Who is Your Perfect Client?
Welcome to the Aspiring Stylists Podcast with Tracey Franklin. Where to begin, grow and aspire to become the best stylist you can be. Whether you're thinking about becoming a stylist opening a salon, or developing your skills as an experienced stylist the next step of your beauty career starts here. Each week we'll discuss strategic ways to design, plan and execute on becoming a stylist that excels behind the chair and above the bottom line. Here's your host, Tracey Franklin.
Who is your perfect client? Knowing who your ideal client is, is the key to your career fulfillment. I'm just here to tell you right now that having an ideal client in your chair is the difference between a good day behind the chair and a great day behind the chair. The benefit for me is looking at my book every day and being excited, I'm performing services I enjoy on people I enjoy being around. But it's more than that. And I want to be specific. My ideal client is someone who really respects my time, they're on time for their appointments, and they don't cancel last minute. They're also someone that takes my recommendations. I'm not just blowing smoke, and they know that they know I'm the professional they can count on for those recommendations. My ideal client pre booked her appointments, possibly for the year out. That means that she values my time, she values her time, and we're making these preset appointments with one another so that her hair can always look on point. My ideal client trusts me when it's time for a change. She trusts me. I mean, someone that's had blond hair, their whole lives isn't about to dive into the brown or the bronde world that takes a lot of trust in someone and I'm committed to the process. And I'm committed to delivering results that they can continue to trust, and it's so much fun.
My ideal client also sends me all of her friends and family, the good ones, the ones I actually want. And she tips me really well. I'm not going to sleep on a good tip, I actually really still enjoy receiving good tips. So how do you actually figure out who your ideal or your perfect client is, I suggest you make a list like I did all the things that I just listed the pre booking, the trusting the tipping and everything like that, like make a list of the things that matter to you most and make sure that you're attracting that client.
Maybe your ideal client is very service specific. So for her she's looking for someone that can execute a killer Bolyai or hair extensions and that's the kind of client that you're going to want to attract if those are the types of services that you want to perform. I want to use Jen Atkin as an example. She is in my world just a superstar she is a celebrity stylist and not just any celebrities like the top celebrities in our world today. You know, Jennifer Lopez and Kim Kardashian. I mean, she is their stylist. And it's no surprise to me that she is as successful as she is because when you read her book, you'll figure out that she knew early on what kind of clients she was looking for, what kind of stylists she wanted to be, and she worked and she worked and she worked until she made that come true. Another one for me is Erich von he does tons of extensions on beautiful supermodels. That is his niche.
He knew early on that that was the type of stylists that he wanted to be. And so he fine tuned his ideal client criteria and made sure that he made himself available to those types of clients, it's really important that you lean into your niche when you're thinking about your ideal client, because your niche and your ideal client go hand in hand. As you progress in your career, your niche will become more apparent, like maybe you're just figuring things out, and you're just trying to make it day by day. As you progress.
The things that you absolutely love doing behind the chair are going to stand out. And you're going to really want to serve the type of clients that are wanting those services, you will need to lean into that niche and you're going to have to do whatever it takes to attract that ideal guest looking for that particular service. You need to be constantly educating yourself so that you can be really, really good at it.
Wanting to be good at something and actually being good at something are very different things getting good at something takes practice. That's where I see a lot of people falling short is they don't want to touch mannequin heads anymore.
Well, I'm just here to tell you, learning never stops and you want to learn on a mannequin head. You don't want your first set of hands tied extensions to be sewn into a human being if you don't even know how to use a needle yet. Once you've gotten really good at your niche, it's time to get the word out over and over and over again. promote yourself. Social media is a great platform for you to blast the good news. I have just learned this fabulous new skill set. It's what I absolutely was born to do, and I'm looking for people to perform this service on, don't be afraid of offering introductory pricing. There's nothing wrong with saying, Hey, I just learned how to do this and I want to get better at it.
