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, my loves and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host Britt Seva, coming in real hot this week.
If you do not already have a notebook ready, you are going to want to grab one ‘cause I’m going to drop some major knowledge bombs. I’m actually going to be spilling some secrets, which you guys know I don’t normally do.
However, yesterday I had the pleasure of hosting two absolutely phenomenal online masterclasses, and in case you missed it, I want to give you an opportunity to get some of the golden nuggets from that class, give you the opportunity to sign up for a replay so you can watch the program in full before it expires at the end of this week.
And even if you were there, we’re going to go deep this week into some of the topics we did not have time for in the masterclass.
So whether you were there or not, we’re going to dive deep this week. If you did join me yesterday, thank you. Or earlier this week, depending on when you’re watching this, thank you from the bottom of my heart. It’s truly a pleasure to have you in any of my classes.
If you are a part of the new Thrivers Society class, welcome. I’m so beyond excited to have you guys. I can’t wait to see you take 2021 by storm. So excited.
But if you didn’t make it to the class yesterday or earlier this week, depending on when you’re listening, and you want to know what we talked about, we got down and dirty. We talked about the five key roles in every stylist’s business. Whether you’re a stylist behind the chair, a studio suite owner, a commission stylist, a salon owner, there are five roles you need to own if you want to be successful.
We talked about the pitfalls where you need to focus and prioritize. We talked about the pandemic and how it’s going to continue to affect our industry, what predictions I have, and what I think you need to change in your business if you want to stay successful. We talked about the seven essential elements of success, including the marketing funnel. We talked about the retention funnel, we talked about step-by-step what you need to do to ensure you have longevity in this industry. We talked about the stylist archetypes and what it means for your future. And then I shared my step-by-step plan that’s helped over 10,000 stylists–over 12,000 stylists now actually–build a business that allows them to live their biggest, best, most beautiful life and I would love for you to be a part of the training if you have not already done so. You can head to brittseva.com/success.
I am not teaching the class live again until probably about a year from now, so if you want to get in on this goodness, you need to sign up for the replay like right this second. We have replays going on a couple times a day throughout the week of September 20th, so you’ll want to sign up if you’re listening to this in time. Sign up, you do not want to miss out. I would love to see you in the replay so that you can get 90 minutes of fresh inspiration ready to carry you through the end of the year.
That being said, I want to give you some sneak peeks right now and, like I said, even if you were in the class, stick around, ‘cause I’m going to dive deep into some of the topics we did not get into in the masterclass. And if you haven’t joined yet, allow this to be your sneak peek.
I want to start right at the top. I mentioned that we dove deep into the five key roles in every stylist’s business. I’m not going to go over all five again–you can come to the masterclass if you want to know all five, but I want to talk about the one role that most of us are really good at prioritizing. And unfortunately it is the least important role in your business.
Anybody know what it is? The Talent. We are so good as stylists and salon owners at prioritizing the talent and we forget about the other four roles that are way more expensive.
So what makes our industry so unique is that in most businesses–if I owned a flower shop, I’m a florist. I own the shop. Well, I probably have some people who come in and help do arrangements for me or work the front desk for me, right? And then I’d have like my accountant, somebody who does the bills for me. I’d have all of these other roles that were filled, right? I wouldn’t do all of the things, generally speaking. If I have a flower shop, there’s other people there to support me.
Well, as a stylist, we don’t have that level of support. We are expected to do all of the things and the thing that screams the loudest is the role of the talent. What the talent does is they’re the hands. They are the body that shows up to do the work. They are the emotions that support those who sit in their chair. The challenge is the talent, generally speaking, is the person who is least compensated on the totem pole. When you look at a company like Target, right? The store Target, who’s the talent? The talent are the workers, high school kids making minimum wage. People who are managers who have been there for years, probably making $45, $50, $60 grand a year, right? So that’s the talent. They’re not the executives making a multi-six figure salary. They’re the grunt workers. That’s generally speaking the talent pool. That’s what we’re looking at.
As stylists, when we prioritizing cutting, coloring, getting as many clients in as possible, double booking, you are treating yourself and your business as an entry level employee. In no successful organization is the person who’s doing the grunt work, the physical labor, also the highest compensated, right? Name one industry where that’s how it works.
