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, Thriving Stylist Podcast? I’m your host, Britt Seva, and usually I come on and I say, “and I’m so excited to talk about” and this is a topic I’m actually a little bit nervous about. I don’t generally get nervous, but I think I’m nervous because for me, this is a podcast that’s been like a few years in the making.
This is one of those topics that I’ve been asked to speak to, I don’t know, 40 times, 60 times a hundred times, and I keep saying, “I’ll do it. I’ll get there. I’ll make that for you,” and then when I sit down to plan it, I’ve never been able to do it because it’s such a big topic and I don’t feel necessarily like a qualified expert to talk about it.
I just want to share that at the onset that this is one that I’m really speaking from personal experience on, and I’ve wrestled with it in recent weeks. It comes up for me from time to time and then I got a DM from a beautiful soul on Instagram this morning. She had just lost her husband. They are a couple in their twenties, she just lost her husband, and she said, “Britt, is there any way you could help me out? I don’t know how I’m going to carry on with work, experiencing this dramatic loss.”
And I thought, “Well, maybe. I’m not an expert, but if somebody needs a lifeline and I can share from personal experience, who am I to not at least give it a shot?”
So this may not be an episode that you listen to in real-time. This might be one of those that you hopefully don’t have to come back to later when grief strikes or when the unexpected happens. But I wanted to create this resource as a lifeline for those who are trying to navigate being in the salon, putting the smile on, being there for your guests, and navigating when the unexpected happens.
I also want to say this is not a podcast that I’m recording to get some personal sympathy. It’s one that I’m recording to share strategies from what I have learned.
Part of the reason that I didn’t record this podcast earlier is I hadn’t really experienced traumatic grief for about 15 years. I lost my dad when I was 20 years old, so many years ago now, and it was the most extreme pain I had ever felt in my life. At that point, it really knocked me out, but it was so long ago that I’m in a really different place with the grief and so it was almost hard for me to remember the exact details of the pain and the navigation. I remembered it in broad strokes and then 2021 happened. And this is without a doubt in the hardest year of my life.
I lost my best friend of 27 years on May 19, 2021. Like my soulmate in this lifetime I lost. Then a few weeks later I lost my mother-in-law and the loss of my mother-in-law is something I went through very privately. I haven’t talked about it until right this very moment. And so I a little bit want to speak to that as well.
I chose to handle both losses really differently. One I navigated publicly, and I basically told all of my students. One I navigated very privately and I think I told three people. My entire team knew of course, but as far as like the Thrivers Society or here, this’ll be the first most of you have heard of it.
I did it both ways. I navigated grief privately and publicly, and I want to weigh both out for you because I learned a lot doing it both ways. I even think those insights might be helpful to those who are trying to decide how to talk about loss, when to talk about loss, who to talk about it, with how to tell your coworkers, how to tell your clients, how much time to take all the things.
The other thing too is that essentially every single person on my leadership team this year experienced some of the most traumatic losses I’ve ever heard of in my entire life and, or is experiencing right now. I don’t know what’s going on in the world right now, but I feel like there’s a lot of uncertainty.
So I’m going to speak to what I’ve learned, what I’ve seen as far as navigating grief, what I think works well, and like I said, I’m no expert. I’m speaking from experience. I hope that this is able to give some guidance.
The first thing I want to speak to is the idea of the stages of grief. And depending on— I gotta be honest. I thought this was common knowledge. It must’ve been something that was told to me when my dad passed, but when my best friend died, I was talking a lot of people. I mean, I was talking to dozens of people every day and I was talking about these stages and I didn’t realize that a lot of people had never heard of them before. So I think it’s worth talking about.
There are five to seven notable stages of grief and just different schools of thought. I actually tend to resonate more with the seven stages just because I think that they’re more and more detailed and more accurate, so I want to talk about them.
The first stage is shock and denial. It’s disbelief, it’s a numbness. If you’ve ever been told somebody passed, a lot of times, you don’t cry instantly or your brain almost like short circuits. It’s a really strange feeling because it seems impossible. Like you just talked to them yesterday or you just saw them, or you just thought about them, or it just seems like there’s no possible way. So usually shock and denial is the first stage.
At some point, you shift into pain and guilt, and that’s when you say, “I should’ve done this, I should’ve done that.” Watching the guilt through the eyes of my children was something that really shocked me when you’re going through the stages of grief yourself. You feel them, but it’s different because it’s all happening internally, so you’re kind of riding the wave.
