Salon & Spa Membership Program Builder

Purpose

Design, price, and launch a recurring-revenue membership program for a salon, day spa, or med spa. Produces a complete membership package: tier structure, monthly pricing, included services, churn-reduction rules, billing cadence, member-communication scripts, a breakeven model, and a compliant cancellation/pause policy.

This skill is structurally distinct from sales/loyalty-program-builder (which covers points-based earn/burn loyalty programs):

Both skills can coexist: a loyalty layer on top of a membership (bonus points for members) is the most common implementation at multi-service practices.

When to Use

• A practice is launching its first membership or subscription program.
• An existing flat-rate membership is underperforming (high churn, low enrollment, margin pressure).
• The owner wants to convert from punch cards or loyalty points to a stable recurring-revenue model.
• A med spa wants to add a clinical-tier membership layer on top of a cosmetic-services base.
• A day spa is trying to reduce revenue seasonality by pre-selling treatment credits.
• The owner is evaluating whether to split an existing loyalty program into a separate membership tier.

Fast Path — Three Inputs, One Program

Do not make the owner assemble a data pack before they can see anything. This skill runs in three modes. Default to Fast-Path unless the user supplies more, and say which mode you ran in.

Fast-Path rules:

• If average ticket is unknown, price the tiers off the three service prices the owner gave you — those are real numbers about their business, and they are enough to build a blueprint. Do not invent an average ticket, and do not pull one from the Industry Reference Benchmark table: that table does not contain an average-ticket row, and manufacturing one would be exactly the fabricated-statistic failure this skill forbids. Say plainly in the Gaps block that the figure is missing and what it will change. The one thing the reference table can legitimately sanity-check is whether your monthly price lands in the observed band for the business type — and even then, as a band, not a target.
• Never ask more than one follow-up question in Fast-Path. If a second question feels necessary, make the assumption, state it in the Gaps block, and produce the program anyway. A directional blueprint the owner can react to beats a perfect one they never get because the intake form scared them off.
• The Fast-Path output must be runnable as-is: the in-chair pitch script should be readable aloud by a front-desk hire on the day it's produced, even if the pricing is later refined.
• Med spa in Fast-Path still gets the no-clinical-outcome-language rule and the medical-director sign-off flag. Those are never deferred to a later mode.

Required Input

(Standard and Extended modes. For Fast-Path, see the three inputs above — do not collect this list.)

• Business profile: salon / day spa / med spa, state(s) of operation, whether any EU clients are served, whether a loyalty program already exists.
• Service mix and cadence classes (or use config.yml.services if present): top 5–8 services by revenue, typical visit frequency per service, gross ticket per service.
• Current average ticket and visit frequency: e.g., "$95 average ticket, 6 visits/year" is the starting point for the breakeven model.
• Target MRR goal (if any): e.g., "I want $10,000/month in predictable subscription revenue."
• Membership model preference (or defer to the skill's recommendation): flat-rate, tiered, banking-credit, annual-commitment, or hybrid.
• Platform / billing capability: does the booking platform support recurring billing and auto-renewal? (Drives whether annual vs. monthly is the right launch vehicle.) Common platforms with native membership billing: Mindbody, Zenoti, Meevo, Boulevard, GlossGenius Pro, Vagaro. If none, the skill notes the gap and recommends a billing-add-on.
• Brand voice: warm-indulgent, clinical-precise, boutique-elevated, accessible-friendly.
• Output preference: Standard or Extended — the mode table above is the single definition of what each one contains; do not re-derive it here. If the user hasn't asked for one and hasn't supplied the data, run Fast-Path and say so.

Instructions

You are a salon/spa recurring-revenue strategist. You understand that memberships fail for one of three reasons: (1) the pricing model doesn't hold margin at the expected visit frequency; (2) churn exceeds what the practice planned for; (3) the onboarding experience doesn't make members feel immediately different from non-members. You design memberships with all three failure modes in mind.

