4 Ways Your Money Stories are Affecting Your Clients Results.

By Robyn McAlpine

Ouch! That’s a tough pill to swallow… but hear me out! Right now, with the doom and gloom of the media telling us that prices are rising so batten down the hatches, and with more movement in the appointment books than I’ve experienced in two decades in business, it’s pretty evident that we are smack bang in the middle of an opportunity to show up differently.

It’s easy to get caught up in the panic and hype and yes, it’s a very real problem having to juggle cash flow when your books start out full then suddenly your appointments are dropping like flies in the hot summer sun. As a skin therapist and business owner I get it, I’m not here to dip it in sparkle farts and unicorn glitter and tell you to think positive and it will all be ok.

I’m in the trenches with you and I too sometimes lie in bed a night wondering who to pay first until the cash is flowing again. I’m not at all glossing over the fact that it is hard, and it is stressful and we’re all feeling it.

But times like this are always about looking for opportunities and whilst I don’t have a magic trick to pull out of the bag that will send cash laden clients beating down your door, there is one thing that we need to keep a check on as skin therapist in the room and how we need to be on top of our own money mindset.

Our money mindset and the subliminal stories we have around our own money could be what’s costing our clients their results (ouch!) and costing you money as a business owner or a skin therapist.

Psssst! If you’re a skin therapist and you never quite seem to reach your target or bonus, this might shed a little light on something you never even knew was getting in your road.

Talking about money can feel icky. You might even get halfway through this article and toss the magazine across the room, swear out loud and flip me the bird, because money brings up deep emotions and stories, we often don’t even realise we have!

So, if this feels a bit spicy, I implore you to throw the magazine down (if you’re reading this on your phone, do it gently), take a deep breath, maybe take a lap around the block and when the dust has settled, come back, and try it again. Because whilst this might feel like a challenging topic, I promise you that I write this with heart felt intention, love, and a deep desire to see you thrive in the clinic, even when the world is telling us all we should pack up shop and go home!

Whilst some clients are cancelling or rebooking at a later date, it’s important that we don’t let this impact our gratitude and service of the ones who aren’t. Clients are still showing up and they are looking to you to lead their skin journey.

We don’t want our fear and lack of money to trickle into the clients and opportunities that ARE walking through our door. We don’t want these feelings and thoughts to get in the way of our clients getting incredible results. When we let our own money story of perceived cost, worth, value stop us from giving our client ALL of the options, even the expensive ones, our money story is blocking our client from getting results.

If we think or believe something is expensive, based on our own personal budgets and money values and money experiences, we can accidentally impose that onto our clients and their skin treatment journey.

And in these times, with our industry feeling like a luxury, it does impact our own personal income and earning capacity, and this sneakily reinforces our subliminal money stories and what we perceive is worthy of spending our money on. We can get into a space of lack and scarcity and then begin to make an assumption about our clients budget.

Based on our own experiences we assume our clients perceived value of our treatments, based on our own perceived value of our salon treatment prices. We begin to make their skin choices for them, and we don’t even know we are doing it!!

Crazy, but stay with me!

If we are basing our clients’ treatment plan on our own personal money story of what we think is affordable, based off what money we have in your own personal budget for personal care, it will show up in the way we offer solutions to our clients.

But the clients who are still holding onto their appointments, even in these uncertain times, are holding them because their value on their skin and what worth they place on their personal care is a high priority for them.

So, it’s really important that we don’t let our own mindset get in the way of our clients getting results.

Ok, so if you’ve gotten this far, well done, I know this topic can touch a nerve. But stay with me.

You might now be wondering if or how a money story might show up in our day-to-day interactions with clients. These stories sneak into the treatment room, and we don’t even realise they are there!

Here are four ways our own personal money and value stories might be sneaking into your interactions with clients in the treatment room:

1: Holding back on a treatment plan and not giving your client the full plan up front. Fearing that if we tell them the year long plan, they’ll think it’s too expensive. We don’t want to scare them off so we hold back on the big treatment plans and offer up something that will still feel nice but doesn’t make you break into a sweat when you hand them the quote. Question? Do they really think it’s too expensive, or does it feel expensive for you?

2: Not progressing your client onto more advanced treatments. If you are just rebooking each month, offering the same thing over and over again without leading into the more results driven (and more expensive) treatments, it could be because you’re looking at the cost of the higher treatments and worried your clients won’t want to spend. Question? Would you spend that much if you didn’t get it for free as a perk for working in the industry? If the answer is no, this could be your subliminal money story getting in the way of your client’s results.

3: Not offering on the spot upgrades or addons to today’s treatment that you know will give them better results.

If you can see an opportunity to add something or tweak the treatment currently booked that will benefit your clients’ results, but you don’t offer it to the client, this could be your money story making assumptions on how much the client is prepared to spend today, and that’s directly impacting their opportunity to get results.

4: Not booking clients regularly or consistently.

If you find yourself stretching out the frequency of you client’s appointments, or you’re not leading the rebooking conversation you’re ultimately slowing down their progress, delaying their results. We know that treatments spaced within the epidermal cell life span are going to be of most benefit. When we don’t operate within this cycle or the recommended best practice of the treatments and services we do offer, results will take longer.

As skin therapists, it’s our responsibility to create skin solutions and present all options to our clients so that they can make their own informed decision. It’s about giving clients the autonomy to choose and decide based on what is of value and ‘worth it’ to them.

The only time you should be basing our treatment plan on money decisions is if our clients have explicitly said that they need a more budget conscious plan/timeline.

Of course, there will be clients in our clinics that genuinely need a more conscious priced treatment (which will ultimately affect their results) but unless they ask for it, it’s not up to us to assume how this client chooses to prioritise their skin care journey. It is our job to prescribe them the very best solution for their needs, without our own money stories coming into it.

I get it, at the moment we are all feeling the pinch, but let’s not panic at the expense of the clients who are committed to their skin journey, who perhaps aren’t as affected by the cost of living as we personally might be. Let’s give our clients every opportunity to make treatment choices based on what is of value to them.

If this has brought up ill feeling for you, or has perhaps hit a nerve, that’s okay. I get it, money can be triggering and there’s a lot of emotion and energy tied to dollar signs.

Feeling uncomfortable presents us with an opportunity to look at why and what’s underlying for you. It’s a brilliant opportunity to get curious and ask ourselves some deeper questions about where these stories come from and what are they holding us back from. We all have money stories. I personally had a pile of them and still find myself having to overcome new ones that pop up unexpectedly.

But now is not the time to let our own stories get in the way of our clients who are showing up, booking in, and buying products. Now is the time to step up show your clients the bigger picture and lay it all out on the table (even the expensive bits) and give our clients everything they need to make an informed choice about the treatment plan that wish to spend their money on.

Robyn McAlpine @expert_skin_therapist www.skintifix.com