I was able to watch through the eyes of my children, the guilt and the shame that they felt that was when I really noticed it.
I know I went through guilt and shame too, but in listening to them speak, I really understood it. That that is one of the very first things you’ll feel is this tremendous guilt and pain. You almost take ownership of a lot of things and that’s hard. So when, and if you go through that, it’s normal. It’s something that most people end up going through.
Then you get into anger and bargaining. You think you’re very mad. You start to blame all kinds of circumstances, people, your own actions, the person, your past actions, all of these things. It’s interesting. The rage that you’re not expecting comes in and then you start doing, it’s called bargaining. Almost like trading like, well, if this, then maybe that will happen. Or if I do that, you try and rationalize and create logical steps to get from Point A to Point B. But a passing is illogical, so you’re trying to connect these dots that you can’t connect. If you feel that way, it’s normal.
Then we have depression, which can be long for a lot of people. That’s the overwhelming sadness. A lot of times the first three phases you’ll go through pretty quickly in a matter of hours or days, and then the depression and the extreme sadness can last quite some time that at some point you’ll reach phase five, which is called the upward turn.
This is not where you feel happy, but it’s like you’re able to put one foot in front of the other. That’s the best way I can describe it. Sometimes it takes a week to get there. Sometimes it takes a year and a half.
This is the part of grief that there’s no manual for. I can’t tell you how long it will take for you. And you can experience an identical loss as somebody else and their time to get to upward turn could be twice as long as yours or half the time. It’s just the way it goes.
Then we have reconstruction and working through. So it’s when you’re starting to put your life back together. And for me, I find the reconstruction happens when I find ways to memorialize the person or talk about the person in happy tense, or do really sweet things to honor them. I’m definitely in a healthy place like that with the passing of my dad, where I’m able to do a lot of really healthy celebratory things ‘cause it’s been quite a bit of time. I’m not able to do that with anybody else at this point.
Then we have phase seven, which is acceptance and hope, which is where I am with my dad as well. I’m not that there with Caroline or my mom quite yet. These are the stages that you go through.
Knowing that this is part of the process, I want to talk about the steps that I would suggest if you are in the position as a stylist or salon owner, where you experienced traumatic loss and you’re going through grief.
And can I even say like grieving and I mean, this in the most sincere form, like grieving, the loss of a pet is grief. Like I remember when our dog Miles died, I was inconsolable for days. It’s funny, it’s about the void in your life that you feel when that thing is gone. (I’ve been using that word a lot this year. I literally call it the void.) And when you experience a really dramatic loss and pain, it’s like this hole is created and you can try and fill it. Friends and loved ones will try and help you fill it and it’s so sweet. They’ll be like, “Let’s go on a walk. Let’s talk about it. Let’s do something fun.” And it’s so kind because they’re trying to help heal the void, but it doesn’t because you can’t fill the void with another person or another being if somebody has gone. And so it’s this overwhelming mission of like, how do I fill this void? That was wonderful and is now a hole. It’s this feeling that you have to navigate.
With that, I suggest that you take at least a week of time off from work whenever you experienced the loss of a person or an animal that’s close to you. I think it’s really important. A week at a minimum.
I’ve done it a couple of different ways. I have taken the time and then I’ve tried to rush myself. I’ve done it both different ways. And then when my dad passed, I was trying to rush in my process, which was horrible, but I think that it’s really important to take the time you need.
I personally am a workaholic by nature. I love being busy and my team had to actually hold me back from myself, and I’m very grateful for them in that, especially when Caroline passed, because they knew that if I didn’t take the time for myself, it would have made the process longer. I needed to start going through these phases and I needed to heal myself before I get through myself into work.
Because what happened was when I tried to work, it was like, I kept saying, “My brain is really slow. I feel very numb.” I was very indifferent and imagine trying to do haircuts or color or consultations when you don’t give a rip what the client wants, because I’ll be honest with you. That’s what it feels like within the first week someone comes in and they’re complaining that their toner is too warm and you want to shave their head. It’s the most interesting feeling where you’re like, “Are you kidding me? You’re complaining about a toner right now?” Because to you, it feels irrelevant.
