Did you miss this week’s threads? They’re particularly excellent: there’s an incredibly generative conversation happening over at Life-Changing Purchases, Schedule Changes, Philosophical Shifts, and Habits....Small and Large and Medium-Sized and I found the comments on How Have You Grown? very moving.
And if you haven’t yet checked out this week’s episode of The Culture Study Podcast, it’s all about nerdy book and publishing trends; I learned so much. (Also: the bonus segment is all about how to make your book club sustainable and how to pick books that are, in Melody’s words, all bangers). Listen here and remember that all Culture Study newsletter subscribers get a massive discount on their podcast subscription.
Finally, I’ve pinned a thread of ways to donate to organizations that are managing to get aid through the Israeli government blockade to starvig Gazans — you can find it here.
In response to my piece on how How I Write Culture Study, I asked readers if they’d want to participate in a series where people from various professions talk about their work lives, explaining how they organize their days and weeks, how they protect their time, when and how they do their work and how and when they attend to their inbox, etc. etc.
Our first entries in the series are from a freelance audiobook narrator, a gardening ceramacist, and an engineering grad student. Today, you’ll hear about what it’s like to run your own hair salon. If you’d like to volunteer to talk about a day/week in your life for a potential interview — crucially, this work does not have to be for pay; I’d love to hear from caregivers — here’s the very simple sign-up.
Now, let’s hear from Heather Haavisto about the work of running your own hair salon, the breakdown of how different stylists make money, why the business models are in flux, what cutting hair does to the body, social media ambivalence, strong feelings about scheduling, AND SO MUCH MORE. This interview is so addictive.
How long have you been cutting hair, and how did you get started?
When you’re in hair school, at hair events (educational classes, shows, retreats), interviews for jobs, and probably various times throughout your employment at salons, you’ll get asked this question, and I used to be embarrassed by my hair origin story. It never came off as creative or “born with shears or color brush in hand” enough, and I really wanted to be seen as a Fellow Artist with Innate Talent. I used to even embellish the story, because having a fairly simplistic answer felt almost sacrilegious in an industry that pushes the narrative that we’re all here for the passion of the craft. It feels like that’s what everyone else outside the industry wants to hear, too.
Having now been doing hair for 20 years (and getting paid to do it for most of that time), I’m not embarrassed anymore! I think the story has a little bit of cold reality in it that people find off-putting when discussing creative jobs (and we don’t have that same response toward other jobs).
I was a kid who loved English and reading and writing. I had creative pursuits at home (my mom was a big crafter and I participated in some of her hobbies like knitting and cross stitch, I got super into makeup as a scene kid teen), but I never really connected that to “what should I get paid to do someday.”
I also couldn’t entirely connect the more traditional school subjects I enjoyed to a career either, and my parents were straightforward about what they could help pay for education-wise and that we didn’t have “take your time and figure it out” money. I always think it’s interesting that my sister and I, children of government workers with college degrees, both went directly out of high school into trade schools. I’m sure that bluntness from my parents contributed.
I had high school friends who graduated early and moved to San Francisco to go to hair school, and after casually mentioning that once, my boyfriend at the time responded, “Well, have you ever considered that? You really like makeup and stuff…” (big teen response). It was probably the first major revelation of my life, like, oh…I could just…not go to traditional college. (I love being a student, so this was not as easy of a decision as I’m making it sound!)
We booked a tour of that same San Francisco school my friends went to in late winter of the year I was due to graduate high school, and I was quickly enrolled to start the eleven month cosmetology program that August. That was 2005!
Now, tell me about how you organize your day — or your week.
This is going to be different for many hair stylists, depending on the set-up of your salon and payment structure, which I’ll talk about in the next segment. For the last five years, I’ve owned my own solo business and rented studio space in a building that has nothing to do with my industry. My neighbors design kitschy gifts, screenprint, and are a videographer/photographer. I would say I’m definitely in the minority with this setup, and it means I have to do a little more work on the business side of things, as well as physical maintenance of the space.
