How Your Students Can Use AI to Gain More Clients
Stephanie Carter, Co-Founder
Beauty as a Business
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Chris Linford:
Take it away. Thanks for being with us.
Stephanie Carter:
Hi everyone. Can you hear me? Am I good?
Chris Linford:
Yep.
Stephanie Carter:
Okay. Hang on just a second. I want to share my slides really quick. For those of you who don’t know me, like Chris mentioned, my name is Stephanie Carter. I am a co-founder of Beauty as a Business. I’ve been working on the marketing for beauty schools for the past, let’s see, since 2015. So somebody do the math on that. It’s been a minute, but I’ve loved it and I’m excited to share what I have learned along the way. So I hope everyone is ready to talk about AI again. Parker did a fantastic job talking about AI for schools, and I’m going to talk about AI for students because we want them to be successful in the industry, and I do think AI is going to help them do that. It’s going to help them in their careers and it’s going to help them make more money.
AI for Small Business Owners
So let’s start from a place that we all need to anchor our students in, and that’s that they are going to be small business owners. This quote that I have up here on the screen, this sentiment, we have heard this thousands of times. Wow. I was really surprised at how much of this was so much more than just the skillset that I learned.
I mean, let’s think about all the departments that make up a business, finance, IT, HR, future professionals are going to run into this, and I think they’re going to be able to use AI to help them. I think it’s going to be really cool to see how AI can help people juggle the many hats that a small business owner often has to wear. Today, we are going to talk about AI specifically in the context of marketing and sales. So first things first, they need to get access to ChatGPT or Gemini.
ChatGPT and Gemini
I will say that prior to putting this all together, I’d been a ChatGPT girly, but I started using Gemini and I actually really like it. Free accounts, in my opinion, are going to do the job. They’re going to do the job for your students. So nobody needs to pay money, don’t worry about that. I will say this, ChatGPT changed their settings, so you don’t have to create an account to get access to it. I would still recommend making an account because then it allows you to go back and view past conversations. And actually, I think that becomes really important. One thing that I have found to be tricky for some folks, and actually, I really appreciated Daniel’s session today from Pivot Point because I think that there of course is always a place for human coaching and consulting, not just AI coaching and consulting.
One of the values that I’ve found with human coaching and consulting is someone’s going to prompt you with questions, they’re going to say things and engage you in a way that gets your wheels spinning. And I’ve heard some people say, “Oh, I’ve gone in and I’ve used an AI chat bot, and it just kind of fell flat for me.” And I think that sometimes that’s because they don’t know what questions to ask or what to say.
And so I just wanted to add that context in because I think that human coaching and consulting is hugely valuable, but it’s not free and it’s not always as accessible to people. Whereas I think starting with Gemini or ChatGPT for students is going to be both free and accessible. So I just wanted to add that context before we get into it. Okay, so let’s talk about AI for marketing and sales.
AI For Marketing and Sales
Everyone is talking about TikTok, especially with a potential ban and the potential sale of TikTok, but I’m going to reference what Chelsea said earlier in her presentation, which is that I do think Meta is still the 800 pound gorilla in the room. But, regardless of what platform you’re using, what platform your student is drawn to, whether it’s TikTok or Reels, short form video content, and really video content in general is hugely important for social media marketing these days. And everybody hates to do it. Well, not everyone. Obviously, there’s a lot of people that love to do it because there’s content all over these platforms that are video, but most people, most of us, myself included, kind of loathe to make a video. It’s just, it’s off-putting, it feels like a lot of work. But we are going to show you today how your students can come up with a month’s worth of short-form video content ideas and have AI do all the heavy lifting.
It can’t do everything for them quite yet, but it’s going to do the hardest parts and it’s going to get them where I think… To a point where they’re going to be really successful. All right, let’s see what’s up next.
Oh, so basically another important point here, I think if you talk to your students, or for those of you that have Beauty as a Business in your school, you’re using this curriculum already with your students, we do have a whole lesson in our TikTok course dedicated to worksheets where you plan and you script out your videos. This is still so important, but I really think people should be utilizing AI in this part of the process, and that’s what we’re going to go over today.
Using AI for Idea Generation
So this is something that I think if I went to a group of students right now and I said, “Plan out a month’s worth of Reels or TikToks,” I mean, I think we would sit there for a couple of hours, if not more, and we’re going to using this method that I’m going to show you with AI, I think that students could do this maybe in 15 to 20 minutes. I mean, I went through it. I know I’m a little bit… This is an area I play in daily, so I’m maybe a little more comfortable, but really you guys are going to see how simple this was, and that’s why I have every confidence that students are going to be able to do this in a pretty short amount of time. Certainly not in the hours and hours and hours that I’ve heard students say it takes them to plan social media content.
