HIRING ASSISTANTS FOR WEDDINGS BEAUTY PROS (how to pay & hire)

Hi. We have 10 bridesmaids, one bride, that's me. Let's not forget about myself. I have two flower girls, three moms, possibly an aunt and we need to be ready by 12pm that's possible, right? Tell me if that has ever happened to you when you're going through emails or when you're on a conversation with one of your potential brides. If you've ever gotten an inquiry like that and you feel totally freaked out, like how am I gonna handle all those people and by myself? Don't worry, I got you covered. In today's video we're gonna be going over how you can hire assistant when you need one, where to find in between. So keep on watching. Welcome back to my channel. If you are new here, I am Marissa and it is my mission with this channel to help over 10,000 bridal hairstyles and makeup artists build a successful business that they love. So I love sharing all things social media, Instagram marketing. You can start thriving in your bridal business. So be sure to subscribe to this channel because I post new videos every single week. Follow me over on Instagram. Any content or topic ideas that you want me to cover in a video, leave it in the comments below. For today's video we're going to be talking all about hiring assistance. Hiring assistance can seem overwhelming and for me at first it for sure was. But it is an absolute necessity and non negotiable when you are running a bridal business. Why? Personally I am in the east coast of the United States, I am in wonderful state of New Jersey and I get a lot of inquiries for large bridal parties and it is something that I don't really see going away. I do see people who have smaller bridal parties that are like under 7 but the typical for me is a bridal party of about 10 including the bride. So it is absolutely a necessity for me to have someone on hand that is able to assist me when doing weddings. And it's going to be a necessary step to grow your bridal business in order to truly scale Working bridal parties at 15 is not recommended and it is not doable unless you want to get up at like 2am and I'm pretty sure that's not going to fly with the bride. So the first thing we're going to talk about is when to hire and what is your actual minimum of how many people you can take on yourself. So the first thing you want to ask yourself is how many people am I able to service comfortably myself where one I am not burnout. And two, I'm able to have them done in a sufficient amount of time. That's not exceeding, you know, like six hours. Personally, I feel like the amount of time needed to get ready really exceeds six hours. If you're going on seven hours, that's going to cause the bride to have to be up super early. You're most likely going to get some pretty negative feedback from her and a lot of push and pull, which I don't want you to have to deal with. Trust me, I've been there. And it's not fun. When you need to fight with a bride in emails. And the fights always, usually, and I'm not saying like an actual fight, but like disagreement usually starts over the start time. So first thing is figure out how many people you're able to do comfortably by yourself. For me personally, as an example, I like to do the bride plus seven. So that's a total of eight hair services that I'm able to do comfortably on my own without needing an assistant. So what is that number for you? How many people are you able to comfortably service within acceptable a time frame of like five or six hours by yourself where you wouldn't need an assistant? Write that number down and keep that for later. So if I get an inquiry where a bride has eight bridesmaids, two moms and herself, I'm definitely going to need to hire an assistant because it is over my minimum of where I'm comfortable. It would take me way too long to service this bridal party and I'm going to be so burnt out afterwards. So I know for bridal bookings that are over my minimum because I have my service limit set when I'm going to need to hire an assistant. So that brings me to step number two, how to actually find someone. So great you've got your service limit set. Now how can you actually go about finding a quality, trustworthy, loyal, someone who's going to show up on time and not going to flake on you kind of assistant. But before we get into that, let's figure out the details that you're going to want to present to them before you go all ham on an Instagram story post, trying to find someone or just trying to text everyone, you want to make sure you have all those details ready for them so they're able to see if it works for their schedule. Some of the details you want to have ready before you start looking for an assistant is for the wedding job. You want to know the location, so where you're going to Be doing the services like an address, hotel. You want to be able to have that ready to give to them so they know how far it's going to be for a drive for them. You want to know how many services they're going to be doing. You want to know exactly how much you're going to want to be paying them an estimated time frame for the job. If you do work in the bridal world and you are a hairstylist or makeup artist, you know that there are some things that always change. You may not find out until like a few weeks in advance and that's okay. But most assistants or people who work in the wedding world know that those are like variables such as the getting ready location sometimes changes as well as the time frame usually always changes when the bride figures out her timeline from the photographer. But even if you have an estimate, that's going to be better for you when you're trying to find an assistant. When you want to decide on how much to pay your assistant in order to start finding one that's perfect for the job, first thing to yourself, what am I going to have them do? If you're going to be having them do full services, as in they're going to be doing a full makeup look on brow bridesmaids, moms and other guests in the bridal party, you're going to want to be paying them service. That's typically an industry standard that I see across the board where you pay per service or if you're going to be having them just doing prep work, such as prepping the skin or prepping the hair, and then you go in and do the full style or makeup look. Typically that is paid as a flat rate. Something I want you guys to remember when you're trying to figure out exactly what you should be paying your assistant is one what they're doing. So you can decide if you want to pay per service or a flat rate. Also, I want you guys to remember that they are just showing up to help on the job. You are the business owner and you are the one who did the marketing vacation with the bride. You created the contract and you are the one who's going to be responsible and held reliable if anything goes wrong on the job. Also done all of the organization for the day of and you've probably spent about 50 emails going back and forth with the bride. So when you think about paying, I don't want you to short yourself because you have to understand you've done