We’re right on the heels of Thrivers Society Live 2020, a revolutionary education event for the industry that happened in early January 2020. It was an event the industry has never seen before and will be often imitated but never duplicated for decades to come.
Facilitating that experience for 450 stylists and salon owners was the greatest sense of pride and accomplishment. We made magic, created a bond in this community that is second to none, and those stylists and salon went owners home inspired in a way they never have been before.
Let’s break down the biggest takeaways from each speaker during Thrivers Society Live 2020!
Meet the speakers
We did things at Thrivers Live a little differently, meaning everybody who took the stage except for Britt and a Thrivers social media panel wasn’t a part of the industry.
Mike Michalowicz, Sarah Centrella, Emily Aarons, Tonya Dalton, Stacy Tuschl, Jasmine Star, and Lori Harder graced the stage because this all-star lineup served all aspects of the business. There was somebody to talk about marketing, social media, in-salon operations, productivity, organization, finance management, vision boarding, everything. And boy did every speaker drop major knowledge bombs during their keynote.
Here are some of the biggest takeaways from each speaker.
Mike Michalowicz
Mike is a bestselling author of a lot of books on finance and business management (like The Pumpkin Plan). Profit First, one of his top-rated books, is an accounting method used by large and small corporations worldwide. It’s one of the most well-respected finance management programs out there.
Mike shared that he travels professionally as a speaker and often returns to a conference year after year. The room will roar when he walks in, and he’ll ask if he can assume that everybody applied Profit First after last year?
Crickets.
What he found is, at the moment, people love his message, but then go home and do nothing. We get stuck in the learn/consume mode, and when it comes to applying the information, we fall flat.
How many of you have attended an education experience, left fired up, and then not done anything? No inspired action. You bask in the glory of the education and then go home and go right back to habit.
In 2020, give that up. When you learn or get excited about something, take it. Not say, “I’ll do it later.” Do it now.
Emily Aarons
Emily always brings a touch of the woo. She talked about alignment, fear, how to know where to move forward, and what to focus on to get results.
A Thriver asked, “How do you push past fear to get to where you’re craving to go?” Emily said, “Think of fear as the asshole in your head who tries to hold you back from success. Picture it almost as a person, like a little gremlin who sits in there and does everything they can to prevent you from moving forward.”
She went on to describe the fear gremlin as something that lives within us from caveman times when we were scared to leave the cave because the lion might eat us. Fear is designed to keep us alive in times of extreme danger. The problem is that, in modern times, the fear is too strong. Our fear gremlin gets in the way when he shouldn’t and tells us not to step outside of the comfort zone, keeping you all kinds of cozy and mediocre.
Nothing good comes from comfort zones. It isn’t until you get a little scared, make some mistakes, push a little harder that you actually get everything you’re looking for.
If you are craving more money, time, success, and clarity, what are you doing to put yourself out there? What behaviors are you shaking up to potentially fail or possibly find everything you’ve always been looking for?
Picture a gremlin, laughing because he’s getting everything he wanted and holding you back so he stays safe, and you never achieve your wildest dreams. That’s what fear is.
Shut that fear gremlin off and to pursue everything you’re dreaming of in the biggest, baddest way.
Sarah Centrella
Sarah is a bestselling author who looks at vision boarding in a very different way.
A lot of us do the sixth-grade girl thing where you cut out magazine pictures and write “inspire,” “happy,” “love,” and “wealth” on a board. Until you’re clear on how you’ll get the love, wealth, the trip to Paris, you can’t expect it to happen. In her future boarding process, Sarah talks about dreaming big and strategically making plans to get there.
Surprisingly, the biggest takeaway from Sarah didn’t have a lot to do with vision boards. She opened her presentation by sharing that years ago, she had a feeling in her gut that something wasn’t right. She started to suspect that her husband wasn’t being faithful.
One day he came home from work and got in the shower. Something in her gut said to look at his phone, left in the pocket of the pants she was supposed to wash. When she pulled it out, there was this text message: “I can’t wait until your wife is out of the picture, and you’re mine, all mine.” Sarah ripped open the shower curtain and told him to get out and don’t come back. He didn’t argue with her, just took his ring off, left it on the counter, and bounced. She was now a single stay-at-home mom with three kids who just kicked out the family breadwinner.
During the Q and A, a Thriver asked if Sarah thought her husband regrets that he cheated on her. She replied with, “I don’t know if he regrets it or not, and honestly, I don’t care because, for me, it was such a great gift. Even at that moment, I was able to say this is the turning point. Everything happens for a reason, and this marriage fell apart so that something better could come together, and oh my gosh, did it.”
