Pedicures are our biggest dollar earner per hour. We may have natural nail clients and artificial nail clients, but guess what? They both need pedicures. Stylists have to do chemical services to make more money and maintain good body balance. Consider pedicures your chemical service. Pedicure costs per service usually run less than the cost of an artificial nail service. So you make more money on the professional product end too.

Many of you reading this are saying “I am so booked with fills already, I don’t have room in my schedule to do pedicures.” Here’s what I hear: ”I am too busy doing $30 fills that I don’t have time to make money doing $50 pedicures.” When you really listen to what you’re saying, it sure sounds stupid. I was that stupid at one time. I was so busy making $30 an hour doing fills that I couldn’t take that $50-an-hour pedicure client.

Here’s what happened, I started getting tired, beat down, and sick of the artificial nail smell. I needed a break, my body hurt, and I was thinking about leaving the industry. I was working too hard for the little money I was making.

I was watching the “new girls” do more pedicures than me. The newly graduated nail technicians had the time to do those $50 pedicures I would not make room for. They did additional services and sold $20 to $30 foot files. The “new girls” surpassed me in sales and often earned bigger paychecks than me. They were clearly making over $50 an hour with additional services and retail. There I was, doing my $30 fill, talking about a $9 bottle of cuticle oil or nail polish for touch-ups until I was blue in the face.

Well, let me tell you it didn’t take long for me to change my ways. I basically started asking my clients while pre-booking their next appointment, “Will we be doing a pedicure with your next fill appointment?” I doubled my pedicure business in one month just by being bold and asking one simple question! It took a couple of months before my income began to change. I got my clients used to getting their feet done with their hands. I became better at pre-booking and began to weed out my clients who did not pre-book with me. My books became too full to accommodate those last-minute appointments. I was now replacing $30 fills with $50 pedicures. And slowly getting out of fill, fill, fill gridlock.

If you haven’t seen or heard the importance of doing pedicures for body balance then, maybe the math behind it will get you change your ways. Here’s is where the BIG DOUGH comes in: The national average for a pedicure is around $50. If you work five days a week and do one pedicure a day, you can expect to generate about $1,000 a month from pedicure sales. That’s $12,000 you’ll be adding to your yearly sales, just by doing ONE a pedicure a day. Now, imagine if you upped it to two pedicures a day? By merely adding another pedicure to your day, you would be giving yourself a $24,000 raise for the year! That doesn’t even include the additional services or retail you’ll sell.

Body balance to help you balance your money and your career — one more way to help you stand out above the rest and become the BEST!        

Need personal assistance building your pedicure business? I travel to salons all over the U.S. and Canada consulting and training salon personnel, teaching you how to maximize pedicure sales, get out of fill gridlock, and create department consistency onsite. For more information on how your salon can benefit from customized in-salon nail business training, contact me at jwilson@summitsalon.com.

— Jill