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, and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Britt Seva, really excited this week because I’m not alone.
This week, I’m joined by a woman I’m very proud to call a friend, Lori Harder. Lori is one of the most accomplished, most humble women I’ve ever met. We met for the first time when she took the stage at Thrivers Society Live 2020 and she just brought the house down.
Lori is a transformational speaker, Forbes top 18 female-led podcast host, number one bestselling author, and thought leader. She helps people lock in their transformations by teaching how to create long-lasting relationships that support their long term goals as a successful entrepreneur, running two seven-figure businesses.
Yes, this woman is highly accomplished. She’s a network marketing professional, a TEDx speaker, a 10 time cover model, and at three time fitness world champion. She offers a carefully curated set of practical tools to promote sustainable health, spiritual well being, and emotional thriving. She’s the creator of the top 100 Earn Your Happy podcast—which if you’re not already subscribed, Earn Your Happy, that is a podcast I don’t miss. Ever. She’s amazing. Subscribe now—with over 15 million downloads, I know you’re going to love it.
She’s the founder of the Bliss Project, bestselling author of A Tribe Called Bliss, and just recently launched an incredible premium seltzer wine brand called Lite Pink. You guys, I tried it myself, I am completely obsessed.
This brand is revolutionary and it’s so in line with what Lori does. She sees one idea and takes it to another level. She’s incredibly innovative. She’s one of those women who’s done it all, yet is still so humble and will empower you to do the same.
You guys, I’m honored to have Lori on the show this week. I know you’re going to love her as much as I do. Enjoy!
Britt: Lori, thank you so much for making the time today. I know you’re on an epic journey right now. I’m just so honored to have you here. Thank you for being here with us on the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
Lori: I’m so excited to be here with all of you. And yes, I am— if you know how people picture where you’re at when you’re on a podcast, well, just picture I’m locked in the back of an RV on the side of a road truck stop. It’s going to be amazing. This is going to be inspiration central. We’re going to crank it up.
Britt: A hundred percent. We always do. So for those of us who don’t know you yet, which I can’t believe anybody wouldn’t, but if anybody who’s listening to this hasn’t met my friend Lori Harder, can you tell us a little bit about what you do and who you are today? We’re going to go back in time, but what are you up to right now?
Lori: Oh my gosh. So we will put all of those puzzle pieces together, but right now, I am starting an alcohol company. We also have a nonalcoholic rosé that we’re doing. It is a light wine-based seltzer and it is all about giving back to female entrepreneurs.
I really wanted something that met women where they are connecting at and I wanted to be able to elevate that experience they’re having right now, because I don’t know about you, but I have left so many events or networking events or even like girls nights where I’m either a little too buzzy, or I ate too much food, or I drank like way more than I wanted to. And I didn’t actually get that soul connection or the answer that I went in looking for. I just kept on asking the question, “How could I connect these women better? How could we really change the conversation and help them get the answers that they needed?”
And you might be wondering how in the hell do you do that with a cocktail company, but we’ve added three questions on the back of the cans and really all I’m meant to help guide you and facilitate you in a deeper conversation. Which goes back to how I started in my career was connecting women, doing women’s events, doing a lot of different speaking, writing books about you can’t do this alone, you really have to find your tribe.
And what does that look like? Like what are all the things that come up when we enter into these friendships and business relationships? So it’s really like the 101 on really learning how to connect and network and really get what we came for.
Britt: Oh, you’re just so amazing. And I’ll be honest, when you first told me about Lite Pink, your alcohol brand, I thought, “I don’t know, connection over rosé? Like we all know we have connection over rosé,” but in the way that you described it, where you could actually create community around something and spark conversation, which spoke to my introvert heart, I was hopeful, but I didn’t quite get it. And as I’ve seen it roll out, it’s phenomenal. Like you are creating a new niche that we didn’t even know we needed, that we desperately need. Your timing is perfect and I just can’t wait to see where this goes.
