Intro:
Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hairstylist?
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 weren’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 life long 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
What is up and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
I’m your host, Britt Seva.
I’m here live at X Club Retreat 2025 with Kaytlin Garland in San Antonio, Texas.
Kaytlin, thank you so much for joining me today.
Thank you so much for having me.
It’s my pleasure.
We just finished, I’m calling it four really incredible days together of connecting, networking, learning, feeling inspired, decompressing, relaxing, a little bit of everything.
And I want to talk about that before we get into why we’re featuring Kaytlin today.
Kaytlin, would you let us know why you chose to come to the X Club Retreat?
First of all, I will never turn on anything Britt is offering because I’ve been to every live event you’ve ever hosted and it’s always filled me up beyond what is even in my realm of ideas.
And I’ve made connections that have forever changed my life.
So I will always say yes to any live opportunity that you offer.
But specifically, where I’m at in my career right now, and it’s funny is we signed up for this a year ago.
Right.
And I really fully believe in Aligned Timing and all of that stuff.
And when I signed up, I was like, of course, because yes.
And also now that I’m here, it couldn’t have been more aligned.
And the timing is just absolutely perfect.
So yeah.
I love that.
I believe in alignment and divine timing.
And I truly believe, especially after going through the four days we had together, this was so timely for all of us.
It was incredible to see how many shared experiences we’ve had over the course of the year and how truly this time was right for, I think, most, if not everybody in the room.
Tell us about the room and what it was like for you.
So we had about 80-ish high-performing stylists and salon owners.
You had to qualify to be in the room.
What was being in this room like for you?
So initially, I would say overwhelming.
I felt like such, and I still, you know, I always like to play small a little.
So I’m like, the smallest fish in this huge pond, and that’s my favorite kind of environment to be in.
I don’t want to be smartest, most successful.
I want to soak in and sponge up everything.
And there’s so much to get to learn from the people that were in that room.
Luckily, I’m pretty outgoing, and I approach everyone with a smile and hope that they’re gonna, you know, accept that.
So, I really had a great time just at first observing and kind of seeing, and none of it felt clicky.
I didn’t come in and say, oh, I can’t approach them or whatever.
And so that felt incredible.
And just also, you don’t know if you’re gonna sit next to and what they’re about.
And then just throughout natural conversation, and then then they get featured or then they something.
And it’s like, oh, my gosh, like they do all of this.
And it’s just so great to connect with the human.
Yeah.
And then learn about how incredible their business is.
I completely agree.
And I noticed exactly what you were noticing.
It was like a peeling of the onion, but in a room full of 80 people, where you would sit these tables, and you would know in your heart that these are all incredible people.
There’s nobody in the room that you couldn’t learn something from, but you would hear somebody share something, and it would like ping or trigger something in you, and be like, wait a minute, you’ve done that.
Or, oh, my gosh, you’re the person I’m looking to speak to.
And that was the big thing for me, was watching that happen over and over and over as a collective.
It was amazing to get to know people that you probably wouldn’t connect with otherwise if not put in this situation, having these conversations.
Absolutely.
Yeah, totally agree.
OK, so let’s talk about you specifically for a moment.
So, Kaytlin, tell us about your business.
Where are you located?
What does your business look like?
Give us a little context.
OK, so I’m in Frederick, Maryland, so East Coast represent.
I am kind of in the center of the DMV area, so around some major cities and I own a five-chair salon.
Currently employ three other stylists besides myself.
And I specialize and one of my other stylists specializes in extensions and color.
And then I have a curly haired specialist and then a brand new stylist who’s assisting me.
Beautiful.
What is your long term vision?
Well, when I say long term, what is your three year vision for your business?
So my three year vision would be to step back a little bit behind the chair and step into more of a leadership role.
I’ve taken thriving leadership and it’s, I mean, Thrivers in general is how I’ve been able to grow into the space that I’m in now.
And I just see the need for me to take more of a leadership role.
And I’m definitely not someone who feels that I need to hang on to doing all of the hair myself.
However, it’s kind of just happened because of, you know, guest needs and things like that.
So, I’m feeling very called to grow the next stylist up so that I can offload some of that and just be able to focus on leadership.
And I was an educator for nine years, so that’s where my heart lives.
So, yeah.
And you’re creating capacity and space and a plan to make that your main focus.
I love that.
So, one of the things we did here at X Club Retreat is we brought in a bestselling author.
