HOW TO BOOK YOUR FIRST BRIDE (as a bridal hairstylist)

Booking my first clients as a bridal hairstylist was confusing, painful, and paralyzing all at the same time. I had no roadmap of how to actually get clients in my chair that were brides. If you're someone who's just starting out in bridal hair, maybe you've transitioned from working in the salon. You're a 9 to 5 escapee, and you want to take your career as a bridal hairstylist seriously and get those brides in your chair. Here's three ways that I would give bridal hair clients the first thing you want to do is post about it. Often when I was starting out, I had no reviews because I hadn't worked with any brides, or the brides that I had worked with were on a wedding team team. So I wasn't able to reach out for them for reviews. This led to me not having anything to showcase that I actually worked with brides or any social proof. But what I did have was a lot of friends and family members on Facebook, Instagram, and a lot of people that I used to work with in salons. So what I started doing was I started posting my work on Instagram. I created a dedicated Instagram page so that way I could showcase my hair work and let people know, like, hey, this is what I'm doing now. A lot of my friends that I had on Instagram as well as Facebook were people that I worked with in salon. So anytime that they had somebody who was looking for a bridal hairstylist, they would refer me out because they knew, oh, Marissa left the salon. She actually specializes in weddings now. You should go to her. Posting about my work and what I was doing often made it very easy for people who knew me to refer me out to other people. And this is actually how I started getting my first few bridal clients, by posting my hair work on Instagram. A hairstylist friend that I used to work at a salon with actually had a client that she didn't want to do updos for because that wasn't what she specialized in. She specialized in cuts and color. So she said, oh, so someone who actually used to work at the salon specializes in wedding now and she can actually travel on location to you? She gave them my Instagram information, they sent me a dm, they saw that I was specializing in wedding hair, and that's how I booked my first bride. The second thing you can do if you're just starting out in bridal hair and you want to get brides in your chair, like now is Offer trials before booking. No, I didn't stutter. I did say offer your trials before they actually book. Why? If you are trying to book your first free bridal hair clients, this is going to increase the demand for your services for fast. Why? Because it builds trust fast. So when I was actually starting out as a newbie, I would always do this because I had nothing to show. I had nothing other than words to go off of for somebody to trust me. I really didn't have visuals of bridal hairstyles. My portfolio was nothing like it was today. So I didn't have a lot of visual confirmation for somebody to trust in order to hire me. So there was a lot of risk associated with putting down a booking deposit, signing a contract for me to show up a year from now. So if you think about it in your client's perspective, they are actually taking a lot of risk when you don't have a portfolio they can trust and you don't have other clients. Word for social proof that this girl's actually going to show up on my wedding day. So think about it in terms of you were trying to hire a landscaper and this landscaper had no reviews on Google. They had no photos of the work, they just had a business open sign. They maybe had a Facebook page, but it didn't have any reviews. There was no credibility of why you should hire this person to come out to your home. What's the probability that you're going to want to hire that landscaper versus somebody who has dozens of five star reviews and photos of their work? And you know that this is a real person and not a scammer. So when I was starting out, this is the way I thought. I wanted to lessen that risk for my client and I wanted to give them something that they could trust as something for them to actually try out their hairstyle before booking with me to give myself credibility and build that trust with them. Now here are some of the pros for offering your trials before your clients book with you. My clients immediately felt more comfortable with me because they met me in person. They understood that I knew how to actually do updos. They typically booked immediately after their trial because I would give them the contracts and have them pay the deposit after the trial appointment. And then it worked even more in my favor because they were so wowed at their trial that they would go out and tell all of their friends. So once they told all of their friends, I would immediately start seeing more inquiries saying, erica just referred me, you just did her hair trial. A few weeks ago and I loved what you did and I was able to get photos from their hair trial to build up my portfolio and I would ask them for reviews after their trial to build that more social media. Now here's some of the cons of doing a trial before booking. So once you actually start having demand for your services, you're not actually going to be able to sustain doing that for a long period of time when you have clientele who are inquiring for, let's say, the same