Teréze Taber
There’s a quiet misunderstanding in hairdressing that holds a lot of stylists back. Most think they offer one thing. The colour. The cut. The end result.
But there are always two services happening in every appointment.
The first is the obvious one. It’s your technical work. The formulation, the placement, the finish. It’s the part you trained for. The part that shows up in the mirror. That’s what gets clients in your chair. That’s what builds your portfolio.
But it’s the second service that decides whether they ever come back. You’re not just doing hair. You’re creating an experience..
It’s how your client feels from the moment they walk in, the way you greet them, the tone you set. Whether they feel relaxed or like they’re on the clock! It’s how well you listen during the consultation, not just to what they’re saying, but what they’re unsure about. It’s whether they feel understood, or whether they feel like just another appointment in the day.
It’s how clearly you explain what you’re doing. How confidently you guide them. Whether you take ownership of the result, or leave it sitting in that grey space of “we’ll see how it turns out.” It’s the small moments throughout the appointment. And it’s how you close it. What they walk out thinking. How they feel when they look in the mirror, and how they feel about you.
This is the part most stylists underestimate.
We saw it over and over again when we owned salons. Our biggest earners weren’t always the most technically perfect stylists in the room. But they were always, without exception, the ones who made their clients feel something.
They made people feel comfortable. Understood. Looked after. They knew how to hold a conversation, how to read the room, how to guide without overwhelming. Clients didn’t just trust their hands. They trusted the whole experience of sitting in their chair.
Lynden learned this long before hairdressing, in optometry. He realised pretty quickly he didn’t need to be the smartest optometrist in the room to become the most in-demand. What mattered more was his ability to take something complex and explain it in a way clients actually understood. To communicate clearly, to make people feel informed, not confused. That was the difference between a transaction and an experience.
And it’s no different behind the chair.
“Clients didn’t just trust their hands. They trusted the whole experience of sitting in their chair.“
From my side, as a client, I’ve felt it both ways. I’ve sat in chairs where the hair was technically fine, but something was missing. No connection. No real sense of being seen. And without making a big deal of it, you just… don’t go back, right? You quietly find someone else.
And then there are the appointments you look forward to. Not just because of how your hair will turn out, but because of how you know you’ll feel while you’re there. That’s the difference.
From a Behind the Brand perspective, this second service is your brand. It’s the invisible layer sitting underneath every appointment, every interaction, every message you send. Because how you show up in the small moments is usually how you show up behind the chair.
Clients don’t come back just because you’re good at hair. They come back because of how you made them feel while you were doing it.
You can be technically excellent and still lose clients if the experience feels rushed, cold, or transactional. On the flip side, when someone feels genuinely looked after, guided, and understood, they’ll return again and again. Not because you’re the cheapest, not because you’re the closest, but because it feels right to sit in your chair.
That’s where retention lives. That’s where loyalty is built. That’s where word of mouth actually starts.
So if you’re building your column or refining your brand, ask yourself a different set of questions.
Because at the end of it all, the hair matters. Of course it does. But it’s not the full picture.
Our top earners always understood this. The transaction was the foundation. The experience was the finish. The first service gets you booked. The second service is what builds your business.