Sarah is now living this big, beautiful dream life full of happiness. She can create this incredible life for her children.
When something bad happens, we feel like it’s doomsday, and everything is falling apart. Instead, be like Sarah and choose to be grateful and say thank you because, for whatever reason, this situation needs to unfold so you can live your biggest, best life.
Tonya Dalton
We all know FOMO, but Tonya Dalton coined the term JOMO with her book, The Joy of Missing Out.
Do you suffer from mom, spouse, son, or daughter guilt where you feel like you are supposed to be all places all the time? And if you’re not, you’re a failure?
Tonya says you will find so much more joy by saying a whole lot more “no.”
During her keynote, Tonya shared that productivity isn’t about doing everything. It’s about doing the right things with incredible focus.
If you are saying if your social media pictures were better, if you got more referrals, if your owner wasn’t such a jerk, then you’d be successful, guess what?
None of that is true. You are wasting time on things that do not matter.
If you work behind the chair five or more 12 hour days a week, what are you doing? You are no more successful than stylists who work the chair with focus two or three days a week. Some stylists work two days a week and make close to six figures. How many of you are working five or more days a week wishing you could get there? The reason these stylists have done it is because they work with tremendous focus. That is what it takes.
Tonya said so often we think the harder we work, the more successful we’ll be, but it’s not true. The more focused you are on the right things, the more successful you’ll be today.
Jasmine Star
Jasmine is the co-founder of Social Curator and teaches social media strategy and actually creating a business using social media. Our top takeaway from her keynote was how she – as a guest – looks at stylists’ profiles.
She pulled up some Instagram profiles and pictures in real-time and dissected them. Jasmine pulled apart a bio as an example, which mentioned that stylist’s brand affiliations, hair extensions, love of dogs, and raspberry lemonade with a link to their website.
As a guest, Jasmine didn’t care about any of that.
Your extension brand, the award you won at some hair show, the brand you’re associated with means nothing to her as a guest. When she looks at your bio as a guest, she should know who you are and if she will resonate with your personality. That’s it.
90% of clients don’t know that award, that brand, or what those affiliations mean. You’re speaking stylist when you waste that prime bio real estate with nonsense like that. It might impress other stylists, but it is not doing a dang thing to build your clientele.
Use that beautiful bio space to attract a client. Talk to them. Tell them if their extensions will look pretty or be expensive. They don’t know about the rest.
Think about if you’re speaking as a client or stylist when writing your bio.
Stacy Tuschl
Stacy is the host of The Foot Traffic podcast, where she coaches brick and mortar business owners to grow and scale their business. She wants you to work smarter, not harder, by using modern marketing and scalability.
Stacy is the absentee owner of a highly successful brick and mortar local small business. She has a phone meeting with her business representatives weekly, goes to the building once a month, and draws a salary every month.
When asked how she knew she empowered the right people and trained them to grow into their roles, Stacy said, “You hit the keyword when you said training. I didn’t hope that people would come in and just figure it out. I spent years meticulously training for every single role that’s in there.”
If you complain that good help is hard to find or don’t understand why you can’t find a good social media manager, look at your training program. Do you have a training manual and calendar, an FAQ, and written down processes, policies, and written warnings? If you don’t, don’t be surprised when it doesn’t scale to allow you to step away.
Lori Harder
In her Thrivers Society Live keynote, Lori Harder talked about the beauty, finding the right tribe, and her incredible book A Tribe Called Bliss.
The big word that came up when Lori’s presentation was vulnerability. Do you have friendships where you can’t get real, where if you share that things aren’t going well, you’ll be judged, or they’ll slowly back away because they don’t know how to handle it?
That’s not friends, and that’s not your tribe. Those are low-quality relationships. Through Lori’s keynote, she shared how to become more vulnerable and find those who are willing to open up to you.
Another big takeaway from Lori is that you will never find one person to be your everything. If you expect your partner to be your biggest fan, shoulder to cry on, support system, and drinking buddy, you’re putting the weight of the world on their shoulders.
Instead of expecting one person to be everything, curate multiple amazing relationships, so when you’re having a hard time or want a night in, you have someone to call. Cultivate a tribe around you to serve all of your needs without putting the pressure of being everything on any one person.
Everybody who took the stage at Thrivers Society Live 2020 brought their A-game and shed new light on every element of being in the beauty industry today. We are so thankful and grateful that you said yes to being on the stage.