Being the stylist who always makes it work can come at the expense of your own time. Kelly Ehlers wants beauty professionals to think more carefully about what they agree to and what they deserve from their careers.
On Volume Up by The Tease, host and founder of The Tease, Kelly Ehlers, steps into the guest seat with Monica Hickey to discuss how her book, Nice Girls Win, applies behind the chair.
Setting Boundaries With Clients
Ehlers encourages pros to practice saying no without immediately filling the silence with explanations or offering a quick solution. Protecting your time can coexist with caring about your clients.
She also connects boundaries to communication. A consultation is an opportunity to explain services and pricing before the client reaches the register. Helping everyone understand what to expect at the end of a service.
Talking Openly About Money
“It’s okay to talk about money. It’s okay to want to have money,” Ehlers said.
She points to the ways professionals discount services or hesitate to raise prices because they worry about hurting someone’s feelings. Her message is to recognize the value of your work and communicate it clearly through pricing.
Ehlers also shares her experience turning down clients whose behavior affected her team’s quality of life. Walking away from revenue can be difficult, but she recalls how chasing money led to decisions that made her life miserable.
Defining Success for Yourself
Ehlers challenges the assumption that every beauty professional should want to own a salon. Building a career that leaves room for the things that fulfill you can be its own version of success.
Nice Girls Win, her best-selling book, has 17 chapters that pair personal stories with exercises that ask readers to consider those priorities.
“I think there’s something about putting pen to paper,” she said.
Ehlers wants readers to return to those exercises as they grow, using them to make decisions about the lives they want.
Listen to the full conversation on Volume Up by The Tease wherever you pod, and Follow @readthetease and @volumeupbythetease for more.