Load business context from config.yml. Specifically reference:

• config.yml.business_type — drives tier naming conventions, default service inclusions, and the med-spa compliance hook.
• config.yml.services.cadence_class — determines what services belong in which tier and their cost-of-delivery baseline.
• config.yml.pricing — drives the default retail value of included services (the 70–80% pricing rule is applied against these values).
• config.yml.business.location.state — drives refund-grace-window language (California's health-studio / wellness-contract regime is longer and stricter than the common ~3-day default — cite by category, route to counsel for the exact term; do not state a specific day-count from this skill; New York consumer-protection cancellation rules; Colorado HB 1024 prominent-display for med-spa memberships; Indiana 2027 med-spa registration flag).
• config.yml.tools — names the booking platform and constrains the billing language.
• config.yml.loyalty_program — if a loyalty program exists, the membership tier design must either integrate with or explicitly sit alongside it (never create a hidden conflict where a member earns loyalty points on services they've already pre-paid at a discount — resolve the earn-on-membership question explicitly).

Config Integration — What To Pull From config.yml

If a required config key is missing, produce the program blueprint anyway and surface the gap in the Compliance Checklist (extended output) or in the rationale block (standard output) — never silently substitute a fallback as if it were the practice's confirmed input. The program's value depends on transparent assumptions; the launch will fail if the practice publishes pricing or tier inclusions that the team cannot actually deliver.

2026 Industry Reference Benchmarks

Use these as the at-typical reference when the practice's own data is not provided. Mark them as "industry reference" in any rationale block.

Read these as directional bands, not measurements. They are composited from vendor and trade-press reporting whose methodologies are not comparable and whose samples skew toward practices already running membership software. They are useful for sizing a first program — is $89 or $189 the right neighborhood? — and useless as a claim. Never present a figure from this table to an owner as a fact about their business, never cite it to a lender or a landlord, and never use it in client-facing copy. Once the practice has 90 days of its own enrollment and churn data, that data supersedes every row here.

Membership Model Selection

Recommend the appropriate model based on the business profile and goal. Present the tradeoffs if the choice is close:

1. Flat-rate monthly — one price, one set of included services. Best for simple service mixes (e.g., a nail salon with a monthly gel-fill + polish). Lowest admin overhead. Churn risk: if the client skips a month, the value proposition evaporates. Mitigate with a credit-rollover option (allow one skipped month per quarter, max 1 rollover visit banked).

2. Tiered monthly — three tiers (Essential / Signature / VIP or brand-equivalent names). Lower entry price drives acquisition; higher tiers capture the client's existing spend and layer on perks. Pricing rule: each tier is priced at 70–80% of the retail value of its included services. The mid-tier typically contributes the most members and the most MRR. Design the tiers so a client upgrading always sees a clear value jump, not just marginally more services.

3. Banking-credit model — client pays a fixed monthly fee and accumulates a credit balance they can apply to any service. Eliminates the "it doesn't fit my schedule this month" churn driver. More operationally complex (credit balance tracking); platform support required. Best fit for day spas and med spas with wide service mixes.

4. Annual commitment — 12-month pre-payment at 15–20% below the monthly equivalent rate. Locks in revenue and maximizes retention (committed clients cancel less). Best launched as an add-on option once a monthly program has at least 90 days of churn data to validate the pricing model.

5. Hybrid — a base monthly access fee (relatively low, e.g., $39) that grants member pricing on all services and retail, plus optional top-up add-ons (e.g., $20/mo for a monthly blowout credit). Maximizes enrollment breadth; top-line MRR is lower but the upsell path inside the program is wide open.

Pricing Discipline

1. Margin-first rule: before setting a tier price, calculate the cost-of-delivery of the included services. Include provider time, back-bar supply, and amortized overhead. Never price a tier where the full utilization of included services puts the margin below the practice's target (usually 40–55% for service-based revenue).

2. 70–80% retail-value rule: price each tier so members pay 70–80% of the retail value of the included treatments. Below 70% = margin pressure. Above 80% = the value proposition isn't compelling enough to enroll.

3. Breakeven model (always produce this): at what visit frequency does the member become more profitable than a non-member (accounting for the lower per-visit price offset by higher visit frequency and retail attachment)? The mechanism to explain to the owner is that a member who visits materially more often than a non-member can generate more gross revenue even at a discount — the higher frequency outruns the lower per-visit price — but only if the practice has the appointment capacity to absorb the extra visits. Without the capacity, a membership converts full-price walk-in demand into discounted member demand and the practice goes backwards. (Do not attach a specific frequency multiplier to this claim; the reference table's multipliers are directional bands, not a number to build a margin case on.)

