Esthetician Summer Slump: Preparing for Slow Seasons

Summary

In this episode, Brittany Hagemann discusses the summer slump that many estheticians experience in their businesses. She provides strategies to overcome this slump, including connecting with current clients, selling products, and providing value. She emphasizes the importance of building relationships with clients and offering valuable services and products. Brittany also encourages estheticians to plan for slower seasons by saving money. Overall, she reminds listeners that the ups and downs of business are normal and that consistent effort and adaptation are key to success.

Takeaways

The summer slump is a common challenge for estheticians, but it can be overcome with the right strategies.
Building strong relationships with current clients is crucial for business growth.
Selling products can be a valuable source of income for estheticians.
Providing value to clients through exceptional service and knowledge is essential.
Planning and saving money for slower seasons can help alleviate financial stress.
Business success requires consistent effort and adaptation to changing circumstances.

Brittany Hagemann (00:00.654)
You are listening to the Estheticians Earning More podcast with Brittany Hageman, episode number 157. Happy, happy Monday. Welcome back. I am so excited to be talking with you today because the topic that we're going to talk about, I know a lot of you are having a hard time with, and that is the summer slump. Now, I know if you do waxing or sugaring or hair removal, this is the busy time of year for you, right? This is when everyone needs to come in and get the hair removed.

or lasering or whatever. But I know a lot of you that listen do skin and it can be a slump. People are traveling, people maybe like to do kind of corrective skin care and it's not the ideal time of year because people want to go in the sun and be outside and things like that. So it can feel a bit scary. And I remember when I had BLH Beauty, my business in San Diego, August was always my slowest month because

That is when people are going back to school and it just kind of coming in for services would be genuinely like people would forget. People were just kind of caught up in everything that was happening. So you may have a whole month that is harder for you or you may have the summer months in general. I know for a number of my clients, summer months in general are just tend to be slower and be much more stressful for them and their business. So that's what we're going to talk about today.

Brittany Hagemann (01:31.694)
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Brittany Hagemann (01:36.174)
First of all, I do want to acknowledge this is real. This is happens with business is the highs and the lows in business and it's normal. Okay. So I do have some strategies that I'm going to talk about in this podcast, but I first want to just be like, not having a consistent number every single month that you hit in your business and the fluctuating up and down is normal. If it's a big fluctuation, like you were doing 10 grand months and now you're doing...

two grand, then that is when we need to be like, what's happening? But if you're doing 10 grand months and then 11 and then seven and then 13 and then nine, that is a normal business adjustment. It's frustrating. You always just want to be always going up, but that's not super standard in business. Again, when I work to Target, the reason that Black Friday is a thing is because it was the one day of the year you guaranteed you were in the black, you weren't in the red in your business.

because a lot of times businesses run in the red. I know Target when I was there, January, February were red months. We just didn't make the money that we needed to make to pay all of the bills to run the targets. But the other months we were so far in the black that it worked itself out. So I don't ask you to do that or be like, hey, just run in the red during the summer because that's not sustainable, especially from a small business perspective. But I just want to kind of normalize that this is

What happens a lot in business, this is not a problem necessarily with you, but it's just kind of how business is. Business can be cyclical. I also recommend, this is not one of the strategies, but something to think about over the next year, over the busier seasons for you. So like if you are in hair removal and this is your busy season and the winter is slow, like listen up to this strategy. And that is save money for the slow time. So if...

You know, looking at your sales that your slump, whether it's the winter slump or the summer slump.

Brittany Hagemann (03:40.59)
is $2 ,000 less a month, then in your busier months, put that money aside so that you have that money as a cushion if you need to, to pay your bills, pay it yourself, things like that. It takes a lot of planning and a lot of foresight and a lot of discipline to do that. And that's something I actually work with some of my clients with that have this problem and have that savings account so that they're like, okay, ideally I still wanna be making some amount of money.

