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 you guys? Britt Seva here, back with another podcast by request.
So I recently did an episode for you guys where I talked about different options within the industry. If you’re thinking about making a change, this is a really incredible time of opportunity. If you want to double down as a stylist and literally become the top stylist in your city, this is the time. Even if you’re like, “ah, no Britt, I’m in California or another state where things are still shut down.”
This is the time — I have said for years that big, huge, amazing businesses are built in the gaps. It is so hard to break into any market. When business is booming, when stuff is easy — does anybody follow Gary Vaynerchuk? He’s somebody I’ve followed from time to time and what he always says is everybody wants to be an entrepreneur when it’s easy, when it feels light, when it feels effortless, when you can kind of YOLO it. We have good days and bad days and it’s all good.
But it’s when the S hits the fan that true success can be found, because those who really have what it takes to carve out their place do twice the work when times get tough. That’s how I’m built. I can’t help. I can’t help it. There’s just no other way for me.
And for those of you who were like, “This is my time, man. I’m going to be the best salon owner in my city. I’m going to be the best stylist in my city.” You believe me? I can’t wait to have you on my podcast in a year when you’re like, “Oh my business boomed through the pandemic. I can’t wait to talk to you about it,” because I see you.
I watch you guys on social media and it’s already happening for some of you. And so to you guys, I want to congratulate you. I hope to welcome you into Thrivers in the fall if you’re not already there so I can continue celebrating all of your success.
But for some of you, you at a different crossroads, you might be somebody who has been considering being an educator, or maybe you are an educator, but you haven’t really found the level of success that you’re looking for. And I want to help y’all for a minute.
If you’re in Thrivers Society Elite, you know I had a little treat for you guys at our digital summit that we hosted at the beginning of this month. I brought in my speaking coach, Colin Boyd, to talk about becoming an effective educator and the tips he shares so your message can be delivered as effectively as possible, so your messaging always results in sales, and business growth, and development, and all of those beautiful things.
Well, even if you’re not in Thrivers Society Elite, we have a little treat because Colin is teaching a free training coming up this month and you can register for it now. So if you want to learn from my speaking coach, the guy who taught me how to craft my perfect webinar, deliver keynotes from stage, and develop my signature message, you have got to head to bit.ly/brittcolin to sign up for a free week of training hosted by my speaking coach, Colin Boyd.
He is a dear friend of mine. If you were at Thrivers live, you know, he was in the audience. I gave him a big shout out from stage. He’s been a huge part of why I have found so much success as an educator. So if you know stepping away from the chair in the next year and doubling down on being an educator is where your goals are at this is a program you’re going to want to check out.
Now I’ve had Colin on the podcast a few months back so you may recognize his voice if you sign up for his free training, but I haven’t really shared any more details about how we’ve been working together until now.
Colin has been coaching me for going on four years, which went by so fast. He’s helped me to refine my professional speaking skills, develop my messaging, master webinars, and effectively educate students through varied learning styles. What I love about him is he doesn’t think that everybody learns in the same way and I agree.
He has really effective ways of selling without selling, teaching almost without teaching, like teaching through entertainment. His methodologies really resonate with me and if you like the way I teach, you’d probably really like Colin too.
If you are interested, I recommend signing up for his free training bit.ly/brittcolin.
But I want to share with you today the tips I’d recommend if you are looking to either grow your business as an educator or begin an education business in the next six months.
Step one for me, whether you are an existing educator or you’re considering becoming one, is to determine your niche and target market. I’m going to be totally candid: this is something that I see a lot of educators doing wrong. They’ve determined something either too broad or too narrow and it becomes very difficult to scale if either is your problem.
I want you to answer these questions: Who is it that you work with? Who do you help?
For me, I got this wrong. When I started, I said, I coach stylists, salon owners, spa owners, nail technicians, tanning professionals. I do it all. If you just do skincare, I’m here for you. Lashes, yes. Permanent makeup. Yes, I do it all.
It wasn’t until I pulled back on that and just stayed in my own lane and said, “I only work with hairstylists and salon owners” did I find tremendous success. Could I have continued to stay broad and done well? Maybe, but it would have probably taken me a lot longer.
That’s not to say you can’t do that. You can totally coach all of those areas. For me, what I found was it wasn’t my area of expertise, which is key point number two.
So number one is who do you work with? Number two is what is your area of expertise?
I do all the things, I solve all the problems. Nope. Then you’re a generalist. Nobody wants to work with that guy. What is your area of expertise? What is it exactly that you do? What problem do you solve?
Which brings us to point number three: What pain point do you resolve? People are not going to be willing to pay for your coaching if you don’t give them relief from their pain — Cool ideas? Nope, people aren’t willing to pay for that. You need to solve a problem.
