 Hey guys, welcome back to my channel or welcome if you're new. If you're new here, hi, my name's Sam. I am a licensed cosmetologist and if you're not new, I'm sure you've noticed we have a different kind of setup. I just got this new microphone and mic stand for my podcast, video podcast episodes coming soon. I'll have more information about that in the description but I thought that I would just test out my new equipment. So let me know what you think as far as quality of the audio, lighting, all that kind of stuff. I'm very excited about that but today I'm gonna be doing another client horror story. I've actually been taking a break from doing hair. I haven't done hair since this past December because I moved states and I was just experiencing burnout. This story happened right before I stopped taking clients. I wanted to share what happened and the lesson that I learned from the experience because that really is the main reason why I do these videos. Yes, they're entertaining but I don't wanna just sit here and like shit on clients. I'm just sharing experiences I had that were challenging and how I handled them and then what I learned from that experience moving forward because every bad encounter I've had with a client whether it's something that I did wrong or if it's just like red flags that I know to look out for in the future I always learn something and it always makes me a better stylist moving forward. This client came in, she had booked a consultation appointment and at the time I had online booking so sometimes when clients book an appointment they will reach out to me on Instagram or call this on first and we'll have a little bit of a conversation so that I know who they are what they're looking to have done but this client just booked a consultation online herself we had no communication prior to this so I had no idea before she came in what to expect you know who she was anything like that and she brought her son in with her. That's not the horrific part of the story he actually wasn't that bad clients bringing kids to the salon I actually have another story about kids at the salon one kid almost started a fire in the salon so let me know if you'd like to hear that story that'll be a different story for a different video but this one wasn't bad at all but he was very like curious about the salon and the mom who was my client as a result was like very stressed and on edge her main focus really was on him like she was just constantly reprimanding him be quiet, sit down, stay still don't touch anything and as we're trying to have this consultation she just like didn't seem very present like it was very hard to communicate with her because she just seemed like so on edge and she seemed like in such a rush like she just wanted to get in and get out super fast which was confusing to me I remember at the time thinking like why book this consultation because consultations were optional we had them as an option as a standalone appointment we would block out I believe like 20 or 30 minutes and you had to pay for that time and then if you decided to book an appointment after that the consultation cost would go towards like the total of your appointment later on you're paying for this appointment and she's the one that voluntarily booked it so it just seemed very confusing to me that she just like seemed like she didn't wanna be there and she was in such a rush to get out and I was like why did you even book this then or like why bring your kid and I totally understand that it can be difficult finding childcare I mean the kid wasn't even bad like I don't know she was just like very worried about him when she came in her hair was jet black she did tell me that she had boxed-eyed it black I'm gonna try and see if I can find the original before photo that I had taken of her hair if not I'll just insert a similar picture so then when I was asking her okay what are you looking to do she didn't really have an answer for me like oftentimes when clients come in they already have inspiration photos or just at least like a general idea of what they want she did not know she was like I just want something different I was like okay how different are we talking cause obviously your hair is jet black you can't go any darker than that so obviously if you want something different you have to go lighter so okay that's step number one and I'm just like I keep trying to ask her questions to try to pull out of her what she wants which is fine but it's difficult to do that when the client is not giving you their full attention and they're so focused on something else we ended up settling on she wanted a balayage and she wanted it to be very warm we found a few photos online that we were gonna use as inspiration and the tone that she wanted she kept referring to as pumpkin when I'm doing my consultations if you've never gotten your hair done by me you need to know I am very thorough I ask about your hair history everything you've done to it in the last year we talk about what you want I go into detail about placement and the specifics like the nitty gritty details like you tell me that you want a balayage okay well how much dimension do you and I don't even use technical terms like that I'll literally say like well how much do you want any of your natural color in the ends as well or do you want it to be all solid blonde or pumpkin in this case how high up do you want that color to come do you still want to keep your root do you wear your hair up in a ponytail frequently do you wanna see some of those highlights around your face when you pull your hair up or do you want it to just be all your natural color do you like it to be brighter and bolder around your face or do you want it to be like all blended evenly all throughout I'll even ask them like what their current hair routine is like how often do they wash their hair do they style it often just so that way it gives me an idea too of like are they a high maintenance person or low maintenance person with their hair so that way I can make sure I'm giving them a color that's gonna be realistic to their lifestyle I don't wanna give a low maintenance person a super high maintenance hair color you know like I really take my job seriously I think about all of these things I think it just also