Intro: Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hair stylist? Like you got into this industry to make big things happen?
Maybe you’re struggling to build a solid base and want some stability. Maybe you know social media is important, but it feels like a waste of time because you aren’t seeing any results. Maybe you’ve already had some amazing success but are craving more. Maybe you’re ready to truly enjoy the freedom and flexibility this industry has to offer.
Cutting and coloring skills will only get you so far, but to build a lifelong career as a wealthy stylist, it takes business skills and a serious marketing strategy. When you’re ready to quit just working in your business and start working on it, join us here where we share real success stories from real stylists.
I’m Britt Seva, social media and marketing strategist just for hair stylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
Britt Seva: What is up and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Britt Seva, and I wanted to share an episode that I hope provides a lot of clarity.
So if you don’t know, now you know: I get most of my podcast inspiration either from Instagram DMs, or ratings and reviews left on this show. That’s my primary source. So if you’ve not left me a rating or review, and then in the comments, ask me a question, make sure that you do so because it’s where I go every time I’m planning these episodes.
But one of the things that’s been coming up with frequency specifically this year is how to either motivate yourself, how to motivate other team members, how to find motivated people, and what I’ve come to realize in running my own business—I don’t know if you know this or not, but I have 18 employees, right? It’s not just me, even though it’s my voice and my face. It is so far from being just me in this business.
So I’ve got a team of people I run and manage as well and one of the things I’ve learned over time is that we are not all the same. I used to do the very naive thing that a lot of us do in that we assume everybody should be as driven as we are. Everybody should be able to work as hard as we do. Everybody should want to take time off the way we like to do it. Everybody should communicate the way that works for us. We as human beings are incredibly self-centered and we try really, really hard not to be, but at our core, you can’t help but think that the way you do things is the best way to do them because innately that’s your way. So it’s really hard for us to self-reflect and be like, “But wait, but maybe, I don’t know everything.” That’s really hard for us as humans.
Innately, we feel like we’ve got it all dialed in and that’s why when somebody’s super driven, goes to coach or mentor or guides somebody who is not, the person who’s super driven is like, “Oh my gosh, they’re lazy.” That’s when labels like that start coming out, right? They just don’t get it. They just can’t hack it. There’s something wrong with them. No, there’s nothing wrong with them. They’re just not the same as you, right? They might look at you, the person who’s trying to drive them and push them, as being somebody who’s a workaholic, right? Because there’s two sides to every coin. And so what I want to do over the next couple weeks’ episodes is talk about different working styles. I want you to identify your own and then maybe consider identifying others around you and then using it to either shift yourself or give grace. You can’t shift anybody else. If anybody wants to shift, it’s on them.
What I don’t want you to do is listen to this week’s episode and next, and be like, “Perfect. I’m going to coach my team on being more like this that are the other thing.” Nope. This is about identifying yourself, seeing the differences in others, and then if you so choose to flexing your own style, don’t use this to impart judgment on anybody else. This is a tool for self-reflection, self work, and hopefully this is something that will help you to make your own progress. But I do hope that it’s a tool that helps you to analyze your team.
So I’ll tell you where all of these concepts came from. I’ve been leading teams since 2009, so quite some time, right? 13 years at this point, something like that. And when I was young and didn’t know anything, it would frustrate me when people didn’t work the way I did well. I stayed just as frustrated for about a decade and would still find myself really irritated when not everybody was cut just like I am. Then we brought in a series of coaches in the business I have now to coach my leadership team, and through that coaching, I came to realize that really successful businesses understand their pitfalls and their payoffs. They understand what each team member, even if it’s just you, like, I need to understand what I’m super good at and what my flaws are, ‘cause why? We’re all flawed. I’m massively flawed. So are you, so we have to understand what we’re amazing at and what our flaws are if we’re ever going to go and grow. If you are working with others in any capacity, which P.S., all of you are. If you’re working with clients, if you’re an educator and you’re working with students, if you are a stylist and you have coworkers, if you are a salon owner and you have a team, you have to understand how different people show up in life.