But of course, like you alluded to, this isn’t where you started and you have really evolved. So let’s go back in time now. Can we go back to Lori, either graduating high school or young adult trying to decide what you wanted to do and where you wanted to be and what your first professional moves look like?
Lori: Oh my God. Well, I was just like a hot mess. My graduating high school—I was actually homeschooled through high school, so I never officially had those moments. I was living in a really small town in upper Michigan. Most people don’t even know that Michigan has an upper portion to it that’s totally separate, so essentially Canada. I was just surviving, like I was really just trying to figure out life. I was raised in a more restrictive religion.
So the whole meaning behind why I love to connect women is because I did not really have friends growing up. I had a lot of trouble making friends in my twenties because in that religion I grew up and I was not allowed to associate with people outside of the religion. Now imagine being from a really small town and only having two or three girls who you got to hang out with and they really didn’t get to do much either. And if they weren’t your jam, then you were left to do things alone a lot of the time.
I was already introverted, and then being homeschooled through high school, and not really having people to choose from, I did everything alone.
I started telling myself the story as a protective mechanism that I’m better off alone. So everything I would do, whether it was different friendships or whatever that looked like, I would keep to myself and not share in self-sabotage and end up being alone again because that’s the story that I told myself. Like whether I was building a business or when I got into the fitness world and was competing in fitness competitions, I just did it all by myself.
And while eventually I was able to start achieving different things in the fitness industry in my early thirties—won a bunch of competitions, I opened a gym, different things like that. While all of a sudden I understood that, “Wow, achieving things gets you this love or this fake friendship.” I didn’t understand it wasn’t really built on lasting back then.
So then you can imagine someone who didn’t have that attention, or friendship, or whatever that was that I was missing growing up, I got really addicted to achievement and I was doing that all alone. What ended up happening is I started to think that the only time I had that feeling of connection with people or attention was when I was achieving.
So I started achieving even more, got super burnt out, and then I found myself just at the height of my career the most lonely I have ever been in my entire life. No energy, didn’t want to do anything ‘cause I just felt so lonely and isolated because of the stories I was telling myself. And that’s really when I was like “There’s gotta be a better way. There’s gotta be women who feel like this out there.”
That’s when I had started my event called The Bliss Project, did that for about eight years. It’s an annual event where 500 women come every year and it’s really all about connection, and finding a connection, and teaching how to have relationships and work together and where we get blocked and where is it that stops us. What is the story about friendship and business and life that we’re telling ourselves that we need to break through? That is how the cocktail company came about because that was my early, early start.
Britt: Oh, so amazing and you brought up so many things for me. I mean, whenever I talk to you, I almost have this visceral reaction because I feel like you’re describing me. I just so relate to what you’re saying.
It is incredibly difficult to connect with women for a lot of us—maybe not for all of us, but for me as well. I would sabotage relationships and convince myself I was better off alone, and I too am addicted to achievement.
I think a lot of the men and women listening to this podcast are built the same way and it can be so isolating and intimidating to try and connect. You have just made it so possible and doable and continue to break down the walls. I’m just so thankful that you’re on this path and on this mission.
The other thing that you touched on that I don’t want to let pass is you said your career really started taking off in your early thirties and I have to stop there for a second because so many of my listeners feel like they’re like 25 or maybe 30 or 35, and it’s too late. Like somehow they’ve missed the bus, which is wild. And you and I share the same story. I didn’t find any level of success until I had graduated and gone through a journey and walked the walk a little bit and had some major failures. And it’s like now we continue to find the next level.
Do you feel like there is some kind of age cap on success or do you feel like you almost have to go through some failures to find your true north or to find that true happiness?
Lori: I think it’s impossible to not fail. I think that it is a part of it and one of the most important parts. I really call failure just a process of elimination. Truly it’s just like that didn’t work, let’s reroute, let’s try something else. Or let’s enter this in a new energy or with new beliefs or with new people. Or it’s really understanding what didn’t work without me failing as many times as I do.
