Everybody Has Marketing Advice. Nobody Wants to Explain the Fucking Business.

Before You Choose a Marketing Channel, Determine Whether the Business Is Worth Marketing.

I recently came across another one of those marketing discussions asking what a business should do when it doesn't have money for advertising.

The answers were about as useful as you'd expect.

It depends on the business.

Congratulations. We've established that different businesses are different.

Now would somebody like to explain what the fuck the owner is supposed to do?

This is something I've noticed repeatedly in business discussions. Everybody wants to recommend a marketing channel. Everybody has an opinion about social media, Google, referrals, and networking.

But remarkably few people begin by asking whether the business itself makes financial sense.

I've spent years observing how businesses actually operate, including small service businesses where the owners are working with limited capital, expensive commercial space, inconsistent customer demand, and service menus that create far more complexity than they realize.

And one of the most interesting things I've observed is how frequently owners recognize that their industry is struggling but continue making the same decisions as everybody else in that industry.

Which brings me to a question.

If you and your peers are all complaining about how badly the economy is affecting your businesses, why the fuck would you build your business to operate exactly like theirs?

Same services.

Same pricing structure.

Same customers.

Same promotions.

Same social-media strategy.

Same expensive storefront.

And somehow you're expecting a different financial result.

What the fuck makes your business different?

A prettier interior?

A different logo?

An Instagram account with nicer photographs?

If your peers are struggling to sell the same services to the same customers, copying their business models isn't a strategy.

It's adopting the same economic exposure and hoping you're the exception.

Maybe you will be.

But hope isn't a financial model.

So we're going to examine three different Los Angeles service-business models: a head spa, a salon, and an established barber.

These are not audits of three identified companies. They are hypothetical cases informed by patterns I have observed. I have not reviewed the books, leases, utility bills, payroll records, or customer data of any real business represented by these examples.

The purpose is not to claim that every head spa, salon, or barber operates this way.

These aren't three businesses starting from the same position. Two represent operations struggling to establish sustainable demand. The third represents an established owner-operated business. I'm not comparing their performance as if they faced identical conditions. I'm comparing the decisions I would make given the conditions each business faces.

The purpose is to show why the same marketing advice does not solve three different operating problems.

Not what I would post on Instagram.

What business I would operate in the first place.

Your Rent Isn't Your Overhead. It's the Beginning of Your Fucking Overhead.

Let's talk about opening a physical service business in Los Angeles.

You've signed a commercial lease.

Congratulations.

Now pay for electricity.

Water.

Sewer.

Trash collection.

Internet.

Heating and air conditioning.

Laundry.

Cleaning.

Booking software.

Point-of-sale software.

Credit-card processing.

Website hosting.

Domain registration.

Business insurance.

Workers' compensation if you have employees.

Wages and the other obligations created by employment. California's statewide minimum wage is $16.90 per hour in 2026, before considering higher local requirements, overtime, payroll taxes, benefits, workers' compensation, training, or supervision.[2]

Payroll administration.

Licensing and renewals. California's Board of Barbering and Cosmetology regulates both practitioners and establishments within its jurisdiction, and its 2026 rules include establishment, licensing, health, and safety requirements.[3]

Equipment maintenance.

Consumable supplies.

Product replacement.

And the occasional repair that nobody remembered to include in the original business plan.

Depending on the lease, add common-area maintenance, property-tax pass-throughs, building insurance charges, and other occupancy expenses.

Then remember that you're operating in Los Angeles, where commercial space, utilities, labor, and ordinary business services can represent substantial monthly obligations. Colliers reported a $2.39-per-square-foot NNN average asking rent across its broad Greater Los Angeles retail market for the second quarter of 2026.[4] That regional average is market context—not a quote for a particular neighborhood, property, lease structure, tenant improvement, or service business.

Your utility bill isn't necessarily a simple flat amount, either. LADWP's published 2026 small-commercial schedule includes a monthly service charge, a facility charge measured per kilowatt, energy charges that change by season, and separate adjustment factors.[1]

LADWP is one Los Angeles utility system. Its schedule does not apply to every community or utility territory represented by these hypotheticals, including independently served cities and areas outside LADWP's territory.

That does not tell us what a particular business will pay. It tells us why a guessed flat monthly number is not underwriting.

Businesses with treatment equipment, water-intensive services, laundry, climate control, and specialized lighting can have very different utility requirements.

All those little expenses matter.

Individually, some may look insignificant.

