Brittany Reno has been practicing as a hair stylist for over 10 years and currently works at Rooted Salon in Kingsport, TN. She studied in LA and got her start at Paul Mitchell outside of Washington D.C. Dedicated to building her business, she is a talented stylist that pushes boundaries and narrative in the industry, both behind the chair and on her podcast, The Boss Stylist.

We stumbled across the episode below where she provides a comprehensive and glowing review of GlossGenius. Suffice to say, we absolutely loved it and wanted to share her take with our community. Enjoy!

Hey guys, welcome back to The Boss Stylist podcast, I am your host, Brittany Reno. I know I go a long time in between podcasts but I only want to record them when I have important things to say, good things to review, or something fun to talk about. I never want the podcast to become monotonous and boring and I don’t want to put out content unless it’s worthy of being put out. I think most of you are going to learn over time, I’m very anti-pressuring yourself into social media, podcasting, things like that. I’m very raw and real when I post on social media or my podcast. I think you should really truly be yourself. And moving into this review is going to be quite easy to do because today I wanted to talk about my absolute favorite booking system, which is GlossGenius. And moving into social media with them, I love them because they post great content, they support all of their hairdressers, they give everybody a chance to win contests, they’re always putting out great content, and they’re always teaching and trying to help you put out content that doesn’t stress you out. And that also goes into their own booking system, which helps alleviate stress. It helps you if you’re independent, it helps you if you’re in your own little suite, it helps you if you’re a booth renter with other booth renters. I am very pro alleviating any kind of stress in your work life, so I’m just really excited to talk about GlossGenius and let’s get into it.

“Today I wanted to talk about my absolute favorite booking system, which is GlossGenius.”

So, last year, I discovered GlossGenius on Instagram and I started watching them. And I really liked how supportive they are of hairdressers, nail artists, and estheticians. I love that they came up with something that was to help booth renters and people who are independent. And from what I am seeing and hearing, they are looking into helping commission salon owners, or being multi-platform in the future*, which I think is going to be great and help commission salon owners as well, because GlossGenius kind of thinks of everything.

“GlossGenius kind of thinks of everything.”

*GlossGenius now has functionality to support salons of all sizes! Our community kept requesting it and we are so happy GlossGenius Teams is now available and being used by so many salons already.

When I first started checking them out, I was like, ok, I need something that really is for hair dressers that, you know, isn’t going to leave me feeling with a bad taste in my mouth, because I had used a competitor, who I’m not going to name, but I wasn’t happy with it and I know a lot of people use this competitor but to be quite honest, this competitor is not made for hairdressers, it wasn’t made for the beauty industry. It was made for people who are checking out retail and other small things. It can’t work for tattoo artists because tattoo artists don’t do double booking and they book mostly on an hourly. So when I found GlossGenius, it books for hairdressers and estheticians. You can either book in an hourly manner, or you can book for spaces in between, without it clogging up and messing up what your feed looks like on your booking system. It shows everything clear as day, it shows your timing clear as day, so you know what’s going on and don’t get stressed out and overwhelmed.

“It shows everything clear as day, it shows your timing clear as day, so you know what’s going on and don’t get stressed out and overwhelmed.”

I absolutely love that GlossGenius helps you set up a menu; it helps you set up a portfolio for people to see; it helps you build a mini website that many many people are going to end up seeing – I think I’m up to 3,000 views on my website alone. It sends text reminders within 72hours and your clients need to confirm; it sends your clients text messages as soon as you book; and it alerts you as soon as somebody cancels and you can choose to either charge your cancellation fee or let it go, depending on what your policy is. I absolutely love that GlossGenius also has the option to set your policies, because, when you have a booking system that helps you with your policies, it’s going to hold you to your boundaries that you’ve set. So if you have a 48-hour cancellation policy and somebody cancels last-minute, like, say20 minutes before you’re supposed to do their hair, you’ll be like, ok, I have a $35 fee for last-minute cancellations, you let them know, you follow through with your boundary, click your button on GlossGenius and they get charged.

GlossGenius also saves everybody’s credit cards so that you can enforce your policies and so that checkout is easier and faster. They also did come out with a card reader for people who are adamant about not saving their cards, for people who do switch their cards – I do have clients that, you know, they use different cards at a time, and I also have clients that like to tap and use Apple Pay. I also really like about GlossGenius that, along with policy enforcement, they have this awesome thing where you can do text or email campaigns. You can send text messages or emails up to 100 clients to be like ‘Hey, product X is 50% off this week’ or ‘Book this service and get a complimentary deep condition’. And what’s awesome is that after you send out this text campaign, GlossGenius will show you how much money you have made and booked by doing these campaigns.

“GlossGenius also saves everybody’s credit cards so that you can enforce your policies and so that checkout is easier and faster.”

I also like that GlossGenius is extremely user friendly. So when you first open up GlossGenius, you’re going to see how much you have booked for the day, how many sales you’ve made, and how many pageviews you have on your website. When you flip your dashboard, it’s going to show you your sales for the year, what your ticket average is, and your total of clients. Now, for me, my ticket average is always kind of low, because I do do session and hourly work, so don’t always let a low ticket get you down, check your other numbers. When you scroll down, you see what clients you have coming up for about two or three days, depending on how many you have, so you can start planning. And then at the very bottom, you’ll see rewards account credit, and that is if you refer people to GlossGenius, you both get $30 that you can use either for fun money or you can put it towards your GlossGenius.

“I also like that GlossGenius is extremely user friendly.”