Fortunately, once you set up the business stuff initially, organizing days becomes more of a “plug and go” type of situation. When I opened I made sure I had a solid, concise and aesthetically pleasing website (they say people don’t care about those anymore, but I get a lot of compliments, even from Zoomers, and yes I made it myself!), my Google listing and social media accounts I wanted to (begrudgingly) be on sorted, licensing (both business with the city and cosmetology owner/operator with the state) paperwork filed and walk-throughs booked (that can go slowly because these smaller state agencies aren’t typically efficient), QuickBooks set up and, really key to everything for me, all of my clients imported into my Square account.
There are a lot of options for appointment software, many specific to my industry, but at my prior salon I helped set up Square Appointments so I was already familiar, and then it’s integrated with the Square payment platform we’re all familiar with. It’s very customizable as far as how I want to label services, items (if you’re selling product in-salon), and it gives you a lot of data and trends. You can even set it to pull from every single sale a certain percentage into a savings account, which I do for taxes. I also like that clients are familiar with it because it became so ubiquitous in coffee shops.
This sounds simplistic, but now that I have most of the important things set to “auto-renew” if you will (I update the website if I need to, I glance at my Google listing if someone leaves a review, I know when I have to do the annual licensing stuff, the quarterly taxes), the majority of “organizing” my day is more like all day mini-maintenance and comes down to answering texts from clients and opening that Square Appointments app and booking them! “Plug and go,” if you will.
It’s a divisive topic, but I don’t do online booking. I have a form clients can fill out to contact me on my website (usually used by new clients), a few of them email me which is fine, and the majority of booking I do via text. Once I’ve seen someone once, if they don’t want to rebook in person, and want to come again, I actively encourage them to save my number and text.
My reasoning for this is that while I do cut and color nearly exclusively (styling on occasion but not updos), the appointment times vary a lot. I have 15 minute appointments (bang trims), to hour long haircuts, to three hour long blonding services. It makes my life very difficult if a client, say, opens an online booking platform and plops down a 45 minute service at 2:00 on an empty day. That can really alter what fits before it, after it, and if a client logs on and doesn’t see available options anytime in the near future (when I might be able to make the Tetris work better vs. the computer), it may frustrate or deter them.
Clients can also have unrealistic ideas of what service they think they should get, or how long it should take, no matter how clearly you describe it on the booking site. Thinking your multi-hour balayage transformation should only take the time of a partial highlight can result in a lot of disappointment day-of in the chair when I have to reschedule you because we don’t have enough time. I can usually avoid this sort of thing if we can have a brief back-and-forth over text where I gather enough information to book the right amount of time, and can explain why.
Online booking software will give you the option to approve every appointment before it’s finalized, but if I’m often having to go back and communicate with the client to make the whole day fit together and most efficiently, I’m not really saving that much time.
I have really high standards for myself to answer people as soon as possible. Coming from someone who switched to a four-day work week after a six week “lockdown” in 2020 and never looked back, I know this sounds inconsistent as far as work/life balance is concerned. But I see it as a concession I need to make if I’m not offering the convenience of online booking. And feedback I’ve gotten from clients about stylists they’ve left over the years (or tattoo artists! Or estheticians! Or lash techs!) is that consistency and reliability is really important, and I mean, as a client myself, I feel that way too.
This means I have answered people while waiting for a band to go on at Red Rocks. I have answered people while in a time zone 17 hours ahead (and tried and occasionally failed to not mess up the appointment time back home) while on a two-week trip. I’ve answered while sick. I’ve answered while flying home for a medical emergency for very unwell parents halfway across the country.
Most of my clients are aware of this, so they’re respectful of timing often, and they’re also aware of why I don’t do online booking. When I explain it to them they’re like, “Ohhh, yeah. That sucks. I wouldn’t want a huge gap in my day where I don’t get paid, I see how this helps prevent that.”
I try extremely hard to resist the urge of the dopamine release I’d get from clearing a notification, and don’t open any text I’m not ready to answer that moment. However, I do fuck up! Sometimes one slips through and I don’t respond for a week, or they have to poke me again. But because we’re all aware of how and why I’m doing it this way (and they can relate to forgetting to answer a text despite their best efforts), there is very little friction around this. I really can’t imagine doing it any other way.
