3 Professional Traits You Should Borrow from Your Hairstylist

Having worked for and with professionals in the beauty industry over the past decade, I have come to love the time I get to spend with salon owners and hairstylists. My first published marketing calendar was a salon and spa marketing calendar, borne out of working directly with beauty product manufacturers, distributors and salons.

I write a lot of articles with marketing ideas for salons and hairstylists, and I’m gratified each time I get a comment or message from someone saying that they’re using my ideas. Today I want to point out a few things that I am thankful to have learned from some of the best of them.

3 Lessons a Hairstylist Can Teach About How to Be Successful in Business

1. Be Relentless in Your Pursuit of Education and Skills

Prior to working behind the chair, a hairstylist may have been required to successfully complete anywhere from 1500-2100 hours of education (or more), and often go on to complete salon apprenticeship and mentoring programs.

However, unlike many business professionals whose post-college education and training is largely limited to on-the-job learning and the occasional webinar or conference, most hairstylists take additional classes and receive in-salon training several times each year.

This relentless pursuit – not of education, but of mastery – enables the hairdresser to continually evolve in their professional life and which ensures that their skills and abilities remain relevant to changing needs of their customers.

2. Be Brave Enough to Put Your Work ‘Out There,’ and Stand by It

A hairstylist’s work is always on display. Clients see this work each time they look in a mirror as do all of their friends, family, colleagues and even strangers on the street. Hairdressers whose clients are in public facing roles (politicians, tv personalities, performers, models, etc.) dare to put their work out for an even larger audience. Hairdressers who compete as individuals or as part of a team in regional and national hairdressing, modeling, photography and other competitions put their work “out there” to a world-wide audience.

Hairstylists are courageous enough to put their work on display and have it opened up to analysis, comparison, critique and even judgment. And even in the face of expert criticism, they stand by their work.

This kind of conviction occurs when one has not just done their best work, but when an individual has a vision for what they want to create, and then executes. It’s not just pride of having achieved or completed a project, it’s the accomplishment of having said something (through their work) that they believe the world needs to hear.

3. Measure Success Not in Sales, but in Client Outcomes

Ultimately, the hairstylist’s success lies in how the client feels when they’re walking out of the salon doors. This is the feeling that will determine whether a client will return, buy salon retail products, or refer friends, family and colleagues to the salon. Future sales, client retention and salon profits depend on each and every client outcome.

What if the only metric available to let you know how you were doing (or how your business is doing) were your customers outcomes?

Successful hairstylists seem to have an innate ability to make clients feel like the center of their universe – the person most important to please, most important to listen to, most important to help – during those minutes spent in the chair.

It is this ability to be “in the now” and focus on the task at hand that produces great client outcomes, which in turn leads to word of mouth referrals, positive reviews, testimonials, rebooking, salon retail sales, etc. (i.e., more business!)

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Elizabeth Kraus is the author of 12 Months of Marketing for Salon and Spa and the 2014 Salon and Spa Marketing Calendar: By the Numbers, available on amazon.com, and is the marketing manager of business financing company DB Squared, which offers receivables financing and business cash advance financing for salons and other retailers.