But if for some reason I'm not, I have this extra cushion. So if you're a waxer or sugarista, then this is the time that you need to be putting that money to the side, just for a little cushion for the winter. But if you are currently in the slump, or if you do hair removal and you're listening to this, and next winter, hi, these are the three things that I did that I recommended my clients to do if this is where you are. So the first thing, maybe the most important thing, is

connection. So I want you to connect with your current clients, clients you haven't seen in a while, and just people in general. I know this is a very broad thing, but I don't know your business and I don't know exactly where you have opportunities that you can do that. But what I find is some estheticians are always trying to get their current clients to come in and they already are coming in, they already are booked. And so,

that well is used, right? Like if we're looking at connection in three different ways, like your current clients that see you regularly, your former clients or clients you haven't seen in a while, and people you don't know and haven't been clients yet, people tend to focus on one of those three ways, trying to like get people back in the door, get people in the door, and it usually is their current clientele. And that's where you wanna start, is your current clientele, make sure that they're all booked.

They're all coming in, they feel connected to you, they feel that they're important. That's the first one. Second connection is those former clients, clients that you haven't seen in a while, clients who you know, you're not really sure what they're doing is connecting with them and outreaching to them however that looks for you. And then the third level of connection is probably more challenging for most of you. I know from talking to my Esthetician clients, this is something that a lot of people struggle with, but it's connecting with people that you don't know.

Brittany Hagemann (06:05.518)
And it doesn't have to just be social media. Social media is a very useful tool and it can be very helpful.

And I highly recommend you consistently connect with people on social media because it's social. That's the whole point of social. It should be called connection media, right? Because you connect to people. But also in your real life. I think that that often gets missed as a way to get your business growing and get it moving. So first step is connection. Okay. So if you've been connecting with your people, current, former, and new, potentially potential people,

I want you to focus on product sales. I want you to look at when people have bought product, if they should be out, you need to be looking at who needs product. That is the name of the game. Who needs product? Who needs to buy product? Who is out? Who's gonna be low? And then also connecting with those people to see if they need more product. This is work and this is very vulnerable. I know I'm kind of speeding through these.

But I know this takes a lot of vulnerability to do these things and to put yourself out there and be afraid of rejection. I know, especially connecting even with people you haven't talked to in a while and people you don't know and then asking them for, I get it. It's like you're like, this is not what I was hoping you were gonna say. But it is how the business grows and how you make money. And I think if we go back to the connection part before we talk about the products is if you are connected to your people,

the conversation for products is a natural conversation. If you are not connected to your people, the conversation for products feels disjointed. It feels like it's out of nowhere. It feels like you're just asking for money.

Brittany Hagemann (08:02.51)
Do you see the difference? You see how the connection and then the sale, it builds on itself versus just the sale. I think that's where sometimes we get stuck is like, we need money. So we're going to ask for sales, which don't get me wrong. You can totally do that, but that's where that can kind of feel maybe icky for you and hard to do because it feels like you're just asking for money.

But if you've already had that connection going with them, it's a natural thing, but natural place and way for the conversation to go.

But I don't want you to just skip over the products part of this. I know a lot of you do. I know you do because I have talked to so many of you. I do a lot of discovery calls and talk to a lot of you about your money and how much money your businesses are making. So I know this is true. This was like, I just saw my products later. I don't have a problem with my clients, right? And so figuring out what they need, if they need it, if they need more. And that takes work. That takes vulnerability. But I...

I promise you, if you can get that down, your business will grow and your clients will be happier because they'll be getting results. And this can be also for like waxing and sugaring. One of my clients, actually she's a former client now, she just finished. But she has an incredible post wax oil and well in between treatments. It's called Cloud Oil, it's amazing, Google it. And...

Selling those products is an important way to make money and people use it. It's a consumable product. You can make money from that. So I know it's not the same rate as facial, but you still can make a good amount of money from selling products to non -facial clients.

Brittany Hagemann (09:53.422)
The third, maybe most challenging part of this strategy is value. I'm saying it with that because I know that you may be like, I was hoping you would say, I don't know. I'm curious actually what you would hope I would say it to be because you feel like that would be really easy. I know this is probably even the hardest. So like you can tell I've been prepping you for the hardest part is providing value to your current.

and not people you don't know out in the world.

And I actually just want you to sit down, piece of paper and write, like, how can I give more value? I really want to encourage you to figure this out. Because I have given a lot of examples on this podcast. If you scroll back, you can see I've given you a lot of feedback and ideas. But I really want you to think, like, how can I give more value to my clients and people I don't know?