It doesn’t. The business where the talent is putting in most of the effort is a business that struggles to get by. You have to prioritize the other four roles if you ever want to get ahead, if you ever want to have true scalability, be allowed to work a schedule that’s reasonable, really enjoy your family, make so much money that you don’t have to stress at all about your finances. You’re living a debt free life. You’re saving aggressively for retirement while living life to the fullest. That’s what it should be like and that’s possible.
There’s a lot of stylists living that life. The challenge is those stylists are prioritizing the other four roles. For them, talent comes last.
But for most stylists in our industry, they don’t realize that while they’re prioritizing talent, cutting, coloring, standing behind the chair, being the client factory, doing as much hair as possible, they are slowly killing their longevity. You cannot have a scalable, sustainable business as a stylist until we prioritize the other four roles we talked about in the masterclass. If you want to know what the other four are and how to prioritize them, make sure you head to brittseva.com/success, where we dive deeper.
But as a reminder, if you were here in the masterclass, I want you to step away from talent. It is step one to getting to where you want to be.
When I talk about stepping away from being talent, it always brings up a lot of fears and feels because it’s completely counterintuitive to what we were taught from the time we went to beauty school, right? We were told things like, “This is the hustlers’ industry. You’re going to have to work hard for that money. Be patient. It takes time.”
I want to turn all that on its head because those are all lies and it’s old school. There was a time where that was true. That time is not now, and so I want you to release those beliefs, and I want to ask you some poignant questions that I think are going to help you with that process.
I want you to go back to when you were first joining the industry. Maybe you had just enrolled in cosmetology school, or you were doing a program through your local high school where you’re able to get your license. But I want you to think about what kept you awake at night, like when you were laying in bed–we all did this–and you were like, “I’m so excited. I’m going to be a stylist and maybe one day an owner and maybe one day a platform artist” or wherever those kinds of dreams took you.
What kind of life did you think you’d be living? Was it a life that involved a big, beautiful home, a really comfortable car, amazing vacations, working a great schedule, feeling like you made an abundance of money, working with incredible clients while being creative.
Was that your dream or was your dream spending three, four, 10, 15 years financially struggling, going back and forth as to if this industry was right for you or wrong? Living confused as to why some stylists have it all and some have nothing, and being overwhelmed by the disparity in our industry and the tremendous shifts in the haves and the have nots. Was that what you thought it would be like?
‘Cause most of us didn’t dream of the struggle, but it’s what we ended up with and I don’t want that for you any longer. The first step in getting out of that rut is to think about that young man or that young woman or you two or three years ago–maybe this is the second or third career for you–sitting there deciding to enroll in the cosmetology program and what you dreamed was possible.
Why? You made that choice. None of us made that choice hoping it was wrong. None of us made that choice saying, “Man, I hope this is a career where I barely make minimum wage for the rest of my life.” None of us said that.
What did you think was possible? I want you to circle back to that. Then I want you to ask yourself, “How close am I to that now?” Did you nail it? Did you totally surpass it? Are you like, “Are you kidding me, bro? I am living a life 10 times greater than what I ever even imagined. I’m just so impressed by what I’ve done. I’m proud of myself.”
Can you say that? Or are you like “It was a pipe dream,” or maybe you feel like you were even foolish for thinking those thoughts.
I need you to own that. I need you to really take a look at how close you are to what you thought was possible and then I want you to answer this: what’s gotten in the way, what prevented you from getting there?
Or if you’re there, but you’re like, “I’m there, but it took me way longer than I thought.” Why did it take so long? Was it you? Was it who you worked for? Was it your circumstances? Was it that you worried about what people would think of you? Is it that you didn’t have enough belief in yourself? Is it that you wish you would sharpen your skills faster? Is it because you wish you knew more about marketing? Why do you think you haven’t gotten to that dream life you thought was possible or it’s taken longer than you thought it should? How come there’s always a reason and life doesn’t happen? We can’t blame the pandemic. Like, let’s not blame external factors.