What pain point do you resolve with your coaching and are you clearly expressing that pain point in all that you do? When I say in all that you do, I mean the way you post on social media, the way you show up on video, the way you use email marketing, the way you do your blog, the way I look at your website, if you’re not speaking to pain all over the place, you’re probably doing it wrong.
What is the pain point that you resolve? Is that pain point something people are willing to pay for? This is tough because I’ve seen a lot of really brilliant educators be like, “Oh my gosh, I want to coach to this thing that I see so many stylists struggle with, but no one’s willing to pay for it, right?” It’s like, “Oh, that’s such an annoying problem.”
What freebie do you have? There’s a real difference between stuff that makes a good freebie and stuff that people are willing to pay for. It’s important if you’re going to decide to be an educator to say, “What can I teach that nobody else is teaching that somebody is willing to pay for?”
Because that’s when you find that sweet spot.
And then I ask you, is the niche you’ve chosen shallow? Deep? This is another thing that I see that’s really common with educators. Their depth of knowledge is very shallow sometimes, and that’s actually okay. You can find pretty tremendous success with a shallow depth of knowledge.
Like if you’re only really good at one technique, that’s cool, but then you need to drown the market in that technique. I’m going to hope that technique is something that nobody else is teaching to, that you can really hold onto and take a grip on.
Let me give you an example. When we think about somebody with a more shallow niche, a really good example is Jack Martin. He is wildly talented and I’m not saying his knowledge is shallow. I’m saying he’s chosen a very niche down specialty.
What does he do? If I ask any of you, what does Jack Martin do? He helps women to beautifully go gray, right? He does other things like, even if you look on his social media, he does other work, but 95% of what he shows is going back to natural, allowing women to grow gray hair out gracefully, right? That is what he is best known for. He has really niched down. He doesn’t try and do a million things.
When you try and pick something that you can go deep on, like somebody who teaches lots of different methods of extensions. There’s a lot of depth to that, right? Because it’s like peeling an onion, right? There’s “Oh my gosh, and then there’s this one, and this one, and this one, and that one.”
Well, with teaching women how to naturally go gray, I mean, my gosh, that’s a complex topic, but that’s it. That’s what you’d go to him for, right?
So decide, is this something that you are going to be a specialist in one very, very, very specific thing? Or can you choose a topic that there are layers of an onion then you can continue to teach, to just be really clear on what it is that you want to be known for. And is it layered or is it really finite that you are a specialist in this one very specific thing?
Number two, start by taking one-on-one clients and refining your craft. This is the step that I most often see missed. It is so tempting to want to scale right away.
Remember when we were in beauty school and we’re like, “Oh my gosh, sweet. I take my state boards on May 27th. I’m going to make a $100,000 by December 31st. It’s like we want it all and we want it right now. And we think we’re just to get in there, hand out referral cards, and it’s just going to boom.
It’s the same thing when you think you’re going to become an educator. You think it’s going to happen quickly. It is not. It takes quite a bit of time.
So what I suggest is that you start by taking one-on-one clients and refining your craft. For me, I did one-on-one clients for three years before I attempted to go digital.
Do you have to do it for three years? No, but I suggest you do it for one. Why? It is 100,000 times easier, okay?
I promise you, if you speak to any established educator, they will tell you the same. (We’re going to talk about why in a little bit.) So what I would do is I would start showing up on social media by adding value to your followers’ feeds daily, speak to pain points. Don’t give away your best tips for free.
If you’re in Thrivers Society, you know I don’t teach anything Thrivers publicly. If you’re not in Thrivers Society, you don’t learn any of those strategies. You could follow me on Instagram, listen to every episode of my podcast, go back and watch Facebook Lives. I never teach Thrivers for free, right? I keep them my best stuff locked up, but I have plenty of stuff to teach for free and I teach it liberally.
Often that’s what you gotta do. Add value to your followers’ lives each and every day. So if you see me now, you probably can catch me four or five times a week, right? Between Instagram, Facebook, the podcast, and things like that. If you’re in Thrivers Society, we have additional coaching calls, and my Monday messages, and all of that kind of stuff, right? Great.
When I first started in 2015, 2016, I did a live video every single day. I probably did 360 a year. Sometimes I would do two. That is how it starts. You have to flood your market with your message and you can do it in a lot of different ways. You can do it with paid advertising. You can do it with video. You can do it with social media posts, YouTube. I mean, there’s a million different things.
But yeah, you need to produce content at volume, especially when you’re starting, right? Start offering free webinars that offer your one-on-one coaching services on the backend instead of feeding into a course or program.
I’m famous for hosting webinars with no pitch where I don’t try and sell anything at all. All I’m trying to do is that value. For me, I want to become somebody who is a trusted voice in the industry, and it doesn’t always have to lead to a sale.
Yeah, sometimes that’s not a part of how it goes. So if you can take your time and practice doing some webinars without the pressure to sell on the backend practice, doing some webinars where you are not selling a course that took you a year to create and you invested all this time and energy, and you only made three sales.