So the first thing that we’re going to do is we’re going to go to the chat bot and ask for ideas. We are going to describe who we are and what we need and just an FYI for everyone, these slides are screenshots from my conversations with either Gemini or ChatGPT. So here’s what I asked, I said, “I’m a hairstylist. Give me some ideas for what I can film for Instagram and TikTok,” and here’s what some of the things that it came up with. Gemini gave me 12 ideas in less than 10 seconds, I timed it. And today, the way that I will see… When I go and I teach students and I say, “Okay, guys, we got to go. Let’s brainstorm videos or let’s gather video ideas,” most people today are basically bookmarking video ideas that they love as they’re scrolling through either TikTok or Instagram. They’re using that for inspiration, and I think that that’s great, but sometimes, even when you scroll for hours and hours and hours, what I’ve found is students will say something like, “Oh, I bookmarked a bunch of ideas,” and this is from scrolling all this time.
And then they go to those bookmark of ideas and it’s like five, four… It’s never as much as they thought it was going to be. So these, again, I’ve been showing on my slides, the ideas that Gemini came up with. And here’s the truth, I do not love all of these ideas, but I love some of these ideas. For example, I thought reacting to celebrity hairstyles, this one is one that actually sounds kind of interesting. I think that if it’s well done, it could get a lot of views on Reels or TikTok. And I thought, I understand filming dramatic transformations. That was another suggestion on here, and it’s like, I don’t know if I’m going to have enough of those in a month, but a lot of people upload their transformations to TikTok or Reels, and maybe I could marry this idea of doing commentary where I go stitch a TikTok with somebody who just had a really dramatic hair makeover and I add my commentary as a hairstylist over it. I mean, this is a really popular form of entertainment.
It works in sports, it works in video games. I mean, people have commentary about people watching video games. I don’t see why this wouldn’t make sense, and I’m sure it’s being done on TikTok or Reels as we speak. So I think that this is where I would go as a student is I would say, “Okay, it took me 10 seconds to get these 12 video ideas. I’m just going to see how I might tweak them or what ones might stand out for me.” And the big thing here is I can keep prompting AI for more ideas if I want to go in a certain direction. So here I said, “Look, I want to focus on brides and special events. So give me ideas in that vein.” And again, so fast, so easy, less than 15 seconds probably on this one. And I just keep prompting until I get what I need. And the other thing is, is it wraps up with a few other pro-tips telling me, “Here’s some other things that we want you to think about to make the best quality videos.” And I’m like, “Awesome. Cool.”
Create a Content Calendar
So I’ve got a whole bunch of ideas. What’s next? Well, we have to make a plan. It is so important to plan out your social media content. I mean, trying to show up every day, do work, great work on clients, engage with them, connect with them, give them a wonderful treatment and service, that is exhausting. And if you wait until the end of the day to say like, “Okay, now I have time to do my social media,” the magic just isn’t going to happen. And we all know what happens from there is suddenly you put it off. You think, “Oh, I’ll do it tomorrow.” “Oh, I’ll do it tomorrow. Today I was just packed. I was booked.” And then all of a sudden, you’re not really doing it. I mean, this is very, very common. I would say 80% of the industry professionals I talk to when we say, “What stops you? What are your habits around social media?”
That whole situation I described is them. They recognize themselves in that.
So we are going to go to AI and we’re going to say, “Look, you’ve given me ideas. Organize these for me. Help me make a plan. Hold me accountable. Give me a path to success here.” And here’s what I asked for. I basically said, “I want a month-long calendar. I want to make TikToks, I want to make Reels. I’m a new stylist.” And then I prompted it with some specific video types that I thought would be really successful for me. So I said, “I want before and after videos. I want some of the videos to be product reviews, and then I think I want some humorous ideas. I want to try and keep this a little light, a little more entertaining. So show me what you come up with.” And it popped out for me what I should be doing daily by four weeks in the month. So Monday through Friday, it gave me ideas of what to do that fit into these categories. And it did it for four weeks of the month.
And look, it’s just like going to the gym. It’s just working out. If you force yourself to go to the gym every day and you haven’t been going to the gym every day and you haven’t built up to that, you’re not going to be successful. The biggest thing that I tell students is you need to make this plan and then you need to have some grace and space with yourself. It’s okay if you don’t do this every day. It’s okay if you don’t hit the plan every day.