shows to my clients that like I really care and I really am listening I wanna hear you I wanna make sure I'm giving you something that you're gonna love and that's gonna work for you you know like I'm not just here to make money like I really care about what I'm doing anyway all that to say I was trying to do my usual thing and be super thorough but it was difficult to do when I felt like the conversation was kind of one sided but yeah so we ended up settling on this like pumpkin balayage and we booked her appointment for I believe the following week she paid for the consultation and then just like rushed out of there and you know looking back and talking about it now I'm like yeah that kind of seems like a total red flag but at the time I remember thinking like she doesn't really care you know like she just wants something different she's tired of just the solid black color she wants to just change it up add some pops of color I don't know like she just seemed chilling laid back and I've had a lot of clients that were like that they were just super easy going and they were just kind of like yeah I don't know I don't really want anything like super specific I don't really care when I would ask them all those little specific questions they'd be like I don't really know like whatever you think is best like I trust you I love your work do what you think would be best for my hair and it always works out fine and they're just like so easy and they're like oh my god I love it great thank you and they're like you know willing to pay whatever your prices are and they're just wonderful clients and I really thought that's how she was gonna be obviously not because if that were the case we wouldn't be sitting here doing this video right now day of her appointment comes she comes in she does not bring her kid with her this time and I did another quick consultation with her I always do this just to like confirm everything we talked about before especially if the consultation was like a week or longer ago you know cause like I don't want them to forget anything we discussed I wanna make sure that like I didn't forget anything we discussed and I just do like a brief like refresh and especially with her I wanted to definitely do this because like I said I felt like she wasn't fully paying attention the first time so we talked about everything she had the inspiration photo with her that we had found during her consultation from my understanding based on the two consultations we had she wanted dimensional color meaning she still wanted to see some of her black hair throughout the ends she just wanted like bold pops of the pumpkin color so I think I just did like my usual technique where I'll do like three back to back teased slices then I'll leave some hair out and I'll do three more back to back teased slices leave hair out you know so it creates like these really pretty bold ribbons of color so it like really pops but then you still have a little bit of that natural color running through the ends so it's not just like a solid like orange and then black root you know it's like really nice and blended I'm thinking everything is going super smoothly she came in on a Saturday I remember and she was my last one of the day so she was my last client for that week so I was like oh this is gonna be a great way to end the week I have this like super laid back cool client we're just gonna do like a nice fun easy color on her same kind of technique that you know I've done a million times it's gonna go great and super smooth and she's gonna love it and then I'll be done for the week so anyway I finished the color I am blow drying her a tip for my fellow stylist especially if you're a newer when you're doing color on someone I highly highly recommend you start blow drying the front around their face let them see how the color looks before you blow dry the entire head she was loving the tone she was like yes this is perfect this is exactly what I wanted the pumpkin I don't know why I find that so funny I guess it's just because that was the first and only time I've had someone request pumpkin hair color but yeah so she loved the tone I was like perfect great did the rest of the blowout mind you she has pretty thick curly course hair so it's not like it was a quick 10 minute blowout you know like took me a good amount of time and I asked her how she'd like it to be styled and she's looking in the mirror and she's like I don't know this isn't what I was expecting I don't really think it looks that different does it look different I'm sorry does it look different you mean does your pumpkin balayage that I just used like three bowls of lightener to accomplish look different than your solid jet black box dyed hair that you came in with yeah yeah I'd say that it does like what does it look different it's not like I just added like a couple little pieces couple little blended pieces like no like we did like straight up ribbons of color I don't have any after pictures of this to show you guys unfortunately and I know that that takes away from the story and it's like hard to envision and hard to like believe what I'm telling you but you have to understand that in the moment if you do a client's hair and then they're still sitting in your chair and they're telling you that they're not happy with it you're not gonna be like okay I know that you hate it and you want me to fix this but can you just hang on a second like pose for me so I can get some pictures of it and I'm not thinking oh my God I can't wait to make a video about this on YouTube I gotta make sure I get picture evidence and receipts like no in the moment you're just like kind of panicking like oh shit I need to resolve this situation and try to make them happy but she's just telling me I don't really think it looks that different this isn't really what I asked for I said I wanted something really different and at this point I am about to lose it I'm like are you kidding me? You were giving me nothing we did two consultations and I had to pull information out of you just to get an idea of what the hell you wanted you were not being specific at all whatsoever and any question that I asked you you were just like I don't really know I don't know I don't know I don't know and now that I'm done oh this isn't