You know Jill it means a lot to Rachael to hear me tell her she is doing outstanding work, but it means so much more to see you commend her actions on this blog. She was so excited when I told her she needed to be sure to read your post this week. And when she finished she was a little teary eyed and very grateful for your words of encouragement. She immediately said that when she got home she was going to make her fiancé read it. It is really wonderful for me to see her getting the results that she is getting and also to see her getting the recognition she deserves for a job well done.

As you said, “So because Rachael performed and charged her clients for all of those additional services, she saw a major increase in her paycheck!” You are right about that. Once she saw the extra money on her pay stub it was a huge boost in her confidence and she began asking more and more of her guests for the upgrade.  When Rachael had worked at other salons they would charge for some things but not others. It was hit or miss. It has been that way for my career as well. When I first started working I didn’t charge for any additional services. I think I felt that I was still practicing and that it wasn’t good enough to charge for, or that if I charged for it the client would turn me down because of cost and I really wanted to do the upgrade to practice that service or technique.

I realized the error of that line of thought when I went to a three-day airbrush seminar. I am a very arty person and was always doing nail art on my clients for free because I wanted to do it. When I took that seminar I was shown how much money I was giving away. They did the math for me and it was sickening to see how much I was cheating myself out of. Now because I had never charged I had to start slowly, but I started charging at least $3-$5 for the set of nail art. Over the following years I gradually increased until I was charging $1 a minute for my nail art. It has made a huge difference in just that area of my pay alone.

I also used to include all repairs if the client came to me every two weeks. For several years I stuck by that policy until I realized that I was being taken advantage of. Some people were getting nearly a full set every two weeks because they picked so many off. I started including just one repair with a fill service and charged $6 a repair after that. It was a bit of a shock to some of the people who were the ones always getting two to four repairs, but they realized that they had been lucky in the past and didn’t fuss too much about the change. One of the clients who was the worst offender, actually said to me, “Well it’s about time. I was wondering when you would realize that.”

It took me a long time to learn that I need to charge for the services I am providing and I wanted to make sure that Rachael didn’t have to struggle with that as much as I did when building my clientele. It is always easier to ask and be told no, then to give it away and then try to charge for it. Now we are both polishing nails all the way to the bank!

— Sandy