What could you have done differently that would have made it possible? If you could go back in time, how would you have changed your decisions? I want to really own that ‘cause we all have to reflect on that from time to time.
What would you change in your life if you had a magic wand? Not just your business, but your life. Would you live where you live? Would you spend your time how you do? Would you work the schedule that you have? Would you have the help you have? Would you have some help? Would you have no help? Would you have less help? What would that all look like? Would you have someone to help take care of your kids? Would you be the primary caregiver for your kids? What do all of those elements look like? How often do you travel a year? Where do you go?
I want you to really think about if you could change anything in your life, bring more joy in, bring more financial peace of mind in, bring more free time in what would all of those things look like? How would your career change? How would your life change? Let’s really center ourselves around that.
And then one final question: what is holding you back from earning two times more while working two times less?
And even those of you listening to this who are like, “I’m already making $200K, I’m good.” Oh, you don’t want $400K? If I offered you $400K, you’d turn it down. I just want to be clear on that because if you wouldn’t turn it down, then I need you to do this exercise and I need you to own the fact that there’s always another level. Somebody is always playing bigger than you. And by playing bigger, I don’t mean working harder. I mean being more deliberate with their actions and they’re getting a better result. That’s true for all of us.
Okay, so I’m going to ask again, what is holding you back from earning two times more while working two times less? Is it A) you don’t know how to do it. You don’t even know how to make that possible. B) you don’t believe it’s possible.
I’m saying that and you’re saying, “BS. It is impossible to make two times more while working half as much.” Okay, that’s fine. Or C) you don’t believe you deserve it. That level of success is for other people. There’s some of you who believe, “That’s not for me. The cards are stacked against me. I’m sure some people could do that, but you have no idea what my reality is like. That is impossible for me.”
Okay, well, all three of those examples I gave you are called limiting beliefs and they’re the things that hold us back from success. I’m going to share them with you again.
You don’t know how to do it. You’re like, “Britt, I would love to make two times more while working half as much. Tell me how.” Okay, I can do that. I can totally do that, but I need you to own which one of these resonates for you.
Do you believe it’s possible and you believe you deserve it, you just don’t know how. If that’s true you’re an A, okay?
You’re a B, if you think I’m full of it, you’re like, “Nobody works half as much and makes twice as much.” Okay, well, unfortunately for you, you’re incorrect. Plenty of people do that year over year over year over year. Maybe you haven’t seen it and that’s okay, but it is true. So I want you to realize that you may be incorrect because it’s fully possible. You just likely don’t believe you deserve it or you don’t know how to do it so to you, it seems impossible. Okay? So I want you to own that.
And you’re a C if you don’t believe you deserve it. I was a C for a long time. I looked at the childhood I had, I looked at those around me, who I was spending my time with. Everybody was struggling, so why should I be the person who doesn’t struggle? This is normal.
I’ve been like success shamed. Has anybody experienced that? Like you achieve any level of success and people actually look down on you for it. That really messed me up for a long time. I was like, “Oh my gosh, maybe I don’t want to be financially free because everyone will hate me.” All of these crazy thoughts started running through my mind.
Do you believe you don’t deserve success? Because if you don’t, I’m here to tell you that you do. You were put here on this planet in this lifetime because you deserve massive success. It’s waiting for you. It is ready for the taking. You just have to know you’re worthy of it. And when you know you’re worthy, meet me halfway. I’m happy to show you to the end result, but you need to know that you are supposed to be wildly successful. You just have to own it, right? And take charge of it.
Another thing that we talked about in a deep way in the masterclass is the four elements of a wealthy life and how to actually get all four of them aligned so you can make more money.
One of the elements of a wealthy life is money, but it is the least important part, which is hysterical and ironic because most of us live our entire lifetime wanting more money. We think it is the solution to all the problems.
I was that lady for years. We were in massive debt, living in a teeny tiny 700 square foot, two bedroom duplex. My husband and I were sleeping on the couch. Our kids each had the bedrooms ‘cause there weren’t enough for all of us to go around.