Start with two videos a week, start with one if that’s what you need, whatever it is to make you feel like, I am doing this, I am showing up consistently.
So I just want to say that because I do know there are definitely folks in the audience right now going, “There’s no way I’m going to make 20 TikToks or Reels in a month.” And students are definitely not either. Again, get that this is a plan to help us be successful.
This is a plan to help us show up and to be consistent, which we found is really the secret to success with social media. So I do love this. Every time that I went to Gemini or ChatGPT and I asked them for this stuff, it always came out with a little extra, too, of like, “Hey, Stephanie, don’t forget to do these things to help your videos be great.” And I love that. It’s like my little AI cheerleader, just keeping it positive. It understands that I’m trying to meet this goal and it’s saying, “Here’s some other things that we think you could do to be successful.” Another feature that I loved, and like I said, I was a ChatGPT girly, but I think I’m getting into Gemini more. You could quickly export these to Sheets, and I think that that would really allow someone to format this calendar in a way that they love.
I’m thinking about custom color coding, whatever. Maybe they want to print it out. I don’t know. I just think moving it to Sheets opens up a whole other door of organization, and there are going to be some people who take this seriously enough that they’re going to do things like, “I want to create tabs of every month what I did in social media,” or, “I want to be able to look back and see where started and where I am now.” And I just love that it was just a click to take it to Sheets. It was awesome. So another example of what I thought, “Gosh, if I move this to Sheets, what are some other things that I would do as a student?” And I would probably put links to the scripts of each of these videos into the Sheet next to the idea. And I know there are people in the audience going like, “Scripts? We’re going to script out these videos?” Yes, there are 20 videos. Think about scripting out 20 videos.
Using AI to Build a Script for Video Content
We’re starting to understand why this is a nightmare for people, why they don’t want to do this. Well, not with AI. We’re just going to go in and we’re going to say, “Hey, can you take one of the ideas from the calendar and give me the script that I need for this?” Sorry, I’m just going to do a quick check on time. Woo, I’m getting close. Okay. It gives me the voiceover, it gives me the on camera script, it gives me the shots. It really lays out everything that I’m going to need to be successful to make this video. And look, maybe I’m not going to use one of the ideas from my calendar today because I actually have an appointment that I’m really excited about, it’s going to be one of those big transformation appointments. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to go to Gemini or ChatGPT and I’m going to say, “Hey, give me the script for telling my audience about this really cool makeover that I’m going to do today.” And I hit enter. Here’s what pops out.
Again, gives me the voiceover, gives me the on-camera script, the shot, everything. It’s literally spelled out for me, and I know that it feels like, “Hey, this doesn’t seem like it’s that hard. This isn’t rocket science.” I get it. But when we talk to students, the hardest thing is getting started. It is so much easier to react to a script that is just magically presented to you than to write this script from scratch. This is a lot of, students would feel too awkward, they would overthink it. Ironically, they would sound too robotic. This is such a good jumping off point, and I really think that as a student, as a stylist, I would get this script ahead of time before the appointment so that as I’m going through the treatment, with the client’s permission, of course, we’re always going to get permission when we’re filming people. I would go to them and I would say, “Hey, we’re going to make this awesome video together.” But I know now as I’m doing the treatment, every single shot that I need to take, I know the video pans.
If you went to anyone who was making video content today, they would say… My phone, when I’m making a TikTok, 90% of the things I film, just sit on my phone and take up space and go in the trash because I don’t actually end up using them in the script or in the video that I make. Well, if I have a plan beforehand and I know the shots that I need, we’re going to cut back on that. We’re going to cut back on that waste and on feeling like, “Oh, I shot hours of footage for this 30 second TikTok, and now there’s just a bunch of other random stuff on my phone.” And then of course, if you can’t shoot a video again, we’re going to have grace and space for ourselves. If you just need a break, and all you did today was take a photo, you just go to ChatGPT or Gemini and you say, “Look, give me a list of captions. Think for me, do the first 80%. I will copy paste, tweak from here.”
Stephanie Carter:
Parker or Chris, sorry, Chris, I’m just going to check in with you. Should I pause here or do I have a little bit more time to go into the next section? What do you think?
Chris Linford:
We got plenty of time. We’re going to be doing giveaways after this, so you’re good to go.
Stephanie Carter:
Am I good to go? Okay, I’m going to jump in. All right, thank you.
Okay, so outside of just marketing to get new clients, that was our, here’s our social media content, here’s the videos we’re going to make for a month, all laid out, spelled out for us. Thank you, AI.