Outside of texting and booking, a typical day for me is waking up, checking my books to see if I have any new clients that day and if so, sending them a set of instructions on how to enter the building, parking map, door code, etc. I am in a 140 year old, formerly-industrial building in a very old part of Kansas City. This means it isn’t a typical entry procedure and I need to be very detailed about how to enter, for timing’s sake and also ease of experience; a 140 year old building is charming and cool until you get lost going the wrong way on the indoor loading dock. If you can’t tell by my language, there was a fair amount of trial and error here! I have all the scripts as well as a parking map I doctored in Photoshop in my Notes app, so morning of I can just fire them off to the new client via text.
I try not to ever leave a mess behind for myself, but I do often throw in a load of laundry before leaving the night before. One single hair stylist uses so many towels. The laundry is never ceasing. I try to get there a minimum of 15 minutes before my first client, earlier if I think I need to fold some capes, refill the beverage fridge, water a plant or eight, or complete any minor day to day maintenance chore. Unfortunately sometimes you show up and the whole beverage cart is a mess because a biblical storm caused the super old roof to leak on it, or some such thing that isn’t life or death but is annoying and messy. My wifi was out all day today and it doesn’t stop me doing my job, it just means I can’t provide you with beautiful Dinner Music playlists to create ambiance. Nothing is an emergency unless we’re out of power or water; otherwise, I can do my job still. There’s some sort of beauty in that, I think!
As I said before, I chose to go to a four day work week five years ago now. The traditional salon weekend is Sunday/Monday, and for me there’s now a Tuesday. It sounds luxurious, and often is. But plenty of time on Tuesdays I do “admin” type stuff like going back through my uncategorized transactions on Quickbooks, placing a color order, placing a styling product order. Sometimes I do book people on a Tuesday if I’m going on a trip, or if I had to reschedule people for illness, or even occasionally if I can see a day people aren’t booking further ahead, so I take that day off and offer a Tuesday instead if people have shown interest in it (even though I regularly am reminding them that I don’t generally work Tuesdays). But I try to be pretty strict with myself about not breaching those boundaries too often.
How do you organize your future? (Planning for future work, planning for time off, etc.)
I think because my work is so day to day and week to week, the number one job I have, doing hair, is not something I really think of as “planning” future work, but every time I book an appointment for someone I guess I technically am. I have a few people who rebook on the spot for 12+ weeks out, but they’re rare. Covid really changed how my clients, at least, organize their hair appointments. I have way fewer rebookings in person and more people opt to “just text later.” I’m not in a place where I can stop working Saturdays, but they fill slower than they used to, and while evenings used to be highly sought after and booked far out, that’s calmed some and people fill in the many hours of the day in a more balanced way (I do not hate this).
If I were earlier in my career, these changes would freak me out (and I have moments where they do) because I was trained in a very rigid system of thought around booking, as in, “X% of people need to be rebooking in person, you need to be rebooked X amount of weeks out, etc.” But at the end of the day, if I’m bringing in the money I’ve decided I’m comfortable with, I’m okay (sometimes this is like a mantra I need to repeat to myself a few times). Covid exposed the office job crowd (much of my clientele) to the idea that more flexibility could exist in their work/lives and they are bringing that to how they schedule. Why get your hair done on the weekend or after work if you can Zoom while your color processes at noon on a Thursday?
Things can change within a few days or even hours, and do, all the time. I often say that the somewhat volatile nature of this job does not go well with the structure that I naturally crave as a person, but 20 years in, I guess I’m managing okay! There’s no doubt that I’ve gained skills to soften my natural rigidity from having to learn to pivot and manage expectations of a work day or week or even month, and am much better for it.
As far as time off is concerned, I try very hard to block my books off as far in advance as possible. I am pretty strict about putting an actual detailed block (“Denver Trip”) on my Appointments app, which feels silly at times, because no one can see it but me. I really like to have travel blocked at least 12 weeks in advance, since most aren’t booking that far out anyway, but sometimes I have it blocked off even further than that. Folks who have been with me longer will actually ask upon leaving (if they don’t want to rebook at that time), “Are you going anywhere the next month or two?” to gauge when they need to rebook.