Together, they become another monthly obligation that must be paid whether the appointment book is full or empty.

Let's say your hypothetical business has $5,000 in rent.

Another $1,500 in occupancy charges and utilities.

Another $1,000 in insurance, software, administration, and miscellaneous fixed expenses.

You're already at $7,500 monthly.

Those are illustrative figures, not a Los Angeles benchmark or an estimate for any observed company.

You haven't paid an employee. You haven't delivered a service. You haven't bought a single bottle of treatment product. And you haven't paid yourself.

Now tell me how much money you have left for marketing.

This is why I keep coming back to the same principle.

Opening a business isn't the same thing as funding its continued operation.

And a service business with expensive fixed obligations needs a very clear understanding of how many profitable transactions it must complete every month.

If Everybody in Your Industry Is Struggling, Why the Fuck Are You Copying Them?

Here's the contradiction that interests me most.

Business owners talk.

They know other owners.

They compare experiences.

They complain about rent.

They complain about customers not spending money.

They complain about the economy.

They complain about employees.

They complain about advertising costs.

And then they turn around and build nearly identical businesses.

If the local market is having trouble supporting conventional salons, why would I automatically open another conventional salon with the same services and the same prices?

If ordinary head spas are struggling to maintain consistent bookings, why would I build another ordinary head spa and rely on the same promotional channels?

If consumers are cutting back on discretionary spending, why would I respond by expanding the number of discretionary services I'm trying to sell them?

What exactly have I changed about the economics?

Nothing?

Then why should I expect a different outcome?

So the operating question is not merely whether I can advertise the existing model better.

What would I change about the customer, the service, or the operating structure that my competitors haven't changed?

That investigation does not have to produce the same recommendation for all three businesses.

The head spa may need differentiation.

The salon may need focus.

The barber may need to leave a functioning business alone.

Those are three different responses because they are three different businesses.

Case One: The Head Spa Doesn't Need More Posts. It Needs a Reason to Exist.

Start with the head spa.

If the local market already contains businesses selling similar treatments at similar prices through similar storefronts, opening another version and asking how to advertise it is backward.

The first question is what the new business changes.

Does it offer greater privacy?

A more controlled environment?

A service experience that cannot be delivered efficiently in a high-volume salon?

Does it serve clients willing to pay substantially more for discretion, time, personalization, or exclusivity?

Or is it the same service wearing a more expensive interior?

My proposed alternative would be a private, appointment-only luxury experience lasting approximately three to five hours—not another short treatment added to an ordinary appointment menu.

I would combine only compatible services that strengthen the experience and eliminate the ones that create complexity without supporting the position.

I would investigate private treatment rooms, a small team of highly trained people the client can trust, controlled scheduling, and enough time that the customer never feels processed through a chair.

The proposed position would be expensive—potentially $5,000 to $10,000 for the complete experience, depending on what is actually included and what it costs to deliver.

That number is not a recommendation to put a $5,000 price on an ordinary head-spa appointment and call it luxury.

The service, privacy, environment, expertise, time, staffing, and relationship would all have to justify the price.

And even then, the proposed customer is not choosing between this experience and a cheaper head-spa appointment alone.

The business is competing for discretionary luxury spending against travel, hospitality, wellness, beauty, dining, entertainment, personal services, and every other premium experience the customer could purchase instead.

Affordability does not establish desire.

The business would need to determine what the customer is actually purchasing—privacy, transformation, trusted personal attention, convenience, social value, recovery, or something else—and whether that motivation is strong enough to justify the price.

The acquisition strategy would change with the business.

I would not begin by purchasing broad social-media attention from everybody who likes a relaxing treatment video.

I would investigate direct relationship-building through affluent local networks, hospitality relationships, private-member communities, country clubs where access is appropriate, luxury concierges, and trusted professionals whose clients already purchase privacy and high-touch service.

Those relationships are not free marketing.

If membership, associated spending, and networking expenses cost $15,000 annually, the business would need approximately five incremental bookings producing $3,500 in contribution merely to recover that expenditure, before assigning any value to the owner's time.

That relationship channel would need to be tested like any other acquisition investment.

That is slower than posting another reel.

It is also directed at the customer the proposed business would actually need.

The Head-Spa Financial Test

Suppose a conventional treatment sells for $200 and produces $150 in contribution after its direct variable delivery costs.

At that contribution, the business needs 50 completed appointments merely to cover the illustrative $7,500 in monthly fixed expenses discussed earlier—before owner compensation, taxes, debt service, and any other omitted costs.