I mean, that’s what I’m doing through this whole company. I’m just in the process of elimination. I’m failing here. I’m failing there. I’m asking as many questions as I can. It’s so important ‘cause you don’t learn lessons in the wins.
You don’t. You do not learn the important lessons in the wins. You learn the important lessons in what did not work, and what to look out for, and what didn’t feel good, and what made you exhausted. What is it that you can’t sustain for the next one? I think those are such important things.
Is there an age limit on it? Oh my God, no. My twenties were, so I was making up for a childhood that I felt like I didn’t live. All of my twenties were just figuring life out. Oh my gosh.
I’ll make everybody just feel so much better. I worked as a receptionist at a hair salon for a while. I worked at a drive-through coffee shop. I worked in a LA Fitness where I made $6 per 30 minute session and hustled my ass off for a really long time. I worked at an Ulta Beauty where I randomly talked about makeup and sometimes did people’s makeup. I was so floundering and I didn’t believe in myself.
I will tell you one of the best things that ever happened to me was in the recession. My husband lost his job and he was the main breadwinner. He lost his job. We lost our home. We lost our cars. We were $300,000 in debt. Up until that point my belief had been, “I have anxiety. I have panic attacks. ‘m not smart enough. I’m not educated. I didn’t go to college. I was homeschooled. I’m not going to be able to apply for that job because they want X, Y, and Z experience. I’m not gonna be able to apply for that other job because I get panic attacks. I can’t speak in front of people. I’m not a leader.”
This legit is 1000000% more true than you can imagine. I believe this so much that I did have panic attacks on the regular, massive anxiety attacks. I was on all the medications you can imagine. I was on five different medications at different points and it wasn’t until we lost everything that I said, “Nothing’s going to change. You have to face this. If you do not face this, this is going to be your life.” I allowed myself to go down the journey of if I don’t change and I don’t face this, what is my life’s going to look like?
Really quickly, my first stop was, “You’re going to ruin your marriage. You’re going to sabotage your marriage because you’re already becoming this whiny, blaming person who’s like, ‘I can’t do that. I can’t do that.’”
My husband’s very much an ownership person and he’s like, “You gotta piss or get off the pot. This is ridiculous. You’re just telling yourself a story and you’re not even trying.” While that was challenging to hear from the person you seek comfort in, it was also the best thing I could ever hear. I got extremely, obviously pissed at him, in a huge fight after that. He’s like, “I’m not gonna listen to this anymore,” and it was the best thing that could’ve ever happened to me.
Between losing everything and doing that because I had to start facing my fears. The first three years of facing my fears and starting to do a little bit of public speaking, even in front of 10 or 20 people, it was horrendous. I would cry. I would feel like I was gonna throw up the whole time. I literally would have rather jumped out of an airplane than done any of that stuff. But the pain got so severe and intense around being uncomfortable about not living into my potential. And it got so intense. If I really believe these stories of anxiety, and fear, and my family’s poor, and we went bankrupt X amount of times growing up, and that’s why I have this bad money mindset. Like I had to look at all of my shit and face it. And that is not a fun spot to be.
Britt: I love that. As you’re talking about that, I can almost see the tears rolling down my listeners’ faces because I think many of us have walked that walk. And to hear that you walked through the fire and had a partner who was able to have some real talk with you and that you were both able to navigate this time and come to the other side, I think really gives a lot of us hope.
One of the things you talk about and you coach to is creating powerful connections. How do you facilitate powerful connections in your life that help you to walk that walk and go through those journeys? And do you have any markers for healthy relationships?
I know I can only speak for myself, I had welcomed some very unhealthy people into my life and only learned the lesson many years into the relationship. How do you ensure you’re surrounding yourself with great people like your husband and supportive women and people who are able to lift you up without any jealousy attached or anything else? How are you able to cultivate these really healthy relationships?