And in understanding that, oh my gosh, it’s going to allow you to communicate so much more effectively to make it through your day so much more easily. And so I hope these are just tools that you add to your toolbox that make life just a little bit easier.
This week I want to talk about the four different types of working mindsets that I believe show up in our industry today, and then next week, I want to talk about making effective progress because I’m watching it. Like I’ve always lived the world very eyes wide open. I struggle to be introspective sometimes. I’m very good at being an observer, and so whenever I’m scrolling Instagram—don’t be scared if I follow you now—I’m being a little judgemental. But I’m not judging you as a person, I’m judging trends, and I’m seeing this big trend in people taking social media breaks or going off the rails. And I can only imagine if that’s how you’re showing up on social media, which historically is putting our best foot forward, that your life is really like that too.
And again, I’m not coming from a place of judgment. I’m coming from place of observation.
Next week I want to talk about practical strategies to ensure you’re making really solid progress in the way that you want to and you’re not getting stuck, right? Your wheels aren’t turning in the mud.
But this week I want to talk about the four different working styles that I believe show up in our industry.
The first working style are dreamers. Raise your hand if you just off the bat think that you’re a dreamer even as I just say it, right? So dreamers are full of ideas. Some people call dreamers multi-passionate, right? You might be a dreamer if you have 10 different business podcasts you love listening to—thank you for allowing Thriving Stylist to be one of them. You love reading self-help books that can help push your life forward. You love a great documentary about what is possible. You have 15 different business ideas that you would love to get started, but there’s just not enough time. Those are all indicators that you’re a dreamer.
You have big vision, you have big ideas, you have big aspiration. You seek out inspiration really actively. You would be a lifetime student if you could.
One of my sisters is like, “If I could be paid to be a lifelong learner, that would be my job.” So big dreamer, just loves to learn, loves to ideate, right? The ideation process is really, really big for dreamers.
Now the pitfall for dreamers is that they get that high off of the dreaming and the learning and the vision and the inspiration. That can become a really addicting rush if you are a dreamer.
Now, if you’re one of these other categories, learning might not be a rush for you. But if, as a dreamer, you like to soak up every possible learning opportunity that you can. It’s a slippery slope because dreamers tend to stay in ideation and when it comes to actually doing the work, they really struggle. That’s why you see a lot of people, very common for dreamers to find quick success.
Like when people talk about their 15 minutes of fame, dreamers are really famous for finding that 15 minutes of fame and then it all falls apart. A good example of a dreamer could be a salon owner who opens a salon. Big vision thinks it’s going to be amazing. Thinks are going to change a community. They get in there, realize how hard it is, and they’re like, “What was I thinking? I need to sell. What was I thinking?” Very common in a dreamer.
So if you’ve done that, that’s not weird. You’re normal. A lot of dreamers do that. Big vision, big ideation, very inspired, but when the dream becomes work, they struggle. Now we’ll talk about how they get over that next week, but that’s very common in dreamers.
I can remember I shared a story at a speaking event not too long ago about how in 2016, I was invited to be a part of this really awesome group education opportunity with a bunch of people who at the time were these big name educators. I was totally the small fry. I couldn’t believe I was invited to be at this experience, and I look now and very few of those people are even educating at all anymore, and I’d argue that now I’m the big dog, which is wild because looking back, they should have been 10 steps ahead of me still. But what happens is a lot of people are good at the initial inception, the dream that “I love this,” and then when you get into it and you realize how much work it is actually going to be, the dream stops being as sexy because the dream has now become work. And the work is not nearly as fun, right?
My husband—bless his heart, I love this man so much—he really dreams of owning a farm. He just loves it. We live in an agriculture community. We like living as wide open as we possibly can. We don’t live near malls or shopping centers or anything like that. We like the simple life, but we don’t have a farm by any means. We have two dogs and that’s plenty.