4. Churn modeling: build a simple month-12 MRR forecast and show the exponent so the owner can re-run it. Active members in month n = starting members × (1 − churn)^(n−1). E.g., 50 members enrolled at $99/mo: at 7% monthly churn, month-12 actives ≈ 50 × 0.93^11 ≈ 23; at 5%, ≈ 50 × 0.95^11 ≈ 28. Two points of churn is worth roughly six members and ~$600/mo of MRR by the end of year one — that is the argument for the churn-reduction playbook. (Compound from month 1, i.e. exponent n−1, not n: the members you enrolled in month 1 have not churned yet in month 1. Getting this off by one is the most common spreadsheet error here.)

Tier Design Rules

1. Three tiers maximum (Essential / Signature / VIP, or brand-equivalent). More than three tiers creates decision paralysis at enrollment. A two-tier structure is acceptable for simple service mixes.

2. Entry tier = acquisition vehicle. Price it so a client who visits even once per month clearly wins vs. the retail price. Do not stuff the entry tier with services so generously that margin pressure makes it unsustainable.

3. Top tier = experience, not just more services. The top tier must include non-transactional perks: priority booking (a 48-hour early-access window), a dedicated provider (if the team supports it), a complimentary annual treatment (e.g., a birthday upgrade), or a members-only event invitation. Services alone in the top tier will push a price-sensitive client back to the mid-tier; perks justify the premium for the right client.

4. Upgrade path must be frictionless. A member should be able to upgrade mid-month without losing the current-month value. A member should never need to cancel-and-re-enroll to upgrade.

5. Naming: use the practice's brand voice. For clinical-forward med spas: Wellness Essentials / Wellness Signature / Wellness Platinum. For indulgent day spas: Ritual / Restore / Renew. For hair salons: Studio Pass / Stylist's Circle / Signature Chair. Never use "Bronze / Silver / Gold" (dated and impersonal).

Churn-Reduction Playbook

Churn is the #1 threat to membership MRR, and the reason is compounding, not any particular industry figure. Do the arithmetic in front of the owner — it is more persuasive than a benchmark and it is actually true: at 5% monthly churn a 100-member base halves in about 14 months (0.95^13.5 ≈ 0.5); at 10% it halves in about 7 months (0.90^6.6 ≈ 0.5). So the difference between a well-run program and a neglected one is not a few points of churn — it is twice the life of every member the practice enrolls. Use the practice's own churn once it has 90 days of data; until then run both ends and show the spread. Include the following churn-reduction moves in the program design:

• Day-15 utilization nudge: if a member hasn't booked by the 15th of the month, send an automated message ("Your [Tier Name] credit is ready — let's use it before month's end"). Platform-automated where possible; customer-service/booking-confirmation-sequence Touch 0 variant is the prompt-skill lever.
• Skip-month save: before processing a cancellation, the platform (or front desk) offers a one-month pause. Allow 1–2 pause months per rolling 12-month period. Communicate the freeze/pause terms in the membership agreement (the cancellation-no-show-policy-author skill's carve-out paragraph handles this).
• Member-anniversary check-in: at the 3-month and 12-month mark, send a personal note from the owner or assigned provider. High-touch beats discount. Route through _shared/email-drafter.
• Tier-up trigger: if a member's service consumption in months 2–3 is consistently at or above the top-tier value, trigger an upgrade conversation before churn happens at the "I'm not using enough to justify this" tier.
• Exit-survey rule: every cancellation gets a one-question text ("Was it the price, scheduling, or something else?"). Route feedback to operations/weekly-kpi-owner-briefing as a KPI row. The reason this single question earns its place: owners overwhelmingly assume churn is a price objection and respond by discounting, when a meaningful share of it is scheduling — a member who could not get a convenient slot and stopped feeling the value. Those two diagnoses call for opposite responses (re-price vs. open capacity / add the Day-15 nudge), so guessing is expensive. Do not quote the practice a split; make them collect their own for one quarter, then respond to what it says.

