Three Ways to Stop Working 24/7 in Your Esthetician Business

In this episode, Brittany discusses the common issue of estheticians working all the time and the negative effects it can have on their business and well-being. She emphasizes the importance of setting boundaries with clients and charging accordingly for the level of attention and availability provided. Brittany also advises treating the business like a job and scheduling specific work hours to avoid working randomly throughout the day. Additionally, she suggests having designated admin downtime tasks to maximize productivity and reduce overwhelm. By implementing these strategies, estheticians can avoid burnout, enjoy their business more, and increase their profitability.

Takeaways

Set boundaries with clients and communicate when and how they can contact you.
Charge accordingly for the level of attention and availability provided.
Treat your business like a job and schedule specific work hours.
Have designated admin downtime tasks to maximize productivity.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction
00:40 Working All the Time
03:23 Charging Accordingly
04:01 Setting Boundaries with Clients
08:05 Treating Your Business Like a Job
09:25 Having Admin Downtime Tasks

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Transcript:

You are listening to the Estheticians earning more podcasts with Brittany Hagenman episode number 140.

Hi, happy Monday, welcome back. I'm so excited to be back here with you today. I am also doing another video recording. I don't think the video worked last two weeks, but if you are watching on the video, hi, nice to meet you. And if you're listening to a podcast, thanks for coming back. Again, I hope the audio is better. I have my pillow here to kind of help with sound. And I'm really excited to talk about today's topic.

Something that I see consistently with estheticians is that estheticians tend to be working all the time.

And I know this is not a esthetician only thing. This tends to be a small business owner thing. And I know that because it's like a thing about small business owners is like you work all the time, like that's just having a small business. It kind of becomes just accepted. Like that's just what you sign up for, right? If you decide to own your own esthetician business, that means you are going to be working all the time. Like, like if you're a plumber or small business or a contractor or.

or a realtor or any other, you know, if you work for yourself, you have a small business, like that is just the expectation of our society, of our culture, just kind of how we think small businesses run.

But I have to tell you, I know for a fact, because I've seen it myself and with other esthetician clients and just estheticians that I just know, you work all the time, you are going to get burned out, you are going to want to quit your business. You're going to present your clients, you are going to start hating your business. And like, why do we, why are you in business if you hate it so much, right? Like, it basically does the opposite of what we were hoping for, which was...

having a business that's making money and it's the business that you really love and enjoy. And of course, like not everything in your business you're gonna always love, but most of the things about your business, I hope my goal for you would be that you like. So we feel like we have to work.
all the time, always responding to client's calls or messages or whatever so that we are professional, so that we are taking care of our clients, so that clients don't end up leaving us to go to someone else. And...

Especially when you're a new esthetician business owner and you have your few clients that you're just so excited for and you just can't believe like you have a business you just kind of like fawn all over them. You just love them so much and you just want to help them. However, you can and then what happens is you start to get more and more clients, hopefully, and then you realize that you just can't give everyone that much attention. Now if you like giving that much attention per client, you just need to charge accordingly.

Like if you like that relationship, then that's great. There are people out there that are willing to pay for that kind of relationship.

But what I think is probably happening to you, which is happening I know to a lot of people, is you're charging normal esthetician rates, but you're giving them the service of someone who's spending a lot more money for that kind of attention and that kind of availability and being on call and things like that. Out of fear. You're doing it because you're afraid and you don't.

your business won't be doing well, you'll lose clients, you'll lose money, right? So you're like, I just am gonna keep doing this. And so then you keep doing it, new clients come on, you're giving them the same amount of attention, and then you're like on your phone 24 seven and you're working all the time. I was thinking about this.
Especially with like, I had this down with my esthetician business. I figured this out and it was like not a thing for me when I was, you know, had that business in San Diego. But then having an online business where I meet and talk to, everything's online. I don't talk to anyone in person. I found myself also kind of sliding back into this because it's like easy. Like you go on Instagram and like, oh, what does this person ask for, right?

And my business coach, the coach that I've been working with for a while now, who I love, Samantha Siffring she's a business coach and she's great. And I remember when I first started listening to her podcast and learning about her and what she does a few years ago.

She was talking about how she was like an avid reader and she loved to watch Survivor. Actually, we have a lot in common. I love to read, I love to watch Survivor's new episode this week, a new season. It's very exciting. She talked about all these hobbies and she also has like a million dollar business. And I was like, how? And I'm like, oh, she must have really great systems and really great boundaries. That is true.

but she's also not working crazy amounts of hours. She knows how to work when she's supposed to work. And I do too, that's a skill that I learned. And I had to kind of refocus my attention and energy on client time versus non -client time and really honoring the two.

