Hairstylists need to stop “charging your worth”
Today I’m going to be sharing about the often overused topic of charging your worth. I want to start off by saying that “charge your worth” may seem empowering at first glance, but it’s somewhat of a problematic statement at its core. If you’ve been in the industry for any length of time you’ve most likely heard this phrase at almost every hair show and continued education class you’ve been to, but often times this advice has been watered down to the point of becoming motivational speaking instead of a legitimate business plan.
Although I can appreciate the intent behind this advice, it’s lacking vital context to be genuinely helpful in any way. Worth is subjective, and blanket statements like this typically lead into associating self worth with the monetary value of your services—which isn’t accurate or fair.
I feel like the majority of hairstylists have struggled with this as some point, but I want you to know that your personal value is in no way associated with your career. Just because a stylist has lower pricing doesn’t mean they are any less worthy of success, and lower prices do not always mean lower profit or lower value. In the same way, a stylist charging higher prices isn’t inherently more successful, more profitable, or more important based on how they choose to charge for their services alone. Maintaining this comparison mindset can lead us down a path of feeling inadequate simply because our businesses are structured differently than someone else’s.
If you think about it, this advice is not giving you any real strategy. If you were to base all of services on what you emotionally feel like they are worth, you would be excluding the most important factors in pricing your services properly such as rent, product costs, continued education, client retention, and incoming demand.
More often than not, when you’re being told to “charge your worth” it’s coming from someone who doesn’t understand the intimate details of your unique business. There should be some genuine strategy and ethics to back up your pricing beyond what you feel like you deserve to be paid. Stylists following this rhetoric will often find themselves in a place of either inflating their pricing to to “prove” their worth, or feeling resentful when charging a lower rate because you feel like you aren’t being “valued enough”
There is a saying that “your services are only worth what someone else is willing to pay for them” and the reality is that every service has a monetary value that optimizes the profits of your personal business, but it’s crucial for us to create a distinction between the value of our services and our worth as an individual—when we fail to define that difference it’s easy to fall into these cycles of obsessively overworking ourselves and losing our identity to our careers.
For over a decade the beauty industry has glorified becoming enmeshed with our job title, to the point that we identify more with what we do rather than who we are. We have normalized working harder and longer hours in order to prove how successful we can be as stylists—neglecting our personal lives in the process—leading to burnout and identity crisis.
Maybe this is our unresolved trauma wounds coming to the surface, subconsciously projecting the hurtful words of those who said we would never be successful if we were just a small town stylist or that hair wasn’t a real job and we would never be able to support ourselves without a real career, until we eventually spend so long trying to prove others wrong that we forget what we are chasing after in the first palace.
In my own experience, career enmeshment happened so easily that finding an identity outside of being a hairstylist was a vulnerable and uncomfortable process. I found it difficult to relate to people outside of conversations related to the beauty industry and I struggled to describe myself or my hobbies beyond my career. The longer I let my identity be consumed by the beauty industry, the more difficult it became to see the distinction between the value of my services and the worth I was placing on myself. But forcing myself to rediscover my individuality outside of the “hair obsessed” persona we are often encouraged to take on, was also the thing that helped me out of depression, burn out, and undercharging for my services.
One of the most common struggles students in my coaching program have shared with me are their habits of emotional discounting. I’ve noticed a correlation between stylists not charging the full amount for a service or giving away add-on services for free and their lack of confidence in their pricing strategy. This gut instinct that overtakes many stylists at the checkout screen is often an excuse to avoid their insecurities rather than legitimate reasons for discounting the value of the service provided.
I want you to ask yourself honestly, why do you not want to charge that client the full price? Is it because you don’t feel like your services are worthy of that price point and maybe you’ve started comparing your prices to the other stylists you know? Is it because you didn’t have an honest conversation about pricing and reasonable expectations before you began the service and now you’ve found yourself doing more work than you anticipated? Or is it because you feel guilty for raising your prices because you think of this client as a friend or they’re a family member, and you know they are going though a hard time?
If you’ve found yourself struggling to determine if this a manifestation of your insecurities or something your doing as a genuine favor to your clients, a test would be to ask yourself in that moment if you can say to that clients face what the original total of that service was and why you decided to discount it that day. If you are quietly battling with that grand total internally, it’s a sign that there is some kind of feeling of shame associated with that emotional discounting habit.
I’m not saying there are never circumstances that you can offer a discount, although those instances should be exceedingly rare, but you should be able to think about those situations from a neutral standpoint and offer them in a way that is communicated openly. A good example of this would be if you were running behind one day of had some kind of emergency come up that resulted in you having to reschedule a client at the last minute, in that case I might say to them “thank you so much for being flexible and understanding the other day, today I want offer you a free add on service to show you how much I appreciate your kindness and support of my business” This allows the client to acknowledge the fact that you are gifting them this add on service while also providing the reasoning why they aren’t seeing this on their final bill.
A lot of times stylists don’t realize how important it is to communicate these minor variances in their service and pricing, but without the conversation your clients are left confused as to why their service is inconsistent and caught off guard when you are no longer emotionally discounting at their next appointment—doing more harm to that client relationship long term than just the financial loss to the business.
Remember, your pricing is simply a numerical valuation of the services you offer, it means nothing about who you are as a human. If you are having the nuanced conversation about your service pricing up front, there is nothing to feel shameful or selfish about when implementing the proper pricing for that service at checkout. Don’t be afraid to talk to your clients about budget before every single appointment, not just when they become a new client. Hold yourself accountable by having your pricing clearly posted for everyone to see, I like to have mine on my station in the salon so that its eye level for myself every time I’m closing out an appointment. And use facts and formulas to determine a fair and profitable pricing strategy that doesn’t attach your personal value to your business pricing, because even as an independent stylist that client is paying the business for the service and it’s not going directly in your personal pocket.
Instead of blindly listening to the noise of the beauty industry, I encourage you to narrow in on your personal business, understand your unique finances, and seek out guidance from someone you trust to breakdown proven facts over emotionally charged opinions. As always, I hope you know how truly valuable you are no matter what price point you charge for your services, how many followers you have on social media, or where you’re located. You are so much more than a hairstylist and you deserve to recognize that value in yourself so that others can see it shine in you as well.
- Casey Taylor