And I thought, “If I just have more money, we’ll be so much happier. We’ll have less stress. There will be less tension in the family, and we won’t have to worry when we go to the grocery store about not being able to buy what we need. If we just have more money, everything will be right.”
It has been proven to me time and time again that is not the solution. More money solves some issues. It brings a whole slew of others right along with it and it doesn’t necessarily stop the cycle.
It’s why you see celebrities, people with massive wealth end up declaring bankruptcy because it doesn’t change your behavior. When you have more of something, you spend more of something, and it does not necessarily drive happiness.
More money isn’t the way to actually live a wealthy life. It’s different than that. In the masterclass, we dive deep into how to get more money and the way to get more money is to master the other three areas of wealth.
It sounds counterintuitive, but I want you to sign up at brittseva.com/success because once you understand the logic behind it, you realize until you have the other three areas of wealth mastered, the money is impossible. And that’s why a lot of you have been chasing more money for two years, five years, 10 years, 20 years, 40 years and you still don’t have more money.
Have you ever wondered that? “What am I doing wrong? How come I can’t make more money?” Well, let’s look at the other three areas of wealth and troubleshoot.
We don’t start by troubleshooting money. I can teach you how to make more money. That’s the easiest. The reason why most people don’t master it is because they’re so insufficient in the other three that they can’t even get there, okay?
So we need to prioritize all of the areas of wealth in our life before we can actually get more money and I want you guys to remember that there’s one thing you take away from this episode. I want it to be success comes when you stop chasing the money.
That being said, let’s keep it 100. You listen to me because at the end of the day, you want more money because money is what makes the world go round and it allows us to live these big, beautiful lives where you can travel, and buy a beautiful home, and do all of these incredible things. And I want that for you too.
I’m not saying money’s not important. I love talking about money and I like the idea of having enough that my family doesn’t have to sweat it. I’m all for that, believe you me. What I want to talk about is the seven essential elements of the marketing funnel and the retention funnel, and how they flow together so you can have more of that money and more of the time and more of all of the other things that we need.
Now, we go deep into all seven elements in the masterclass, but I want to talk about a hot topic that I usually cover in masterclasses and we did not have time to get to yesterday. One of the most popular things I talk about is target market, what that means, how to get there, why it’s important.
So target market is element number four when we’re looking at the seven essential elements of the marketing funnel and retention funnel. It sits right in the middle of both funnels and it’s on what I call the opportunity level. When you nail that target market, when you do it right everything else becomes easier. Social media a snap. Referral program, simple pricing, easy peasy. Getting new business? It’s like taking candy from a baby. Everything becomes very simple.
The problem is most people don’t do the target market work correctly. They think they have it. I see you. I work with you all the time. You think you got it? You’re like, “Oh Britt, I’ve got a logo. I’ve got a brand. I have a vibe. I have all the things.” And I take a look and I’m like, “No, you don’t. I see why you think you do. I totally see it. Unfortunately, you don’t have it down.”
In Thrivers Society, we go through it. It takes most people four to six weeks, honestly, to do all of the deep work needed to get target market right. But once they’ve done it, once they’ve put in the four to six weeks, I mean, it speeds up the growth of their business by 10 years. So it’s a short term sacrifice for majorly long term gain, right? ‘Cause if you can get this dialed in, everything else becomes a cinch.
I want to talk about a fresh example of target market. You guys have probably heard me talk target market before I’ve talked about sparkling water. I’ve talked about coffee. I want to talk about cars for a second.
What kind of car do you drive? If I pulled up to your house, what do you have in the driveway? My family and I have pretty basic cars, like something that you would see in the average family. One of the things we always joke about is the Tesla, okay And my husband is a little bit of a Tesla later. Not for any specific reason, except for the fact that he is not their target market. He’s a total car guy, total car guy, and part of me feels like “Babe, if you could afford to have one of those, you would be all over it,” but we’re not part of their target market.
I want to talk about for a second the Tesla experience. If you’ve owned a Tesla, you’ve walked through the Tesla experience. I haven’t owned one, but I know some friends who have.
