May 25, 2020

Bootstrapping “The Makeover Maven”

In response to a reader question, I’ve been spending the past few days thinking about how a hair salon owner could transform their business to respond to pricing objections from clients.

Here’s the crux of the question... if you were a garden variety hair stylist who sold low-value “unisex haircuts for children and adults”, how could you transform yourself into an in-demand hairstylist who commands premium fees?

My advice in the last message was to get very VERY specialized and I outlined three potential positioning examples for you. Today, I’m going pick one of them and describe step-by-step what I would do to start bootstrapping that business in one week for under $100.

Let’s use this one:

Identity—The Makeover Maven

One-liner—Transformational makeovers for women who have recently gone through a major life change.

Tagline—“When you know it’s time for a big change, but don’t know what to do.”__

Here are the steps I would recommend:

Following these steps will increase awareness of your value proposition with folks in your target market. As more and more people become aware of you, your calendar will start filling up with free consultations with women who are your ideal clients.

NOTE: These conversations will be full of solid gold information, so take notes like crazy with every person you chat with. Capture the hopes, dreams, worries, and fears of these ladies because it will help you connect more easily with people like them in the future.

At the end of each call - if you believe your prospect would be a good fit - you can ask for the sale. You could say something like, “Well, I’m convinced that you’d be a great fit and I’d love to work with you. I have one opening next week for a Maven Makeover at $500. Would you like to book it?”

If she says, “Yes!” then take payment right then and there, and book the appointment.

If she says, “No” then find out why by asking something like, “Okay, that’s totally fine. Can you share your thoughts on it?”

Big picture...

The goal of this bootstrapping exercise is to create a small but steadily growing pipeline of targeted leads for a very specific premium priced service that you can provide without a lot of ramp up time. Namely, a hair styling appointment for a woman who’s looking to make a major change in her appearance.

Here’s the coolest part of this particular specialization... it markets itself. Since you’d be making big obvious improvements to your client’s appearance, everyone she knows is going to ask her about it! In other words, it’s viral by default.

It’d go something like this:

“OMG! Sally you look amazing!!!!”

“Thanks! Don’t you love it?”

“Yes! Who’d you go to?”

“The Makeover Maven. She’s a little pricey, but... SOOOO worth it!”

“I’ll say! I have to tell Martha... we could go together!”

Every friend of your clients (big life change or not) who’s looking for a hair/style/makeover reboot is going to call you fully expecting to pay top dollar. The more of them you help, the more people will become aware of your services.

Now... if we stopped here, it’d be pretty good. You’d have gone from selling commodity haircuts for $50 to anybody who walked through the door to selling transformational makeovers for $500 to a very specific clientele. Once your pipeline was full, you could potentially 10x your revenue.

That said, you’d still be doing a lot of high-touch sales and delivery. This is fine... until it’s not.

How could you 10x things again?

I’ll talk about that next time.

Yours,

—J

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