The redesigned operation would not carry the same fixed costs.

Private rooms, extended appointments, specialized training, a higher service standard, relationship development, and a small trusted team could substantially increase the monthly obligation.

So assume the redesigned luxury spa carries $18,000 in monthly fixed costs rather than $7,500.

Now suppose the private experience sells for $5,000 and requires $1,500 in direct variable labor, products, amenities, and other delivery costs.

That produces $3,500 in contribution per completed experience under the hypothetical assumptions.

Six completed experiences would produce $21,000 in contribution and cover the stated $18,000 in fixed expenses under the hypothetical assumptions.

Five bookings would produce $17,500 in contribution, leaving a $500 shortfall against the modeled fixed costs. Six would produce $21,000, leaving $3,000 after those modeled fixed costs and before taxes, debt service, owner compensation, or any omitted expense.

That does not prove six customers will buy.

It does not prove the delivery costs will remain at $1,500.

It does not prove the $7,500 captures the real fixed-cost structure.

It demonstrates why the alternative is economically worth investigating even after assigning the redesigned model a substantially higher fixed-cost structure. The conventional model requires volume. The proposed model requires a much smaller number of customers who will pay for a fundamentally different experience.

The business would still need to validate the offer, locate the customers, test the price, document the service cost, and determine whether those relationships can produce enough repeat and referral demand.

Maybe the investigation confirms it.

Maybe it shows that the customer is unwilling to pay enough.

Maybe the numbers say not to open.

That's the point.

The investigation determines whether there is a business worth advertising. The advertising does not determine whether there is a business.

Case Two: The Salon Doesn't Need to Sell Everything to Everybody.

Now consider a salon trying to survive by maintaining a broad menu of services for the general public.

Hair.

Makeup.

Treatments.

Retail products.

Packages.

Promotions.

Every additional offering appears to create another way to make money.

But it can also create another inventory requirement, training requirement, scheduling rule, equipment purchase, and reason for capital to sit on a shelf.

My proposed alternative would be a focused hair-and-makeup operation serving two customer channels: private clients and entertainment production.

That changes the question from How do we attract everybody who might want a beauty service? to Can this operation become unusually useful to a specific customer with a specific production or event need?

I would eliminate services that do not support those customers.

I would keep a small team, train it around a clear service standard, create predictable production and event workflows, and attempt to compensate reliable people better because the operation is no longer financing every service a conventional salon is expected to offer.

Then I would develop the market directly.

Podcast studios.

Web-series producers.

Independent productions.

Photography teams.

Private-event planners.

Venues and professionals already serving buyers who need hair and makeup delivered reliably, on schedule, and sometimes on location.

That does not mean sending everybody the same fucking sales email.

It means establishing what each buyer needs, who controls the booking, how frequently the work occurs, what service standard is required, and whether the resulting work can be delivered profitably.

That market can fluctuate. Clients can be concentrated. Events can be seasonal. Production schedules can change. A focused model is not automatically safer.

And if most of the profitable work happens on location, I would question whether the business needs to keep paying for a conventional salon storefront at all.

Maybe the space supports private appointments, preparation, equipment storage, training, and a profitable regular-client business.

Maybe a smaller studio, shared facility, or another operating arrangement would support the work with less fixed overhead.

The answer depends on what the space contributes—not on whether salons are expected to have one.

This narrower operating model gives management something concrete to underwrite: the customer, the need, the service standard, the labor, the schedule, the price, and the capacity required to deliver.

It also forces the owner to decide which services belong in the business instead of collecting offerings because competitors have them.

Selling More Products Will Not Save Your Fucking Business.

This is where salons frequently create even more complexity.

The business isn't generating enough money.

So the owner adds another service.

Another treatment.

Another product line.

Another package.

Another promotion.

The logic sounds reasonable.

If we offer more things, we'll have more opportunities to sell something.

But the business isn't a fucking vending machine.

Every new offering can create another set of obligations.

You need to purchase the products.

You need somewhere to store them.

You need employees who know how to use them.

You need equipment.

You need training.

You need to establish prices.

You need to schedule the appointments.

You need to promote the new service.

And you need enough customers buying that particular offering to justify everything you just added.

Otherwise, you haven't expanded the business.

You've expanded the expenses.

Let's imagine the hypothetical salon introduces a specialty treatment.

The owner spends $2,000 on initial products, equipment, and training.

The service sells for $200.

