8. Stop Letting Clients Control Your Schedule

Are your clients slowly taking control of your schedule without you even realising it?

In this episode, we’re getting brutally honest about why so many beauty business owners end up working late nights, weekends, and hours they never intended to work.

We’ll talk about:
 • Why saying “yes” to every appointment is burning you out
 • The pressure to be available 24/7
 • Clients expecting you to work around their 9–5
• How to create hours that actually suit your life
• And how to set boundaries without losing clients

If you started your business for freedom, but somehow ended up with less of it… This is the episode you need!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everyone and welcome to Blossom and Business, the podcast for all things beauty, business, mindset, and more. My name is Monique and I am the owner of Royal Blossom Beauty, a beauty business based in Melbourne, Australia. I offer nail, lash and brow services as well as nail and business education. I really hope you enjoy this episode and let's get into it. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today I'm talking about something that I feel like a lot of you guys probably struggle with because I know that I do, and that's letting clients choose your hours. Letting clients control your schedule. And when you first start your business, you kind of just run with whenever your clients are free. Like if your client says they're not free weekdays during the day, you're suddenly working weekends. Even if you don't actually want to work weekends, you're working weekends because you want to accommodate to your clients. When you first start out, you're kind of just doing whatever you need to do to get clients to come back. So that can mean working hours that you don't want to work. But one of the main reasons that people choose to start their own business is to choose their own hours. So they start a business and then the clients are choosing the hours for them. And then instead of choosing their own hours and having that whole freedom around having their own business, they're working hours that they hate. So they may as well just be working their typical nine to five or working for someone else and not being their own boss because they're not really making the decisions in their business. And up until recently, in my business, I was doing the exact same. I was basing my hours off my client's schedule. And even if I did have hours in place that were best suited to me, if a client couldn't make those, I would kind of just bend my hours a little bit and fit them in anyways. But most of the time, I wasn't really choosing the hours that worked for me, I was choosing the hours that worked for everyone else. Now I'm sure anyone in the beauty industry can relate. Of course, when we first started our business, we were like, yes, I'll work weekends if you need a weekend. Yes, I'll work late nights if you need a late night. We'd literally work any given time just so we could get clients because we were so desperate. We were just starting out, we really needed to get those clients and get that money. We would literally do anything just to get bookings. So I never really wanted to work weekends, but I just did it because I thought that's gonna get me more clients. The people that can't come during the day, during the week, will come on a weekend and that's gonna get me clients, and clients is what I need. Like I feel like at the start, like you kind of see it as you don't want to be too picky because you just want to get clients in the door, and that's just a fear of not having enough bookings, or even when we start getting a lot of bookings, the fear of losing clients is the reason why we don't change our hours into hours that we actually want to work. So I would always feel really guilty about not wanting to work weekends, so I'd always work the weekends, and even if that weekend was full, I would work later in the day, whether it's you know a weeknight or even like the evening on a Saturday, I would work to fit people in because I was already fully booked, and we had this belief in us that we kind of have to be the most flexible person ever, and that we, you know, bow down to our clients and like whatever they want, we will do, but that's not the case because realistically, we did start our own business to choose our own hours, we did start our own business to do the hours that we want to do. Like, of course, realistically, none of us want to work like eight-hour days, five days a week, or whatever, and everyone's schedule is gonna be different, but we have to work at some point, like ideally, we don't want to work at all, but we may not be able to control the number of hours we work as much, depending on your pricing, and also how much you want to make from your business, but we can control what kind of hours we're working. Because for me, I have no issue working eight, nine, ten hour days, but I don't really want to work till 9 pm. Like, let's be honest. And I am fine working four or five days a week, but I don't really want to work a Saturday. So I feel like we need to stop feeling guilty because it's not the fact that we don't want to work. I mean, realistically, no one does, but it's the fact that we just don't want to work hours that don't work for us. So you probably started your own business to choose your own hours. You started your own business to be your own boss. So why are you acting like an employee? Why are you letting someone else control when you work? Running your own business means that you choose the hours. Not your clients, but you. You are the one running the business. When I first started, I was literally working like seven days a week. Not full days, seven days a week, but I had seven days a week available because I was like, what if someone needs a Sunday? What if someone needs a Monday at 9 a.m., 9 p.m.? I'd literally have every single option available because I didn't have many bookings. It wasn't like I was working seven days straight, like all day. So I would have everything open. And even when I got rid of having seven days available on my online booking, I would still have late nights, I would still have weekends, and even when I wasn't actively working with a client, I was still responding to messages at 11 p.m., 12 a.m. simply just because that's when they would come through and I'd see them and I'd reply. And honestly, I thought doing all that was going to make my clients so happy and they were always gonna re-book with me. But what that actually meant is I was literally burning myself out, trying to please every single person. So in this episode, I really wanted to talk about why so many of us girls in beauty feel this way, feel like we have to accommodate every single person's schedule and work hours that we really just don't want to work. Why we shouldn't be letting clients control our hours and we should be controlling them ourselves, choosing them ourselves. Because when you start your own business, especially a service-based business, I feel like it's really easy to fall into that people-pleasing trap. You're scared that you're gonna lose clients if you say no, so you just say yes to everything. If they need late night, you're available late night. If they need weekend, weekend. Last minute, you'll just say yes to absolutely everything. You're squeezing people in on your day off just so you can have them come back, just so you don't lose them as a client and they go somewhere else. You're applying to messages at 11 p.m. because you're worried that if you don't