If I am going to be out for an extended period of time (two weeks or more) or a time of year that is often very busy is approaching, I’ll send out an email via Square so people know it may be more of a squeeze to get in if they don’t get ahead of it. It’s hard to hold people’s attention these days, and I want to resist text marketing as long as I can, so as to not be more annoying digital trash in your face, so I’ve stopped caring about the email open rate. I can only do so much to get you to notice communications from me, we’re all adults responsible for our time, godspeed (I say with love).
Most years my partner and I do travel quite a bit. This is something my clients know (and enjoy? Maybe?) about me, and again, transparency is key to them understanding if something does come up and I need to reschedule. I like to try to get on top of that as soon as I know, even if their appointment is eight weeks away but now I know I’m going to be gone then, and give plenty of alternate options (Tuesdays can be useful here). They move appointments around with me all the time (within reason, and before the cancelation window which is penalized at 12-24 hours) so they understand I’m a human being with a life, too.
As far as studio “work” is concerned, as in work on the physical space, I also sometimes use Tuesdays for medium-term maintenance like a deeper cleaning tasks or reorganizing, or longer-term projects, as mentioned. But honestly? Sometimes I do any or all of this shit on a Sunday or Monday, or a slow work day, because…I can :)
I do keep a few lists of tasks I consider annual (do a big inventory count of color), quarterly (like the deep cleaning) and then a bigger project list that will probably always be growing (one day I will learn to patch drywall, or finally paint the part of the wall we lazily didn’t because we didn’t close the freight elevator door when we painted). Do I complete these exactly when I aspire to? Generally, no! And honestly that’s partially because I need help from my partner or friends sometimes and they don’t work on my schedule…the studio would not exist without the help of MANY people learning in real time how to paint something weird or construct a curtain rod out of metal pipes 12’ up near the ceiling, or the only real contractor of the group helping with something more serious like plumbing.
What’s the thing people misunderstand about how your life and work, well, work? (Would love love LOVE to hear more about the different set-ups, renting a chair vs. owning your own salon, all that stuff here — as you told me, this is the thing most people don’t understand, but you can expand that in whatever direction you’d like).
I think there are two things I want to discuss here, the first being the multiple payment structures that exist, and second, the somewhat sudden narrative shift I’m not only hearing from some clients but also more broadly about how entering into trades is the way to fix the college debt issue in this country.
There is a lot of variability state to state as far as what the most common payment structures are, which are certainly influenced by the many, many different laws governing this industry from state to state, so just keep that in mind. I’ve only got experience with California, Washington and Missouri.
A commission salon is one that takes a percentage of the service dollars you bring in, and you get the remainder (pre-tax) and are a W-2 employee. Industry standard seems to be around 48% (for the stylist), though I myself have made as high as 52% and as low as 36% (the latter seen as heinous by most and justified by the establishment by having a full benefits package and higher serviced prices for new stylists than most at the time, as well as a huge marketing presence). Some salons opt to do a “sliding scale” based on the amount of service dollars you bring in each period they designate (it’s usually done by week). I’d also like to note that unless you’re charging quite a bit (unlikely as a new stylist) it’s damn near impossible to hit the high end of the commission scale unless you’re double booking.
These are usually bigger salons, and are often able to offer some benefits (this varies widely), marketing, product, color, continuing education, often they have a receptionist who books all your appointments…all the stuff you’re responsible for if you’re on your own. Also often (not always), if you’re a new graduate from cosmetology school looking to do an apprenticeship, you will usually find them at a commission salon, with the idea that once you “graduate” apprenticeship, you will have a spot as a stylist in that salon, and all the built-in infrastructure, clientele, and stability that comes with it (this is what I did). Some apprenticeships pay minimum wage for the time you’re there cleaning, washing hair, assisting senior stylists, and then you take classes and do models to continue learning on off days. Some don’t pay at all, or they pay you minimum wage to be present in the salon assisting stylists and cleaning, but you don’t do models or take classes, just learn from those around you.