Rebooking & Reputation Management
One of the neglected or underappreciated areas of business is rebooking clients and reputation management, and AI can help our students with both of these things. So let’s start with the dreaded negative review. I know Pat just talked about the importance of reviews, still important. They can be so disheartening and scary when you get a negative review. Think about how heavy it feels, especially as a new professional, not knowing where to start, what to say, trying to remember all the best practices. This is actually a review that I took from a real salon and I just threw it over to AI and I said, “Hey, craft a response for me,” and here’s what AI came up with.
I won’t read it for you guys. I know you can skim through the screen really quick, but to me personally, it’s a little long, a little overly apologetic, but it’s hitting the right notes. The whole, “Reach out to us directly. We want to talk more. We want to make this right.” This is spot on, and I love the note at the end that again is like, “Hey, remember, be empathetic. Be understanding. Be proactive in addressing concerns.” That’s great. I agree with that a hundred percent. So two minutes, problem solved. I just have to copy, paste this into maybe the notes on my phone, edit it a little bit, answer the review.
Let me jump to this next part. So this is another tactic that’s our reputation management. I didn’t go into how to respond to good reviews because honestly, I think it’s pretty easy to respond to good reviews.
Booking Repeat Appointments
I think most people get tripped up on how to respond to the negative reviews. But of course, you could go to AI and ask for a response to good reviews, too. The other tactic that I do not see utilized enough is students go through all this work of getting a new client in their chair, and then they walk out the door and they just hope that this person comes back. A great thing to do, I’m going to flip the script here. Definitely, we tell students, “Ask people to follow you on Instagram.”
We’re going to flip the script here. We’re going to tell our students, if you have a new client or somebody who’s not following you on Instagram, what you’re going to do is you’re going to go to them and you’re going to say, “Hey, can I follow you? Can I follow you? Because I want to send you, I want to direct message you a little note just saying thank you for sharing some time with me today for being a client of mine today.”
So I’ve used this prompt. I’ve said, “AI, can you craft this message for me that I can DM to people? Make me a template that I can copy, paste to people when they say, “Sure, here’s my Instagram handle. You can follow me,” and then I’m going to send them the direct message. So here’s what it came up with. Again, what I’m going to do is I am going to copy and paste this into the Notes app on my phone, and every time I use that script with someone, “Hey, can I follow you? Because I want to send you a little message and just say thank you,” I’m going to personalize this, I’m going to tweak it, but I have 80% of what I’m going to type up. So many people are doing this from scratch every time they’re interacting with a client, and we don’t have to do that, not anymore.
So that was good. I love that. And I think we can do better. So I go to ChatGPT and I say like, “Hey, I really, really want them to book with me. I really want to give them incentive to show up in my chair again. Tell me some other ideas I can add to this message.”
Using AI For Marketing Strategies
And here’s what it gave me. Welcome packages, referring a friend, adding on a free service. Again, people are going to come up with this, students are going to think of this. This is something though, where I’m like, even if someone could come up with this, have they and are they putting it into practice? We’re way more likely to do that if the heavy lifting is done. And I know that it’s as easy as copy and paste to make that effort to get someone to show up and book with me again.
So I guess in conclusion, I want you guys to know, I want students to know, AI can do… It can be a workhorse for us. It can do some heavy lifting. It can give us the 80% on templates, ideas, coaching, consulting, and I think folks should use it, let it help you make money, let it make your life easier. For anyone who would like a copy of these slides, please email Johnny on the Beauty as a Business team. He will be able to get you these slides and a demo of BaaB if you would like to see our curriculum. What is BaaB, as we affectionately call it, Beauty as a Business is a digital social media marketing curriculum for your students. You can get this through CIMA, you can get it through Lab. We’ve got courses on TikTok, websites, Google. If Meta is the 800 pound gorilla in the room, Google is like the blue whale. I don’t think students know enough about Google. I certainly think it’s underutilized when they first leave school. So get them this curriculum, get these slides, share these ideas with them.
Chris, I will throw it back over to you. I think we’re giving away some BaaB seats, aren’t we?
Chris Linford:
Yes, we are. Hey, everybody. So thank you so much Stephanie. Everybody in the chat, please share your love with Stephanie and the great information that she shared on AI for your students. We’re lucky to have had you, Stephanie, again at the Beauty School Summit. So we’re going to do some giveaways here. If you want more AI tips and a curriculum for your students to grow their clientele by using social media, you are in luck. Whether you are using PivotPoint’s Lab or Milady CIMA or neither, your student can gain access to the power of social media. Beauty as a Business is giving away the curriculum.