reply, they're just gonna go inquire with someone else. They're just gonna go book with someone else. But realistically, messages, they can wait till the next morning, they can really just wait till the next morning. You don't have to be the kind of business that accommodates to like same-day bookings, day before bookings. I literally have my booking system open that you can't book within 24 hours. So I'll never really respond, or try not to at least, to a late-night DM about appointments the next day because chances are it's already fully booked, first of all. And secondly, I don't like last-minute bookings, like that's just me. I don't like having something so last-minute. I like preparing for my day. So I have been trying not to reply to messages late at night, not only because it's taking away time from me, but it's kind of putting in your client's head the idea that you're constantly gonna be available for them. But you've got a life. Like, I know, like as a business owner, our business kind of is our life, but it doesn't have to be. Go enjoy your life, go watch some Netflix or something at 11. You really don't need to be replying to messages at that time. Because people pleasing is literally the fast track to burnout. Like, I'm telling you right now from experience, if you run your whole business with the idea that you're gonna please everyone, it's not gonna work out. You're gonna end up burnt out, you're gonna end up miserable, you're gonna end up dreading doing what you love. And that's exactly what happened to me. So I'll talk about that a little bit more later on, but you're going to burn out because being a people pleaser doesn't automatically mean like it's good customer service, you're doing above and beyond for your clients because there's a big difference between providing a really good service and just having no boundaries. So, one thing that I kind of instilled in my brain is that if your clients expect you to work any hour that works them, any day that works them, if your clients expect you to work late nights and weekends just to accommodate them, that is how you've trained them to be. You've trained them to expect that from you. Not ask that from you, expect that from you. And I say that with love because I literally did the exact same thing. I said yes to every single day of the week, every single appointment time. If someone was late, you know, I'd just let it slide. If someone needed something super last minute, like same day, I'd say yeah, come, whatever, like it doesn't really matter. Reply to those late night DMs, but you don't need to do all of that. You can work whatever way works best for you. So of course my clients kept expecting all these things from me, expecting late nights, expecting weekends, expecting me to come in on my day off because I was showing them that it was possible that I would do it. And honestly, I was literally scared for the longest time to change my hours to better suit me. I'm still like adjusting them over time, like they're still not perfect because I wanted to make more of a transition rather than like a just cut off everything because I knew that I would lose a lot of clients, which isn't necessarily why I haven't just done a clean cut of certain days I don't want to work, certain times I don't want to work. Like, for example, me, I don't really enjoy working Saturdays, but I don't mind working them every now and then. So for me, I'm happy to just do every now and then for now. One day maybe they'll be gone eventually, who knows? But for now, I'm really just happy to transition to reducing them rather than cutting them off completely. Like you can literally do that, no stress, but that's just what works for me. Like I don't really care about cutting them clean off straight away, but I was so scared to even just reduce those hours. I was so scared to reduce my late nights. I got rid of late nights completely, like I just did a clean cut, like I went from finishing at 9, 9.30 to finishing at 7 pm, which is still fairly late. And now I've reduced it to 6.15, and now I'm reducing it and reducing it even more. And I was so scared to do so because I was like, oh my gosh, people are gonna hate me, all my clients are gonna leave me, like you know, something horrible's gonna happen. But yes, of course you lose clients when you change your hours if they can't, like genuinely can't make anything else work. But that was a risk that I was willing to take because I was so unhappy working the hours that I was working, and we'll come back to that a bit later. But when I actually got out of my comfort zone, did something I was a little bit scared to do, and changed my hours, my clients just adapted. Like you'd be surprised like how often people can come, times they said they weren't available, but they low-key actually were, or you know, they can shift some things in their life to make it work. Clients adapted, and if they weren't able to like come at those times that I had available, like genuinely could not do anything about it, they would leave, and that's completely fine. So by being a bit more firm with the hours that I was going to work and telling them, like, I'm not really doing this many Saturdays, I'm not doing late nights anymore, that expectation they had changed. They no longer expected that from me. And eventually I had a little bit of reality check, and I was like, wait a damn minute. Like, as much as you work for yourself, you don't have a boss, your clients aren't your boss either. So you're the one running the show, you're the one that gets to decide the hours, you don't work for your clients. Like, yes, they're paying you, but you're the one running the business, you're the one making the rules. Now you need to put this in your head as well. You don't work for your clients, you work with them. Just keep telling yourself that until it's second nature to you because it is the truth. You do not work for your clients. They are not the boss of you. You could get rid of one tomorrow if you wanted to. Like, you are a person running your business, and choosing hours that work for you, that doesn't mean that you're being rude, doesn't mean that you're being disrespectful. The right clients will understand. Because I feel like something I noticed when I joined the beauty industry is that a lot of clients, they just expect you to be available whenever they want an appointment. So if they want an appointment late nights, you have to work late nights. If you want an appointment on the weekends, you have to work weekends. Like they just expect you to be available whenever they need. And I find in a lot of cases for people that work full-time, they work Monday to Friday, 9 to 5. So of course, a lot of these clients are gonna want late nights, they are gonna want weekends. And the only time that they're ever gonna be able to come weekdays during the day is maybe when they have annual leave. So naturally, a lot of these clients are going to only request late nights, only request weekends. And that's completely fine. Obviously, they need something that's going to accommodate to their schedule. But just because a client works Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, does not mean that you have to work late nights and you have to work weekends. Because realistically, a lot of people don't actually want to work those hours either. If their boss said, can you come in on a Saturday and work? Or can you stay back till 9 pm, they're probably not gonna have a fun time. A lot of people wouldn't be happy about that, and a lot of people wouldn't want to work those hours. So I feel