After direct variable delivery costs, each completed treatment contributes $100 toward recovering the initial outlay and supporting the rest of the business.

The business needs 20 completed treatments to recover that initial $2,000, before accounting for additional fixed expenses or the opportunity cost of using the appointment capacity.

If it sells five treatments, it has generated $500 in contribution against a $2,000 initial outlay.

The remaining inventory might still have value, and the equipment might be reusable, so that isn't necessarily a realized $1,500 accounting loss. But the business has committed capital that it has not yet recovered through completed services.

And that capital is no longer available for other immediate needs.

Now repeat that decision across multiple service categories.

More products.

More training.

More equipment.

More inventory.

More scheduling complexity.

And a business that still doesn't have enough customers.

Selling more kinds of products does not automatically mean selling more products.

And even selling more products doesn't necessarily mean earning more money.

The question isn't how many things you can put on the menu.

The question is which services produce sufficient profitable demand to justify the resources they consume.

Sometimes adding a service makes sense.

Sometimes removing three services makes more sense.

But when a business is already struggling, expanding the menu without understanding its economics is not a rescue plan.

It's another gamble with money the business may not have.

The Salon Financial Test

The proposed model would need to outperform the services and appointment capacity it replaces.

Suppose the specialty treatment above requires two hours of one worker's time and produces $100 in contribution after direct variable delivery costs.

That is $50 in contribution per booked service hour under the hypothetical assumptions.

Now suppose a production booking generates $2,500 in revenue for an eight-hour day and requires $1,200 in direct variable labor, travel, supplies, and other delivery costs.

That leaves $1,300 in contribution per booking.

If two employees each work eight hours, the booking consumes 16 labor-hours and produces $81.25 in contribution per labor-hour before including any preparation or travel time omitted from the assumption.

The booking also occupies one eight-hour production day, which may matter for scheduling even though it is not the same measurement as labor time.

The comparison does not prove production work is more profitable.

The production booking may require additional preparation, equipment, insurance, travel time, schedule flexibility, or idle capacity that the simplified example does not capture. A proper analysis would measure contribution per booking, labor-hour, and occupied facility or production hour separately rather than treating every hour as interchangeable.

But this is the test I would perform.

Which customer channel produces enough contribution for the time, people, capital, and scheduling disruption it consumes?

How many booked production days and private events would the operation need each month?

Can direct relationships produce that volume consistently enough to support the team?

If the answer is no, the specialized model fails the investigation.

If the answer is yes, the salon has a business-development plan—not merely a shorter service menu.

Case Three: The Barber May Not Have a Fucking Growth Problem.

Now consider an established owner-operated barber with approximately ten customers a day, six working days a week, and an average transaction around $60.

The service mix and schedule would need to make ten daily transactions physically achievable. Ten one-hour appointments would require ten hours of service time before cleaning, breaks, administration, late customers, and gaps. A mix of shorter and longer services could change that capacity substantially.

Assume monthly rent somewhere between $1,000 and $3,000, approximately $60 a day in advertising, and no employees.

Those assumptions are illustrative and rounded from an operating pattern I have observed. They are not verified books, and they do not establish the barber's profit.

At 10 transactions a day, six days a week, and an average 4.33 weeks per month, the business would generate approximately $15,588 in monthly gross revenue.

The $1,800 monthly advertising assumption uses 30 calendar days because digital advertising can continue running when the barber is not physically working. If campaigns run only on working days, the assumed expense would differ.

At $2,000 in assumed monthly rent and $1,800 in assumed advertising, approximately $11,788 remains before merchant fees, supplies, utilities, insurance, licensing, taxes, debt, unbooked time, and the owner's compensation.

That is not net income.

It is enough information to understand why the model may be worth preserving before somebody sells the owner an expansion.

Someone will still tell that barber to grow.

Add chairs.

Add products.

Move into a larger shop.

Hire people.

Post every day.

Build a brand.

Why?

If the owner is earning an acceptable living, retaining customers, controlling the schedule, and operating within an acceptable level of risk, expansion may solve a problem that does not exist.

Could another chair produce more revenue?

Maybe.

It could also create payroll, supervision, scheduling, compliance, and quality-control obligations the owner never wanted.

Could a larger location support more customers?

Maybe.

It could also replace a manageable cost structure with a larger fixed commitment.

Could advertising create additional demand?

Maybe.

But if the current schedule is full, what is the business purchasing that demand for?

For the barber, I would not change the operating model simply because somebody thinks every business should grow.