Lori: That is such a great question and it takes so much work and it takes time, but what’s going to happen is one day, three years from now or five years from now, you’re going to wake up and it’s going to blow your mind what you’re able to accomplish with these people and who you have in your life.
So, first of all, I just want to say, be patient. For me, even the original girlfriends that I started getting in my early thirties, that took some time.
It’s not easy to cultivate relationships because true connection takes vulnerability. That means you have to share things you don’t want to share and trust them that they’re gonna nurture you and whatever it is that you just said and comfort you, and guess what? That doesn’t always happen. Sometimes relationships fail. Sometimes they use it against you. They stab you in the back and gossip about you.
There’s no way to learn who those people are until you’ve gone through some relationships like that. So you can’t go into it, like “This person could use this against me.” Of course you’re going to close up. You’re not going to share things with them. You have to be really open and you have to feel it out and you have to be like,”Does this feel safe right now? Does this person feel trustworthy? What is their track record?” and then you have to go all in.
It’s like dating, right? Like you can’t bring your ex-boyfriend into your new relationship that’s healthy because what’s going to happen is every time something comes up that triggers you, you’re going to throw what happened in the past into the present and that’s not the reality.
So you’re going to think like, “Well, my old boyfriend cheated on me, so now I just expect you to cheat.” Well, if that’s the energy you’re going in with and you start to push people away, you essentially could create this reality of having someone cheat on you because you all of a sudden close off. You start getting mean, you start pushing them away, and then what happens to the other person? They don’t feel connected. They find connection somewhere else.
It’s this really bizarre cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy. We can almost self-fulfill a prophecy that’s positive. So what we can do is lean in and then test it out, get a bit vulnerable, pull back a little bit. Meaning just your comfort zone. Lean in, like assess. We’re just assessing “Is this safe? Does this still feel safe? Have they done things to keep my trust or to lose my trust? Is this relationship good enough? Or is this a relationship that I want to keep? So am I now willing to have a tough conversation about what line or boundary I felt was crossed? And maybe I didn’t express that that was a line or boundary and I need to.”
Relationships are the most challenging thing in the world and also the most rewarding because they have so many layers. A lot of the times, the layers can all point back to us and something we need to work on.
Maybe we didn’t have a boundary. Maybe we thought they knew we liked to be texted once a week. And this person’s love language is not to communicate in that way, right? There’s so many things that we need to be clear on. Like I said, boundaries, expectations, not taking things personal, being willing to have tough conversations. Knowing that at the end of the day, they could give you all of their best advice in the world, but if it doesn’t sit well with you, that’s advice that maybe you should not have taken in the first place and you took it against your own better judgment.
So we could go down the entire rabbit hole of that. But I think what makes a good relationship is just the willingness to go all in and keep on assessing and leaning in.
Britt: I love that. And there is—I got to tell you, Lori, there’s something about the way you communicate. I’ve watched you work a room a little bit and I noticed you walk into conversations and relationships with an open heart. Not necessarily with your guard down, but like you are open. You don’t have a suitcase of crap you’re bringing with you. It’s like you’re open to seeing where the relationship evolves and I love that you give yourself permission. Like, listen, if I’m getting red flags or signals that this isn’t going, well, the boundaries going to go up or I’m going to distance myself, but you walk in open-minded with the best of intentions. So like you said, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy and you’re going to continue to surround yourself with really incredible people.
Now, if you start to create a relationship and somebody is doing something that you don’t like or you’re starting to feel pushback, like you were texting every day and then all of a sudden they’re not responding to you. And you’re starting to respond back and you’re like, “Hey, are you okay?” and you’re getting mixed signals, what do you do in a situation like that?
Do you reach out and say, “Hey, I feel like something’s off. What’s up?” Or what is your process for navigating if you feel like a relationship is going sideways or maybe you’ve crossed a boundary? How do you broach that conversation?