So he really thinks about growing crops and having animals and getting out there on the tractor and all, like that fires him up. My husband is a big dreamer and so am I. When he brings it up, I’m like, “I support you. I will live on the farm with you. I’ll wake up at 5:00 AM. I’ll do it all. I don’t want to milk the goats, so don’t ask me to do that.” I know I’m not going to do it and that becomes a hold up for him too. It’s like the dream is so fun and exciting, but who’s actually going to milk the cows. Like who’s going to collect the eggs in the morning. It’s not going to be me. I’m not doing it. I love to live on the farm, but I’m not doing that. And so that’s the thing about dreamers is like, it’s okay to be in the dream, but you have to ask yourself, “Am I willing to see this through?”Right? So those are dreamers.
Then we have doers. Doers are often the polar opposite. Doers don’t necessarily have dreams at all, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want a big, beautiful life.
I believe dreamers should surround themselves with doers because it’s the most beautiful freaking marriage. So what happens is the dreamer can come up with all these amazing ideas, right? I have amazing ideas, and then the doer can actually execute.
Doers find so much pride in taking something to the finish line. Dreamers don’t love that so much. Doers like it when somebody’s like, “Okay, here is an amazing game plan for you. All you have to do is follow this game plan from step one to step 12, and life is going to be incredible.” A doer is going to blow that out of the water in half the time it would take a dreamer to do so.
I watched this happen in Thrivers Society. I have about half the people who join are dreamers and half are doers. The dreamers get in and they are like foaming at the mouth. The dreamers are the ones who go through all the modules and all the lessons in two days and don’t sleep. Somebody’s laughing in their car right now, listening to that, ‘cause you did this. I see you. They go through all the training in two days, they don’t even sleep and they’re like high on life, and they’re just so happy and so excited because they’re thinking about all the possibilities and they’re dreaming about what their life is going to be like in two years.
But when it comes to actually doing the work, they stall out, they make six different brand boards, they can’t pull a trigger. They get to the website module. It’s overwhelming. So they take a break on it and then they go back and forth between the other things. They love it. They love the concept. They love the idea. They know it works, but the dreaming was the rush for them.
Versus a doer. A doer goes into a program like Thrivers. It is so systematized and so streamlined and I give you everything in a box with a bow and they just knock it out.
Now the difference is we don’t hear a lot from the doers. There’s a doer—I won’t say her name, but I think she knows I admire her. There’s a doer that I’m really obsessing over right now. She’s not been a Thriver for a super long time, but she’s doubled her income with it. And if I dropped her name, I don’t even know that anybody on this podcast would know who she is because she’s been silently doing and killing it in the program for like a year. And she’s blowing a lot of people out of the water and I’m watching her and I’m watching her business explode and I’m watching her conquer new social platforms. And I’m like, “That’s a doer.” That’s not to say that she doesn’t have dreams. The difference is she needed the plan. So when I handed her the plan, she was like done. She knocked it out of the park versus a dreamer takes my plan, puts their own spin on it, adds on 15 layers, dreams it even bigger. It’s just a different way of doing things.
Now, the reason I have to bring up the difference is because often salon leaders or just people in general are dreamers. Very, very common dreamers get stuck in the details. They don’t like to do the day-to-day. The day-to-day brings them down, kills their vibe. Doers really struggle with dreamers because they’re like, “Can you make up your mind already? I know that you have 16 dreams. What is the dream of the day? Because I’m here today and I’d like to do something.” And that’s often where there’s tension.
So if you’re a salon owner and you have stylists and you feel like, “Well, their social media just looks terrible and I just don’t know what to do about it. I tell them and I tell them and I tell them that if they show up on social media, everything’s going to be great,” you’re speaking from the dreamer mindset. If you do this, then that will happen. A doer doesn’t care about that. A doer’s like, “You know what? I just want to show up, do my clients, make my money and get out of here.” They don’t want to vision cast an inspiration board for an Instagram page. That’s dreaming. It’s not their zone.
Now, if you make it super easy for them, they will do it because they’re built as an action taker, but don’t expect them to get caught up in your dreams and your vision that that’s not their bag at all. They are executors.
