinely are done with it, then remove the fricking services. But you also have the option of increasing that price, and if you increase that price, you'll be able to keep a handful of those people. Like, let's say that you do enjoy still doing haircuts every now and then, but you have a lot of them on your book, right? Just increase the price of that specific service, um, a lot, you know, a lot, to purposefully remove people from your book that are specifically getting that service, and that way you can keep the people who are willing to pay you a premium to get that service done.

Furthermore, you can mix these strategies together. So whether it be increasing your price and genuinely just removing the services, how about maybe we consider, okay, I only want somebody who is going to pay a high price for this service, and they better be somebody who is an ideal client who definitely brings me joy. 'Cause that's how I went about removing haircut-only services from my book, is not only did I significantly increase the prices of my haircuts, but I also completely removed the option from specific people who I didn't want to do those haircuts on anymore. And so I basically reached out to each of those people and I said, "Hey, unfortunately, I'm not going to be offering this service anymore, because it just does not make sense for the demand on my time for the other services that I'm specialized in.

So I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna cancel this appointment with you that's coming up, and I'd recommend that you go to these other people in the area."And then I kept my very small handful of haircut-only clients that I absolutely love, that will pay that premium price, and that are loyal clients that, you know, I wanna keep in my book and then help fill in those little weird hour gaps every now and then. You know what I mean? And so, you know, that's kind of, like, the, the, the alternative.

So you kind of have three options here. You can raise the price and price people out and just keep it that way, you can completely stop doing them if you really want to, or you can kind of get rid of the people who are getting those services done that really bring you down or get the t- get a type of that service that you don't do really well, like let's say it's, like, pixie cuts that you just, like, are done with doing short cuts for whatever reason, maybe they're labor-intensive, maybe you're just not confident in how you're doing them, and you keep haircut-only services that are, you know, long hair or whatever it may be. That is something that you can go ahead and consider to do if you would like to. You would just wanna make sure that those individual, let's say, haircut-only clients know that they are special and that they are getting grandfathered in and it's because of their loyalty to you, it's because you really enjoy getting to see them, and to make sure that they don't share with their other friends that you're still doing that service, right?

You'd wanna keep it on the low. So, those are your three different routes and it's gonna depend on your specific situation and how comfortable you are with each of those situations and it's gonna be up to you as a CEO to decide, like, which one is the best fit for you, right? But nonetheless, you really wanna consider the demand on your time. Like, can you afford to lose those people, right?

Is there's gonna be somebody who's gonna replace them moving forward? Because if there's not, then you're not gonna get a paycheck if you can't fill in those gaps, so it's gonna be important for you to make sure that if you, uh, if you ever wanna phase out anything, that you have people who are going to be able to replace those spots or that you can afford to lose those spots in your book. Okay, so now that we've talked about why you might wanna do this and then how you should actually go about it as far as, like, the foundational strategy, like whether or not you're going to do a price increase and price people out of that service, whether you're just gonna remove it all together or kind of do a combo or both, let's talk about your emotions. Let's talk about how you feel about doing this, right?

'Cause that's the biggest thing that holds us back at the end of the day, you know? The strategy's important, and yes, it can stop us, but the biggest thing stopping us is our fear and also our broken hearts over the people that we won't be seeing anymore, right? I understand, as hairstylists, we create these beautiful relationships with these people and we catch up with them and we see them more than we see our own extended family and likewise to them, right? Like, they see you more than that and you guys catch up, uh, very, very often and know what's going on in each other's lives and you might really, really enjoy working these, with these people.

And to that I say, I totally get it. I understand. I've been there. I've had to cut off relationships, uh, with clients because of price increases, because of removing services from my own book.

So I've been there. I feel you, right? Um, and when you've been seeing somebody for five years, it can be really difficult to implement something like this. And to that I say, as the CEO of your business, I want you to take a step back and I want you to ask the reason why you are working so hard to build this business and what you really want it to do for you at the end of the day.

Is it that you want this business to provide you fulfillment and passion and joy or is it that you want it to provide you the lifestyle while making a living doing something that you love that you and your family deserve for yourself? That's when we split apart your personal life and your work life, right? Like, you as the CEO and you as the human being Um, I was listening to a life coach not too long ago talk about how it can kind of be toxic and kind of be unhealthy to rely on our business to bring us joy, happiness and fulfillment even though they can. And even though it can be really easy to get caught up in these relationships that we create, and these are real human beings, right?

I'm not saying that they're not. Um, but I am saying that sometimes we need to take a step back and really think about who matters to you the most in the long run and what are you taking away from yourself, from your family, from the people who really matter to you the most, who love you the most, who don't pay you for a service, right, to get done for them, who don't, you know, rely on you or that you don't rely on them for, for your income, right? Those people, right? What are you taking away from them by keeping this service in your book or by keeping these people in your book even though you love them, right?

