The 7 Best Ways to Become a 6-Figure Hairstylist and Grow Your Salon Business in 2024

If you read one more generic proposal for how to scale your salon business during a recession, what will you do?

Probably nothing. And that’s the problem.

But what if you get a few suggestions that can be used immediately to make the changes that in the short and long haul will benefit your pocket book no matter what inflation decides to do?

We want to offer some sound, practical steps Hairstylists can take to immediately improve their revenue here in 2024.

But first, a trip down memory lane.

The past couple years have been hard. We’ve just weathered a global pandemic resulting in economic fall out. Jobs were lost, rent was due but couldn’t be paid by millions, supply chain issues created resource-lack, inflation stung and keeps stinging, and salon owners had to make changes based on gut-wrenching decisions. Close down, morph into suits, provide color services outside in windy conditions, no more than a handful of people in the salon building at a given time, tanking profit margins, the fear of getting sick with every interaction, loss, heartache, an entire culture shifting at a pace we weren’t ready to keep up with. It was a lot for our industry.

And now, here we are in 2024 getting ready to face a recession that according to some, we are already in. 

How is it then in 2024, the rise of the 6-figure stylist is more prominent than ever? How did we go from “memory lane” to 6-figures?

If you pooled all of the hair gurus’ magic steps to becoming 6 figure artists, you’d see there’s nothing magic about them, but there is a trend.

We want to cover the 7 best ways to scale and grow your salon in 2024 that we’ve gleaned from the experts.

 

1. Good, Consistent Videos and a Steady Hand

Or an Assistant with a steady hand. The best of the best started out making consistent video content on the apps we all know and love like Instagram and Tiktok. Kristen lumiere and Jaime Sea, founders of @Lumiere.house and @_Saltsociety respectively, went from running their operations like suites, to scaling, to offering business education and technical training for other stylists and even educators. They took videos of their work, their businesses, their education trajectories, everything, the whole way. 

2. Set Your Pricing Right from the Beginning and Require a Deposit

One of the fastest ways to lose money is by not pricing your services and products accurately. The consensus from the gurus is pricing is not done accurately due to a few factors: 1. Creating your pricing based off of a competitor's pricing or pricing in the area. 2. Taking a Wild Guess. 3. Guilt.

Instead, pricing should be based on your skill, demand, indirect expenses, direct expenses, and monetary goals.   

3. Expense and Income Mapping on a Weekly or Even Daily Basis

There’s something about getting your financial goals stripped down to the hour that makes them more profitable. That’s because small financial details are overlooked when a broader scope is focused on. 

Overlooked expenses begin to add up while overlooked income doesn’t get allocated properly. Stylist’s can miss out on thousands upon thousands of dollars a year by not taking a daily and weekly inventory of direct and indirect expenses as well as allocating funds where they need to go. 

4. Invest

Even when it feels intimidating, invest anyway. It’s the number one way to guarantee your money works for you while you work for it. 

Getting help from an investment strategist can be a good way to start, or for a more simple route, try apps like Acorns and E-trade. 

Acorns offers the sort of mindless growth built from the spare change we forget about. But when it’s done right, it can really add up quickly. E-trade offers brief summaries of the companies you may want to buy stock from. It also gives you the option to sell. You can invest in ETFs, stocks, mutual funds, etc. 

5. Tack a Blog onto your Website and Become an Amazon Associate Affiliate

This whole string of connections is incredible for your brand and pocket book. Let’s see why. 

You already have the website. You already purchase the products/tools on a regular basis. But, if you become an Amazon Associate connected with their marketing affiliate program, you can earn money every time you link a product and your clients/friends/family use the link to also make the purchase. 

So where does the blog come in? Starting your own blog allows you to gain exposure as well as link products/tools/etc. Each time someone clicks the link in your blog, you earn a generous commission from Amazon. It’s kind of an incredible way to make passive income while maintaining and strengthening your brand’s identity. 

6. Increase Revenue Immediately with Add-on Services

We love this one! There’s no better way to immediately make more money than by offering add-on services that will genuinely benefit your clients hair. They don’t have to be pricey either. It can look something like doing color melts instead of toners. If a regular toner is $45, a color melt is $90. Pairs well with Balayage clients. 

You can also add a gloss overlay after you do a permanent base color. It makes it shiny, can add a varied tone, and increases the longevity of the base color especially for gray clients.

Treatments, masks, and partial Keratins provide a lot of financial impact. Masks can be an extra $10-25. Partial Keratins can add an extra $50-$100 and can be performed similar to a quick partial tint covering just the sides. 

Scalp treatments are great too. The scalp is one of the most important areas of the “hair” and yet is one of the most overlooked in western hairdressing. 

7. Raise Your Prices 2-4 times Per Year

Yes, you read that right. The instinct is shock, followed by a firm “no.” However, there are good reasons for this.

The first is value. How much do you value your time, energy, and the amount of education you accumulate over the year and then put into your business? Do you realize your skill-set grows every single year?

The second is inflation. Every time the prices of our products go up, but our service prices stay the same, we have received a pay cut. Think of it like this, no one would accept a boss coming up and saying “you’re going to make $50 less dollars per day from now on for no reason.” Then 6 months later, said boss says “oh and by the way, you’re going to make $10 less on top of the $50 less per day, ok?”  

But that’s what hairstylists face regularly. Inflation and broad scale economic changes that have to do with manufacturing and supply-chain issues, etc., leave hairstylist’s at the mercy of a very temperamental economic “boss.” We deserve to adjust our prices accordingly so we can reach our financial goals.