like in the beauty industry, there's this expectation that we have to accommodate to every single client's schedule. We have to do late nights, we have to do weekends. We always have to at least do one of those two. We can't just work weekdays during the week. But the truth is, you don't have to. If you love working late nights and weekends, that's fine, you can keep doing it. Some people prefer that schedule. But if you genuinely don't enjoy working late nights and you genuinely don't enjoy working weekends, you don't have to work them. If you just want to run your business Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, or 8 to 4, or whatever hours work best for you, you absolutely can. That's the time that a lot of other businesses operate as well. Because there are so many other salons out there that some will work late nights, some will work weekends. So if a client specifically needs those times, they can go to someone that has hours that work for them. That's completely fine. Your job isn't to make your schedule work for every single person because as much as you try, you're never going to be able to please everyone. You could work all weekend long and someone wants a Monday. Your job is to create a schedule that works for your life and clients have to book within that. And you'd be surprised how many people can actually make weekdays work if that's the only thing that you have to offer. Working late nights and weekends, they are things that you should be able to choose whether or not you want to offer them. You should not be pressured into doing them. When a client truly values your work and they can move some things around and make it happen to come during the week, during the day, they'll do it. And if they genuinely can't, then there's someone else that they can go to that can better cater for them. Because no matter what hours you choose, you're never gonna be able to please everyone. You could literally work Saturday, Sunday, 9 to 5, and someone's gonna want a 7 p.m. You could work late night appointments and someone's gonna want an 8 a.m. appointment. You work weekends, someone's gonna want a weekday. You work weekdays, someone's gonna want a weekend. Your hours are never gonna suit every single person. And they're not supposed to. So instead of trying to please everyone, create a schedule that works within your life. You don't schedule your life around clients. Your clients schedule around your life. There are so many other beauticians out there that do work weekends, and they do work late nights. And just because they do, doesn't mean that you have to. There's no obligation. Like if a client says to you, like, oh, this person works late nights on weekends, go to them. Like tell them just go to them. Like they don't have to come to you. Like, no client is going to be the perfect fit for every single business. And not every single business is gonna be the perfect fit for that client. And things change. Like I am the most volatile person ever when it comes to getting things done. I always go to the same person for everything, every single time. But sometimes you have to switch it up. But sometimes things change. Like, let's say I got, I don't know, teeth whitening done. If my teeth whitening technician, I think you call them, move like 50 minutes away, of course I'm gonna have to find a new teeth whitening technician unless I'm willing to travel 50 minutes. Or maybe I only can do a one-day appointment and they stop working Mondays, I'm just gonna have to find a new technician if I can't make any other times work. It's okay to lose clients. It's okay for clients to move on. It's okay for you to move on. No client is a permanent fixture in your business, and that's okay. I know we want to keep the same clients forever because I love my clients. I don't want to lose any, but it is part of your business, it is part of growing. You're gonna choose hours that better align with your life. So with my hours, when I used to work late nights, I absolutely hated it. So I would finish at like 9, 9.30. By the time I finished packing up the salon, let's say like 9.30. So to end up eating dinner at like 10, showering at like 10.30, and then going to bed at like 11, like not having any time to like scroll or watch any shows or do any sort of hobbies or exercise or anything, even socializing. Like I literally did not have the time. Then I'd go to sleep and do it all again the next day, starting in the morning. And now I did trial different hours, like obviously those were like really long hours, like 12-hour days, where I was working morning to late night, and I absolutely hated it. It was just so draining. I hated the idea of finishing work and having no life after work, like going straight to bed and eating so late at night. I hate eating late at night, it was just horrible. But I just hated that idea, and then obviously doing the 12-hour days was horrible. So I ended up trying different hours where I could still accommodate to my late-night clients by working to like 9, 9:30. But instead of doing a 12-hour day, I'd do more of a nine-hour day, which is like fairly standard. So I would work 12 to 9. But even the 12 to 9 didn't work for me because even though the hours were better, like the number of hours, was obviously 9 hours is better than 12 hours, the type of hours, it didn't matter if I got to sleep in a little bit. I hated working 12 to 9. Because you know, there's only so much you can do before work. Like I don't know if anyone else can relate, but I feel like when you know you have something on later in the day, you feel like you can't really do much. Like if I started at 12, you can't travel far to go do something and hang out with people or do something with yourself because you know you have to be back by a certain time. Like you can't really go far, you can't really like do much because you have this constant thought that you have to be back in time. You're kind of in a rush the whole morning. Like the most that I could do if I started at 12, which waking up at like seven or eight, you know, like I obviously wasn't waking up super early because I was working so late. The best that I could do is just like sit at home, maybe even sleep in a bit longer, maybe do a bit of exercise, and that's about it. Like you can't really go anywhere, right? Whereas I feel like if you worked nine to five, like even though it's the same number of hours, I feel like going out after work is easier. Doing things after work is easier because you don't have to rush back. Like, of course, you don't want to be out super late at night if you have work the next day, but I feel like if you stay out a little bit too late, you just lose a bit of sleep. But when you're trying to do things before you start the day, before you start a client, if you're out a bit too late, you're late for your client. So I felt like working at 12 to 9 was just horrible. Like I couldn't do anything. Like I lost 12 to 9 working, and then obviously I'll go straight to bed after, but I couldn't do anything in the morning because like where can you go? Like if you have to rush to be back by a certain time, there's only so much you can do, so many places you could go. Now, mind you, I worked weekends as well. Like I did work the Saturday as well. So I had late nights, normally two late nights a week, working till 9-9:30. Plus, I had the Saturday. And even on those weekdays I didn't do late nights, I still worked till at least 7 p.m. So that's still fairly late to a lot of people. And let's be real, like 9 to 5, I think that's like 8 hours. That's a pretty