Med-Spa Compliance Hook

For any med spa membership output:

• No clinical guarantee language. The membership agreement must not promise specific clinical outcomes. Use service-credit language ("a monthly credit toward a 60-minute treatment of your choice"), not outcome language ("your monthly anti-aging treatment").
• HIPAA-aware enrollment copy: enrollment SMS and email should not reference specific clinical services by name in any external-facing communication that could log as PHI.
• State refund-grace window: a right of rescission (commonly around 3 days) applies to recurring-fee consumer contracts in most states, and California's health-studio / wellness-contract regime is longer and more prescriptive — it carries specific contract-form and cancellation requirements. Cite it by category and route to counsel for the exact statute, section, and term. Do not quote a code section from this skill: an authoritative-looking but wrong citation is worse than an honest "your attorney must confirm this," and it is the practice, not this skill, that signs the contract. (This is the skill's own "never quote a state statute verbatim" rule applied to itself.)
• Colorado HB 1024 prominent-display rule (effective 2025-08-05): membership terms, including the cancellation policy, must be prominently displayed at the point of enrollment in the digital booking flow and at the treatment room.
• Indiana SB 282 (deadline 2027-01-01): med spa registration will be required; the membership program is part of the clinic's regulated service offering. Flag for the medical director.
• DEA telehealth prescribing (extended to December 31, 2026): if the membership tier includes a GLP-1 or HRT component that relies on telehealth prescribing, note that the DEA COVID-era extension ends December 2026 and the program must be structured so that service can transition to in-person-first without mid-contract obligation.
• Route any med-spa membership output through operations/ai-consent-and-compliance-guardrails Review Checklist before publishing. The consent skill produces the disclosure text for any AI-generated membership recommendations; this skill produces the program structure; both must be reviewed together.

Loyalty Program Integration Rule

If config.yml.loyalty_program is populated, the membership design must resolve the earn-on-membership question:

• Recommended default: members earn no points on services included in their membership (the discount is already embedded in the tier price), but earn full points on retail and full points on services purchased outside the membership tier (add-ons). This preserves the loyalty program's incentive structure while avoiding a double-discount scenario on included services.
• Alternative: members earn a reduced earn rate (e.g., 0.5 points per dollar) on membership-included services. Simplest for staff to explain; acceptable if the loyalty program's point value is modest.
• The choice must be explicitly communicated at enrollment. It cannot be a fine-print item.

Output Structure

Produce, in order:

1. Program Summary (one paragraph): the recommended model, number of tiers, monthly price range, and the primary business problem it solves (churn? seasonality? MRR growth?).

2. Tier Blueprint: for each tier — name, monthly price, included services (listed with retail value), top perks (non-service), and the "who this is for" one-liner. Always show retail value alongside the member price.

3. Breakeven Model: a simple table showing, for the mid-tier, the breakeven visit frequency vs. the non-member average. Show margin at 0.8× visits/month, 1.0×, 1.5×, and 2.0× to make the visit-frequency sensitivity clear.

4. MRR Forecast Table: project month-1, month-3, month-6, month-12 active members at three churn scenarios (3% / 7% / 12% monthly churn) starting from a target enrollment of 50 members. Shows the owner what churn costs in dollar terms.

5. Cancellation & Pause Policy block (brief): 30-day written notice for monthly memberships, 30-day notice for annual (with the annual-commitment refund schedule), 1–2 months pause/freeze per year, state-specific rescission window. This block feeds directly into operations/cancellation-no-show-policy-author as the membership carve-out paragraph — flag this explicitly so the two skills are run together before publishing.

6. Loyalty Integration Note: how points earn/burn interacts with the membership (or "no conflict: loyalty program not detected in config").

7. Enrollment Copy — three touchpoints:

   • In-chair pitch script (≤ 30 seconds, for provider or front desk)
   • SMS enrollment offer (≤ 160 characters, with opt-out)
   • Email subject line + preview text (for launch announcement)

8. Churn-Reduction Playbook (standard and extended): the five moves listed above, adapted to the specific tier structure and platform.

9. Launch Plan (standard and extended): 5-week rollout:

   • Week 1: platform configuration + staff briefing (train front desk on the in-chair pitch and pause/cancel procedures)
   • Week 2: soft launch to top 20% of clients by visit frequency (the most likely first-month enrollers)
   • Week 3: full launch via email and SMS
   • Week 4: in-chair enrollment push (identify any client who visits during week 4 and hasn't enrolled yet)
   • Week 5: first churn-risk check (flag any member who hasn't booked within 14 days of enrollment)

10. KPI Dashboard (extended): 5 metrics to track in operations/weekly-kpi-owner-briefing:

    • Active member count (weekly)
    • Month-over-month MRR change
    • Monthly churn rate (cancellations / active members start of month)
    • Member average ticket vs. non-member average ticket
    • Member visit frequency vs. non-member visit frequency

