Recently a long time student of mine asked “I want to offer a monthly subscription for my clients so I get paid on the 1st of the month. I’m thinking of including 2 services in their payment, with perks of getting first dibs on appointments – and offering the services at a discounted rate. This would help my clients save money and help me manage my time and money AND create a secure income. I think this would give me more consistency in my business – what do you think?”

As someone who has run a membership business model for the last 5 years with The Lashpreneur Society – I would consider myself an expert in membership or subscription based business models.

And I am NOT a fan of the membership or subscription based business model for solo lash artists for a variety of reasons which I’ll share in a sec-but I do think it can be a great structure for those who have a staff.

Why do businesses choose a membership model? 

In the context of beauty service business – a membership is usually a solution for a loyalty problem – like a client bounces around from artist to artist or you can only get clients in for a full set and one or two fills but they don’t come back. Larger salons with a staff typically have a high turnover rate of staff so they want the client loyal to the business and locked into a recurring payment so they don’t follow the artist when they leave. 

So your franchise locations tend to have this type of membership business model to incentivize their customers to be loyal to their business and NOT necessarily to the service provider. And generally speaking – not always – but the higher the discount is for the membership as opposed to what is a typical standard price point for that same type of service – the strategy is that more people will sign up to be members and never utilize the services.

I mean think of gyms that offer $20/month memberships. Gym businesses typically have insanely high overhead due to the square footage of their space, the cost of the equipment, and the amount of labor costs to staff a large facility. So they can either charge a high monthly fee and limit the amount of people that can afford that monthly payment to try to profit OR they charge a very low monthly fee and go for quantity of members – knowing that statistically 67% of gym memberships go unused yet the members continue to pay for it each month hoping they’ll be motivated to go someday soon. 

But this is why some gyms are able to charge very low monthly fees – because people are basically donating $20/month for a service they never use and they don’t want to risk NOT having the gym membership just in case motivation strikes next month!

 It’s fascinating buyer’s psychology.

The two most common membership structures

So Memberships are usually structured in one of two ways. Either the monthly membership is cheaper than the cost of a regular service but requires a contract for a minimum time frame like one year so it guarantees the business consistent income for that time period and maybe there’s additional perks like discounts on products or additional services… but since you’re already discounting your service in exchange for long term commitment, there’s not usually any additional perks with this structure. Massage Envy, Amazing Lash Studio, and European Wax Centers follow this style of membership.

The second type of membership is a sort of VIP membership where a client pays more than their typical service price but they receive other perks like discounts on other services, exclusive VIP days or priority booking, free bday services, discounts for friends, or like some sort of special gift and can either be a minimum term like 3 months or it can be month to month (but I would require a minimum of 3-6 months to ensure you’re going to make your money back on any discounts and “special offers” that you include in a VIP offer).

I will say from my experience and the experience I’ve seen of others implementing a membership structure, it doesn’t make financial sense for a solo lash artist to offer memberships as it’s hard to scale (meaning it’s hard to duplicate it over and over to grow it) when you’re a one man show. 

Why having a membership as a solo lash artist is going to COST you in the long run

While the idea of having consistent recurring payments might sound enticing – and believe me – this is one the biggest reasons why I chose a membership business model as opposed to having a course based business model – you need to look at the future of your business to see if this solution or opportunity still benefits the business when you’re fully booked. 

Because once you do start to get busy, you’ll find your time to be able to fulfill on those membership perks very limited which will upset your clients who expect this as a part of their membership (which they are also probably contractually committed to – and so are you – so technically if you don’t fulfill on the contracted services – you’re in breach of contract).

I want you to also consider for any sort of discounted rate your members are receiving, you’ll get real frustrated when you’re getting close to being fully booked that you HAVE to take a membership client over a full price paying client because you are also locked into a contract with your members to give them “priority booking”. Or what happens when you’re fully booked and a member can’t get in for her monthly membership service because there just isn’t availability. Ruh Roh!

What happens when you want to raise your prices cause you’re in demand? Your members are locked in at their rate until their contract is up unless you have language in your contract that you can increase their rate whenever… so you are crippling your growth as a solo gal for the duration of your most recent member signup.

What happens if a member can’t get in for her fill because YOU’RE booked up and busy and couldn’t get her in in time for it to be considered a fill? Then you’re doing a full set at a discounted fill price because you’re locked into a contract.

So believe me – it’s not that I don’t like memberships – I have one. It’s just a membership business model typically works best for businesses where there are multiple staff members to be able to accommodate clients at a variety of times and days and where loyalty to the business is low because there’s high turnover from service providers leaving. 

If you don’t have a loyalty issue – then DON’T CREATE A SOLUTION FOR A PROBLEM YOU DON’T HAVE.

So what are some solutions – if you want more consistent and predictable income in your business? Well my friends – that’s what we can teach you inside of The Lashpreneur Society – my business coaching program – membership for beauty business owners. And the cool thing is – we don’t lock you into a long term contract – the membership is month to month, cancel anytime. This puts the risk on myself and team Lashpreneur to make it a no brainer for you to stay a member because of the results YOU are getting from your membership. 

And if you don’t get the results you want – cancel anytime.

If you want to get on the waitlist to be notified when we open the doors to the society again – head to www.thelashpreneur.com/society and sign up to be first in line when we open enrollment again – and keep an eye on that email cause we’re opening up the doors to the society soon.