Part 3: Pros And Cons Of Trending Service Niches (Gray Transformations)

Oh my gosh, friend. I royally messed up, bro. I messed up because I was in our Modern Stylist Movement Facebook group, and a couple people were like, "Oh my God, loved the episodes about trending service niches, but where is the gray transformations?" Because I promised gray transformations in the episodes, and then I- we completely s- forgot it, for whatever reason.

I don't know how or why, but this is us making it up to you. This is gonna be part three, extra little bonus episode to talk all about gray transformations as a trending service niche. This one definitely is a trending service niche that has its own unique, like, pros and cons, and, like, attributes that b- that it brings with it to the business and to the business owner. And I think it's very interesting, so I'm excited to talk about it.

Um, I think, first off with pros, when it comes to gray transformations, it normally is going to be a very long and tedious and crazy process, right? There's gonna be multiple different types of chemical services involved. There's gonna be probably multiple processes. And so therefore, you're probably gonna be able to charge a little bit more for it, especially because this is something that I think a lot of people who are thinking about going fully gray probably expect to be a larger process as well, going completely 100% gray from coloring their roots, like, for a very long time.

I think that the majority of consumers, even if they're not really that educated in hair stuff, I think that they still, most of them have the predisposition that this is going to be a big thing. So you can charge higher ticket for it, and people most likely are going to be budgeting very highly for it. And the other reason for that is, of course, the gray transformation is so that the person does not have to come to the salon as often. So then they're thinking about it more as an, a worth-it investment, a worth-it high investment for a longer return, so they don't have to spend their time and money on getting their roots touch-up on a consistent basis.

I think that the people who I've seen, I don't think I know, the people who I've seen really dive deep into this niche have created extraordinary demand, very similarly to curly specialists. Like, these people get super booked and busy. If you do a really good job at setting up your SEO and your website speaking well to this niche down service, then, and you truly, like, brand yourself as the gray transformation person, then you can really blow your shit up, almost to an undesirable demand, of course. Um, but of course, we'd rather be booked and busy than not, but it definitely brings its own slew of problems.

And it's actually very important that this is a lucrative, high-demand thing because of the cons of this particular service. So the biggest con here is that you are literally... It's designed to reduce your lifetime customer value. So lifetime customer value is the amount of money that somebody will spend with you over the lifetime of them being a customer with you, right?

And so we, as businesses, ideally would like that to be as high as possible, and that equates to what type of services they're getting with you and, of course, how long they come to see you and how often they come to see you. You, this service is literally designed, this niche is designed to make it so somebody stops coming to see you as often. Maybe they only come to see you for haircuts. Maybe they only see you for toners now moving forward, much more low-ticket services.

And low-key, I think that's fine as long as you're being very intentional about trying to increase the average frequency of visits still. Keep them tied to the salon in one way or another with those toners, with those haircuts, with those treatments. That will then fill in maybe any gaps that you may have in between the whole lot of new demand that you have. So this model very much relies on a very full book of a bunch of new clients, right?

And one could say that's very fragile because you're always having to replace a client. So it's important that when you have those new clients coming in, that you're doing everything that you possibly can to prolong their lifetime customer value with you. And that doesn't mean scamming them and, like, making their gray transformation take longer than it needs to. That's not what I'm saying here.

But I'm saying ethically, of course, everybody needs their hair cut. Everybody could use a treatment or a toner, especially these guys, right? Their gray gets yellow or whatever it may be. So, so you wanna make sure that where you're losing, where you have a weakness in a specific part of your business, that you are trying to mitigate that weakness as much as possible, and that's what that looks like is, is, is, is trying to fill in any gaps in between those new clients with these, with r- making returning clients of the transformed people that you may have.

Yeah. Am I cool so far, Jodi? Do you have anything to share before I keep yapping? Yeah, no, I think you're dead on.