(Note on my wording there of “senior” stylist: I mean established and busy. A salon can use any kind of terminology to describe its stylists, so you will see all sorts of titles out there. Someone is a junior, or a senior, or a master stylist because the salon says so, just like I’m the czar of the Taco Bell by my house because I’ve deemed it so. This is not the same as how the “traditional” trades categorize themselves i.e. master plumber, apprentice painter, etc. The titles at salons are used to justify different pricing for different stylists, and while this is fine, I’ve found it has led to confusion for clients in the past because they think there’s a standard system. There is not. Many stylists at a salon I worked at got bumped to the next tier because they sold a ton of product and had a high rebooking percentage, but were super green experience-wise. Clients do not enjoy hearing that, but it isn’t uncommon).
When you’re an employee of a commission salon, they can dictate a lot of how your work life goes: your schedule and the time you have to be in the salon, regardless of whether or not you’re doing hair and getting paid (most of us have sat for three hours in the middle of the day after a last minute cancellation not being paid and not being allowed to leave!), how your appointments get booked, what your services cost, what chores you’re expected to contribute to if you have down time.
As a result, many stylists reach a point in their career where they feel comfortable with their amount of clientele, but would like more freedom and flexibility in their lives, and decide they can go it on their own and do “booth rental.” (There is a small movement gaining steam that makes a commission salon actually appealing to stylists that changes a lot of what have been considered required elements of them and gives stylists a lot more freedom while still being employees, and I endorse this new version and hope it becomes the standard; at this point, though, it’s uncommon).
Something clients hate to hear: a lot of commission salons consider the client their property and will not let the stylist leave nicely or take your information with them. If you’ve ever called your salon up and learned your stylist was no longer there, but, “no, unfortunately we can’t tell you where they went, we’re sorry,” this is why. Non-competes are common across many industries, and I think they’re becoming less common and less enforceable in this one, but this behavior by commission salon owners leaves an understandably sour taste in stylists’ mouths about working in them again in the future. And most clients are appalled by it. (Social media has made stylists much more accessible to clients, and that’s somewhat solved this problem, but it still sometimes results in legal action).
Booth rental can exist in a multitude of flavors, but generally you are renting a chair in a salon and pay rent to the salon owner. These salons can be as big as twenty chairs or as small as two. (Some people are even experimenting with micro salons with just one chair and someone rents it from you on your off days, to fully maximize your space).
You are mostly your own boss now! You make your own schedule, book your own appointments (rare instances exist of receptionists in these salons), buy your own color, and do your own marketing. Some of these salons offer “back bar” usage, i.e. you get to use the shampoo/conditioner and styling products the salon provides, and even get commission off of products you sell if they stock them. Sometimes they’re very bare bones, and you have to provide everything yourself and just pay rent. These stylists typically file taxes as a 1099 or contractor/sole proprietor. (Please no one yell at me about LLCs vs. S-Corp, etc. I’m not an accountant and I’m not gonna endorse the best way to play the horrible US tax system!) That’s one downside: you now have to remember to set aside tax money to pay quarterly. At least in Missouri, the state considers you your own salon, and you have to get a separate license for your “booth” as well as your operator license. You should also go ahead and get some business insurance, because you’re responsible for most of what goes on in that chair now.
A kind of sister of booth rental is the studio rental situation, which I think is still considered booth rental in the eyes of most cosmetology boards and the tax system. A building with multiple small studios built out, sometimes of all hair people but often of many different types of beauty service providers in one building (I call them “beauty malls” sometimes, not meant derogatorily!) Most of what I explained about booth rental applies, except now they’ve walled off your chair/space and given you a door for a little privacy. Sometimes they’re super small and you share a big shampoo room with others and again, “back bar products” are included in the rent you pay. Sometimes they’re a little bigger and you get a shampoo bowl in your room, and have to supply all your own product. You get to dress it up as you want within reason usually, which I think is a nice little bonus. Usually you get the benefit of a shared backroom with other tenants, which is great, because while I love all you clients, talking all day and then having you watch me eat a salad with foils in your hair is just too much for me.
