Why don’t clients trust hairstylists anymore & how do we change it?

What's going on, my friend? Welcome back to the Modern Hair Stylist podcast. I've been talking about how we're, quote unquote, in an epidemic of people just not trusting our industry, right? And people not trusting us as hair stylists.

And there's plenty of reasons for that, and I think that it's very important to figure out, how can we gain that trust back, right? And I've been doing some surveys, and I've been, uh, figuring out how exactly we can do that in today's day and age, but also pinpointing why this has happened and what has brought us to where we are. I've done some research, and I'm gonna be bringing that to the table to you today, my friend. But before I do that, I would love to introduce to you guys Jodi Brown.

What's going on Jodi? How are you? Hey, Hunter. I'm good.

Good. I'm glad that you're here, and I know that you and I have been talking about this a lot. You and I have been seeing talks about this, and I know that you share a lot of similar opinions as I do. And so, I'm really excited to get into it with you.

Where do you think that we should start off in the conversation? So, I think the- the natural starting point is, where did this trust breakdown come from? Growing up in the industry, it's always like, your stylist is your favorite person, and then all of a sudden we're seeing on TikTok, like, you know, all these horror stories and all these different things. So, where do you think this lack of trust in the industry has come from?

I think that a lot of it stems from pandemic, okay? Mm-hmm. Pandemic happened. Shutdown happened.

A lot of us, a couple things happened, right? Number one, we were had- we had to face very scary realities. We had to face not having our main source of income anymore, which made us start to think about money in a much more scarce way, right? Um, we also had a lot of time to reflect on what we actually want and how we're spending our time on the day-to-day, right?

Because we had time to slow down and actually reflect and look at the bigger picture, and we oftentimes don't have that same opportunity in the daily hustle of life, right? A lot of people decided to go and get business education because they had the time to, you know? And so I think a lot of education came out, a lot of independent educators, such as myself even, who were teaching about boundaries, right? And then what ended up happening is, a lot of stylists started to take their boundaries in their business and how their clients are treating them and what they're setting up in their business, um, a lot more seriously.

And then so we raised our prices. We started to get really serious about cancellation policies and things like that. And some of us went a little bit too crazy in the wrong direction. It was like too much of a good thing, because I am 100% somebody at that time, and still to this day, who is a big proponent of work/life balance, having strong boundaries in your business so that way you have a personal life, because at the end of the day, what the fuck is the point of you having a business if you're just working in it all the time?

From the beginning, I'm a firm believer that I have always, always taught the best of both worlds. I've always been an advocate for the client and the hairstylist. Mm-hmm. Right?

I've always looked at it from both perspectives. Where I think some people, unfortunately, were so sick of being stomped all over and certain circumstances, like disrespect with cancellations, certain situations can create very emotionally charged reactions. And I know for me, personally, like, when I feel like I've been disrespected from a client or when I've been just so freaking fed up because I've allowed disrespect, I have not respected my own boundaries for so long, that it's gonna be really easy for me to react reactively out of emotion and not strategy, not logic, and I think that's what ended up happening. I- I'm a firm believer that from the very beginning I have taught a good balance of, how can we have these boundaries in place?

How can we set up systems in place that are gonna hold us accountable to boundaries, that are gonna reduce bad, disrespectful behavior? How can we raise our prices responsibly and safely, um, in a way that's not going to put us in a bad position? Um, and I think that a lot of people, unfortunately, did not go in that same direction, and therefore we were posting on our Instagram stories making people feel really ostracized. Um, just putting crazy policies into place, um, and because of that, being in tandem with, like, super large price increases because we had inflation and every single person's cost of living has increased over the past couple years, now people have not just looked at the fact that we are all charging more for the most part, but we also have stronger boundaries in place as well, and so that makes people more discerning.

And, we also have tons of people who have entered the industry. So, a lot of people after pandemic, same situation. They were really evaluating how they're spending their time. Maybe they wanted to join our industry because they saw the potential in it.

They thought it was more creative, they would be happier, they had a more flexible schedule, right? So, we have a ton of people who are joining the industry and really impatient younger people as well, and I've seen this with my own eyes. I've been the inpatient young person as well, I started in this industry when I was 16, who just go straight to being on the floor, or, like, just renting their suite right out of beauty school, or whatever it may be, and that could possibly also cause some negative experiences, right? So, there's a ton of different reasons why we've gotten here.

Ah, I think moving forward, we just have to think about every single step of the client experience and think about, how are we building trust, not breaking it? How are we preserving our boundaries? How are we preserving our happiness? How are we still running a business that makes us happy and still provides us the wealth and the work/life balance, but also makes it so a client still trusts us enough to want to book with us for the first time and then book with us again and again and again?