You're taking away your own potential for growth, your own joy. Um, you'll potentially become resentful, right? Not to mention, you know, you wanna be doing people b- and services behind the chair that completely light you up and that totally makes sense because you'll be doing that person, that person that you love so much, you'll be doing them a disservice in the long run if you continuously serve them with services that you hate or that you feel like you could be putting in a color at this time but this person booked in the middle of your day and completely mess up your schedule, right? That stuff starts to brew and, and, and, uh, you start to ruminate in your brain with that stuff and it w- you will eventually end up taking it out on your clients, on your own business, on your own family and your friends You're taking away all that beautiful growth potential for yourself.

So, I understand, we've created this relationship, but at the end of the day, business is business, right? And you have to think analytically as a CEO if this business is truly something that you want to create to support you in your own personal life. And sometimes thinking analytically as a CEO is removing the emotion from it, of course, and doing the really hard thing that might suck, but it's necessary for you to move forward. Okay?

So, that's my little pep talk for you. The other thing is the fear, the fear of is this person gonna be mad, wh- who am I to say that I don't do haircut-onlys anymore, right? All of that stuff comes and creeps in as well too. And to that, I will share with you that, you know whatSometimes if you're not uncomfortable, you're not growing, and sometimes you have to feel the fear and do it anyway.

And if on paper this all makes sense, then go ahead and freaking do it. Because as I said, the CEO, the analytical CEO, yes, you may be scared, but if you step into that role, then you are willing to feel the fear and do it anyway because you know on the other side of this that all of that shit does not matter at the end of the day, the temporary uncomfortability, not to mention the uncomfortability that you're already feeling right now before even making the change. Once you make that change, once you get to the other side, all that uncomfortability will be over, and you'll be so glad that you made the switch, made this change, made the decision, whatever it may be, for any aspect of a decision that you wanna make in your life and your business, right? So I would rather you live with a little bit of temporary discomfort of people being a little bit upset with you, strategically approaching those things, and moving through all of the weeds so that way you can get to the other side feeling so much better and relieved and setting your future self up for a lot of success and joy.

Hopefully that, those little pep talks were helpful for you as far as the emotions around this goes. Let's talk about how you actually go ahead and roll this out, right? How you roll this out. So here's the thing.

If you're going to be doing a price increase, right, if you're gonna be pricing people out of this service, what I would do is, is I would send an email to all of the people who get that service done with you specifically if you're not going to be also raising the prices of your other services, right? So, like, if you're only gonna do a price increase that is just for raising the specific service, then I really only want you to, like, announce a price increase to the people who only get that service done with you, right? Like, there's no need to, like, tell all your other clients that you're only increasing on that one service. Um, so I would send an email just to those people.

Furthermore, I would send an email just to those people even if you are just genuinely removing the service, and I would say, "Moving forward, I won't be taking these appointments anymore." So now let's talk about how you'll actually go ahead and roll this all out to your clients. So the tea is, it's gonna kinda depend on whether or not you are going to be doing this w- with i- individually pricing this service, um, higher than your other services or just giving it a big price increase to get people out of that service or whether you're gonna be removing it altogether. So if you're just gonna be removing it altogether across the board and/or if you're going to be doing a price increase, an email is the best way to go about it.

Now, for removing it altogether, reaching out and saying, like, "Hello, everybody. Thank you so much for your loyalty and your support in my business thus far. I really, really have appreciated getting to know you and appreciate every single time that you come back and see me to trust me with your beauty needs," whatever it may be. Something like that.

And then furthermore share, "Moving forward, um, I've had- made the very difficult decision to remove X service from my book, and the reason why is because of the high volume of request and demand for these other services, and I'm unable, unfortunately, to serve those people because of these specific services being in my chair as of right now, and it just only makes sense for me to make room for those services that I specialize in. I don't believe I'm able to serve you to the best of my ability 'cause I'm mostly only getting education pertaining to these specialized services and not the services that I normally do on you. Therefore, I will be removing them and think that you will be much better served with somebody else moving forward. Here are recommendations for other specialists within that service that you're looking for that you normally get done with me."

Boom, boom, boom, phone number, website for three, maybe, recommendations. "And if you have any questions, then please reach back out to me, and I'll be happy to answer them." Now, here's where you're gonna wanna consider whether or not you'd like to keep some of those appointments, right? Because maybe people already have those appointments booked with you, right?

So, like, let's say that you're removing haircut-only services, but you have, like, Sally in your chair in a week that has a haircut-only service, right? It's gonna be up to you whether or not you want to take that appointment or not, right? I think kind of the quote unquote "right" thing to do is to, you know, go ahead and fulfill that service and, like, make it your last time and have that conversation in person. However, if you feel like you're going to, you know, give in, um, if you feel like it's gonna be too emotionally taxing for you, if the person is gonna give you a bad attitude or whatever it may be, right?

I'm also gonna give you permission to, um, reach out to them through text message and share with them the tea personally. And this is only if you're going to be removing their pro- appointment that they already have booked with you, right? I would reach out to them personally and say, "Hey, don't know if you got my email or not, but I wanted to reach out personally because I know that you had an appointment booked with me in two weeks from today, and because of me removing this service, I don't think it would make much sense for me to do your hair one last time. Um, so here are the other people that I'd recommend to- for you to go see, and here is exactly what I do on you so that way they can see what I- what I recommend."

