What to Do When You Can't Fit in New Clients (No Hiring Needed)

If you are in a position in which a new client would have to wait a long time to come see you for the first time, or you just cannot fit in any new clients at all, then you are losing money by the minute, in the short-term and the long-term. It is so important that us as hairstylists, who are growth-oriented and who truly want to raise our income, are able to fit in new clients and are getting new client requests on a consistent basis. Now, for a lot of us hairstylists, it might sound like a beautiful problem to have, where you are so booked and busy that you cannot fit in a new client. However, it is still a problem.

And those of you who are in that situation, you understand how nuanced a problem it is and how emotionally tough it can be when you've explored the options for how to go about this, 'cause you wanna keep your loyal customers happy and pay them respect. But you also know that getting new clients into the door is super important for your success, and the reason that is, is because having new clients in your chair is going to make sure that you have a stable foundation for your business right now and for your growth in the future. As you move through price increases and as life changes, as people move, as people's circumstances change, it is very important that you always are acquiring new customers moving forward, because it is inevitable that you are going to lose existing customers in one way or another. So those people do have to be replaced.

So, here's the thing. I've had a lot of experience with this particularly. I was super booked and busy, three and a half months book solid, five new client requests a week, and it was absolutely stressful. I was coming in early, staying late on my days off, and it was really hard for me to pull the trigger on the things that I knew would probably help me in getting these new clients actually to be able to fit in, uh, with me.

So, what I'm gonna be sharing with you today are the options that you have for being able to fit in new clients moving forward. So if you're ready to hear them, then let's get into it. Let's go. Okay, so I wanna just first couple this all with the fact that this is all gonna go back to supply and demand.

It's like, you are playing with the economic rule of supply and demand. You only have so many hours available to work and to offer services, and then you have demand on your time, so the amount of clients who are wanting your supply, right? And so, all of these options are gonna help you balance out your supply and demand. I'm going, I always go back to the example of the pandemic quarantine at the very beginning, and like the toilet paper apocalypse, when every single freaking person and their mother wanted a million rolls of toilet paper, right?

So they were like destroying the grocery stores, filling their carts with a million different, um, uh, toilet paper rolls, and then they were completely sold out on the shelves. The s- the price of toilet paper skyrocketed and the supply was very low, but the demand was extremely high. And so that is a pretty good tangible example that everybody understands when it comes to supply and demand. And so what the company does, normally, is raise their prices, like I said, because that will make it so less people are desiring that product because of the barrier of entry with their price, right?

And so that's the first option that you have, and it's the obvious one, it's the one that a lot of people already know about. Um, it's also the hardest, uh, sometimes for people to actually, you know, act fo- act upon, to make happen, um, as are these other options as well that I'll be sharing with you. It's all tough, you know? Putting these things into place and setting boundaries and making these difficult decisions in which you may lose people is really difficult.

But I have a bunch of different other episodes that you can listen to about that if you would like to. But raising your prices is the main way to make it so you are making room in your schedule, because existing clients of yours may not find your new prices to be feasible for them and their budget moving forward. But the beauty is, is that if you've built enough demand for yourself, if you're getting new client requests on a consistent basis, then you know that there will be another person to replace the person that is leaving, right? And that new client has a m- uh, has a much higher standard as far as what they are willing to pay, um, as far as your prices go to be able to get services done, which is setting you up for a lot more success and stability as you increase your price year after year, right?

Because that person has h- has a much higher budget, most likely, and is, and much more willingness to continue on with you. Um, so raising your prices is absolutely the number one way to balance out your supply and demand, and that's my pretty straightforward first option. Now, I also have a bunch of episodes about price increases in general, the decisions that you make around them, and I talk a lot about how there's two different types of price increases that you could have, the first one being a cost of goods increase, and then the other one being a revenue increase. The cost of goods increase normally is going to be a $5 to $10 increase.

A revenue increase is gonna be anything more than that, and if you truly want to lose clients, you have to raise your price high enough to make that happen, because a lot of the time, especially if you are a booked and busy stylist, you most likely have a foundational clientele that is not going to leave you just because they, th- just because you raised your price 10 bucks, right? Um, so it needs to sting a little bit. It should sting a little bit if the reason for your price increase is to clear out some of the demand, so that way you can fit in these new people, right? So, just take that in consideration.