Absolutely. Like, everything you said is dead on. And with all this being said, like, I know that you've got so many different, like, students in your programs. I have so many stylist friends, I was in this industry for years, who still are doing really well and their clients are still loving them and appreciating them.

And so, I think it's very easy sometimes to fall into this, like-... you know, us versus them mentality because of how algorithms serve you content on social media. And so, I think that's such a- it's such an important thing to think about when it comes to, you know, yes, there are still clients who, you know, love the industry and you can build that trust back. Like, to just talk about, like, the recent survey that I rolled out.

I asked people, like, "What is your current perception of the industry?" And although it was like one third of the responses, it was still the number one response, which was positive and respected, right? And so there are people out there who maybe were going to the stylist, maybe such as my students, not to be biased, but who were going to my students who made it so the client felt respected at the same time that they were putting in systems in place or boundaries in place that made it so they were respecting themselves. There is a best of both worlds, right?

And there is possibility to build that trust back, like you just said, which I love that you shared, because we have to have some hope, right? We can't just be like, oh, well, all clients are trash and, uh, we're never gonna be able to get back to where we were and what are we gonna do now? Because that's no place to build from, right? So it's the truth, right, because the other thi- like, the second, um, most popular response in this- to this question, what is your current perception of the salon industry as a whole?

Lack of trust. Mm. Literally is lack of trust, in skill, not enough specialization, whatever it may be. Interesting.

And we also have, like, I, the other day to, like, support these surveys and studies and all the things like that, I casually see comments on TikTok or people complaining about hair stylists and stuff like that. I read two of them, and this was particularly in relation to cancellation policies, um, and people actually, like, posting their cancellation policies on their Instagram or whatever it might be. So, like, this one person said, uh, "This is so true, because when a stylist posts some cancellation policy rant on their story, it kind of comes off as snarky and passive-aggressive and it deters me from going to them." It has 1,300 likes.

Um, another person said, "I know a hair stylist that posted almost every month about her cancellation policy and it made me never want to see her again." 240 likes. And then there was another one, I don't have it up in front of me unfortunately. There was another one that I have, uh, that I screenshotted elsewhere.

It said, "Wow, this is just another way to make money." Like, there are people out there who are not trusting, who have seen negative experiences, right? But then there's other people who have seen the positive experiences, but I think that we all need to work together as an industry. Like, genuinely, I think it's a time for all of us to hold hands and agree that, like, we are all going to reestablish ourselves and make that 33% of positive, uh, positive, uh, connotation of our industry, make that a lot larger moving forward.

Right. Especially in a time in which people are a little bit more discerning and have gotten their maybe trust broken. 100%. And, you know, you and I both said this from the jump, like, the cancellation, you know, the policies and, like, going hard on your Instagram, all of these things, like, I feel like those comments highlight, like, these are things that are individually within our control.

Yes. At any point, you can choose to stop engaging in that behavior, right? Mm. And rebuild.

I love that you said that. Yes. When you are in a space in your business where there are outside factors that you cannot control, focus on what you can control, right? And that's, like, in our workshop coming up, Client Experience Glow-Up Party, I actually think it's happening right now.

So, at the time of recording this, it's not happening right now, but at the time this is coming out, it should be happening literally today. Um, uh, uh, in our workshop, instead of doom and gloom, instead of focusing on all the negative shit that's going on and just being hopeless about what's going on, what we're gonna be doing is, is we're gonna be taking real data and we're gonna be figuring out what is every single little thing that we can do? What is every single optimization that we can make, to make it so we are combating what is causing the negative? Because we can't- we can't control that there is a negative.

We can't control that people may not have great trust in us right now. But what we can do is take every single piece of data, every single possibility of what we can improve, and make that shit happen, right? So that's what we're gonna be covering in, uh, in our workshop that we have going on right now. So if you're listening to this right now, what the hell are you doing?

Go to the workshop. That will answer all of your questions. I was gonna ask you, like, what are some of those ways that we can tangibly rebuild that trust, but I feel like that's exactly what you're gonna be teaching. Yeah, I mean, you know, one of the biggest things I'll just share right up front, I've been talking about it so much, so I'm sorry if I'm a broken record, my friend, but is price transparency.

Like, I talk about it every single episode I feel like, but that's the reason somebody books with you. It's genuinely, like, the reason somebody books with you is that the price is right for them, right? It has to be a factor. It's a non-negotiable factor, right?