So there's a couple things that I want to talk about for you if this is something that you find yourself in. Also, I keep looking at my notebooks. There's a statistic that my dad is a beekeeper. He's become a beekeeper the last few years. He's very cute. He has like five hives. He lives on like this property with a bunch of plants and he like his bees are very important to him. He's always checking on them and helping them and...
All this, it's very sweet. And he told me this, and I had to look up this statistic to make sure I had it right, but in the summertime, honey bees live 15 to 38 days on average. And in the wintertime, they live 150 to 200 days. Because in summertime, that's when everything is blue, everything's hot, so they're out working literally 24 hours a day. They're always working, and so then they just, they don't live, because they cannot survive working that much.

And the winter bees, they don't really, they just kind of live off of the honey that the summer bees made until spring can come around and start getting honey. Like today it's a really rainy day. Like those honey bees are in the hive today. They're not out working. Today's they're resting. Yesterday it was like really windy. The bees don't go out when it's really windy. So they're resting a lot. So they live a lot longer.

So it's the same thing for your business. You can either be a honeybee in the summertime or a honeybee in the wintertime. One's gonna run out before the other. And I know there's seasons for work and there's seasons for rest. That was another day, another topic. But I just wanted to think about that. Are you being a honeybee right now? A summer honeybee or a winter honeybee? Okay.

So let's get into some strategies if you find yourself working all the time. So the first strategy that I want to bring up that I talk about all the time on this podcast, all the time on my Instagram is boundaries. I know you knew it was coming. If you are working all the time, if I had to guess, you do not have boundaries with your clients. Probably because you set them up that way. They didn't come in with that kind of expectation, but you fed it.

by responding, by telling them they can text you anytime. I don't know anyone I can text anytime, except for my husband. But even then I'm like, oh, it's like if he's on a trip, I'm like, he's sleeping. I'm not going to text him and accidentally potentially wake him up. Like that's just not a thing. Maybe it is like maybe when I was younger, I would have disagreed with you when sleep wasn't like.

a rare commodity and something that like I was like dying to do every day. Like I could not wait to go to bed. Maybe that maybe like from a teenage perspective until like 30 that may have been the case for me. But I know that your clients do this. I know they text at like 10 p .m. or 1 a .m. or some crazy amounts of time.

But you have to tell them that you will only respond during business hours and encourage them to text during business hours. That's why I want my clients to always email me because they can email me at 1 a .m. I'm not going to check it until Monday at 9 a .m. That's when they get a response from me. And then there's no, I don't wake up to notification on my phone of like, what? Who just texted me at 1 a .m.? Even if my phone's on, do not disturb, right? So you have to have those boundaries with your clients.

clients, you have to set them and explain to them when and how they can contact you and what that looks like and then what how long they should expect to hear back from you. And then you also need to follow through with that. Other than that, the whole thing doesn't matter. Like you have to be consistent and with every client. Because if one client who you love, you're always responding to because you just love them.

and they refer a friend to you and that friend, you're like, you like them, but they're not like your buddy. And then they don't get the response as much, that's not great. So you really need to be consistent with your boundaries. The second strategy that I have for you.

to stop working all the time is to treat your business like an actual job and choose the hours that you're working and only work those hours. So if you were in the treatment room on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, let's just say those are the days, from 9 a .m. to 5 p .m.

That is when you're going to schedule all of your work stuff. You're going to do all of it during that time. You're going to do your bookkeeping. You're going to schedule it in there. You're going to do your social media. You're going to do post, like any kind of post that you want to create. You're going to do any kind of admin, deep cleaning things that you want to do. You're going to schedule it into your calendar and do it. We're not just going to like do it randomly, random times as you fit things in. I know.

That's how probably everyone who's listening this podcast runs their business, but it does not work And I want you to be really intentional with your time it's okay if Maybe you're doing admin work at home, but that needs to be focused and like I'm doing these two things for this one hour and that's it when I'm done. I'm done. I'm not gonna like

go down the rabbit hole of all the other things that I could do. You wanna be really specific about what the hours that you're working and work during those hours. So if let's say like, you know, a Tuesday, you work Tuesday and you have to like a big gap in your schedule, that's when you need to be doing all of your work stuff. Like don't sit on your phone or like just chill out unless you really need a break. But like don't just like waste that time.

really have everything ready to go, have everything that you can do during that time. Because then you like, maybe you're not working during that gap, but you're also not off. You're not like home, reading a book or cooking or watching your favorite TV show or going on a walk.

or hanging out with your partner or your buddy or like hanging out with your dog or doing anything that's like totally not work related. You're trying to like, like you're not really working but you're not really not working. So like maybe you're just scrolling Instagram and just like panicking that you're not posting enough and then no one's like coming in and like leave all these openings and like.
That's not really like your brain is like spiraling and like panicking, but you're not making money from that. You're not actually like getting anything done in your business or like admin stuff that needs to be done. So you're like just wasting time. You're just wasting time.