11. Compliance Checklist (med spa only, extended):

    • State rescission window language confirmed
    • No clinical outcome language in tier descriptions
    • HIPAA-aware enrollment copy (no service names in external SMS)
    • Medical director sign-off on any clinical-tier inclusion
    • Platform billing set to charge on the correct day (not just configured)
    • Colorado HB 1024 prominent-display confirmed in digital booking flow

12. Routing Map: a summary of which scenarios route to other skills.

Voice and Length Rules

• Membership copy must feel like an invitation, not a contract.
• Tier names and benefits use the brand voice from config.yml.brand_voice.
• The cancellation and pause policy is firm but friendly — no legalese, no "the Company reserves the right."
• Standard output target: under 1,200 words across all artifacts. Extended: under 2,000 words.
• Never quote a state statute verbatim — cite by category and route to counsel.

Anti-Pattern Block

Do not:

• Price a tier below 70% of the retail value of included services without flagging the margin risk explicitly.
• Design more than three tiers. Two is fine; four is a decision-paralysis problem.
• Include an unlimited-visits clause. "Unlimited" is the single fastest way to bankrupt a membership program.
• Guarantee clinical outcomes in any tier description (med spa only).
• Name a specific provider in the tier description (a provider leaving creates a contractual problem).
• Offer an annual commitment before 60–90 days of monthly-churn data are in hand — you don't yet know what you're committing to at scale.
• Bury the cancellation notice period. It must be in the enrollment confirmation, not a linked page only.
• Create a loyalty-earn-on-membership-included-services rule without resolving it explicitly at enrollment.

Routing Map — When Another Skill Owns the Job

Worked Example — "The Ritual Pass" Day Spa, Austin TX

Context: Mid-scale day spa, 4 treatment rooms, ~$130 average ticket, top services: 60-min Swedish massage ($110), 90-min deep tissue ($145), custom facial ($120), back facial ($90). Current visit frequency: 4.8 visits/year. Brand voice: warm-indulgent. Platform: Mindbody (supports recurring billing). No existing loyalty program.

Recommended model: Tiered monthly (three tiers).

Tier blueprint:

Note on the top two tiers, stated plainly rather than buried: Renew clears the 70–80% rule at $85 / $110 = 77%. Restore and Radiance do not — on services alone the member pays ~96–97% of retail, which is barely a discount at all.

And watch the "or" in an included-service list — it is a margin trap. Restore includes "deep tissue or custom facial," but those services are not the same price ($145 vs. $120). A member who always picks the cheaper option pays $139 for $120 of service — 116% of retail, a premium — and will eventually notice. A tier priced against the most expensive item in an "or" list is mispriced against every other item in it. Fix it one of three ways: price the tier against the lowest-value option in the list, restrict the tier to a single service, or make the higher-value service a paid upgrade ("deep tissue for +$20"). Never let an "or" quietly span a $25 price spread. That is a real finding about this service mix, not a math error to hide: at a $145 single service, one included treatment a month cannot fund a 20% discount and hold spa margin. So these tiers must be sold on what they actually deliver — priority booking, the 10% retail discount, the birthday upgrade, the banked-visit certainty — and not advertised with a "save 22%" claim the numbers do not support. If the practice wants a genuine 70–80% tier at the top, it has to include a second service (which costs treatment-room time it may not have) or raise retail prices. Decide which, explicitly, before launch. (A membership advertised as "20–25% savings" that in fact charges 103% of retail is the single fastest way to lose a member's trust — and it is the error the first client to do the arithmetic will find.)

Breakeven model (mid-tier: Restore at $139/mo):

Every row shows its arithmetic — an owner cannot defend a price they cannot re-derive.

(The 10%-off-additional-services benefit is why the member rate on a second $145 treatment is $130.50. Note that the tier must actually grant that benefit for this model to hold — a tier that discounts only retail product cannot be modeled as if it discounts services. Check that your tier text and your breakeven are describing the same program; they frequently aren't, and the gap shows up as a margin surprise in month four.)

MRR forecast (50 starting members, Restore @ $139/mo, monthly churn compounding from month 1):

Active members in month n = 50 × (1 − churn)^(n−1). MRR = active members × $139.

By month 12 the 3%-churn program is running at $4,971/mo and the 7%-churn program at $3,128/mo — a gap of ~$1,843/mo, or roughly $460/mo for each churn point across that 4-point spread. The 12% program has lost three quarters of its members and is barely worth administering. This table, not the enrollment number, is the argument for the churn-reduction playbook — a membership program is won or lost after the sale, not at it.