decent day already. I was working 9 till 7, and that was on my non-late nights. My late nights were like 9 to 9, although 12 to 9. They were very long days. So I set up my hours to please everyone. Like I had till 7 pm most nights, till 9 p.m. two nights a week. I had Saturdays all day, sometimes even till like 6 30 p.m. on a Saturday. It was wild the hours that I was doing. And when I first started, I didn't really care too much because I was single. Most of the time I've had my business. My hobbies are like watching TV and playing Sims. Like I don't really have anything that's a super time restrictive. So when I first started my business, obviously I wanted to get as many clients as I could. I wanted to be fully booked, I wanted to just hustle. I would work whatever hours. Whatever hours worked for my clients, I would work those. But now I'm like six years into my business, my priorities have shifted. I spend a lot more time with family, I have a partner, so obviously things are going to be different. My schedule is going to be different. If I continued that schedule that I had now, having a partner, I would never see him. But when things in your personal life change and your priorities change, the whole point of having a small business is to choose your own hours. You should be able to change those hours to better fit your life. So for me, if I worked those hours having a partner, I would literally only get the Sunday with my partner. And still, like even after I changed my hours a little bit, it still felt like I was only getting the Sunday with my partner. He's a trade who works Monday to Friday, 7 till 3, 7 till 4, 7 till 5, depends on the day. So me working weekdays, all the weekdays, and the Saturday, working weekdays till late, working Saturdays till quite late in the day, like 5, 6, 7, we don't really get like a little bit of Saturday night and then Sunday. That's it. So for me, changing my hours was not only a mix of things shifting in my life, priority shifting in my life, but also a genuine dislike for working certain hours and trying to protect my health, my mental health, my emotional health. Because especially those late nights in particular, they were destroying me. That's the best way that I could put it. Because again, like finishing work so late and the only thing you can do is like eat, shower, straight back to bed. What kind of life is that? Like, really, what kind of life is that? I for me it's not the amount of hours. Like the amount of hours have never really bothered me. Like I've done 12 hours plenty of times and I've been fine. For me, it was more the type of hours. Like let's say 9 to 5, for example, like a basic eight-hour day. Personally, I have nothing wrong with those amount of hours, but instead of 9 to 5, I would rather work 8 till 4. Like I would just rather start earlier and finish earlier. Even if it means I have to wake up super early. Even if I wake up early, I'd rather finish early. So for me, late nights were not only making things harder to schedule things with people in my life, but it was also bothering me so badly and really just affecting my mental and emotional health. So I had to change it. So late nights was the first thing that I changed. So I got rid of late nights completely. Now by that, I got rid of finishing at like 9, 9.30. I still finished at 7, but still fairly late. Starting at 9, that's still a decent day. To start, we got rid of finishing at 9, 9.30. And I also scaled the Saturdays back from finishing at like 5 or 6 to finishing it about 4, 4.30. So gradually made changes. I didn't just bring it on my clients all at once, but that is something that you can do. It's just going to be a bit more of a shock. It kind of gives your clients less time to adapt. So for me personally, when it came to changing my hours, I kind of did it gradually. Now my Saturdays are quite popular. They're quite busy, they're normally fully booked. And my late nights were also very popular and usually fully booked. So when I get rid of late nights, and mind you, I still finish at like seven, that's still quite late, but doing nail appointments, they do take quite a couple hours. Some of those clients that finished at 5 still weren't able to come and get their nails done before I finished at 7 because of the time. So when I stopped doing the late nights till nine, a lot of those clients had to come on a Saturday. But the Saturdays were already like mostly fully booked. Only a few of those late night clients could actually move to the Saturday because of the space that I had. And I was working every single Saturday, right? So I was working every single Saturday, 9 till 4:30. There was no way to make more time on the Saturdays. There was no way. Unless I wanted to work till like 9 pm on a Saturday, which no one wants to do. There was no way. So of course, when I got rid of late nights, I did lose some clients. But not a lot, because again, most could move to that Saturday, but I did lose some clients. That's just normal. It didn't really bother me though. It didn't really affect me because I knew that I was making changes and making shifts to work towards hours that better worked for me. Now, late nights, they're gone. Still working until 7, but just not 9 30 p.m. But I still didn't like working till 7 p.m. because that's still such a long day. And again, for me it wasn't really the hours that I was working, like the number, it was the times. I would literally rather work in some. A nine till seven, I'd rather work like seven till five or whatever. Like I would rather do the same amount of hours, just finish earlier. But as of this year, 2026, I have made more changes. So I changed from finishing seven on weeknights to finishing at 6.15. So I changed that by 45 minutes. Again, it's still quite a long day, that's still like over a nine-hour day. And then I was taking one Saturday off a month because again, I have a partner. We don't get any Saturdays together when I'm working all the time. And the Saturdays I was working, I changed them to finish at 2.30. Now, mind you, I do kind of jump on and tweak the hours a little bit just to fit in an extra client. If it's like just gonna be an extra half an hour to an hour. So sometimes I do finish 3, 3.30, but for me that's not really like I'm already working this Saturday, I've already kind of lost it. So like sometimes I do extend it just a little bit to fit an extra client in. Especially if I have that client that finishes at like 1.30 where I've got a whole nother hour to spare, but like nails, you need a bit longer. So sometimes I will just extend it a little bit. But yeah, so weekdays I started finishing at 6.15, and then I was taking one Saturday off a month, and the Saturdays I was working, I was finishing by 3.30, let's say. So I'm filming this now from Australia, but I'll be in Japan when you guys are listening to this. So as of right now in March, I have jumped on to my system recently and changed my 6.15 to 5.30. Now, mind you, obviously I've already got existing bookings that go to like 6.15. So those are still in there, but I've changed my weekdays to finish at 5.30. We'll be going into winter, and I hate the idea of finishing work when it's still dark. I would rather work earlier, like I'm even considering starting at like 8 a.m. instead and just finishing earlier because I don't care again about the number of hours. It's the kind of hours that were killing me. And I, from July, I don't know if I'll stick to it because you know, just like you guys, like I do struggle a little bit with my hours. I still struggle a little bit to make