I've seen so many hair stylists be in the same position, and uh, they'll go ahead and raise their prices, but they don't raise them enough to where it actually makes a dent in their book. Yes, they'll make more money, but they still have the same issue and it still adds the stress and the pressure of having these new client requests, but not being able to do anything about it. Now, before I get into the next two options, I do think it's worth mentioning that it's really important that you do not stop taking new client requests. I think that you should always be fielding these, this interest.

I think that you should always allow a new client to still inquire with you about this, and have automated systems on the backend that allow you to have a backlog and also give that new client a pre-visit experience, even if you are unable to get them in for an appointment, even if you can't even promise a timeframe for when that may happen. So I teach in my programs a really cool wait list strategy, and with the tools that we teach, there's really amazing ways that you can set up automated sequences that would make a new client inquiring with you who would not be able to get in with you immediately, um, still interested in getting an appointment with you, which will set you up for a lot of success in the meantime while you're making changes that will allow you to make room. So like, let's say a new client gets on your wait list-And it's three months later, right? Th- it's very likely that that person may have been looking around for another hairstylist within that long timeframe.

They've given up on you. But if you have some sort of email sequence in place, or if you at least have a space so that way you can reach out to them when you are ready to take on new clients, then you are going to set yourself up for more success in the future. And not- not wasting those leads, right? Like, you at least can do something about them or have a chance to do something with them later.

So make sure that you are fielding new interests and you're never in a position where you're saying, like, "I'm not taking any new clients," you're just shooting yourself in the foot and you're not even giving those people a chance. But that should be a temporary solution. Like, if you're in a space in which you're getting new client requests and you have to put them all on a wait list and you can't promise a timeframe for them to get in with you, you need to be doing something differently to be able to allow those requests to still funnel in. And so that way- a- and- and get to a point where you can actually fit them in.

The- another option for you is to have a limited booking range. So I teach a limited booking range strategy that's worked really successfully for myself and a lot of my students, um, and it's really great for you and your work-life balance, and it's really great for giving all of your clients a chance to get in with you. Now the caveat to this is that it's still going to apply a lot of pressure and it's not going to lower the demand. However, it is going to give all of your clients a fair chance to get in with you.

So what this may look like is your book is only open for a certain amount of time. So your book is not open all year round, it's only open for, let's say, two months at a time or 60 days at a time. And so therefore you are creating new availability on a consistent basis as time moves forward, and then that gives everybody a fair chance to be able to get onto your schedule because there's constant new appointments opening up on a regular basis. But again, that doesn't balance out the demand, right?

It doesn't lower it because you still have the same amount of clientele. So let's talk more about how we can balance out that supply and demand, which brings me to restructuring. So restructuring is going to be another thing that you can consider that will definitely lower your demand, but it's something that can be really beneficial and a- and advantageous for you as the business owner to regain some more work-life balance into your life, um, and to be able to enjoy your job and your career a little bit more. And also reap the benefits of all of the labor that you've put in up until this point and all the success that you've built.

So restructuring looks like running your business in a different way. It looks like maybe changing your hours, so dwindling them down, working less, or it means, uh, working different days and times that are more convenient for you and not as conventional or accessible to the majority of the public. So this could look like not working Saturdays anymore, not working evenings anymore, just working mornings during the week, right? That's th- you know, the- the- the majority of- of- of people would like that type of schedule.

Not everybody does. That's totally understandable. You can work your whatever schedule you want to. But a lot of the times when you've gotten to a point where you have so much demand, where you have people who are willing to come in at those maybe less convenient times, then you can afford to go ahead and do that because you know that you have the foundation to be able to still stay afloat if you do that.

But when you do that, you are going to affect the demand because you are adding more pressure to your clients and you're adding more inconvenience to your clients so that a lot of them may not be able to make that work for them, and they may see that and they may be already paying a high price with you, and then that may be the final string that makes them want to leave you and find another option, right? But maybe that's exactly what you need, hence the entire topic of this episode, right? So- and this can be done in tandem with a price increase as well, but maybe if you're going to do a price increase and a restructure, th- such as changing your schedule, your price increase wouldn't be as much if you were only doing a price increase. Because if you do a really intense price increase and you change your schedule and you do this and you do that, you may have a lot more fallout than you actually wanted.