Raise your hand if you’ve been that guy. It’s painful. It’s really frustrating because it takes so much time and energy. If you instead take this time to add value, to show up frequently, to do some webinars that just lead into one-on-one coaching, you’ll find a lot more success faster. You’ll be able to build some trust with those that you work with on a more in-depth level and you’ll learn a lot more about your specialty, what you do want to coach to, and what you don’t to coach to.
Because here’s the real talk: It takes years to develop a course or membership properly. If you’re listening to this and you have a course, your membership, and you think it’s going to be like, “Oh my gosh, no big deal,” it’s this huge undertaking. I mean, hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of time dedicated, and then you do the hope-and-pray and cross your fingers that enough people are going to invest, that you’re going to recoup that investment of time, which is major.
So if you’re able to start, yeah, with one-on-one coaching, you often make more revenue to start and that revenue can see your efforts to create a membership or a course or a program if that is what you do.
So what I would do is take a year. Coach one-on-one. Use that time to refine your messaging, cut your teeth with webinars, and create a manageable workflow for yourself.
Because the reality is, when I look at most educators, they stay behind the chair for two to three years before going fully into education. I know I did. I worked two jobs for almost four years before being able to become a full time educator. It takes time.
And if you speak to any independent educator, it was not an overnight success. Having a plan to put in the time is going to be crucial.
My next tip is to hire a business coach and listen, I’m the queen of DIY. I can DIY till the cows come home. I can figure out anything myself. I’m a Google master. I love a training, right?
It isn’t until you hire a business coach that everything changes for you. I wasted a lot of time taking stabs in the dark. In the past four years, I’ve actually had four business coaches. There’s a couple that I’ve talked about more frequently than others. I’ve had a mindset coach, a leadership coach, a business organization coach, and a speaking and presentation coach. I’m currently working with three of the four of those right now.
Coaching is a huge part of how you’re able to find tremendous business success. What I’d suggest you do when you start looking for that coaching is to think about what you need the most as an educator.
I suggest finding a coach or a mentor that can help you to turn your big ideas into an actual plan. Because, let me guess if you’ve been an educator already, you’ve got a good concept. You’ve seen some success, but you’re not seeing the level of results you’re looking. Did I nail it? Right? So if you’re in something like a program like Thrivers Elite, right? If you’re in Thrivers Society, I don’t coach having an educator at all. That’s not part of the framework. Thrivers Society is to teach you how to become a multi-six-figure stylist while working part time, right? Scaling your schedule back, turning marketing on autopilot and maximizing revenue. That’s what Thrivers Society is for. I don’t teach you how to become an educator in that program.
If you’re in Thrivers Elite, I do a bit of coaching for educators, right? I’ll talk to you about how to find your gap in the industry, getting your messaging clear on social, showing up with solid content, giving you some mental breakthroughs is what I’ve been doing in Thrivers Elite.
You’ve probably heard me educate on becoming an educator several times. I’ve talked about it a lot over the years. I never coached to creating effective webinars, or crafting keynotes, or making a workshop, or being booked by brands to facilitate programs. I’ve done all of those things. It’s just not something I coach to. I’ve left that to the experts up until this point. For something like that, you’d want to work with somebody like Colin, right? Or find another educator influencer who’s a good fit for you.
Colin’s been a really good fit for me, which is why I’m referring you guys to his training. I think he’s incredible.
Let’s sum it all up. Take this time to refine who it is you work with and what it is you offer. Offer one-on-one coaching for a year. That’s my suggestion.
And in that time show up every single day with high value content, hire a coach who is able to help work through some of the challenges with you. Don’t offer a course or membership for a full year. Trust me, you will invest so much time, energy, and effort for very little payout if you don’t do it the other way around.
Take that year to refine your skills, get some webinars under your belt. Believe you, me, they are harder than you think they’re going to be. Get your social media clear, carve out your spot in the industry, build a reputation.
Can I tell you what is painful? Is presenting a webinar to an empty room. You put in all this time and effort and 17 people show up. Oh, it’s like a punch in the gut.
And oftentimes you’ve spent four or five, six, $7,000 to fill that webinar room. 17 people show up. It hurts. I want to save you from that pain and instead encourage you to head this direction so you can build out that market for yourself.
You can use that time to coach one-on-one. Do small workshops for salons; just hold off on that digital training piece until you’ve got the messaging, right?
If you know that stepping away from the chair and refining your craft as an educator is your what’s next, like you’re like, “I want to be out of the salon in the next 365 days,” I want you to check out bit.ly/brittcolin to hang out with my really good friend, Colin Boyd, as he walks you through his full methodology over the course of one short week.
You guys, if you were starting your journey as an educator or refining an existing journey, I am here cheering you on. If you were a stylist who continues to seek me out for advice on building a small town, a large community, or you’re ready to just make more while working less, I am so here for you. You guys, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