It’s interesting because you get void, like a lot of the empathy or the sympathy or the understanding that we can on a day-to-day basis have it is gone. You don’t have any of that. It’s like that tank has been depleted and you go into survival mode.
So when you try to work through grief too fast, you’ll become short-tempered, definitely not empathetic at all. And while you think you’re doing your clients a solid, you’re doing them a massive disservice because you’ll build up some resentment that you may never get to earn back.
I learned that the hard way, going back to early with one of the passings and somebody said something to me that had they said it at any other time, I wouldn’t even remember it, but because I was in this place where I was feeling the void so deep and I was struggling in my own right, I’ll never forget what they said, and it tarnished our relationship. And it’s such a shame because it’s my fault. I went back too early. I went back in a place where I was not emotionally ready.
One of the things that I’ve learned so deeply this year is that money is one of the things that you can always earn back. Time, once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. I know sometimes some of you heard that and it sounded flippant. I’ll tell you when you experience a massive loss, the last thing you care about is money because all the money in the world won’t bring back that person and so don’t rush the process in order to do another root touch-up.
I was talking to my brother-in-law when my mother-in-law was passing and he was having a really rough time because he didn’t want to be present to the situation because it was painful. One of the things I told him is, “You know, I’ve been through dramatic loss in the past, right? And the worst thing you can do is live with regret.” And I said, “I’m not going to tell you what to do, man. This is your journey. You have to do it yourself.” I said, “But just take a beat right now and ask yourself if I do things differently, will I regret it later?” He didn’t respond to me, but he did choose to take my advice in the end and he has no regrets now.
Sometimes we get caught up. Like, “I just want to get back to the reality,” because you don’t want to be in the suck. You don’t want to be in the void. I understand that, but trying to escape the void doesn’t decrease the grief. That’s what I learned the hard way. You have to just be in it, be present, and I promise the money will come when you’re ready for it. Don’t trip about that. And if a client wants to leave you because you grieve the loss of a loved one, go, bye. See you later. In 10 years, you’re not going to care.
So even asking yourself that question of like, “Will I regret this later?”, it’s such a healthy crosscheck.
Take at least a week’s time off and point number two, plan for 90 days of disruption, depending on how close you are to the person you’re grieving.
There is a lot that has to be done, emotionally, socially, physically, legally. There’s so many things that have to happen. In both of the losses I experienced this year, I felt like I wanted to be highly involved in both as much as I could be. I’m still in it way past 90 days and I have no regrets about that. But what you have to understand is you have to give yourself that grace.
Even if you only take a full week off, you need to plan for 90 days of ups, downs, and everything in between. It’s like happy one moment, sad the next. There’s a moment in the middle of Thrivers Live where I broke down into a puddle and CT had to pick me up and put me back together because it’s one of those things where you don’t know when you’re not going to be okay.
So set yourself up for 90 days of disruption and tell yourself it’s okay if I’m not okay. And it might take more than 90 days, but I’m saying 90 days is a timeline.
Next, before you go back to work in any capacity, you have to decide if you want to talk about this, or if you want to grieve privately. So I just mentioned to you that with Caroline, I grieved very publicly about a week after her passing. I shared it with my Thrivers and publicly because I knew it was going to be a massive business disruption and it was going to be something I in a lot of ways wanted to talk about because it affected me so deeply. So I talked about it.
And what happened when I talked about it is everyone wanted to talk about it. And it ended up being a really healing thing for me. Some of my Thrivers reached out to me and just said the kindest things, shared the sweetest gestures made me feel really loved. It ended up being a good thing.
With that, some people also said really terrible things, and I don’t think that they meant to, but some people just don’t know what to do or say. And so I had to take it from both sides on that. I don’t have any regrets about sharing it.
Now, what I will say that I did, right, which comes into the next step is to set your terms and be in the driver’s seat. So my team will tell you that with both passings, I set my terms. So I said, when I hop into a meeting, don’t ask me how I’m doing. That was one of the questions. It was off-limits. Don’t ask me how I’m doing. I don’t have a good answer for that. Don’t ask me. I don’t want to talk about it. Don’t ask me for specifics. Don’t ask me if I need anything. I had very specific terms.
If you’re going to go back to work after a loss, it is healthy to have specific terms and to stick to them. So if you need to send those terms out in a confirmation text, if you need to send them out by email.