these changes. It's a gradual process. But I'm hoping from July to take two Saturdays off a month. And when I say taking Saturdays off, I don't mean like actually like physically like working less. I'm just swapping them for the Friday. So the one Saturday off I've currently taken, I've swapped it for the Friday. So I'm not working any less hours. I'm just swapping it for a Friday because I normally don't work Fridays. So hoping from July that I can take two Saturdays off a month, and I say that like knowing that I could literally do it anyways, but I like to do a little gradual transition. I could cut off Saturdays completely, like tomorrow if I wanted to, but I really just want to let my clients have the opportunity to adapt. That's just me. You can change your hours however you want. You can do a clean cut, you can do a process. But I'm hoping like this back end of the year, I'll be down to taking off two Saturdays a month and just swapping them for the Friday. Again, like I know that I'm going to lose clients from that, but that's just hours I don't want to work. I'll be honest, like, working Saturdays isn't ideal at all. Like it is an ideal. No one really wants to work Saturdays, do they? But there's something that I don't mind doing. I just don't like doing every single Saturday. So I'm not removing Saturdays completely anytime soon. I am reducing them, I am scaling back a little bit. So you can change your hours to better suit your life, especially when things change. Like maybe you change your mind, you don't want to work late nights anymore, you don't want to work weekends anymore. Or maybe things in your personal life changes, like you have kids. Like I know when I have kids, I'm probably not gonna work a Saturday. Or maybe I'll work one client on a Saturday morning and that's it. Like your ideal hours for your life are constantly gonna change because your life is constantly changing. Like who knows? I might bring back late nights when I have kids. Who knows? Like I might bring them back. Or when I have like a baby, I obviously won't be even working when I have a baby. So like I'm not gonna have any times available. Like your schedule is constantly going to change. And as I said, any change in hours, we're probably gonna lose clients, and that's okay. It's not life or death. You can get new clients. Like, as much as I love my clients, I know that I have to do what's best for me. I have to do what's best for me, my business, my mental and emotional health. So if that means changing my hours, that's exactly what I'm gonna do. And I know that the clients that genuinely care about me, they're not gonna care that I'm changing my hours. Like if I had a client that can't book in with me anymore because the hours that I work just genuinely don't suit them, the kind of client that I want in my salon is the client that's gonna understand. The client that's not going to be like, oh, this like she doesn't want to work the hours I'm free anymore. I only want clients that are gonna respect my hours, respect my choice, and be like, okay, those hours aren't working for her anymore. Like I wish I could come to her, but it just doesn't work out, I'll just find someone else. And I'm happy to give recommendations to my clients. Like, I, as much as I love my clients, if their hours and my hours just genuinely do not align, that just means that it's just not meant to be. And who knows, like maybe later in life when they have a schedule that does fit my schedule, or maybe my schedule better fits their schedule, anything like that, I'll always welcome them back. But let me tell you something that literally like blew my mind when I changed my hours. I had so many clients that would tell me, I'm only free after 6 p.m. I'm only free on weekends. But as soon as that option was taken away, as soon as I got rid of late nights and my Saturdays that I still have were fully booked, they're booking weekdays during the week. Like obviously not all of them, but people that said they were only free after 6 p.m. or they're only free on Saturdays, suddenly they're booking, you know, weekdays during the day. And I was just like, where was this energy? Where was this energy that you could come in, but you chose not to? And I think it comes down to obviously everyone's got a preferred time. So obviously, these clients that do work nine to five, like if they work for someone else, they obviously don't have a choice in the matter unless they have something that they can work from home, maybe be more flexible, or they can pull a dodgy and come during the day, anyways. Some people generally can't make things work. Like they work mine on the Friday at 9 to 5. They genuinely can't come during the day. Like they have no choice. They have to come at night, they have to come on the weekend. That's fine. But obviously, everyone's gonna choose the time that's most convenient for them. So I have clients that do work for someone else, but me no longer having late nights, or maybe my Saturdays are full, and they have no choice but to come during the day, during the week. Some of them may be able to actually find a way to make it work because some people's jobs are a little bit more flexible. Some people can work from home and just sneak out, some people say they have a doctor's appointment and they come anyways. Like, I feel like there are certain people that will be able to make it work, and that's great, because then you don't lose them as a client, they still get to get their nails done, it's just a slightly less convenient time. So at the moment in my business, Saturdays is definitely the most in-demand day, like the most specific day that people need. So when I told like friends and family, like, I wanna, you know, reduce Saturdays, maybe I don't want to work them at all, who knows? They were like, Minique, but you have to work Saturdays, like those are your most busiest days. You're gonna lose like almost all your clients. Or like even when I told, I think I told like a hairdresser or someone, I can't remember who I told, but I told someone else in the beauty industry, like, I don't want to work late nights and I don't necessarily want to work weekends either. They were like, Well, you have to work one or the other. And I'm just thinking, like, who said I have to work one or the other? Who said I'd have to work any at all? Like, I'm a firm believer that you will attract clients that just work within your hours. Like for me, as much as Saturday is the most specific day that people want, the most in-demand day, I take more clients during the week. There's multiple days that I'm open during the week, during the day, I take more clients during that time than I take on a Saturday. So most of my clients are actually free during the week, during the day. So me reducing my Saturdays or not working Saturdays, yes, I'd lose some clients, but I'm not gonna lose majority of them because majority can come during the day. So if anything, that's more motivation for me to choose hours that work for me because most of my clientele can fit the hours that work for me. It's just a few that do need their Saturdays. My Saturday clients are only a small portion of my schedule. When I have three or four full days in the salon full of clients, that one Saturday with like two or three clients, depending on what appointments they are, that is such a small portion of my schedule. So if you're someone that works usually weekdays, maybe you don't do late nights, and you are working the Saturday as well, just like me, and you're worried about dropping a Saturday or getting rid of them