I would determine what the owner wants, whether the existing business already produces it, and what expansion would require them to give up.

The Barber Financial Test

Suppose expansion requires a larger location, another chair, an employee, and additional advertising.

Assume the expansion creates $9,500 in additional monthly fixed or committed costs: $6,000 in employee-related cost, $2,500 in added occupancy and operating expense, and $1,000 in additional advertising.

The hypothetical $6,000 is modeled as the entire committed employee-related amount used in this example.

Suppose each additional $60 transaction contributes $50 after additional per-transaction expenses not already included in the $6,000 employee-related amount.

If compensation includes commissions or any other variable employee cost, those amounts would need to reduce the $50 contribution rather than being counted again in the committed-cost assumption.

The expansion would need 190 additional transactions per month merely to cover those stated added costs.

Across 26 working days, that is approximately 7.3 additional transactions every working day.

If the market reliably supports eight or more profitable additional transactions a day, the expansion may deserve further analysis.

If it supports only four, the business has increased its obligations without producing enough contribution to cover them under these assumptions.

And even if the arithmetic works, the owner still needs to decide whether managing employees and a larger operation produces the life and business they actually want.

More is not automatically a strategy. Sometimes the intelligent decision is to protect the business that already works.

Your Employees Didn't Create the Fucking Expenses. Your Decisions Did.

Here's another observation I want business owners to consider.

A struggling service business often begins cutting labor costs before seriously examining the decisions that created its operating requirements.

Employees become the problem.

They're too expensive.

They aren't productive enough.

There aren't enough customers to justify their scheduled hours.

So the owner reduces shifts, changes schedules at the last minute, or tries to find somebody willing to do the same work for less money.

But why does the business need so many different products?

Why does it need so many different service capabilities?

Why are appointment durations inconsistent?

Why does one service require a different specialist, a different inventory system, and a different preparation process?

Who decided to offer all of that?

The owner did.

I'm not saying employees can never be inefficient or that payroll doesn't matter.

I'm saying that employees are often blamed for operating costs that originate in the business design.

A focused operation can train people around a manageable service standard.

It can purchase inventory more deliberately.

It can schedule work more predictably.

It can measure performance against a clearer set of expectations.

And it may be able to compensate reliable employees better because the operation is no longer consuming so much capital supporting unnecessary complexity.

That is a management decision.

Not a social-media strategy.

And not something an employee can independently fix while the owner keeps expanding the service menu.

Stop Asking How to Advertise a Business You Haven't Figured Out How to Operate.

If your business is struggling, I want to know why.

Not what your friends think.

Not what another business owner told you to post.

Not which platform somebody on the internet recommends.

I want to know what the business costs.

What the services contribute.

Which customers actually buy.

Which services consume the most time and capital.

What the owner can afford to deliver.

And whether the business should be selling something different to somebody different.

Because if your existing model isn't working, copying your struggling competitors while offering even more services is a particularly strange way to solve the problem.

And if you're sitting around with other business owners complaining that the economy is destroying your industry, I have one question.

Why the fuck are you all still trying to sell the same things, the same way, to the same people?

Maybe the economy is part of the problem.

Maybe the market genuinely cannot support your current prices and costs.

But that doesn't excuse refusing to investigate the operating model.

I don't give a fuck what you sell.

It's who you sell it to, how you sell it, what it costs to deliver, and whether the fucking economics work.

Selling more products will not save a business whose existing products don't make economic sense.

If your business is struggling, the first question isn't how to get more customers.

It's whether the business you've built can make enough money from the customers you're trying to attract.

Because business owners frequently create their own operating problems and then attempt to purchase marketing solutions for them.

And if you've designed an operation that cannot support itself, more advertising doesn't necessarily solve the problem.

It just brings more customers into the same fucking problem.

Continue Reading on anuhlest

• There Are No Five Fucking Ways to Improve Your ROI — why diagnosis must come before a recommendation.
• Your Business Can Be Perfect and Still Be in the Wrong Fucking Market — why a market can support a service without supporting the operating structure built around it.
• How Much Should I Spend on Marketing? That Depends on What the Fuck the Next Customer Is Worth. — why acquisition spending begins with customer economics.
• Your Business Made a Million Dollars. Where the Fuck Is It? — why revenue, contribution, profit, and cash are not interchangeable.
• Your Business Isn't Ready for Growth. And That's Your Fucking Problem. — why additional demand cannot repair an operation that cannot convert or fulfill it.