And then at the very very bottom of the screen, there’s a GlossGenius blog, which helps you figure out pricing, how to boost sales, how to become an award-winning stylist – there’s all kinds of really cool blog entries. And then you can click on the bottom of your dashboard, check out your clients – checkout, like I’ve said, is super super easy, and they still have one of the lowest price points to take away from you, so like if you’re using a service, you know that Square and all the other checkout services are going to charge you a certain percentage fee throughout the day for using them. GlossGenius is still at 2.6%, and either you can take that hit or you can include in your pricing that your clients are taking that hit. But if you do that, you need to let your clients know that they are paying for that. Don’t be dishonest with clients – let them know the things that they’re paying for and why, and when you educate people on this, most people are going to be pretty cool about it.

“Checkout, like I’ve said, is super super easy, and they still have one of the lowest price points to take away from you.”

You can also click your calendar and see what your months are going to look like. You can click your client book and leave notes on your clients, which is a lifesaver because I constantly used to forget to write down my formulas and had to wing things. But GlossGenius will actually text you after every single client and be like ‘Hey, do you have any notes to save’. It helps me save all of my formulas, any notes on my clients, any upcoming birthdays, anything that’s been going on, so I can remember to speak to my client about it.

“You can click your client book and leave notes on your clients, which is a lifesaver.”

I also love that, on the GlossGenius boards, it saves my reports. It gives me analytics for the year, including what I’ve made year-to-date, how much percentages I’m doing in gratuity, retail, and services. My percentage of cancel fees, how many people have cancelled for the year, how many repeat clients I have, how many cancelled appointments I have, and how many no-shows I have. I’m big on my numbers and seeing what my numbers are doing, so I think that’s really great to have, especially if you’re just learning how to be a number cruncher with booth renting, this is perfect for you.

I also have an option to put in all of my products, my product inventory. GlossGenius will alert me when I’m getting low, and it also helps me add taxes. In most states, when you are selling products, you need to add your taxes. So make sure you’re doing that so that at the end of the year, you’re not getting those penalty fees. You can also create your service menu and you can keep it easy. And even though I do charge by session, I do have a little menu that’s broken up into sessions, just to make it easier on everybody.

I also really truly love about GlossGenius that they give people referrals and you can refer people to them. So, you know, any business is in it for the money, but they’re also in it to reward you, so if you refer a stylist, they’re going to basically give you a month for free.

“I also really truly love about GlossGenius that they give people referrals.”

You also have the option to have clients review you. So when you check out a client, they’re sent a text message and in the text message it goes ‘Would you like to review Brittany, Rooted Salon’, etc. And then it shows you your overall rating with your clients, your clients can leave a short review, and you can click that review and you can use it to boost your social media.

They also have social media templates for you along the lines that say ‘Book me online’, policies, and blank ones that you can leave notes to your clients, so that you can bring your social media together.

You also have the option to add your expenses, so you can add your expenses, get an expense report, and view and track all your expenses. So this will help you with your taxes at the end of the year, because, I’m going to tell you, as somebody that just got into booth renting after almost 10 years of commission, my first year, I had absolutely no idea what to do. I couldn’t afford a business coach so looking into GlossGenius really helped me and is helping me be way more responsible as a booth renter. And I’m going to tell you right now, if you’re thinking about getting into booth renting, you need to get a business coach. Any successful booth renter is going to have a business coach, and if you can’t afford one right away, listen to my past reviews, check out my reviews on Boss Stylist, and at BrittRocksHair on Instagram. I have plenty of coaches that I always recommend that have either free or affordable content until you can afford them as a coach.

“You also have the option to add your expenses.”

And then finally, with GlossGenius, they do offer online gift cards that your clients purchase, and you do need to go in and redeem their gift card. I am hoping in the future they do have some sort of physical gift card, but as somebody that is trying to be a little bit more eco-friendly and kind to the earth, I don’t want to use plastic gift cards, I’d rather just use paper ones that are written out to people to be quite honest, but that’s just my personal thing. So if you want plastic gift cards that people can use and reuse or that are recyclable – I do hope that GlossGenius comes out with those.

And the final thing that I really really love about GlossGenius, is the moment that you get it, they help you with set up, they break it down to be super easy. They have the options of setting up my website, setting up client bookings, setting up my payments, marketing my business, crunching my numbers, and need more help. They’re extremely helpful and nine times out of 10, if you text them or email them, they answer within the hour, and if it is really busy, they answer you by end of day, and are super helpful. You also get to see who you’re working with and they make it very personable for you.

“They have the options of setting up my website, setting up client bookings, setting up my payments, marketing my business, crunching my numbers, and need more help. ”

So I highly recommend GlossGenius as a booking system, it’s very affordable for hairdressers, estheticians, and nail techs. It usually runs about $24 a month, your first two weeks are free. And if you guys click my LinkInBio, and if you click to DM me, I can give you a $30 referral credit so you would end up getting a month for free, or you can take that $30referral credit and get a Visa gift card and do whatever you want with it.

“So I highly recommend GlossGenius as a booking system, it’s very affordable for hairdressers, estheticians, and nail techs.”

And finally, one more thing is that GlossGenius every Monday will email you and tell you how your week stacked up. It shows you your weekly sales, how many products you’ve sold, how many reviews you’ve gotten, how many new clients you’ve gotten, and what you could do to boost up sales. I absolutely love this app, I love this system, and I love this company– and I can’t recommend them enough.

“I absolutely love this app, I love this system, and I love this company – and I can’t recommend them enough.”

And did I mention that you can get two free weeks of a trial for free and that you could even get a month for free upon sign up. So if you want that code, either DM me at BrittRocksHair on Instagram, or hit me up on The Boss Stylist and I will get that code to you.

I hope y’all are having an awesome day...