And if you want to be my model, I'm gonna give you a huge discount if you can be there for me while I learn. And while I get better at this, one of the easiest and most important things you can do is represent your niche and your own appearance. If I want to be a Balaji experts, then you better believe I'm gonna be walking around my community with the most beautiful Bali oz you've ever seen. Same thing with hair extensions. If hair extensions are your niche and you're not wearing some form of added hair, who's going to trust you absolutely put the extensions in and tell the entire world about them. I've never been shy to let people know that I'm wearing hair extensions. I have short hair right now I'm actually rocking this really cute Bob but I still have hair extensions in and I let everyone know so that people can see the versatility of the service that I enjoy doing most product lines do this all the time product lines niche to like again, we're in Aveda salon and Aveda is absolutely known for their sustainable beauty practices. All of their products come in post consumer recycled packaging, they always have been and always will be cruelty free. And just recently they went 100% vegan. This is their niche, and the entire world knows about it, because that's how they market themselves. They have pivoted their selves to be industry leaders in sustainable beauty and they do a beautiful job of it. So how are you going to find this perfect client? Well, back in the day, I used to have to stand out at my local college and hand out flyers. Y'all don't have to do that anymore. You guys have social media, and you need to be using it very, very intentionally. One of the best things that you can do is incorporate time into your schedule for pictures or videos or whatever I don't want to hear you don't know what kind of content to get everything is content, capture it all and fine tune it later. Make sure you have enough to make something really, really fun with and worry about fine tuning it all later. Reach out to your client ahead of time, say hey, I am going to do this fabulous color on you tomorrow, I want to make sure you're prepared to be in front of the camera. So make sure you wear makeup, my clients really appreciate that. I'm just here to tell you. Now they know if you're coming in and you're sitting in my chair, you're probably going to be in a real, but I also still like to give them if I'm going to be getting a lot of full face frontal content, then I just want to let them know ahead of time. You need to post intentionally posting pictures of fades or kids cuts or perms or whatever kind of service that you may be doing just to post something is not the right way to go about it. You need to post very intentionally, you need to make sure that you are posting what you want seeing because people are going to book what they see.
So if you want to do more hair extensions, or you want to do more blonding or Bolyard, then you need to make sure that that is what you're posting. I always tell people don't post just to post, let social media be your online portfolio. If there's a lot of stuff on there that you have no interest in doing more of, then it's a disservice. So make sure that you're getting really good content about the services that you want to do more of, can I tell you guys a little secret, the wheel has already been invented. You do not have to reinvent it. No doubt you are following several people that really inspire you.
They probably have well over 100,000 followers and are doing something really, really write, go on their good ideas and do your best to emulate them. I promise you it's not a copycat situation. Nobody has any original stuff anymore. They are always finding their inspiration from other people. All of my reels are something that I have already seen somebody else do.
And my local community has no idea. And honestly, they don't care because it's me, it's me doing it. They're following me because they enjoy my content.
So know that you don't have to reinvent the wheel get out there who inspires you take their best work and do everything you can to emulate it. So your ideal client probably knows a lot of people that would also be an ideal client for you. I would consider offering them a referral discount like, Hey, can you help me spread the word? You are my perfect client, the client is going to feel very flattered. And then just go on in there and ask for a favor.
Hey, I'm really trying to build my clientele with more people like you. Can I count on you to tell your friends and family about me? You're always going to get a yes, a satisfied client will always be more than happy to spread the good word. Finding your ideal client requires time and focus. I would start by writing a vision statement, put it out into the universe and be very, very specific about what your ideal client looks like.
Sounds like what they do for fun, what is their family status? Be very specific about who this person is because these are the types of people that you're going to be spending a lot of time with behind the chair, and then get to work marketing yourself, and don't ever stop. If you're struggling to identify your ideal client, I have a download in the show notes with lots of questions to help you identify who your perfect client is.
Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Aspiring Stylist Podcast with Tracey Franklin. If you enjoyed listening and you want to hear more, make sure you subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify or wherever you find your podcasts.
The Aspiring Stylist Podcast with Tracey Franklin is a Morgan Franklin Production. Today's episode was written and produced by Morgan Franklin editing and post production by Mike Franklin. Want to find out more about Tracey and the Aspiring Barber and Beauty Academy go to aspirebarberandbeauty.com