Then we have situations like mine, which, again, are pretty uncommon, frankly because rent is really high, especially in cities, and it’s hard to find space small enough that can also be plumbed properly. I’m really no different than a photographer renting a studio or a standalone tattoo artist or therapist except that the state considers me a true salon, so I need a different license (and a business license with the city).
Here’s what I’ll say from my own experience: a lot of how the industry has been structured for decades is no longer working. Salons close regularly; people are physically and emotionally burnt out and frankly not making enough money. It’s really hard to keep the lights on in a lot of salons because they’re paying a receptionist when many clients don’t really care to call anymore, or they’ve got $10,000 worth of product sitting on the shelves they need to keep replenishing, when so much of that is purchased online now.
If the owner is also a stylist, they work a LOT to try to keep it going, and stylists are still unhappy because they think their time and work is being exploited and they don’t even get benefits. This happens in both commission and booth rental. I’m not a business coach, but these are the sorts of changes I alluded to a couple paragraphs back that may see the industry adjust (I hope) so that it feels more achievable and sustainable to be a salon owner and not have everyone splintered off into their own studios.
As far as, “children entering the trades will save us!” is concerned: I do want to remind people that trade schools cost money, too. (Last I heard my school was $26k for 11 months, but that was several years ago). Unfortunately, cosmetology has a really high dropout rate because people are not adequately prepared for the slog of the first few years. I actually worked 6-7 days a week for several years when I moved here, between being a barista and building my clientele, and even once I thought I was secure, I was scared to let the barista job go!
If you push through that, you also get smacked with the hard reality of providing your own healthcare, short term disability (you probably need it, if you so much as sprain your pinky you can’t make money and you aren’t bringing any in), no sick or vacation pay, and no retirement or 401k matching. Pregnancy/having a family/caretaking can knock your annual income significantly for years as you inevitably lose clientele during extended time away. This job can also be hellish on your body (see next section) and because most of us are going without all of those benefits for a long time as we start our careers, preventive care is not happening. Taking all of that into account, and then learning that the average annual salary for hair stylists according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics was still $34k in 2024 — it’s pretty sobering.
I know that it sounds like a fun gig (and it is! I do enjoy my job) but there’s a lot more to it than “playing with hair and yapping all day,” and much to consider when encouraging kids to enter the industry because TikTok makes it seem super lucrative. I don’t want to discourage people. But I do want them to be as informed as possible about the difficulties that come with the job.
One small and gentle final thing I will say that I think people don’t understand: we absorb a LOT of information from our clients day in day out, much of it emotional, and doing hair is an intimate experience! I think many of us would love to see the, “my hair stylist is my therapist!” thing die out. I have stronger boundaries than many (and it is our job to cultivate them and set them), but we aren’t trained therapists at the end of the day. Please share your lives with us, the good and the bad, but there are limits to what we can absorb healthily, and there are professionals much better suited to it.
Can you talk about body care as a hairstylist? As in: preventing repetitive use injuries, protecting the back from standing all day, how blowdrying fucks with your wrists, etc. etc. How do you protect against overuse and injury?
I do kind of want to laugh at this one because honestly, it’s HARD. I was trained in my apprenticeship program to stand in certain ways, move the client in certain ways, position my wrists like so. But you fall into patterns or, embarrassingly for me, don’t want to tell someone to move their head for the 50th time and just give up.
There are some tools that I use that for me, put less strain on certain areas like my wrists. (My blowdryer isn’t very back heavy, for instance). Mats under the chair and at the shampoo bowl are a non-negotiable. I widen my stance instead of bending at the waist (at least while cutting and coloring), I try to really pay attention to not locking out my knees because that’s one of my worst habits, I try not to bend my wrist when round brushing. I also should stretch more, especially before work, but a recent bout of health stuff unrelated to hair has had me struggling there.
Everyone’s body is different, and I can recall many coworkers through the years who have had to drastically change certain ways they do hair to make the job tolerable, some of them surprisingly early on in their careers (to me, when I was early on in my career). Many of them hid it by finding alternative styling methods, or foisting a blowdry onto an assistant when the dryer got too heavy or their carpal tunnel too inflamed. At some point in the last few years I decided I would just be open about the things I can no longer do without feeling it into the evening/the next day and the very real possibility that those things could take time off my career.