We definitely don't want to make super erratic decisions and make it so, you know, a- you lose an- your entire clientele, right? But we do want to do just enough to make it so you get what you wanted and what you needed so that way you can make room but still have a steady, strong foundation of clientele. So you can either do a restructure completely by itself without raising your prices if you would like to, if that makes sense as of right now, or you can do them in tandem, but just make sure that your price increase isn't too much as you're doing some sort of inconvenient, uh, schedule change with your hours. Another restructure that you could look at for your business is completely niching down in services.

So this would look like taking your specialty or the services that are most profitable or most enjoyable for you and only doing those moving forward, and then removing services from your current repertoire of things that you offer. So for a lot of booked and busy hairstylists who are more specialized, a- a- a lot of the time this will look like removing haircut-only appointments. So this will look like if you're gonna get a haircut with me, then you have to be getting a color as well. Um, this could look as simple as, you know, removing blowouts from your- from your service offerings.

Um, or, um, I know a lot of people, I don't necessarily love this, um, but- because I think it's a little bit risky, um, but, uh, uh, a lot of people who get specialized in extensions and high ticket services, they have so much demand for those extensions and then they ha- and which are much more expensive and profitable services than maybe doing color appointments, right? So then they'll just completely stop doing color and haircuts and just specialize and only take on extension clients moving forward. But the thing with this is, is that it's very, very, very, very, very emotionally hard and it can get you a little bit of pushback when you're telling somebody, "Hey, I'm not gonna do your service anymore 'cause I just don't offer it." I do have verbiage for this in the Hairstylist Template Vault, um, for how you can roll all of these types of things out, and then Preve as a pathway in my program as of right now.

Um, I walk a lot of people through these transitions because a lot of people who join..us in our programs end up doing these types of things and making these types of changes. Um, so this is just another way that you can reduce that demand by literally forcing those clients out and being like, "You don't have any option. I'm not doing these services anymore."

Which, you know, is completely fine. Like, that's your business, and you've built the demand to be able to do that. Like, you don't need those services to be able to continuously be successful. And you can do the services that you are best at, that you're the expert at, and that you really truly enjoy, if that aligns with you.

So again, all of these are just options that I'm sharing with you today, just pieces of advice that you can piece together in your own way that makes the most sense for you. Like I said, I guide a lot of my students through these types of transitions, um, in, in ways that are specific to them and their own business and what they're trying to accomplish. So, if that's something that you're interested in, I would love to support you in that journey. But nonetheless, it is really, really hard, no matter how you're going about it, to conceptualize you pushing people out of your schedule, whether that be by their own choice, where, like, you're raising your prices and you're happy to continue to see that person but they're not willing to pay that price, or whether you're forcing somebody out and you're not giving them the option.

Both of those things are very hard. But at the end of the day, this is a business, and you need to be reaping the fruits of your labor, right? And you need to make sure that you're setting yourself up for success, not just now, but in the future. And these types of things are going to make sure that you have a great foundation moving forward, so that way you a- have leverage and you can continuously grow o- year over year moving forward.

So, good luck to you, my friend. So much love to you. If you're in this position right now, I know exactly how you feel. It's why I created my entire education in the first place.

Like, I was in that position so hard, and a lot of people don't understand how stressful it can be, um, to have so many clients that it actually gets to an overwhelming problem and it feels impossible to dig yourself out of. But I promise you, there is a light at a, uh, at the end of the tunnel, um, and you're not being ungrateful , you know? I felt a lot of guilt, um, around f- like, my stress around being booked and busy, um, and, you know, we can... Two things can be true, that we are grateful and we are excited and privileged that we have these, these opportunities and this problem, but that it's also a problem for our business and that we need to do something about it.

So, be kind to yourself. All right, my friend. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the Modern Hairstylist podcast. I hope that you have a blessed rest of your day, and I will catch you in the next episode.

So much love. Peace out, girl scout.

End of transcript. © 2024 Hunter Donia LLC.