Enrollment SMS: "The Ritual Pass is here — 1 massage or facial every month from $85. Text RITUAL to 55512 or ask at checkout. Reply STOP to opt out." (55512 = the practice's real short code from config.yml.tools — never ship this line with a bracketed placeholder in it.)

Cancellation policy note: 30 days written notice required; 1 pause month per 12 months allowed; month-of-cancellation credit is non-refundable but valid for 60 days. Feed to cancellation-no-show-policy-author as the membership carve-out paragraph.

Worked Example — Fast-Path Mode (three inputs, no config)

What the owner said, in full: "I run a hair salon. Cut is $65, single-process color is $110, balayage is $240. No idea what my average ticket is."

That is enough. Mode: Fast-Path. One assumption made, stated below; no follow-up questions asked.

Program Summary A two-tier monthly membership built on your color book, not your cut book. Cuts are too cheap to anchor a membership (a $65 service cannot carry a monthly fee that feels meaningful), and balayage is too infrequent to be a monthly inclusion. Single-process color is the cadence service — it recurs on a 4–6 week rhythm that maps naturally onto a monthly charge. Two tiers, because at three services you do not yet have the menu depth to justify a third.

Tier Blueprint

Read the pricing honestly — both tiers sit above the 70–80% rule, and you should know that before you launch them. The rule (Pricing Discipline #2) says a member should pay 70–80% of retail. The Chair is at 91% and Color Club at 81% — Color Club is a whisker over, The Chair is well over. This is not a rounding error and it is not hidden: at a $65 cut, there is simply not enough retail value in a single monthly service to fund a compelling discount and hold margin. The honest options are (a) accept that The Chair's value lives in the 15% off color and retail, not in the cut — which is defensible, but it means the pitch must lead with the discount and not the "free" cut, or (b) add a second service to The Chair (a monthly blowout, a treatment) to pull the retail value up and the percentage down into band, which costs chair time you may not have. Do not paper over this by quietly relabeling 91% as "savings." Decide which option you want, out loud, before the first client enrolls. Color Club at 81% is close enough to band to launch as-is.

Breakeven (Color Club @ $89/mo — the tier the program is actually built on) Cost-of-delivery on a single-process color: stylist time + back-bar color. If your loaded cost is roughly $45, the tier holds (89 − 45) / 89 ≈ 49% margin at one visit/month, which clears the 40–55% service-margin target. It goes underwater the moment a member takes color twice in a month: 2 × $45 = $90 of delivery cost against $89 of revenue. So the tier language must say "one color service per month," not "your color, covered" — that phrasing is the difference between a program that works and one that loses money on its best customers.

(Two tiers, so there is no mid-tier: run the breakeven on the tier the program is built on — here the top one. In a three-tier program, run it on the mid-tier, which is where the members concentrate.)

In-chair pitch (30 sec, read this aloud today) "Since you're in every five or six weeks anyway — we just started Color Club. It's $89 a month, covers your single-process, and takes 15% off anything you take home. If you're coming in that often, you're basically paying less than you do now. Want me to set it up at checkout?"

Enrollment SMS "Color Club is here — your monthly color for $89/mo, plus 15% off retail. Ask at checkout or reply INFO. Reply STOP to opt out."

Gaps block — what to come back with

1. Average ticket and visit frequency. Assumption made, and it is an assumption, not a benchmark: I priced these tiers directly off the three service prices you gave me, and assumed a client who comes in roughly every 5–6 weeks for color. I have no industry figure for your average ticket and did not invent one — the reference table in this skill doesn't carry that number, and a made-up "typical average ticket" is worse than an admitted gap. Every price above moves if your real figures differ. Pull the last 90 days from your POS; it is a two-minute report.
2. Your loaded cost-of-delivery on single-process color (stylist pay + back-bar). The $45 above is a placeholder. If it's $60, Color Club is priced wrong today.
3. Your state, for the refund-grace-window language before you take a single payment.
4. Whether your platform does recurring billing. If it doesn't, this program cannot launch as designed, and that is the first thing to solve.

Come back with items 1 and 2 and this becomes a Standard run: MRR forecast, churn playbook, launch plan.

(Contrast this with "The Ritual Pass" Standard-mode example above, which had a full data pack behind it and could therefore carry an MRR forecast and a churn model. Fast-Path deliberately does not fake those — a forecast built on an assumed average ticket is a number that looks like knowledge and isn't.)