If you need to say it when the guest walks in and her lip pouts a little bit, and she goes, “I’m so sorry,” and she wants to get into it with you, it is okay for you to say, “Thank you. I know you’re sorry. The best gift you can give me right now is let’s have a normal visit together.” And as soon as she says, “I know, but I just want to say—” cut them off if you don’t want to talk about it and say, “I know you want to say,” and say, “but for me and my health, I can’t say right now, so thank you. I know your thoughts are with me. I’d really like to have a normal visit.”
You have to set the stage for success for yourself. Now, if this is a guest you want to talk about it with talk about it, but you’re in the driver’s seat with grief and it is normal and healthy for you to set that boundary.
And I will say that is probably one of the things I did really well and my team fully respected it. They were great because I said I don’t want to talk about it. Don’t ask me what I need. So they just figured it out and it was really incredible because they paid for a laundry service for me. They sent me a message and were like, “Hey, so put all your dirty laundry out on the porch. On Thursday at 5:00 PM, the laundry service will comment will be returned within 48 hours. We love ya.” And that was it.
It was such a gift because I didn’t have to think about it and that’s one of the things when you’re grieving, when someone’s like, what do you need? I need my person back. So unless you can do that, there is nothing because of the void, because of the lack of empathy, that’s where your brain goes. So they sent me paper plates and plastic forks, and they had my laundry done for me. They sent activities for my kids and they just made us feel cared for without me having to say what I needed and it was magical and it was wonderful, right?
Really think about how you want to be, how you want to be supported, what support feels like to you, and setting your terms. And if you need to know how to care for someone who’s grieving, let me tell you the laundry service is a gem, that was just such a gift and a blessing to not have to worry about that so if you need a pro tip, that’s a good one. Okay.
Next, accept help. We’re leading right into that. If somebody offers to help—this is one of the things I should have done more of. Some people said, “Well, I’ll take the kids to the park,” and I still wanted to be super mom, and I was like, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you don’t need to, I’ll do it.” I should have accepted more help.
A lot of times when you’re going through grief, people want to help you Let them, let them. It’ll help you with your process. That’ll help you go through the emotions faster.
And a lot of people are built to be helpers. I’m built to be a helper. Give them a job, let them do something. It’ll help with their grief and yours. So accept help when it’s given.
My last point is be aware of triggers. So there are certain actions or behaviors or songs, or just things that you’ll drive by in the car, that’ll end up being a trigger for you. That’s normal and being aware of what things trigger, you can help you to set yourself up for success to see one coming, to learn to navigate through it, to learn to turn a negative trigger into a positive moment.
So starting to get aware of what situations you can put yourself in and what you can’t. For example, I’ve changed the way I drive through my neighborhood now, because it’s less triggering for me to go a specific way. Getting clear on what are the behaviors and actions you need to change to set yourself up for success when somebody has gone from your life, they’re gone forever. Sometimes it ends up being a long-term change or shift in the way you live your day-to-day that needs to happen in order for you to get through your days. Just try and be aware of that process.
Okay. I hope that this was helpful. It could have been 20 minutes of rambling, I’m honestly not sure, but I spoke from the heart.
I wanted to share to a story because it affected me and I think it could easily affect anybody else. There was somebody who sent me a DM that was critical, and this was a trigger for me. It was a critical DM, saying this person didn’t appreciate a lack of action on something, thought that I should have done something that I didn’t do. And my response back to that person was I’m grieving. I can’t believe you would accuse me of that.
That person had no idea I was grieving, but it was a trigger for me. So when I said you have the option of grieving publicly or grieving privately, and trying to decide what to do when you grieve publicly, everyone will know. People want to talk about it.
When you grieve privately, people won’t know and they’ll act like everything is normal. So if you choose to grieve privately, just know you’ll be susceptible to more triggers because people won’t be treating you any differently. They won’t be giving you any natural grace and you can set yourself up to become a little needlessly sharp or to be judged as being a certain way that you’re not because they don’t realize the situation you’re going through.
Anyway, I hope that this podcast has been super helpful to you. Grief is always tricky and challenging. It’s one of the things that is basically guaranteed to be something that all of us will go through at some point in our lives.
Just remember that we work in order to be able to afford our personal lives. We don’t live our lives to work, and shifting that perspective and remembering that work is something that should enhance our wealth and not be the main driver of it.
I hope that gives you some freedom, so much love and light to all. Happy, happy business building and I’ll see you on the next one.
