The Main Reasons Why I’m Quitting Doing Hair

You read that right! After 17 long years of working behind the chair, I’m officially retiring from doing hair. I wanted to write a post on this to give my experience as a hairstylist for the last 17 years. I also want to mention that my goal for this post is to help anyone that is thinking of starting a career doing hair, or anyone in this industry that may be experiencing the same things that I was. The point of this isn’t to complain, but to be real about my experience in this career.

And don’t worry, this doesn’t mean I’m going to stop pumping out content! It actually means that I’ll be focusing more of my efforts to this blog and Youtube channel. So stay tuned!

1. Trauma on my body

I put body trauma/injury as number one because it is honestly the main reason I am quitting. Doing hair is an extremely physically demanding job. And no matter if you’re tall or short, you’ll have different issues that will arise.

Since I’m short (5’1 on a good day), I was constantly having to lift my arms up high–oftentimes above my shoulders. This can be hard without any weight added, but when you add the weight of the blowdryer, you’re setting yourself up for injury.

For the majority of my career I battled tendonitis in my left shoulder. It would swap between the rotator cuff and the bicep tendon. Since 2012, every few months I need to be prescribed an oral steroid to combat the pain in my shoulder. I was told that eventually I would need cortisone shots, but to avoid getting the shots for as long as I could.

Apparently repeated cortisone shots can deteriorate your joints and then you’ll need surgery, so I opted to never get one. I made-do with oral steroids and physical therapy, although the pain never went away.

My shoulder wasn’t the only joint that gave me problems. Every several months a new area of tendonitis would form. Once I’d get the shoulder somewhat manageable, my wrist would flare up. Next it’d be a few fingers or my elbow.

And if you’re tall, you may frequently bend down or tilt your head/neck forward while doing hair. This can cause disc problems in your neck and spine, and I’ve seen girls have permanent damage from it.

Surprisingly, I never had issues with my legs or feet. This was shocking as I spent 99% of the day on my tippy toes.

2. Exhaustion

Number two is exhaustion. There is no way around it, doing hair is an exhausting job. And I don’t just mean physically (though we covered that in the last section), but your brain is doing multiple things at once all day long.

When doing hair color, you’re practicing chemistry, math, and art simultaneously–all while holding a conversation that should be saved for a therapist (we’ll talk more about that later).

Oftentimes there were color corrections that are extremely tedious and fragile. You have to be exactly precise and know what to do in every situation that arises.

And not that this wasn’t rewarding when it was done properly, but it drains you. Most of my color clients were in my chair for 4 hours. The longest color service I ever had was 10 hours, with one client. By the end of a complicated color correction, I would literally sit on the floor and stair into the void.

3. Anxiety

If you have frequent anxiety, I’m going to go ahead and say that doing hair isn’t for you. I didn’t have much anxiety before I did hair, but it sure came out once I started my career.

I can’t tell you how many nights I laid in bed staring at my ceiling overthinking my work from the day. “Does she hate it?” “I messed this up.” “I should have used a different toner.” “I cut her hair too short.” The anxiety was so intense at times that I would not eat for an entire day because I felt that someone wasn’t happy with their hair because of me. It tore me apart.

Any time this happened I would consider leaving the industry because it was so extreme. I remember googling “hairstylist anxiety” just to look for other hairstylists that also experienced the same emotions that I did.

I did begin to learn from my mistakes and realized that the more educated I was, the less this would happen. So this was more prevalent earlier on in my career and less common the more experienced I became, but it never went away.

Sometimes clients would have goals that were impossible for anyone to achieve, but I would still be affected mentally if I couldn’t do it.

4. People

As you may have experienced for yourself in another industry, working one-on-one with people can be difficult in so many different ways.

As an empathetic person, I tend to feel a lot of the emotions that my clients feel. If they were going through a hard time and telling me of a loss or divorce, I often times took that pain home with me as well. This is extremely draining.

And for whatever reason, people tend to treat their hair appointment like a therapy session. So I would get told about all of the drama and traumatic things going on in everyones life. There were things that were shared with me that made me extremely uncomfortable. I never wanted to be a therapist, just a hairstylist!

People also don’t always understand that what they are asking for isn’t a good option for their hair type/condition/lifestyle. They’ll bring you a picture of Jennifer Anniston, and are upset that they don’t look like Jennifer Anniston when they leave. Even if you nailed the hair color.

Also, people often don’t understand that what they do to their hair at home limits what their hair stylist can do for them. If their hair is in bad condition, it won’t hold onto the hair color no matter what you do. This isn’t the hairstylists fault, but the stylist is the one that gets blamed for the hair color fading too fast.

So at times, I felt that my work was completely limited by the client and is out of my control. This becomes frustrating over time.

The list can go on at how people can be awful to deal with in the hair world. Below are a few other examples that were big for me.

5. You can’t always be authentic

Not being able to always be authentic is something that I recently discovered was hindering my happiness. In the recent years, politics have gone nuts. Every topic of discussion these days are somehow tied to politics when they shouldn’t be. People are more divided than ever.

