You don't need a side-hustle or a full salon to level-up.

Take Friday afternoons off without paying for it on Saturday mornings. Close the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

Do you ever give yourself a reset day? Maybe even a full reset week?

10/10. Highly recommend.

I just wrapped up a week of rest and family time - and I could actually enjoy it without stressing about lost income. That wasn’t always the case. In the past, any “time off” for a vacation, holiday, or family visit meant cramming clients into late nights or weekends just to make up for the scheduling shift.

Here’s what I want you to hear today: you don’t need a side hustle, supplemental income, or a full salon to take time off and earn well. What you really need is more profitable, productive hours. When your pricing and schedule are aligned, you can be more selective with your work and still create financial security.

Freedom isn’t about doing more. It’s about structuring your business so every. hour. counts. (inside and outside of the salon)

Playing dominoes with my family last week

From Stylist to CEO

You can absolutely adapt your schedule to fit the life you want - without sacrificing income. Take Friday afternoons off without paying for it on Saturday mornings. The truth is, flexibility and financial security aren’t opposites. When your pricing and systems are aligned, you can have both.

For a long time, I thought I had to “earn” the right to charge more by becoming a salon owner. But when I finally did open a salon, I realized that ownership alone wasn’t a value-add for clients. If anything, I was busier and had more distractions. The salon pretty much paid for itself, I still paid booth rent to pay into my ecosystem, and I wasn’t taking a cut because we were paying off debt - and so I did what most of us do: I worked more hours to make more money.

So now, whenever I post about my 40 hour/month schedule, I get messages like this:

But let me tell you with full confidence: if you love your art, adding more to your plate for the sake of earning more in the short term only leads to burnout. You could easily wind up working more and not actually supplementing your income with a full salon. More hours logged behind the chair simply won’t give you to the freedom you went independent for. You can evaluate the clientele you have and develop the schedule you truly want to work. True growth comes from baking certain stabilizers into your business so every hour works harder for you. That’s the CEO shift. That’s how a real business operates.

When I exited my first salon and opened suites, I took the time to reflect on my working style - what I liked, what I didn’t, how I wanted the business to grow, and if I would take a cut this time around. I made the intentional decision not to take a cut again so I could reinvest into the business, while also choosing to work smarter as a stylist. That meant I would need to work less behind the chair to be able to also develop the Salon Suite business, while maintaining my income.

No easy feat, but with the right mind + tools I went from 40 hours/week to 40 hours/month so I’m going to share with you:

→ 🦋 4 Shifts that make each salon hour more profitable without adding more appointments

→ ❓ Why more clients = more $$ is the biggest myth in our industry

→ 🎧 2 linked Podcasts I loved this week

→ 💰 How to determine what your base rate should be

If you’re looking to cut back without taking a cut - keep reading!