Neither is bad. I’m talking about both dreamers and doers in really extremes so that you understand the difference. Neither is bad, but they have to be handled differently. A dreamer will just destroy a doer by vomiting their dreams all over them. You’ll chase doers out the door, which is so unfortunate because your doers are often your hardest-working team members ‘cause they just want to do the stuff. They just want to do the damn thing.
Now when you have a doer who’s a leader or an owner, they do enjoy the process and the system and they’re organized and all that kind of stuff. Their challenge is they don’t have the dream or the vision. So it’s okay. It’s good. It’s fine. It runs fine. It’s never going to be the top salon in the area, right? It’s not going to ever be a mega salon. It’s not going to be somewhere where people are lining up around the block to work, but it’s okay because it’s stable and the owner’s able to do what they need to do and they’ll likely always turn profit and that’s all good too, but totally different, right?
There’s a lot of educators who are doers, not dreamers. They want to work really hard. They know they have the work ethic to do it, but they don’t have the vision. An educator who’s a doer but not a dreamer sees the space and really wants to be a part of it but doesn’t know what they teach. That doer should apply to work for a visionary dreamer because the duo of them would just kill it.
I have to surround myself with doers because I’m such a dreamer and then we kill it, right? And I can take really good care of them, but I need the doers and they need me.
I want you to really think to yourself how do I maximize my talents and my skills to make the most?
Then we have the dreamers who do, so dreamers who do are a much smaller segment. Most people naturally are either a dreamer or a doer. So a lot of you, even when I say dreamers, who do, you’re like, ah, that’s me. Mm. Really, really catch yourself. So I consider myself now present day to be a dreamer who does, but it is exceptionally forced. I have to really surround myself with a lot of doers to get things done clean. It’s really important.
A dreamer who does for me is where the hustle mentality came from now. I don’t coach to hustle mentality anymore, but it is what built my business, so I’m going to talk about it. I’m not saying that this is what you should do, but often this is what it looks like to be a dreamer who does.
When I built my coaching business as it stands today, I was still working at the salon around 50 hours a week. I was there a lot, a lot, a lot. I was at the salon 50 hours a week. I was coaching about 30, so I really barely slept. You can ask my family. I mean, it was a really kind of a dark time. I was working literally 80 hours a week. I’d sleep two or three hours a night and I worked all weekend. I was doing stuff all weekend long because I had coaching clients to take. I would be missing sports games. I had to sacrifice a lot because I had this big dream, but didn’t have the financial means to just chase it all the way through. So I had to do, do, do, do, and make personal sacrifices to make it happen.
For me, it was worth it. Sometimes I still have to do that. My dream is so clear that I’m willing to do pretty much whatever it takes to make it happen and that is quite rare. Most people will feel like it’s too flipping much. I need a break. I’m burnt out. And I respect and understand that. I’m not passing a judgment if you are a dreamer. And you’re like, “But the workload is too much,” get yourself a doer ‘cause there are plenty of doers out there who want to do, but don’t have the dream. And that that’s where the connection can be made, right?
There’s a lot of stylists who are dreamers who do. They’re often studio, suite owners. Why? Because they have that very different marriage of they have the vision for the salon they want to build and they’re willing to put in the work to do it.
However, there’s a limitation. Why aren’t they just opening up a really big, beautiful salon? They have a dream. They want to do it. The challenge is they only have a vision that is to a specific capacity. They don’t have a vision for building 20 stylists up around them, right? Their vision is something else, but you can’t be a successful studio suite owner as just a dreamer and you can’t be a successful studio suite owner as just a doer. You can be okay being one or the other. You can do all right, you can get by, but you can’t be exceptional unless you’re a dreamer who does and dreamers who do are often the people we look at and say, “Wow, you, you must work really hard,” because they do. They’re trying to be the dreamer and the doer all at once, right?