When doing hair, you’re going to have people from all walks of life in your chair. I used to think that this was a good thing and loved the diversity, but more recently I discovered how hindering this could be.

People want to be surrounded by those that think the same way they do. Often times they would assume my political party, and begin ranting about politics. Since I do not believe my salon is a place for debating, I would smile and nod or ask about their pet. I would try to change the subject, but everything is rooted back to politics these days and it’s impossible to avoid.

It would get to the point where people would say so many hateful things that it would be extremely uncomfortable if they knew that I felt differently and had different views. They liked me for someone I wasn’t, and it felt like I was lying to them.

I often felt like I had to wear a muzzle and couldn’t ever say how I really felt unless I wanted to lose clients over it. I couldn’t afford to lose half of my clientele just because we had different opinions. This was so draining to not be able to be myself.

I eventually decided that I no longer want to be in any situation where I have to hide who I am. This meant that I needed to walk away from doing hair.

6. Hindered my ability to form relationships

Believe it or not, I am an introverted person. That means that being surrounded by people drains me instead of energizes me. When doing hair you’re obviously one-on-one with people all day long.

So it makes sense why I was feeling so absolutely drained by the end of my workday. I’d go home and not want to see a single person the rest of the day. Then, get up the next day and do it all over again.

When I was younger this wasn’t as much of a problem, but once I hit my 30s I realized that it was holding me back from forming relationships outside of work.

I stopped having a social life at all and struggled to get myself to go on a date or try to meet a significant other. I was so drained and didn’t want to be around anyone except my dog, but I didn’t realize why until recently.

Now if you’re extroverted and are energized being around people, then this is a PERFECT career for you. This just wasn’t the case for me.

7. Disrespect

To continue on the topic of people, people can be SO disrespectful. From clients strolling in 20-30 minutes late, to others flat out no-showing their appointments.

I’m not sure if they didn’t realize that they were affecting my pay check or if they just didn’t care, but frankly I got sick of dealing with the disrespect.

I did have cancelation and late policies in place, but it wasn’t equal to the cost of the appointment. Even if they would cancel before my 48 hour window, I oftentimes couldn’t fill the appointment and missed out on money. And with the pandemic, I had to allow last minute cancellations unless I wanted to get sick and then miss an entire week of work.

Speaking of getting sick, clients would often come to their appointments sick. And then I’d miss an entire weeks worth of pay. I often felt helpless when this happened and frustrated that other people had control over my income, which will bring us to the next point below.

8. The business model

The business model of doing hair is labor for money. When you perform a service, you are then paid for the service. The problem with this is, you are actually extremely limited to how much you can make. Even if you raise your prices, you’re only able to service one client at a time.

I learned that there are many other ways to scale your income where you’re not trading your time and manual labor for money. Especially since I realized that I didn’t always have control over my income if someone canceled or got sick. I was completely dependent on my local clientele to show up. There were a lot of factors out of my control.

This is why I’ve decided to focus more on content creation online. I can create a digital product and then make money from it over and over again. So you do the work just one time, and then reap the benefits from it passively. It makes so much more sense than destroying your body and mind over and over for each and every pay check.

9. Selling makes me uncomfortable

Some may say that this is a personal problem, but I HATE selling and salesmen. Something about a car salesman reminds me of a guy trying to get in your pants and it absolutely enrages me. So since I cannot stand being sold to, it’s understandable that I don’t feel comfortable being on the other end and selling to clients.

The way I handled my business I did the least amount of “selling” possible. I focused more on educating my clients and if they bought from me cool, and if not thats cool too. When I was working on my own this was fine, but working in other salons this was a huge problem.

You are forced to sell to clients and hit quotas. I personally just hate the pressure of that. When it comes to hair, there are so many different products as well as so many different hair types. The brand my salon carries isn’t always the best option for every client. I’m not going to sell them a product if they already have one they love that works for them.

I also wasn’t much of an up-seller of services. Many salons will have you convince clients to add on a conditioning treatment or another service to make a little more from each service. While this makes so much sense on a business standpoint, I never felt comfortable with it even after so many years.

Ultimately I think that hard selling just isn’t in my DNA. I feel much more comfortable giving people what they’re asking for, educating them, and offering my recommendations. If it’s not what’s best for them, then I won’t recommend it just to get a sale.

Quitting Doing Hair Conclusion

As I mentioned earlier, I most definitely don’t want to sound like I’m complaining. My career was incredibly rewarding and I learned SO much about myself, life, and business. That being said, it is time for me to transition my hair career to the next chapter.

The 9 reasons why I’m quitting doing hair:

1. Trauma/injury to my body
2. Exhaustion
3. Anxiety
4. People
5. You can’t always be authentic
6. It hindered my ability to form relationships
7. Disrespect
8. The business model
9. I hate selling

Leave a comment if any of this resonated with you or helped in your decision to pursue a career doing hair! Subscribe below to either of my mailing lists ❤️