what I wanted like well bitch I don't know what you wanted because you were not being specific or clear at all there have been past experiences and past story times where I look back and I'm like oh you know I should have been more clear about this or I should have asked this instead but this time around there was nothing else that I could have done I 100% confidently can say I did everything that I could talk about not knowing what the hell you want like she clearly just had no clue so I'm just trying to figure out something and I'm like well you know we can always add more color we can add more of the pumpkin highlights but you'd have to come in for another appointment we would have to do that you know if you want to come back in a week or two and then she goes you didn't cover my graze I look at her and I'm like what graze I am not kidding you guys she had three strands strands right in like her middle part that was it and I honestly I swear on everything I didn't even notice them that's how like small and subtle they were when it's something like that where it's literally just like one or two strands I don't even want to point it out and ask like hey do you want me to cover these because some people like I don't know like they feel like I don't know I don't like to point out like hey I see a gray hair she didn't mention anything about them she didn't say anything about getting them covered and so I said this to her I was like oh well you know to be honest I didn't even notice them I didn't think that they were visible didn't know you wanted them covered you didn't say anything about wanting to cover them or do any root color she goes oh well I just assumed that it was included so I was like okay no problem I'll go mix up some color we'll cover up those grays for you and I'll just add a little bit more lightener to your ends and we can just make it solid on the ends we'll just the little bit of black I left out on the ends I'll cover right over that and we'll just do solid pumpkin how's that sound so I go to mix up her root color I literally took like a little pea size amount of color a little squirt of developer because that's literally all she needed and then I just took some lightener and I just grabbed her I didn't even bother doing like foils and all that I literally just took her ends and I just grabbed the lightener and I just slapped it on there and I just like blended it with my hands and I was like there we go just let her process for a little bit rinsed it out, toned it she ended up being happy in the end but at that point I think we both were just feeling like annoyed with each other and I shouldn't have lightened her anymore that's a whole second appointment like you're not gonna get two appointments for the price of one like that's just not fair at that point I knew that I was gonna be moving and I wasn't gonna be doing hair anymore so I was just at that point I was like whatever I honestly don't even care and I don't even want her to come back again to have to do a second appointment so I was like I'm just gonna slap some lightener on her ends and just get her the hell out of here as I was styling her hair we were talking about her wanting to come in cause she like I said had really curly hair and she was looking to go to a salon every Saturday to get her hair washed and blown out and styled and I was like oh hell no cause first of all I was just really annoyed with her at this point like I didn't really want her as a client second of all I knew I was leaving soon anyway and third of all I am a color specialist so just doing blowouts is like I'm not interested in that and it's just not really worth the time for the money you know like I could be doing color instead during that time that's what I actually am passionate about and what I love doing and what I spent so much time and money mastering so I ended up telling her actually I'm gonna be moving away in a few weeks but there's this other stylist in the area that is amazing she specializes in curly hair she's so great her work's amazing I really think that you guys would hit it off so I pulled up this girl's Instagram page and she was like oh my God I love this this is so great so yeah she ended up paying leaving and that was that last time I ever saw her heard from her again don't know she ended up going to that other stylist that I had referred her to but let's talk about the lessons that I learned from this because like I said that really is the main point of sharing these stories the first lesson I think is you know I talk about red flags all the time in a lot of my story time videos I'm like oh I should have saw these red flags this time around I really didn't think there were any red flags like I said she really just came off as like easy going and laid back and I thought that she was gonna be a breeze as a client and then the second thing is sometimes you can do everything right and do the best job possible be super thorough and then they're still not happy in the end that just goes to show that these kinds of situations are unavoidable sometimes sometimes you're just not the right fit for a client the client's not the right fit for you some people just don't know what the hell they want but yeah that's the story of the pumpkin balayage girl that didn't know what the hell she wanted don't forget comment down below let me know what you think of this whole setup and the quality and also let me know if you wanna hear the story time about my clients kids that ran wild in the salon and almost lit it on fire by the way if you live in the southeast North Carolina area I am going to be taking clients again starting now on the occasional Saturday by appointment only I will be accepting clients in Wilmington, North Carolina I'm gonna have a link to an appointment request form you have to fill out that form and then I will reach out to you from there about setting up an actual appointment appointments are gonna be on Saturdays only and availability is very limited so if you're in the area and you would like to get your hair done by me fill out that form but that's gonna be it for me thank you guys so much for watching if you're not already subscribed I would really appreciate it if you would subscribe give this video a like and I'll see you in my next one bye