date. So once you increase that demand and you have dozens of new inquiries weekly, hundreds of new inquiries monthly, it's very likely that they're going to be inquiring for the same date and you are not going to be able to hold off somebody who is ready to book and sign the contract and wait for, for Sarah who wants to do a trial before booking. It's just not going to be sustainable once you have that demand. Once I started actually building demand for my services, this scenario would happen to me extremely often and that's why I was no longer able to offer trials before booking and now I only offer them for booked brides. But I only did this once I had demand for my services when I was starting out. This is not something I did. I always did trials before booking to build that trust and credibility first. Then once you have demand for your services, that trust and credibility and social proof is already there. So. So your clients likely aren't going to need or want to do a trial before booking anymore. If you're somebody who has been working with rides and maybe you do want to increase the demand for your services so you don't have to offer trials before booking anymore. In November, I'm launching a bridal business course specifically for bridal hairstyles where I'm going to dive deep in how to increase your demand for your services, how to set your rates, create booking minimums, drive traffic through Instagram, and handing over my exact business playbook and Instagram strategies that built me a multiple six figure business. Make sure you sign up for the waitlist in the description box linked below so in November when it launches, you're the first to know. The last thing you can focus on in order to start booking your first bridal appliance is to build a portfolio brides can trust fast. To me, the most important thing you can actually invest your time and money in when you are starting out is your portfolio because it sells your services. The biggest myth that I always had in my mind when I was building my portfolio is that it has to be done by a professional photographer. For me, when I opened my very first bridal business pretty on arrival in 2016, I actually thought that I couldn't create a portfolio because it had to be done by a professional photographer. And what this ended up doing was slowing down my progress and portfolio building. Because what I would do is I would wait around to do styled shoes with other photographers or constantly reaching out to professional photographers to see if they would trade work because I didn't have the funds in order to pay them for this. And what ended up happening is I would get those images back, and they weren't even hair focused. They really didn't help build my portfolio at all. What it did was it wound up being a little bit of a waste of my time. I did post these photos on my Instagram, and what ended up happening was my Instagram looked like a photographer account and not a bridal hairstylist account. Your brides want to see the hair. They don't want to see professional photographer photos. You want your portfolio to be hair focused. If you want to absolutely master your hair photography, definitely check out this video. It's a hair photography masterclass where I cover photos in depth. I cover lighting, posing, your clients, editing, as well as the camera settings that I use so you can master your hair photography. So definitely check out this video next. So here's how I built my bridal hair portfolio in the beginning for free, while actually getting paid to do it by taking my trials before booking. So what I would do is if I had a trial appointment coming up, I would ask my bride, hey, would you mind wearing a white shirt that is a low back? And I would give her tips on how to show up. So that way I can make sure that I was getting a really great hair portfolio image for my Instagram. And these were trial appointments that I was getting paid for. So I took all of my content on my trial days. So I would make sure that I would stack up a couple different trials and I would do it in the same day, and I would make sure that I would get great images. Another way that I would do this for free is I would reach out to past clients that maybe I did a trial on that. I was like, oh, my God, she is my ideal bride. I love her hair. Her hair color is amazing. She would be a great hair model. So what I would do is I would actually email past clients and I would say, hey, are you free for a couple hours on this Saturday to come in my studio? Because I would absolutely love for you to be a hair model. You would leave with some pretty hairstyles. We could test out something different from your trial if you want to see that. And this way I can post them on my Instagram. I did this a handful of times and I never had a bride turn me down. And it was a great way for her to maybe change up something from her trial for us to connect even further. And she had absolutely no problem at all traveling to my studio and sitting to get her hair played with clients. Love this. These three things alone helped me book my first five brides. If any of these tips helped you definitely share it with somebody who is a newer bridal hairstylist who's looking to build their book so they can start booking brides. Make sure you subscribe for next week's video and I'll see you in the next one. Bye.