altogether, you probably take more clients during the day, during the week, than you do on that Saturday. So those Saturday clients are only a small portion of your clientele. Most of your clients can actually accommodate to the hours that you want to work. So that should be more motivation to stick to those hours that you actually want to work. So most of my clients can come weekdays during the week. And by getting rid of Saturdays and swapping them for that Friday, yes, I could lose some Saturday clients, but it allows me to get more weekday clients, which are the hours that I want to work anyways. So it all kind of works out in the end, but it is so scary trying to tell people that you're changing your hours, especially when it's someone that may not be able to like make it work, like genuinely cannot make it work. They can't, you know, say they're working from home, they can't fake a doctor's appointment, like they genuinely cannot make it work. That is obviously when you do end up losing clients, and that's okay. But I know telling people and just making that change can literally be the most scariest thing ever. It can be, you know, hours, it can be pricing. Anytime that you make a big change in your business, it is scary trying to tell people. But I feel like we kind of make things seem like they're scarier than they actually are. Like I remember when I was telling a very close client of mine that I was increasing my prices, I was literally pacing up and down the hallway, being like, how do I tell this person? Like practicing the conversation I was gonna have with them. Like my partner was like sitting right there and like watching me pace back and forwards. I was like stressing, I was like talking to myself, I was like, like I almost wanted to cry because I was so scared to tell a client that I was increasing the price of their nails. And I was trying to delay telling them for as long as possible and even like trying to talk myself out of you know increasing their prices at all. This was a client that had pricing from years ago that I hadn't increased. But when I actually told this client, like, hey, just letting you know that I'm increasing the price of the nails so your nails will cost this much at your next appointment, they were like, okay. And I'm just like, I was so fing stressed for no reason. Like I was pulling my hair out almost because I was pacing up and down the hallway, being stressed and scared to tell this person this information, and they said, okay. And I'm just like, what? Like I feel like we make things bigger than they are, we make things sound more daunting than they actually are. But once you just do it, like once you just tell your clients you're changing your hours, once you just tell your clients you're raising your prices, or whatever you're doing, whatever big change that you're doing that you're scared of, once you just do it, like you're gonna feel like, why didn't I do this sooner? Like that was so easy. Like it will be very rare for a client to have a negative reaction, especially face to face. You don't want those clients, anyways. Like, let's be real, you don't want those clients anyways. The clients that you want, even if the price that you change to or the hours that you change to don't work for them, they'll respect your decision. They'll respect that that's just something that you need to do to run your business. Like, if I raise my prices and I had a regular client that can no longer afford it, I'm not gonna be cut if they want to leave. And I don't want them to be cut by me choosing to increase my prices because I want clients that are going to understand that that's just something that needs to happen. So if I decide to stop working Saturdays, the right client is going to understand that that's just what needs to work for my life. So if you are worried about making big changes in your business and you're like, I don't know how this client's gonna react, like you know, if they react badly, they're not the client for you. Most of the time, clients will react fine, they will just understand your decision. And if you have a client that just doesn't understand and doesn't respect you and respect your wishes and what works for you, that's not the client that you want. So usually changing your hours and a client reacting negatively, it's usually because they can't make those new hours. So the good thing about that is that they're probably not gonna come back anyways, so just keep that in mind. That's a little happy bonus. Now, as I mentioned earlier, I would literally book in clients outside of my work hours because even though I worked those Saturdays, I worked those late nights, they would get full. So instead of doing two late nights a week, I would end up doing several late nights a week. And instead of just working the Saturday till like four, I'd add an extra person to work till six. And even after I got rid of late nights, if the Saturday was full, I'd add someone in on the late night. Or reducing the Saturdays, like if I noticed on my booking system someone hadn't booked back in, I would open up another Saturday. Like I was just all over the place, really just spending my hours to fit people in. And especially when I was booking clients in face to face, I felt so guilty for saying, like, no, sorry, like there's no Saturdays left, or I'm not working late nights anymore, like I just can't do an appointment that late anymore. I felt so guilty for saying no that I would just book them in anyways. So I was still continuing to work hours I didn't want to work, even though I had changed my hours. I was manually booking people in, I was manually overriding my booking system to fit people in. But eventually I just had to make a change and stick to those hours. And for me personally, like you can just say like no, firm no, like no, there's nothing left on a Saturday. No, I'm not working a Saturday anymore, no, I'm not working late nights anymore. You can just go ahead and do that. But for me, I'm such a people pleaser. For me, it was just easier to make my clients book online. And my clients have had no issue with this, by the way. Like, I haven't lost any clients by booking them in online. No one has any issues. Like, there's probably one or two clients that I had to kind of show them how to book online, but for me, switching to online booking was just easier. Now it depends on what kind of stage in your business that you're at. Some people making your clients book online and not offering to rebook them in salon may affect your bookings quite a bit, especially if you don't have quite consistent clientele just yet, you don't have loyal clientele just yet. Booking the people in in salon is like the best way to get them to come back. So when you switch to online bookings only, you're heavily reducing the chances of a person coming back because you're leaving it up to them to book. But for me, all of these clients, specifically this Saturdays, late nights, they were regular clientele for ages. So I know that if I tell them just book online, they'll just go ahead and do it. I don't rebook any client in salon because I already have such a strong client base and such a loyal clientele that I don't need to book them in to ensure that they come back. They'll just naturally come back. And I do have things like rebooking reminders and things like that. So for me, being such a people pleaser, it was better for me to just instead of saying no and like feel bad or feel guilty and end up saying yes eventually, to just not book anyone in at all and let them book online. But all in all, regardless