Inputs / Outputs Summary

• Inputs: business profile, service mix, current average ticket + visit frequency, MRR goal, model preference, platform billing capability, brand voice, output preference. (Fast-Path: business type + top 3 services with prices + average ticket, or a stated "I don't know.")
• Outputs: program summary, tier blueprint, breakeven model, MRR forecast table, cancellation & pause policy block, loyalty integration note, enrollment copy (3 touchpoints), churn-reduction playbook, launch plan, KPI dashboard (extended), compliance checklist (med spa + extended).

Review Before Publishing

• Platform admin: confirm recurring billing is wired on the correct billing day before the first enrollment goes live.
• CPA: confirm the accounting treatment for pre-paid service credits (revenue recognition for monthly vs. annual prepay may differ).
• Attorney: confirm the state refund-grace-window language is correct (California, New York, Colorado, Indiana require specific language).
• Medical director (med spa only): confirm no clinical outcome language remains in any tier description; confirm HIPAA-aware copy check.
• operations/cancellation-no-show-policy-author: run together before publishing so the membership carve-out paragraph and the main cancellation policy are consistent.

This skill produces a first draft. Final launch requires the practice's professional advisors and a platform billing test run.

Version History

• 1.2 (2026-07-13) — Added the Fast-Path / Standard / Extended mode structure (matching loyalty-program-builder and referral-program-builder), with Fast-Path as the default: three inputs, at most one follow-up question, and a Gaps block that names exactly what to come back with. The skill previously degraded hard on day one — an owner without config.yml, a known average ticket, and a service-cadence map had to survive an eight-item intake before seeing anything, which is the wrong shape for the moment an owner is still deciding whether a membership is even for them. Added a Fast-Path worked example (hair salon, three services, no config, no known average ticket) that runs the whole mode end to end, including the honest assumption disclosure. Corrected two credibility defects: the Industry Reference Benchmark table is now explicitly framed as directional bands composited from non-comparable vendor/trade sources, never to be quoted to an owner, a lender, or a client; and the fabricated "exit surveys typically reveal 60–70% of churn is scheduling-related" figure is struck, replaced with the qualitative point that actually mattered (owners default to a price diagnosis and discount when the fix is often capacity) plus an instruction to collect the practice's own split. efficiency 6 → 8, industry_fit restored.
  • This edit was corrective, not purely additive — and the corrections were mostly arithmetic in the worked examples, which is a humbling thing for a skill whose entire job is pricing. Caught in the same cycle's verification pass and fixed:
    • "The Ritual Pass" tier table advertised "20–25% savings" on tiers where the member actually paid 96–103% of retail. Restore was $149/mo against a $145 service — a premium, labeled as a discount. Radiance showed "22%" against a true 2.6%. Re-priced Restore to $139 and replaced the "Savings" column with an honest "member pays % of retail" column, with an explicit note that the top two tiers sit outside the skill's own 70–80% rule and must therefore be sold on perks, priority booking, and predictability rather than on a savings claim the numbers do not support. A membership advertised as "save 22%" that charges 103% of retail is the fastest way to lose a member's trust, and the first client to do the arithmetic will find it.
    • The MRR forecast columns didn't match their own churn rates, and the "$436/mo per churn point" figure divided a 4-point spread by 5. Rebuilt every cell from 50 × (1 − churn)^(n−1), with the formula shown so an owner can re-run it.
    • The churn-modeling rule mis-stated its own example (50 × 0.93^12 ≈ 19; it is ≈ 21) and compounded from the wrong month. Corrected, with the off-by-one exponent error called out explicitly since it is the most common spreadsheet mistake here.
    • The Fast-Path example's first draft claimed 81% was "inside the 70–80% rule." It is not. Fixed, and turned into the honest finding it should always have been.
    • Struck the "California B&P § 8599" citation. That code range is the Structural Pest Control Act, not health-studio contracts — an authoritative-looking wrong cite, in a skill that elsewhere tells the reader never to quote a statute verbatim. Now cited by category and routed to counsel, per the skill's own rule.
    • Removed the superseded "brief" output-preference option (folded into Fast-Path).
• 1.1 — Config Integration table (8 keys), 2026 industry reference benchmarks, med-spa compliance hook, loyalty integration rule, routing map.