Brittany Hagemann (11:06.926)
How can I bring more value to them?

And it's gonna be different for everybody. If you do hair removal, the value you give someone is different than someone who does brow laminations or lashes.

like she do lashes, what's the value that you could give someone without like giving them a free service or product that they would, that would be really helpful for them. I know when I first got my lashes done with my friend in San Diego, the amount of information that they gave me, my first appointment, how to take care of my lashes, blew me away. And I have never seen it before or after where that amount of value they gave me. And also during my appointments with them.

So what would that be?

Right? So I really, like this is where I think, and I think this is just a human brain thing, this isn't a you thing, this isn't because you're lazy, this is how human brains work. We just want like someone to tell us, right? Like just, okay, just tell me what I should say, what I should put out in the world.

Brittany Hagemann (12:20.59)
But I want you to really think about it because the better you get at thinking about it, the easier it'll be for you to continue to do it. Versus like, this is what everyone who does acne works for them on their Instagram or social media. Because I'm gonna tell you right now, posts that worked two years ago probably aren't working anymore.

Right? So maybe it did work, but maybe it's not working anymore.

Brittany Hagemann (12:58.062)
And the estheticians whose posts are working, they're always going back to that value.

Brittany Hagemann (13:05.678)
So I really, this is like, this is like not your favorite, but this is what owning a business is about. This is the hard part of owning a business. Trust me, like when you are more booked and you are more money coming in, there are challenges there too. I just wanna also make sure that's clear. It's like not better there. There are things just like this that are really hard. I know you're like, no, no.

If my business is bringing $100 ,000 or $200 ,000 a year in, I will be riding happy. But there are new challenges at every stage of your business. This is what being a business owner is about, is connecting with your clients, selling products, providing value at every single stage of your business. And every single stage of your business is going to look different and it's going to bring its own challenges.

What happens is you are looking at other estheticians, other people out in the world, and it looks really easy for them. It looks like they didn't do anything and they have this big business. Maybe that's the case for some people. I don't know it to be true. I have never met someone in the esthetician community who just like, we don't know what happened. It was so weird. They just had all these clients out of nowhere.

I'm not saying this is not possible, I just haven't seen it, okay? But we see people who are doing well and making money and we're like…

I want that and I want it to just be easy.

Brittany Hagemann (14:49.07)
I want it to be just like no struggle to get there. But like every person, like my clients that I've interviewed on this, people who haven't been a client of mine, who've been successful, even on this podcast, you will hear the ups and downs of them growing their business and where things worked and then it didn't work. And then this happened and then that didn't happen. And then this was really great because it did this and then that didn't, whatever, right?

And you'll also hear they have different strategies that maybe aren't as successful today, but they had to think of those strategies. I was thinking back to the podcast I did with Crystal. I'll put it in her notes if I can remember. I remember at the time she had hired someone to do a video of her doing treatments, and that was hugely successful for her. I don't know if it's the same success now, because it is much more common, because...

It's easier to do video than it was a few years ago. It's easier to put that stuff out there. The apps are easier for it and everything. So I don't know if that strategy is gonna work. Maybe. You can try. But she didn't come up with that strategy from just being like, I don't know, they just need to come to me. She was like, how do I, like she didn't have any clients. Like how do I get?

people to know me. Like how do I put out value? How do I get this to go? Like get it moving, right? And that's how it worked for her. She asked herself these questions. You know, these exact questions with the same idea.

Brittany Hagemann (16:24.302)
So I know you're probably like.

Okay, I will do this. And I just wanna encourage you that you may not have answers right away, but don't give up. I want you to keep asking yourself these questions. That is the only way. You have to keep pushing through this uncomfortableness of not knowing exactly what it's gonna be for you and how it's gonna work. The uncertainty of it all, it sucks, doesn't it? And if you need help, come to my workshop. I've already talked about it in this episode.

It's my daughter in the background. We can talk about it. If you come live, I can coach you on it. It'd be great. Okay, have a fantastic week. I'll talk to you next week. Bye for now.