of whether I was choosing to have those hours available for bookings online or I was not having those hours available but booking people in manually to work those hours, I didn't want to work. What ended up happening is I was dreading working on clients. I was absolutely dreading working every single Saturday. I was absolutely dreading working past like 6 p.m. And you know that you have a problem when you start dreading doing something that you love so much and you're so passionate about. And that's when I knew like I have to make a change. So that's when I changed the hours and I also changed the way that my clients book. Sometimes you just have to make these changes in your business in order to make it work for you. Because at the end of the day, we are running our own business, we want it to work for us because otherwise, what's the point? Like, we already do so much work outside of clients, like we already do so much work outside of work. Why would we run our own business and work these crazy hours that we don't even like working to begin with, when we could just go work for someone else and work like hours that we want to work and not even have to finish at 5 p.m. and still do stuff? Like we could have a life outside of our nine to five. So when we have our business, the whole point of having a business is more freedom, right? It's more choice. So in order to have that choice, you need to give yourself that choice. So when I changed my hours to hours actually worked best for me, and I actually was a bit more firm with it, and I actually really enforced those hours and not booked people in outside of those hours, a lot of things shifted in my business, and that's that clients started to respect me a whole lot more. Because when you actually have consistent hours, it makes your business appear so much more professional. Like I feel like there's always this rep that home-based businesses aren't as professional or whatever, and it's just very like laid back, casual. And it can definitely seem like that when you're booking people in like that. Like when you're saying, whatever time works for you, I'll make it work. Like kind of like revolving your life around the client. When if you actually just have firm hours and stick to them, your clients are gonna see you as so much more professional. Even if those hours don't suit them, their overall view of you is gonna be so much more professional. And this comes with a lot of things, like not only the way your selling is set up, but your policies, your booking process, your hours. When everything's actually set up properly and you stick to it, you seem so much more professional and people really see the value in you. And when I started implementing the hours that I actually wanted to work, I no longer felt so stressed and dreading working on clients. I love working on clients. I just didn't like those kind of hours that I was doing. I stopped trying to rearrange my whole life and my hobbies and things like that around my clients and instead had my clients work around my life. And also I started attracting the right kind of clients, the clients that actually respected me as a person, respected my business, respected my time, and understood that that's just a change that needed to happen for me to run my business the way I want to run it. The only way that I could run my business sustainably because I was getting burnt out. And realistically, I could have easily just been like, I'm not doing this anymore, close my business, go work somewhere else, line of five, get the hours that I want. So I had to make this change. And the clients that you want are the clients that are going to respect you no matter what decision you make. And I am a firm believer that you teach your clients how to treat you. So when you say that your Saturdays are fully booked and they say, Oh, but can you just fit me in after, and you keep saying yes, they're just gonna know by default that if they push you enough, you're gonna keep saying yes to them. That's the same thing with other boundaries that you may have, like lateness. If they are constantly late and they know that they can get away with it, they're gonna continue to be late. Same thing with like paying deposits and booking fees, same thing with like not paying on the day. If you keep letting it happen, they're gonna keep doing it. So you need to teach your clients to actually respect you because they want to be respected themselves, but they also need to respect you back. You don't need to move mountains to accommodate to someone else's schedule. They should be accommodating to yours. They're booking with you. You're not booking with them, they're booking with you. And I also feel like there's this like stigma. I could be wrong, but this is just what I've noticed that I feel like a lot of clients expect us, especially if we're soul traders or home-based businesses or whatever, or maybe you have a salon, but you're the owner of the salon, they expect you to be so flexible because they know you control the hours. So they try and convince you to extend those hours. Like I could not tell you the amount of clients that know my schedule to a tea, like my clients know when I work because they've come to me for like years. They know I don't work like late nights anymore, they know I don't work Sundays. But the amount of times that I've had people say, like, oh, I have to reschedule my appointment, but I can only do Sunday or late night, like they're expecting you to do those hours, knowing that you don't work those hours. Whereas a client that actually respects the hours that you work and respects your business will say, like, can you please let me know if something comes up on a Saturday? Or maybe they want you to work those hours that you don't normally work, but are offering to pay extra. I don't work Sundays at all. I haven't worked Sundays in years. And I actually looked this up out of curiosity the other day, the award rates for our industry. In Australia, if you have a cert three, how much you should be paying yourself per hour, this is how much you'd be getting paid if you worked in a salon for someone else. So you would think that working for yourself, you should actually be paying yourself more because the service doesn't have to pay your boss and you. So the award rate for someone with a certificate three on a Sunday, the hourly rate is if you're full-time or part-time, it's $56 an hour, or if you're casual, $63 an hour. So if you are offering Sunday appointments and you're earning, let's say less, let's go with $63. If you're earning less than $63 per hour on a Sunday after expenses, you're actually earning less than the award rate. So that's why I don't work Sundays, because realistically, like let's say a two-hour nail appointment, that two-hour nail appointment would be at least $126 before expenses. So realistically, you'll actually need to be charging like $140, $150, whatever once you add expenses. And obviously, we want to earn a little bit more than the award rate at least, because that's just the award rate, right? That's $126 for a two-hour appointment before expenses, just for the award rate, which is like the bare minimum. Also, guys, public holiday rates, like I looked up the public holiday rates as well for someone with a cert three, public holiday rate, hourly rate is $70. $70 before expenses. That's just your hourly rate, that's your hourly wage. And that's only if you want to give yourself that bare minimum of that award rate. So let's say a two-hour nail appointment, the bare minimum that you'd need to be charging before