I think it's like the pros and the cons are so similar. Like, the pro, obviously, is that, number one, like, your, your people are so educated, 'cause a lot of people who are gonna go through this, like, look at Jack Martin. Like, people traveling from everywhere. And I've seen this happen with a lot of gray specialists is, like, that is one of the biggest reasons that someone would leave their existing stylist is to look for this very specialized niche and service.

So your pool of potential clients gets a lot bigger. But then also, you know, like you said, all of those cons in terms of, like, that retention. It's like bridal specialists, right? People often are getting married, like, very few times in their lives, so you do need to always make sure you're going with that, um, retention.

But I think... Or sorry, with that new client, um, like, attraction. But I do think one of the coolest things is, like, there's so much identity marketing that can happen around this service, and it's, like, a really huge, um, like, thing for people who are going through this transition. Like, there, it's such an identity shift for people that you get to be part of this really cool transformation.

So that's the only thing I would add. No, thank you for adding that, 'cause I completely forgot to bring that up in the pros. And I think that's a, a big pattern between a lot of the niches that we talked about in this series here, that, uh, most of these are large, big deals for people. I mean, hair is such a huge part of people's identity in one way or another, and when you're able to, first off, have actual content and have the innate nature of the specialty be this, like, large difference, right?

You have great marketing material, and you're able to show people very shocking things, very ca- uh, eye, uh, catching things. You have very clear, um, understanding of what the pros and cons are, what the pain points are, the objections, and you're able to market to it very easily and well. You're able to, especially with this particular thing, you can get very specific with the demographic that you're targeting very quickly and easily, and that makes your marketing even that much better. Because normally you're talking to some sort of specific age range, and that makes your, that makes your marketing even that much more targeted and more effective, and again, allows you to charge a higher ticket because people will pay more if they're more specifically targeted, if it's made just for them, right?

Yeah. So thank you for bringing that up. And, you know, there's probably some of you guys, 'cause this is o- this is kind of like the flip side of it, or I guess, like, on the other hand, or, um, maybe we're contradicting ourselves. I do think that the majority of people walk into it definitely l- Googling s- like, trying to see what the process is.

They're aware that it's gonna be a large transformation. On the flip side, I do think that there still is education to be had and different misbeliefs and myths to bust through for the stylist when they, when the, when the client sits in the chair. Because you need to explain, because everybody has their own methods about how they're gonna go about this. I don't think there's, like, one standard way that somebody does a gray transformation.

There's a million different ways that you can go about it, and it very much changes based upon the base that you're working on, right? With the integrity of the hair, what they were getting done before, all that stuff. And so you as the stylist now have to really educate a lot. And I actually just talked to a stylist, uh, this past week who started to add...

Because there's also, like, there's a diaspora of this niche, right? So there's not just gray transformation, where it's, like, zero to 100. There's also gray blending. There- Yeah ...

and there's different types of gray blending. And so this person does, like, a specific type of gray blending where there are no highlights involved. Like, it's only lowlighting. So, like, she only lowlights to kind of, like, blend in the gray instead of actually covering it all up.

And what she found was she literally felt like she had to book a 30-minute consultation for every single one of these color clients just to break up these misconceptions, just to share the difference in her approach, and actually make sure that her and the client were on the same page. So I do think that, especially if we're gonna be charging higher ticket for something and somebody's gonna be investing a lot of money, if they're gonna be traveling far, because yes, just as you said, Jodi, people are literally flying to these people. They are driving hours. Like, it genuinely is, that is what we're seeing out there with these people who are niching down on this.

If they're gonna be investing that much time and money, they probably are gonna have a lot of questions, and you are gonna have to very thoroughly explain to them the, the expectations, set the expectations, and that absolutely adds a lot of labor to the job that you're doing. Um, and a lot of communication and upfront expectations. That is, that becomes very... It, it adds more risk, and it adds more labor as far as communication goes.

And this person I was speaking to about this this past week was just so exhausted from it, from having to just talk about this over and over and over. And so we came up with some systems that would make sure that before they even get to that point, that they were a little bit more clear. And what a lot of people end up doing when they, when we're dealing with service, services that are very involved, I think what we tend to do is we almost over-educate upfront or something like that. Right.