There are two important movement types that used to be very regular parts of my workday and I’ve now almost entirely eliminated, and they both have to do with my hands:
The first, and less common for me, is any long, intense flat ironing. The clamping motion really puts a lot of stress on my hands, especially my dominant (and obviously, most important) one. It sucks to say that if you prefer your hair blown out and straightened, I am no longer the stylist for you, but I must say it.
The second, and more controversial one, is I no longer massage clients during a shampoo. Que horror! I know. I don’t love that similar to the “hair stylists are therapists” rhetoric, we have also been traditionally expected to provide this relaxation moment that takes a chunk of time out of the service, when we have professionals out there dedicated to doing this as their whole job. Bluntly, my number one job is to provide clients with an excellent hair service, and massage is not part of that, in my opinion. So I have switched to using a silicone scrubby brush that pairs well with the cleansing product I use, and it has helped so much (and it still feels nice). My clients (when it rarely comes up) understand, especially when I show them my double-jointed thumbs that have never handled massage well! I listened to an interview with a braider a couple years ago, and she said that her hands are the most important thing to her job, and she doesn’t even open jars anymore. That really stuck with me. I semi-jokingly bring that energy to scrubbing a pot my partner (who does the cooking) maybe got a little aggressive with, but it is true: if my hands are in too much pain due to repetitive tasks or strain, my career doing hair won’t be long for this world.
A major industry improvement vs. when I started I’d say is we’ve all accepted, for the most part, much more casual workwear. The salon I apprenticed in had an all-black dress code and there was almost an encouragement to wear heels (on cement). These days I damn near have a uniform of loose fitting pants, sneakers with inserts, and a boxy tee or lightweight longsleeve I can push up to my elbows in winter. (I’m maybe looking into orthotic inserts for work coming up soon; sexy!) It gets slightly fancier sometimes but I work with a lot of chemicals and have ruined so many shirts/jeans over the years, even if I’m a borderline expert at stain removal now. I keep joking to my clients I’m gonna start wearing scrubs, because I’m jealous of all the medspa estheticians pivoting to that. I truly don’t think they’d mind, but it’s hard to break away from the old mindset.
As I already said, part of why I went to a four day work week was overuse, and it took lockdown to realize it. So some prevention for me is just literally trying to work less, no matter how loud the internal American Protestant screams. The other thing I refused to do ever again after I left the last commission salon I worked at is double book (while one client’s color processes you start another, or do a haircut during that time). It’s nearly impossible to do without an assistant, and even with an assistant you’re cramming food in your face at a horrible pace when you can (or not at all), not drinking enough liquid because there’s no time to pee, and hardly ever getting to sit down. It’s also mentally taxing, and clients understandably don’t love it. If you are a stylist still double booking and reading this: raise your prices and stop harming yourself.
I also get massages monthly and try to look at that as maintenance instead of bougie luxury. My massage therapist wants me to see a PT because something in my lower back/hip on one side is causing the rest of the system to overcompensate (and has been going on a long time if we’re honest), so that’s on the to-do list.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on social media and brand management when it comes to hairstylists — what have you experimented with posting, and does it feel worth your time?
I want to start by saying that purely based on luck and timing, I began doing hair in a window of time that meant that social media was just ramping up (I mean, MySpace was the platform du jour when I was in school!), but I still was taught a lot more traditional techniques of building a clientele, and got to utilize the size and scope of an existing salon to build. That is nearly impossible if you are coming into the industry now, especially if you’re young; most of your peers expect a strong social presence.
It’s not that I’m not online or a luddite; I may be, as they say, “too online” still. But what I learned very quickly once “hair Instagram” started taking off around 2014-15 was that I really resented having an entire other job added onto an already difficult job. I got away with not participating in this for a long time until I moved to booth rental. That salon was smaller, and we didn’t have the presence of a larger, more established one, so I kind of had to start participating. I mostly just created a hair account and took pictures of my work. I decided to frame it to myself as an “online portfolio” because trying to keep up with what Instagram wanted of you changed all the time, and required time spent on the app I just didn’t appreciate. “Make sure to like lots of posts, make sure to comment a lot, make sure to hashtag properly, make sure to not hashtag too much, share others’ content to your stories…” Yuck. I’m not a social media manager, I can’t pay one, and this isn’t what I went to hair school for.