And yes, of course, we can build value in the price. We can make the price justifiable. But they need to at least know what they're getting themselves into, okay? And so if you're not building trust around your price up front, then people are going to be nervous to invest with you, because they don't know what they're getting themselves into, right?

And in a day and age where people are focusing on their budget a lot harder, they need to know what they're getting themselves into. So we need to make sure that up front, we are very clear with our pricing, we make sure that it makes sense, that we have a easy to understand service menu. Uh, if you've li- been listening to me for a while, you guys know that I'm pretty biased towards session package pricing. Like, I'm a big fan of all-inclusive package pricing.

I've seen it do beautiful things in my own business, in plenty, countless of my students' businesses. I actually had a question at the Modern Hair Stylist Tour in Philadelphia. Somebody asked, "Hey, is session package pricing still, like, relevant and good for right now? With people being more concerned about their budgeting and things like that, people may want to choose a la carte instead because they can pick and choose the service or whatever it may be.

So then they're kind of picking and choosing what they pay for."At the end of the day, they're still gonna be fricking paying the same amount of money. So there's the actual, there's the actual total that they're paying at the end of the day, but then there's the positioning of your pricing at the beginning, right? It doesn't matter what the structure is, really.

It matters that you can make sure that there's trust and that somebody has a good understanding of what they're going to be paying, period. And the easiest way to do that is have, like, three different prices that people can choose from, and three different packages, and that they know everything's gonna be included and they're not gonna necessarily pay any more, right? And that's why session package pricing works really, really well for building price transparency, because it's not like there's going to be a surprise toner built on to this later, you know? So I think, you know, to the question that I was asked, yes, it's even more relevant than ever right now.

Absolutely. It's a great idea more than ever. 100%. Even as a consumer, I can say, like, my least favorite feeling and the thing that makes me, like diff- almost like diffuses value the most is the feeling of being nickel and dimed.

Yes. Especially for premium services. Especially, yeah, especially for premium services. Yeah.

You and I have talked about this before. If I am showing up to something that I've already invested a lot of money into, to be told that I have to spend more money to get the full experience is like painful. For example, I just went with my mom to a wellness resort, okay? This is a wellness resort that I've been to a couple times and I really enjoy, and so I'm used to their pricing structure.

I'm used to everything. But I still, sa- similarly have the same feeling and experience as her, where she was like, she went there and she loved it, but, like, the spa was extra. And to, like, even use the spa, it was extra when we were already sp- spending so much money just to stay where we were at, right? She came there and she was like, "Oh, this other place that I went to, everything was included, and when I showed up, I didn't even have to worry about it."

Right? Yeah. And it really put things into perspective for me. It does feel icky or is like an extra sting when you show up with a certain budget in mind, or you're already investing a lot into something, and then you find out later that you have to invest more.

And yes, there are going to be small case scenarios in which somebody comes in and you have to talk to them about that, right? Yeah, it's so true. I think that's such a huge factor, and I love that you shared a tangible takeaway in terms of like creating that, that experience and building that trust. So if someone wants to dive into the Client Experience Glow Up Party, where can they go to do so if they wanna jump in today?

So if you want to make business building fun, if you wanna have a little bit of hope with the future, and if you wanna create a client experience that is genuinely unshakable, that does the work for you, that is really awesome and really blows your clients away, and makes them want to keep spending with you and coming back, and also gets new clients to trust you and want to work with you as well, too, in today's day and age, join us for Client Experience Glow Up Party. I promise you, it will be freaking fantastic, and your mind will be blown, and you will be doing new things that you've never done before. Whether you are a student of mine already, you've been working with me for a long time, or you are brand-new to me, this is all going to be super exciting and fresh for you, my friend. So if you go to hunchdonion.

com/party, then you can sign up right there. You can also check out that link in, uh, the show notes of this episode. Or you can DM me on Instagram the word party if that's easier for you, and we'll get you signed up. Something I said at the beginning of class, uh, at the Modern Hairstylist Tour is we may be in a weird time right now, but we've been in plenty of weird times in the past.

And you've gotten through it. You've pivoted. And when you go through challenging times, especially things that you can't control, it challenges you and it pushes you to be the best next level of yourself, and the best next level of the business owner that you're meant to be. And so embrace that, challenge yourself, be willing to challenge yourself.

And a great place to innovate and do that is with us, at Client Experience Glow Up Party. So hope to see you there. Thank you for tuning in to the Modern Hairstylist podcast. Peace out, girl scout.

Bye-bye.

End of transcript. © 2025 Hunter Donia LLC.