Or we try to cover every base and answer every question before they get to the chair. And technically, yes, but also, people don't read, and people are all gonna have their own unique, weird situations. And so this person was adding, like, paragraphs of, like, disclaimers and information to, like, so that way, when they got there, they didn't have these same questions, and they kept on having these same questions. And I was like, "Well, it's because you have paragraphs.

Like, you need to just have one bold statement that says, 'This does not include highlights.'" Like, that's it. Right. You know?

Like, we need to make sure that it's nice and simplified upfront, so that way people have their expectations clear before you get there to reduce your labor. Right. So a little tip for you guys who are dealing with that type of stuff out there, but again, that's a big con, is that you have to deal with these setting, settings of expectations and answering a lot of these questions. And then of course, unpredictable results.

You don't know how the box dye that Susie has been putting on her head or even the professional color that Susie has been putting on her head for the past couple years is going to lift, and are we gonna get it to white or gray without breaking it off, right? So that means more time with test strands. That means more, um, uh, uh, unclear or unpromised expectations. That probably increases the opportunity for redo requests and bad reviews.

So you are definitely adding a lot more risk, but I think that, of course, it's all about how you approach your service and how you approach setting those expectations, of course, and there's absolutely a really great way to do that. And then lastly, very labor-intensive. The people who have gotten really successful in doing this are, are, are very sick of how long it takes, how much labor it is, how they're highlighting every single little piece of hair on the head, and I could only imag- I mean, I could only imagine. I've done this.

I know that it's, I know that it's a lot, and I couldn't imagine- Oh ... doing it day in and day out. So you have to really enjoy it. You have to love it.

And I think on the flip side of that, though, if you truly build this as something where you have a lot of demand for it, let's say that you do have to sacrifice a lot of labor and time for these things. Normally, that means that you will be able to charge a lot of money for it. Right. Okay, fine.

It's a shit ton of labor, right? Like, it's very tiring. It sucks, right? But what if you could make a shit ton of money doing two of these a week and not having to work at all otherwise?

Yeah. Right? I think that that could be very worth it to people, but I don't really think that a lot of people are thinking that big or have the coaching- Yeah ... to know how to actually make it get there, you know?

And it's 100% possible. Like, the other day, I had somebody who was talking to me about this, and they were like, "This is so much labor. This is so exhausting." And I was like, "And it, right now, it's like $1,000 or something or other."

Yeah. Okay? And she's getting a ton of requests, it's ridiculous, for this service that she is really sick of, but she's really made a name for herself in. And I'm like, "Why don't you just double the price?"

I'm literally- Yeah ... like, "Double the price and see what happens," right? Yeah. Like, literally make it $2,000 and see if you still get requests for it.

And that way, you can take a whole, you can do one whole less of these. You can take a whole day off and just do one of them, and that's what happens when you create a really beautiful specialty, you know how to market it well, and you have hardcore demand for something. That is the leverage that you create for yourself. And so that's why I wanted to talk about some of these trending service niches, talk about the pros and cons of them, so that way those of you out there who are thinking about them understand what you're getting yourself into.

But I do want to highlight the general overall message here, is that this shit is really powerful. And no matter how you approach your business, niche down or not, or what niche that you go into, in business, there's always going to be pros and cons. There's always going to be a challenge and a benefit, or an opportunity. Like, it's just, it just is what it is.

There is not, like, the perfect cheat code or hack, whether it be extensions or whatever it may be. But if you are aware of w- of the nature of what your business is doing and the unique nuances that it has, then you're able to mitigate the risks and the challenges as much as possible, so that way you can fully maximize the opportunity that's there. So, so sorry for forgetting about gray transformations. I love all of my gray transformer people out there.

And I hope that you all have a blessed rest of your day. Peace out, Girl Scout. Keep making these people gray. Bye-bye.

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