Lastly, we have those who are pending and you likely know people who are pending. If you’re a salon owner, you have stylists in your building who are pending. The reason I talk about pending is because those who are pending are in this industry, in this career, in their chosen profession, but they’re just not too sure. It’s often because they don’t have dreams. They don’t have vision. They don’t know what to do or when they show up and do, they don’t get a good result, so what they feel like is nothing is working.
You know these people. They want to have a dream and a vision, but they don’t got it. When they try to build a clientele or do work, it doesn’t turn out like they want it to, and so they’re in the upside down to all my Stranger Things friends. They’re just in between. They don’t really fit in necessarily anywhere. They’re just around.
Those who are pending are extremely frustrating for salon leaders ‘cause you’re like, “Pull it together. Let’s just do it.” You want them to be a doer and or a dreamer who does, but they’re not even sure. And so the question always comes up “How do I get them to dream? How do I get them to want to do?”
How many of you struggle with the stylists who still live at home? You’re like, “They’re comfortable. What drives them? They’re fine.” Just you’ve ever said, “Somebody’s fine. Just getting by,” I call them pending. They’re not a dreamer or a doer. They’re just in survival mode.
We’ve all been there. All of us have, might have been at a job you didn’t enjoy. For me, what changed is I was mentored by somebody incredible. Her name was Deb. This was, gosh, it would’ve been 18 years ago or something like that. She was the first real leader I ever worked for. I’ve sent her thank you notes ever since ‘cause she really changed my life and she had a lot of faith in me. Faith in me I didn’t have in myself, and it took her having that faith in me and seeing something in me and telling me quite frankly to pull it together and showing me what that looked like. She poured a lot into me knowing that I would one day leave her, and that was her goal because she wanted more for me than I wanted for myself. For her, this is what it looks like to be a good leader. She wanted to set me up for a lifetime of success, even if it wasn’t with her. It takes a really big person and a really strong leader to want to spend hours and days and months pouring into somebody like that so that they can be a dreamer and or a doer or a dreamer who does. Deb did that for me.
So if you, as a salon owner, are like, “I’ve got all these pending stylists in my salon who just kind of sit around, do the bare minimum, don’t show up on social, call out sick for their clients. They’re just not plugged in,” you have to decide, do you want to be their Deb? Do you want to sit down and be like, “I have never had more faith in anybody than I have in you and I feel like I’m watching you throw it away. I want to sit down with you and connect with you and find out why are you here? Why did you choose this salon? Why are you in this industry? What are you doing this for? And let’s put a timeline on it and let’s create a plan together.” You have to get that person’s wheels spinning. It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of time and you have to be willing to let them go.
That’s the part that a lot of owners have a hard time with is they feel like they pour in, they pour in, they pour in and then the person leaves a driven person. A dreamer will often leave, but that’s of your creation. So the question is, can you get out of your own way enough to say, “I want to surround myself with dreamers and doers, not those that are pending, even if it means that I am the catalyst for them to have a bigger, brighter future? Even if it means they won’t work for me forever? But they’ll talk about me the way that Britt talks about Deb as the person who completely changed their life. And for me, that’s who I want to be.”
When a team member leaves me, I’ll be sad for a time, but then I’ll be like, “That’s okay. I just want to be their Deb.” And when a team member leaves me and says things like “There’s nobody else I’ll ever work for. It’s Britt or nobody,” then I know I’m doing something right.
I want you to really ask yourself if you’re a leader who feels like you can’t get out of your own way enough to allow people to see their dreams and to think bigger and to become empowered doers and to get off of pending, what are you doing this for? Right?
So if you have those in your building who are pending, don’t write them off. Don’t allow them to be a part of the 95% of the industry who doesn’t renew their license twice. Sit down and talk to them. And if they are that person, be brave enough to say, “I understand, but you can’t be that person here and surround yourself with dreamers, doers, and dreamers who do,” all right?
This is part one. Next week, we’re going to talk about how to get the dreamers and the doers actually executing in a way that is producing incredible results week after week.
If you like this episode, I’d love it if you left me a rating and review, hit me up in the Instagram and DMs and give me some feedback.
But as I always like to say so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