If you want to have a Tesla, you can’t just go to the Honda dealership right off the freeway, like you can for any other car, right? When you or I, or a lot of us who don’t have Teslas want to buy a car, what do you do? You either go through the newspaper or Craigslist or whatever, and you find a used car, and you go meet some guy, and you do the test drive, and you pay the money or whatever.
Or you go to a local car dealership, you test drive, you sit in there for hours and hours and hours, and you work out the financing. Even if you’re paying with cash, there’s a whole process. I mean, it’s a day, it’s an entire day to buy a new car, right? And it’s a nightmare and nobody looks forward to it.
Like you really want the car, but you don’t want to have to go through the nightmare of actually buying one. And then there’s the whole stigma of the used car salesman and even a new car salesman, they’re just like, well, and you don’t want to do it, right? It has this negative implication. You don’t want anything to do with it.
Tesla’s not like that. So I remember when a friend of my daughter’s dad let us know, he was like, “You guys, I’m so excited. I’m on the waitlist for Tesla.”
And we were like, “What does that mean?” If you don’t know this, Tesla doesn’t have dealerships, like you can’t pull up to the lot, and browse around, and somebody comes out ,and there’s champagne, and you can do a test drive. It’s not like that. They don’t have dealerships at all.
What you can do is build your model online, order a car online; can you imagine custom? Or they have showrooms and their showrooms in malls or in really high-end shopping districts. That’s where you’ll find a Tesla showroom.
I can remember visiting New York. I was there for business with a good friend of mine—I won’t say who she is—and there was a Tesla showcase in the area where we were and she was like, “Britt, can I bother you? Is there any way we can go to the Tesla showcase?” And I was like, “Okay, are you buying one?” And she was like, “No, I’ve never seen one before. I have to lay eyes on it.”
I live in California, Teslas are a thing, like we see them all around. She lives in the Midwest and she had to lay eyes on it because it has this different draw and appeal to it. It’s the kind of car you can’t just look at. It’s a kind of car you can’t just get. It carries this exclusivity. You can put your name on a waitlist to purchase when you can’t even just go purchase one. That’s impossible.
Put my name on the waitlist, eventually they call, and you’ll get your chance to purchase the car, and then they walk you through the experience, and you make an appointment for a test drive if you want one. But a lot of people skip that cause they don’t even want to have to bother ‘cause they’re so excited just to get it. And then you custom build it, and then there’s the appointment for you to pick it up, and you get a jacket, and they take a picture.
To buy a car, it’s like this huge freaking production, and when you look at the high end car market, Tesla’s actually somewhere in the middle. So there’s cars that are four times as expensive. There’s some major car manufacturers who have cars in that same price range. What is different about Tesla is the experience from start to finish. They have reinvented the car buying game. There is a specific person who likes the idea of the exclusivity of being a part of that world.
Tesla is like a culture in and of itself. Tesla people are friends with other Tesla people. It’s like a society. Yes, I know some friends who’ve had Hondas like I have. We’re not part of any kind of club. It’s not the same feeling.
That is target market and branding. What Tesla has done is dominated the electric car market and the luxury car market in a way because of how they’ve nuanced the experience. This is what I’m talking about when I’m talking about target market and branding from start to finish. Nobody compares what they do. Cannot be duplicated. It’s fully impossible. That’s how they’re dominating a game and I need you to start thinking about your business that way.
You don’t have to be luxury. That’s not what I’m saying. It’s not even about that. It’s about branding. It’s about messaging. It’s about experience, consistency, and standing out in a crowd.
There are 1 million stylists in the United States alone. Your great cuts and color are not going to take you to the finish line. I’m really proud to say there’s more talent in our industry than there ever has been before.
It’s so easy to be talented. It is hard to be a good marketer. And if you need help getting there and you want a little guidance, I have two places for you to check out. You can check out my signature program, Thrivers Society at www.thriverssociety.com. If you are listening to this podcast at the time it gets released, we are open now! We will be open for just a few days. So thriverssociety.com check it out.
You can hop on the waitlist if the timing isn’t right for you; we’re going to open back up in another six months. It’s something to consider.
If you want to sign up for the masterclass and dive deeper into any of the things I’ve talked about, head to brittseva.com/success and I would love to see you in there.
You guys so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