I also found that I was severely critical of any photo of work I took, and it required a lot of investment in equipment to get right without over-editing color services (most of what I’d post) in a way that could feel dishonest. Lighting has just been weird in the past few buildings I’ve worked in, and fighting it was an endless struggle in limited space without making half the studio into strategically placed lighting umbrellas. I’ve been told by people younger than me to chill out on being so critical of the photography and just post, because potential clients aren’t looking at it the same. I had to just laugh and say…no. This isn’t really possible for me, sorry!
Also, in a very Millennial way, I cannot cultivate a front-facing camera, video-making social media personality or presence. This is not discomfort I’m going to push through. And while I CAN make a reel, and have, I simply don’t want to spend my life doing that. None of this is paid work! You have to take extra time out of the day to shoot content of your clients, it adds stress to the timing and flow of the day for me, and I probably just didn’t put in enough time to see fruits of that labor (is what some coach would tell me).
And what’s funny anyway is…I still have new clients coming in, plenty of them young. Sometimes people find my Instagram and love what they see even if I haven’t updated much the last couple years (I actually don’t think I’ve taken a hair picture in two)! Sometimes they see my website and Instagram and Google reviews combined and decide they like the vibe. I have gotten an influx of people from ONE Reddit comment someone left on r/kansascity recommending me. They’ve been awesome clients! And not to sound too old, but…some of the best clients are still usually word of mouth from my already established clients. Sorry!
It was also very important to me to hire a friend to make a little logo and be aesthetically consistent across my website and social media, on Google and in my Square communications with my clients. It feels professional to me in a way I like when I see it in other businesses. (Because some days I’m like I cannot fucking believe I’ve been doing this on my own for five years, and I need to manufacture that professional feeling for myself)! That’s why I named the studio as opposed to using my own name, as well. I also hired another friend to take professional photos of my studio because I love his work, but I also wanted the website and Google listing to look as nice as possible, and my shots weren’t going to cut it.
I know a lot of people in my industry reading this will not like my “low social media usage” answer. I also know that I’ve heard a LOT of us complain about how they feel chained to it, don’t want to be on their phones using screens as much as it requires them to, and it wears on them mentally because it’s hard to shake the likes = worth bug, or the comparison bug. Someday deciding not to be silly on TikTok may come to bite me, but it doesn’t really seem to be a problem for my business at this time, and I’m happier for it. No client has ever sat down and lamented my lack of reels; if anything, they’re understanding about why I don’t want to do even more labor.
There’s a small bit here to discuss about product sales, and how a social media presence can really help bolster those. That is true — if you already have a strong following. I’m sorry to say that I hate sales, though I love to recommend products I love to my clients if they’re in the market for something, or if I think they’re in need of upgrading to something that will help with an issue they’re having. The truth is, people are going to Sephora or a big box store a lot of the time (and ordering online), and I don’t really want to fight them on that, it’s tiring. It’s so expensive to carry product in-salon these days, which is why many have pivoted to the affiliate link type model. But if you want to do a “support small business” thing, buy from your stylist’s affiliate links or online storefronts if they have them. It’s a nice thing to do and we do get commission.
For every “Day in the Life” interview like this we publish on Culture Study, I’m donating $500 to a non-profit organization of the author’s choice. What organization are we supporting with this interview, and why does their work matter to you?
I know that interviewees often choose a non-profit that is adjacent to or relates to their industry, but I’m choosing AIRR KC (airrkc.org), Advocates for Immigrant Rights and Reconciliation in Kansas and Missouri. They are doing incredibly important work: real time ICE alerts, education, and activism on behalf of immigrants in my area. I think the moment demands it. ●
And here’s my donation receipt to AIRR KC:
Heather Haavisto owns Suki Hair Studio. You can visit sukihairstudio.com for more info or go to @sukihairstudio on Instagram. She’s located in the West Bottoms neighborhood of Kansas City, MO.
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