And so then that brings us to the third thing. This is something that I talk to my clients at in detail that have a hard time with this. This is something that I've worked with people on for a while now. And I feel like the way I teach it is really manageable, but you need to have your admin downtime tasks.

specified and ready to go every single week. So you know, either if you get last minute cancellations, you know what you can work on during that time, or you just know that you have these gaps in your schedule this week and you're planning these tasks.

Now, if you are at the point in your business where you never have gaps in your schedule or you rarely do and you don't have like, you're working when you're working, then you need to schedule time outside of those hours, but at work time to get these things done every single week and be really specific about what you're gonna do during that time. I would once in a while at BLH Booting San Diego get a cancellation that I didn't fill because it was last minute or something.
but I almost always like would just hit the ground running and knew exactly what I was gonna do during that hour or whatever. Because I had my things that I was working on that week.

spelled out, I knew exactly what I needed to do that week. And so I would just be like, oh, like maybe I had admin plan time for the next day. Oh, I'm just gonna do that right now. I'm just sitting here, I have nothing else to do. Spent an hour doing that or 45 minutes. And then that's done. And then that admin time that I have scheduled for tomorrow to get this done, I can do whatever I want. I can stay home longer. I can, you know, whatever. I can do whatever I want with that time. I just got that time back.

But I was very intentional going into every week of what I needed to do during the time that I have. It's the same thing I do in this business now too, especially having childcare. And if I don't have childcare, I really can't get a lot of work done because my child is very full of life and needs lots of attention and is very loud. And so I really have to be.

Aware of that and so like for instance today's podcast I'm recording it. She's at school. I can't edit it when she's having like her quiet time She's loud. She's like yelling in her room and playing and singing and like just having a great old time But I can't record while she's doing that because it would just be just be hearing like a very Passionate yet off -key version of let it go

And that would be really distracting for both of us. But I could edit the podcast while she's singing because I can have headphones in and like she's fine, right? She's not like crying or anything. So I'd be really strategic about how I do things knowing that I don't have that much time. But to be honest with you, I did this before I had a daughter before I had more constraints on my time. I just treated my business. I was very specific about my work time and working during my work time so I could really enjoy my break. Because if you aren't getting the things you need to get done for your business every week that you know just ordering more supplies you know.

Looking at your books, your numbers, make sure you're paying bills, making sure that you like I needed to always have quarters for the laundry at my, where I work, there was a laundry machine, you would pay with quarters, so I had to make sure it's had quarters and like all of these like little things, right, that you need to do for your business. If you don't have that all planned out, like when it's going to be, your brain is just constantly spinning with like, I have to do this, I have to do that, I have to do this, I have to do this, I have to do know, and your brain is just like,

like exhausted by it. It's exhausting because you that the to do list is just never ends.

And then you also feel like you never get anything done. And then you're also thinking about bookings and getting more people in and making more money. So your brain is just spinning all the time versus like having boundaries with your clients so they are contained, essentially. I teach a whole concept about a container. If you know, you know. And then you have your work time.

that you are working and doing very specific things. Doing those things.
It seems, I mean it's simple but it's not easy. But once you do it, once you master it, it's game changing for your business. And not to say like ideas for my business don't come up and I think about my clients when I'm not working, but I just like have a notes app, you know, on my phone and I just will like jot it down. You know, I wanna get back to so and so about something that I was thinking about or I have an idea for a reel or a podcast. I'll just put it right in there.

I'm back to it later. I don't have to go sit down and record that podcast or make that reel right there or message that client right then. This is like my off time. And I can promise you, when you aren't working all the time, you will love your business so much more. You will show up differently to your clients because you're not going to be exhausted. And you're going to make more money. That for sure is a guarantee.

Oh hey. Okay, that is it for today. I hope this was a helpful episode for you. I will be back next week. Same time, same place. I hope you heard this okay. If the audio was okay, have a fantastic week. Bye for now.