His name is Joey Coleman, and he’s written two books.
One is called Never Lose a Customer Again, and the other is called Never Lose an Employee Again, and it’s the Art of Retention.
And one of the exercises that really stood out to me was remember at the very beginning, when it was very beginning of his presentation, he talked about how there was something like 36,000 books on marketing and sales, and a fraction, wild, on customer service, experience, retention, and it really clicked, I think, for all of us in the room when he said that.
And talking about how it’s so much more efficient and effective and cost-effective to retain a guest.
And we all know at the end of the day, it’s the most important thing.
And yet all of us are so focused on the sales and the marketing and the funnels and all the things.
It was such a great reset for the room.
Do you have a big takeaway or two from Joey that you could share?
Oh my gosh, so many takeaways.
I would say one of the things, to your point, when we talk about what pings, when you say where have you had a great experience, we can all think of something right off the bat.
And for me, I was like, I want to be remembered and I want my salon to be thought of for having a great experience.
So just keeping that in mind and kind of knowing from a guest perspective, what they’re experiencing from before they meet us through after, which is what we’re taught in Thrivers.
But sometimes I think we get a little bit to, we gotta stay on our Instagram, we gotta stay on the things to gather the new guests and things do slip through their cracks.
And so I definitely think just re-visiting what the entire flow of the experience looks like is super important.
So that was a huge takeaway for me.
And he also gave very tactical, this is a really great example of what someone else is doing in a different industry perhaps, but also could be related to ours.
And I took so many notes on those things and just how we could possibly implement that.
And it just, that was totally mind-blowing for me.
So yeah.
For me as well.
And my team and I kept it as he was presenting, whispering back and forth to each other like, oh my gosh, this is incredible.
We never thought of this before.
And you’re right, he showed so many real life examples that did feel practical and tangible and made sense in the eyes of us as consumers.
Like absolutely, that would make such a huge difference for us.
I loved that too.
So you got to have a very unique experience with Joey.
So we selected Kaytlin for something called a hot seat.
One of the things that Joey taught the entire room throughout our workshop we had together, Joey was with us for about a day and a half, is how to map out the ideal customer journey.
And it starts from the moment they even realize they might need you to becoming your raving fan.
He calls an advocate.
So they’re shouting your name from the rooftops.
They’re your number one referrer.
And everything would have to happen in between to make that magic possible.
And we had the opportunity, he said, You can volun-tell somebody to come up and I will map out their journey for them.
And we chose Kaytlin.
It’s an honor.
And I was telling Kaytlin a few moments ago, there was a few reasons why we chose her.
One, I feel like she was a great representation for a good cross section of the room.
We wanted somebody who had somewhat of a team, but not too huge of a team, not a big, huge commission salon.
We didn’t want a unique independent stylist either.
We wanted somebody who kind of bridged the gap and Kaytlin was perfect.
The other thing was I knew that Kaytlin would be able to come on and be very open and vulnerable and honest and she was.
She made the perfect candidate for this experience.
When I told you, you were going to be the one who was spotlighted.
How did that feel?
My first words out were, I’m so honored and thank you so much.
After that, a little bit, I went back to my room and did some very deep breathing.
Just for the simple fact of, I’m going to expose myself here and what is that going to look like?
Will I get emotional?
Which I didn’t, by the way, so that was great.
But it was definitely, will it be impactful for anyone in the room?
Because we’ve talked about this a little bit too.
When we share our own unique journey, it is very vulnerable and there’s also the fear of being up in front of your peers.
What do they think about?
What is running through their mind as they’re watching me go through this experience?
It’s very difficult to turn that switch off.
No matter how it’s positioned or what is happening, that’s so incredibly real.
So from my perspective, Joey brought Kaytlin up.
And what he said was, I don’t want you to come prepared at all.
I want you to sit here and I’m just going to ask you a series of questions about your business.
And he said, tell me a little bit about your specialty.
And to which you said, what did you say initially was your specialty?
I originally said that I owned a micro salon and that I specialize in extensions and hair color.
And he quickly corrected me and said, micro, that doesn’t sound, he’s like, what does that mean?
And it was interesting to hear his perspective on, because it’s a term that you hear tossed around in the industry.
And I was just trying to downplay the fact that, well, I’m in a five chair salon, but I don’t have five employees.
And I would argue that I used to be in a micro salon.
I had a small suite with just two chairs.