expenses is $140. So I personally don't work public holidays, and when I do, I currently charge about a 20% surcharge. But after looking at this, I'm kind of like, I don't actually think that that even covers it. So I might be doing some rearranging, but just some food for thought. I know that we want to make things as affordable for our clients as possible, but you need to consider these, you need to consider the award rate, and pricing is a whole nother episode. I've got it planned. The next episodes, I think I've got a bonus one coming up, but the next ones after that, they are gonna be on pricing. Don't you worry. I've been timing it perfectly for like June time because July is when you're gonna need to increase your prices. So I've been plotting, I've been telling you guys it's been coming for a while, but the pricing episodes are actually coming after the next. I'm having a bonus episode in between, but after that, pricing is coming. But yeah, pricing a whole nother episode. But I just thought I'd mention this because the award rates, I've never looked at them, and I was in shock, especially those like Sundays and public holidays. Wild. Like we undercharge ourselves so much. So if you are someone working a Sunday or a public holiday, look at these rates because like you should be earning more than what you're charging. Also, even Saturdays, Saturdays are still higher than your average weekday hourly rate, and even after 6 p.m., that's higher as well. I don't think there was an actual amount on the chart that I looked at for after 6 p.m. But typically with most workplaces, it is higher after 6 pm. So if you want to charge more after 6 pm or on a Saturday, Sunday, public holiday, you are absolutely valid in doing so. So that's just something I thought I'd share, just a little discovery that I had. But anyways, I had clients that would constantly try and convince me to work outside of my hours to fit them in. So for me, just doing online bookings was easier for me. If you're someone that is a bit more firm, you can just say, nope, I'm fully booked. Sorry. Like, not even say sorry, like you just say, like, I'm fully booked, unfortunately. I can't accommodate to the times that you're free, like, this is what I've got available, like if you can make any of this work, I'd love to book you in. You know, you don't actually have to apologize all the time. I feel like we do this a lot, especially me. Like, I'm always apologizing for things that you don't actually need to apologize for. Like, it's just you're just saying how it is. Like, it's not something that you're doing on purpose, like you're just working hours that suit you. There's nothing wrong with that. But it's okay to choose. Hours that work for you. You don't have to work hours that accommodate for everyone else and make you miserable. So this is saying that I hear all the time in business. You can't complain about having no freedom and keep saying yes to the things that take it away. Because the reality is your business can still operate with whatever boundaries you set, whatever pricing you have, whatever hours you choose to work, there's always going to be a client that that will work for. If you allow clients to control your time, they will. If you allow one client that says you're too expensive to control your pricing, they will. Like you just have to do what actually works best for you. You have to charge your worth, charge what you need to charge, whole nother episode. But you have to choose hours that actually align with you. And the right clients will try to make it work, or they'll respect that it just doesn't work for both of your schedules, and they'll find someone else without feeling the need to bad mouth you, without feeling the need to like be mean to you, they'll just understand that it just doesn't align. So if you create a schedule that works for you, you'll find the right clients that can accommodate. Don't schedule your life around clients, schedule clients around your life. Now pricing a whole nother episode, but I thought I would add this in here as well. If you're someone that feels like you need to work more than 40 to 50 hours a week to get a certain amount of money to live, like if you need like that many hours to live, you need to change your pricing. We'll discuss that another episode. But it's not just about choosing the hours that work for you, like the times like of the week, like working weekdays, working late nights, whatever. It's not just about that, it's about the amount of hours that you work as well. If you find you have to work more than the standard full-time hours in your business, you have to change your prices. If you feel like you have to work more than those standard full-time hours in order to live, like in order to get the money to live, you need to change your prices. Like that's a clear sign that you need to change your prices. So if you're listening to this and you feel like your schedule is just being completely controlled by your clients, it doesn't have to be that way. This is your reminder that you're allowed to change your hours into hours that actually work for you. You're allowed to change your hours to hours that suit your life, that suit your preferences. You don't have to work late nights. You don't have to work weekends. If you want to, you can, but you should never feel obligated to. You started your business for a reason, and that was probably to have more freedom. That was probably to work the hours that you actually want to work. And freedom doesn't come with running your life around everyone else. It comes from choosing the hours of work for you, and everyone else around you just has to work with that. The clients that will respect your time are the clients that you want. So see a sign to change your hours to what actually works for you. If you've been like, I don't want to work weekends anymore, get rid of the weekends, girl. Even if you do it like gradually, like I'm doing, like I reduced the hours on a Saturday to begin with, and then I got rid of one a month, and now I'm trying to get rid of two a month, and then eventually maybe I'm not working them at all. Who knows? But you can do clean cut or you can do it as a slow transition, but make sure you're working the hours that you actually want to work. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode and you get motivation from this to choose the hours that actually work for you. I have a little bonus episode coming up for you guys while I'm in Japan. I thought I'd just give you guys a little something extra. And then June, pricing. All about pricing. So stay tuned for that. So if you're not already, go ahead and follow the podcast on your go-to listening platform, subscribe on YouTube, like the video, give the podcast a five star rating, and I'll keep giving you quality episodes. I'll see you guys in the next one. Thank you for listening to this episode of Blossom in Business. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love if you give the video a thumbs up on YouTube or rate the podcast five stars on Spotify. If you don't want to miss an episode, make sure to hit the notification bell so you get notified every single time a new episode drops. If you want to follow along on my journey, make sure to follow me on socials at Royal Blossom Beauty. And if you have any requests for certain topics or story times or anything else you want covered on the podcast, or you want to apply to be a guest speaker, click the link in my description and you'll be taken to my website with all the information. And I'll see you in the next episode.