This is a question often asked by freelancers and hairdressers alike.
The answer is always…MORE THAN I HAVE!
But I put this to you…do you know how many you actually need?
Having a regular clientele is what keeps us in a job, keeps food on the table and keeps bills paid. Then we hope there’s a bit left over for us to enjoy some of life’s luxuries…a holiday, new shoes or a night out.
Every week we hope we have enough work to achieve this. We hope enough people book in to fill our books and each week repeat.
What if there was an easier way? A way to fill your books, have holidays and create a cancellation list for any dead spots.
Step 1: Work out your base revenue target
Revenue is the sales you make. This amount needs to be greater than your wage and super, insurances, rent, etc. These are called “Fixed Costs” and they will be the same every week.
Let’s make this really simple and just use round numbers in these examples. This will vary for each Solo Stylist but you can play with them in order to find what works for you.
Step 2: Set how many hours are you going to work per week
Is it part time or full time? 20 hours per week? 40 hours per week? This is up to you to suit you and your lifestyle.
Step 3: Set your service pricing
Divide your service revenue amount by the amount of weeks you will be working.
There are 52 weeks in a year. If you plan to have 4 weeks holiday then you need to divide revenue target by 48 weeks as there is $0 income during that period of holidays.
Eg. Let’s say you want your business to generate $100000 in service revenue. You would divide 100000 (revenue) by 48 (weeks worked) to give you weekly revenue target.
$100000/48 weeks=$2083.33 per week
Now divide weekly revenue by many hours you’re going to be working per week. I’m using 30 hours per week in this example.
$2083.33/30 hours=$69.44
$69.44 becomes your minimum hourly rate to charge.
Step 4: Set your service timings
How long will your service times be? I personally keep my timings simple. Every service I run goes for either 1, 2, 3 or 4 hours. This keeps my appointment books clean and lets nothing overlap. I also only service 1 client at a time in order to avoid any unexpected delays.
In the above examples I would need to charge my clients $70 per service block (1 hour slot) to achieve the $100000 revenue target.
Eg.
- Haircut (1 hour) = $70
- Basic colour and haircut (2 hours) = $140
Step 5: Rebook, rebook, REBOOK
You have clients you love doing. Concentrate on them. How many clients do you need based on this formula? Let’s say you do 50% haircuts and 50% basic colour and haircuts in your week. This would equate to 16 haircuts and 7 basic colour and cut services (30 x 1 hour blocks). If every client rebooked in 6 weeks time you would be a capacity clientele of 138 clients.
That’s it…you can’t fit anymore in. 23 clients per week is all you need in this case (138 clients / 6 weeks). So now it’s up to you, play with these numbers and see what you can achieve with the clientele you already have. Here are some further examples:
- Double your hourly rate to $140 per hour and now you’re on $200000 revenue for the same 138 clients.
- Double your hourly rate to $140 per hour and reduce your hours to 15 hours per week for the original $100000 needed and you then only need 69 regular rebooking clients.
Don’t forget…these are just rough numbers I’m playing with but it will give you an idea about what you can achieve if you plan ahead.
Key Points:
- Know how many client’s you need to achieve your financial goal
- Book out your leave in advance so your clients know your availability
- Looking after your existing clients is easier than finding new ones
Until next time…
Craig
The Solo Stylist
P.S. Not sure if freelancing is right for you?
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