majority of the work behind the scenes as well as you are held completely liable and responsible if anything goes wrong and you're taking on all that risk as a business owner. So it wouldn't be fair to just pay out an assistant the exact amount that you're charging. For brides. As an example, let's just say you're charging $140 for a bridesmaid. You don't want to be paying your assistant that full $140. Want to make sure that you're doing a percentage. Percentages can vary and I've seen different things. If you're working with someone who has assisted before, like I've assisted before, I've worked on teams. And the normal percentage is a commission rate per service. So if you're having someone do, it usually starts out at 50% plus a travel fee if it's applicable, wherever the stylist or makeup artist is traveling in from to the getting ready location. Percentage that's fair is usually based on what you're already charging your client. So once you determine what percentage you want to be paying out your assistant and you figure out exactly what they're going to be doing, if you're even going to be doing the flat rate or if you're going to be paying per service, you've got all your details ready and you are ready. Start going out and finding an assistant to help you out on wedding days. Oh, you're going to take all those details. How many services there are the wedding date, the wedding location, the estimated time frame and how much it's going to pay. How many services they're going to be doing. You're going to take all that and you're going to make it into a nice format, maybe over on a notepad within your phone, which is something that I normally do. You don't need to type everything out every time you're sending it out to someone able to do. The easiest way to start looking for an assistant, which is just to post it over on your Instagram stories and have it look something like this. People will DM you. There's probably people that you don't even realize that are following you, that are within the browser bridal fee. And then you're able to have a conversation and see if they're the right fit for your company to assist you on wedding days. The second way that you can do is go over onto Facebook groups and in the search bar, I want you guys to type in your city or a neighboring city and see if there's any hair and makeup groups that pop up for me in my local city, which is Philadelphia or South Jersey. We actually have a Facebook group of local wedding hair and makeup artists and they'll post jobs on there. If I was in need of an assistant, I could go on to that Facebook group and I can make a post and put all that detailed information and post the job on there. The third way you can start looking for assistance in your local area is to think back to beauty school. Think back to salons you worked at. Was there anyone there who you think would be a good fit to be able to help you on a wedding? Reach out to them if you have their numbers, reach out to them on social and just see if they're available. These are all ways that I've been able to find assistance in my local area to help me with larger bridal parties. If you're wondering, should I be charging my client, do I have to charge my client as an additional fee or I don't think it's worth it to charge my client the additional fee. Let's talk about that for a second. A lot of stylists or makeup artists DM me and asked me how much should I charge my client? Why do I need to charge my client additional fee if I'm adding on an assistant? So let me put it to you this way. If your bride was to go out and find an additional stylist or an additional makeup artist to help with her large bridal party of like 15 people, it's going to cost her a lot of time to go and research and find another either large team when she's already invested so much time into you. And it's also going to cost her more because they're probably going to have a booking minimum. What you're actually providing is an additional service of contract and hiring another professional to help out with her large bridal part. Chances are she hired you because she loves your work, she thinks you're quality, and she's excited to work with you. Now you have this amazing additional service that you're able to provide for her, which is going out and contracting another professional to help with the larger bridal party that she doesn't have to do for herself. It's more of a convenient service that you're offering. So I always say, yes, you should be charging your. It's an additional fee for each additional stylist or makeup artist that is needed for the job. So if there's only one need, it you would charge one flat fee. If there's two needed, you would charge a flat fee for both stylists. Or makeup artists. And I first started out, I didn't charge this additional fee. And it really cuts into your bottom line as a business owner. But what do I mean? I mean, if you're not charging your client, typically the average is to charge a flat fee of $200 per additional stylist or per additional makeup artist that you bring on and contract for yourself for the wedding day. And what this actually does is it offsets the cost that you need to pay out to that freelancer for the. They might request an additional travel fee that you didn't charge the bride for. With that $200, you're able to use that to pay the travel fee for your assistant that you're bringing along for the job. Also, if you are paying them a flat fee for maybe prepping or you're paying them a percentage per service, you're losing out as a business owner, the one who did the booking. So in order to offset that percentage that you need to pay out to them, it's a sum of money that you're able to pay directly to your assistant. If you are not charging an assistant fee to your brides, you are trul. Truly doing yourself a disservice as a business owner. And you're likely making an emotional decision like I did when I first started, which was, oh, my God, she's not going to pay. Oh, my God, she's not going to want to work with me anymore. Oh, my God, she's going to terminate our contract. No, no, no, no, no. She's not going to do any of that. When you put it to her in the sense that you are actually doing a service for her and this is going to benefit her. You're going to be able to have later start time because you're bringing on an additional assistant. You're going to be able to service everyone in a timely manner and with a professional makeup look because you're going to go out for her. It's going to save her time from having to go back and search other hairstylists or makeup artists in the area. You're going to be the one going out and doing that legwork for her. It's a convenience service. When you start hiring assistants, you're going to be able to take on larger bridal parties, and you're going to be able to offer that service for your brides if they want a later start time for their day. You're also going to be helping out younger stylists or makeup artists by being able to mentor them on the day of which I really love to do Happy assistant hunting. And I'll see you guys in the next video.