And then you can very easily communicate with your new stylist what you're looking to get done, right? So do you see how I, like, supported that person in- in this transition, in defining somebody else? Um, and then I would also share, "So I've taken the liberty of taking out your appointment." Yeah, yeah, you can say that as well.

"And I'm s- completely supporting them and sending them up with every single thing that they need to be successful moving forward, and I'm taking out that appointment so that way I don't have to fulfill it." That's only if you want to. So you have the option. Like, you can take on that last appointment if you really want to have that in-person confrontation, say, like, "This is the last time," along with the email that they may or may not have already seen, or you can just cancel the existing appointment that's already on your book, if that makes sense for you, but that's gonna be completely up to you.

I just really wanted you to make sure that if you are gonna cancel those existing appointments, that you reach out to each of those people individually and you take really good care of them because it is kinda inconvenience for you to- for them, right, for you to be, like, canceling an existing appointment, and I want you to be able to handle that, like, on a one-on-one basis, right? That is how you go ahead and roll it out. As far as the price increase goes with that email, like, rolling back, if it's a price increase email and it's not like, "Um, we're getting rid of these services across the board," then you'll just share, "Please note that I've- I've had an adjustment in my prices specifically pertaining to this- this service. Um, here is the change.

Please make sure that you take note of it moving forward. Um, if you have any questions, please reach out back to this email, and I'll be happy to get, uh, to have that conversation with you," right?And in my programs, in Pre-Visit Pathway and my other programs, um, I teach to a form, right, or, um, a leverage point in which you can also make sure that clients see that new price prior to coming into the door, and then furthermore even, like, leaning into online booking, et cetera, et cetera. Making sure that they are fully aware of that price before they come into the door will help you so much with taking care of those expectations in the f- in the first place.

But then also, you know, making sure that you're asking that person when they come in to see you, um, if they saw the email, so that way you have the chance to explain that price increase before going through their full service will be very important as well too. So, that's how you could roll any of the above out, okay? Now, if you are going to remove those services completely but you wanna keep a handful of people, so like let's say that there's people who, like, really bring you joy and they're willing to pay a higher price, what you're gonna wanna do is, is make sure that you let them know the T, okay? You wanna make sure that you let them know the T, and if you are going to have them book online with you, you'll obviously wanna probably take off some of those services off of your, like, online booking, right?

Because you don't want other people... I- if you told people that you were phasing out those services out of your book, you don't want those people to somehow end up back on your online booking and see that you are offering that service to other people, right? So, custom booking widgets, which is a strategy that I teach in my programs but it's also just, like, a s- uh, a feature within some booking softwares, in which you can s- create very special links specific to, uh, whatever service that you only wanna put in there. So, you could take, like, let's say a haircut-only service and you could make a specific link just for your haircut-only clients that you'll be keeping that'll be just for them that they don't share with anybody else, and then your front-facing online booking won't have that s- uh, service on there for them to see, right?

Um, so you can create a custom booking widget to kind of s- keep it separate if you want to. You could even put in, like, parentheses in that service on your online booking. You could say, like, "Only for grandfathered-in, uh, clients, uh. No new haircut-only clients, uh, are allowed," or something like that, right?

So that's how you could kinda keep it separate and still have your handful of people that you still serve within that service if you want to, 'cause I know that I do. I have my, I have my little handful of haircut-only clients even though I don't take on new ones and I don't offer them to people who aren't already getting only, uh, color services with me, right? So the c- like, a haircut has to be paired with a color service. It is what it is in my business.

So, make sure that you can, uh, you consider some custom, custom booking widgets, and then furthermore, with your service menu on your website, if you're going to, let's say, use that example. Like, let's say that you are, you're including all haircuts in your color services or you're, you're not taking haircut-only clients yet you are still gonna cut people's hair with, paired with a color service, right? Make sure that that's explained on your service menu so that way it's, like, up front and center, people really understand it. And especially if you're gonna include your haircuts in your service pricing, like, for, like, let's say, like, sessions, you wanna make sure it's very big and obvious that you include that haircut in there, 'cause otherwise people will probably get confused, okay?

So, that is, like, the crash course, my friend, on how to phase out services that you may no longer want to do. I know it's a lot and I broke a lot down in a very short amount of time, but regardless, I hope that this was helpful for you and I am rooting you on in this big, scary decision that you're making. And as long as you feel like you deserve it, that you have a stable enough business and foundation to remove those services and fill them u- fill those gaps up with services that you absolutely love, lights you up, and makes sense for the profitability and longevity of your business, then I am very much excited for you to make the change and I'm rooting you on over here, my friend. Thank you for tuning in to The Modern Hair Stylist podcast.

Peace out, girl scout. Bye-bye.

End of transcript. © 2023 Hunter Donia LLC.