So it was kind of my initial instinct to say that.
And I loved that he re-corrected me there and made me kind of take that power back of like, I own a salon now.
I did too.
Yeah.
The other piece that I loved about that is he said, what’s your target market for your extension clients?
What was your initial response?
My initial response was women ages 40 to 60.
He said, that’s lovely.
That’s way too broad.
Make it smaller.
Yeah.
And the second time you said, I believe we narrowed it down to 45 to 50.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yes.
And there was this push to really refine it.
And what he said was, does the average…
And he pulled the room.
He said, for the women who are 40 and the women who are 60, raise your hands.
Do you think you have the same style, the same needs, the same challenges, the same budget?
And you watch the head say, no, we don’t.
We’re living different lives.
And it was such a great collective moment for all of us to kind of see that happen in real time.
The other thing I love that he dialed in on is he said, are they mostly new guests?
New clients who have never gotten extensions anywhere before?
Or is it people who are coming because they’re not happy with their extensions?
What was that process like?
I actually loved hearing that question just because it’s not really something I’ve ever considered even in marketing or talking about things.
I mean, I often focus on the solutions that extensions can provide for anyone, never considering the fact that they might have never.
I do consider that they may never have actually worn them before, but I don’t zero in on that, which was my response is that I would say more than 50% of the time, my guests have never worn extensions prior.
So I do, of course, have the people that transition from different methods or different areas or they’re moving.
However, I would say a huge part of my market is brand new people.
And that just instantly, I thought, oh, my gosh, there’s so much I can use in marketing and communication with these people who have never.
And you do it in person and you educate and all those things, but to attract those people and let them know that there’s solutions for everyday women, you know, is huge, so.
Huge.
I thought that was such a breakthrough, not just specifically for the room.
And then we continued to use that qualifier throughout the exercise.
You’d say more or less than 50 percent, more or less than 50 percent.
That was so helpful.
So for all of us, and it really narrowed down the target market.
And sometimes you’d say, well, there’s a chunk, but no, it’s not more than 50 percent.
You’d say, okay, then we scrap it.
I loved that.
That was amazing.
OK, so tell us about what the experience was like for you as he’s asking questions about your journey.
So my perspective was we’re sitting there watching and he’s saying, OK, Kaytlin, how does a client find you?
What happens when they want to book an appointment?
What is the communication look like?
What is the first visit look like?
So as you’re without talking about all the nitty gritty details, as you’re going through that, what’s coming up for you as he’s asking these questions?
Honestly, it was I the whole time felt like he was holding a mirror up and going, look, look what’s happening.
Because you just get so into, okay, this is a system that I may have created for a different period of time and or a different target market and or a different size salon.
Now, this is the reality of where I am.
Is this still working?
Is this system too much for the guest?
Is it too much for me?
Yes.
It was really eye-opening.
I can’t say enough about just the light bulbs of, oh my gosh, yeah, that doesn’t make any sense.
But, you know, it’s not that I’m not successful doing those things, but could I be more successful and have more time freedom and, you know, actually get that balance of being able to lead my team more because now I’ve saved the time doing such unnecessary work or doing more things to gain more guests for my stylist.
Absolutely.
And I love the way you said that.
One of the other reasons we picked you is that you did have so much good going for you.
It would have been so much easier to pick somebody who had no guest experience.
We could create it from the ground up and it would be perfect.
With you, from the outside, people would be like, yeah, but Kaytlin’s already got it dialed in.
And he was able to say, it’s good.
What would great or exceptional or unbeatable look like?
And it’s what I want to be.
Of course.
And it was reaching that next level.
And as he showed you the mirror, I think we all saw the mirror in ourselves as well.
So now going through that experience, what are you going to go home and do?
Oh, my gosh.
So first step, I would say that I have kind of two goals in line with being a leader and being a stylist.
So my first step as a stylist is that I do need to increase my prices, which has been something I’ve known for a while.
And I looked at my calculator and thought, okay, it’s time.
So that was really clarified for me as really the first barrier to my entry of growth.
And then secondly, I would like to get my newest assistant really well trained so that she can take a lot of extra things off my plate and she gets to then have this amazing opportunity to grow her book.
So those are my first two, which seem so simplistic when I say them, but they will be so impactful.
So impact will be massive and the ripple effect will be felt for years to come.
Kaytlin, thank you so much for joining me today.
This is an absolute pleasure to have you here.
So much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