Lori: This is such an important question, right? Because this is where our relationship will collapse. It’s either you’re either going to say something about it if you’ve got a resentment or a worry, or you have to make peace with yourself and that it’s like, “It’s okay. It’s probably all in my head.”
If you decide it’s on your head, let’s say you have a friend who’s really busy or there’s a lot going on and it’s been two weeks since communication. Maybe you were tying up a loose end or finishing something. Now for me, I would probably shoot over a text and be like, “Hey, could we just jump on a call? I want to make sure everything’s all good. I haven’t heard from you in a few weeks. If you just need space, awesome. Just give me a heads up.”
Like just let me know if I still don’t hear from them, then sometimes I’ll be like, “You know what? I’m going to wait a little longer and give them the benefit of the doubt,” because I know that when a lot has been going on in my life, sometimes what we do is, the people who we love the most, those are the people who get pushed off the easiest because they know that we’ll still love them.
So sometimes I’ll be like, “You know what? I’m going to let this one go because it feels okay to me.” You have to assess it, right? If it doesn’t feel good and you’re like, “No, I’m not feeling like this is being treated well,” you have to decide and that’s a conversation to have with them.
If you’re like, “You know what? I’m not worried about it. I feel pretty solid in this relationship. We’re just going to, let this play out. They can circle back to me when they’re ready ‘cause I can only imagine how busy they are,” or whatever that looks like.
If it’s something that I absolutely need or something that needs to be answered, I will 100% go in, circle back again with that asterisk of just like, “Hey, I’m just on a deadline for this” or, “Hey, I’m worried about you. Just give me a little heads up or a check-in whenever you get the chance, just to let me know that we’re all good or you’re OK.”
Different things like that, at the end of the day, I have to ask myself which one is going to ultimately give me peace in the end. Like which one is gonna give me peace in the end? And what do I need to do to still meet my requirement of getting peace in the end even if the answer is not the answer that I would want.
If you don’t get an answer back from them, what are you now going to do to get peace within yourself? What story do you have to start telling yourself, what do you have to start detaching from? What do you need to start letting go of or making peace with, even if it didn’t end the way that you want?
This is the hardest thing that you’ll do with relationships. I’ve had a couple female relationships endwhere it did not end the way I wanted it. We could not see eye to eye. I did not feel like they were listening or seeing my perspective, and no matter how much I went back and tried to explain myself, it was making it worse. There was a point where I was like, “This is not going to get better.” Like I could just see it spiraling even worse, the more lighter fluid I would throw on it.
Lighter fluid doesn’t have to be negative. It can just be the more energy you give to it, meaning explaining yourself, apologizing. If it’s getting worse, that means you need to pull back, like you literally need to pull back and start thinking about you and your peace of mind.
For me, I was like, “This is legit awful.” They were spreading rumors, it was like getting worse. And the more things I would say to apologize, the more they would use that. It was just going completely sideways, like you were saying, and so that was a point, this is probably about six years ago now, but that was the worst thing that’s ever happened in a friendship or relationship in my life. And also the best, because now I can see where I didn’t speak up. I can see where expectations were completely different. I can see where the red flags were what type of friendships they choose and have in their life. I can see what role they play in relationships now.
There’s always a part of us that’s being fed by the relationship and sometimes it’s not a great part, right? Sometimes it’s not the part that’s the positive part in your life or the part that’s going to make you want to run through a wall in a positive way towards your goals. Sometimes there’s a weird part of us that it’s feeding something that maybe we’re addicted to.
Like it’s feeding drama, it’s feeding the fact that we’re addicted to anxiety or addicted to guilt. Or maybe we grew up with a lot of that and it’s familiar, right? We have to really, really watch like, “Wow, what is this relationship feeding that I’m kind of addicted to? Am I the person who’s always like waiting for the other shoe to drop or for something to go wrong? And I’m fulfilling my prophecy of something always going wrong by staying in this relationship?”
I’ve had relationships that almost feel too good to be true. And I have to be like, “No, this can happen. You have to let go of looking for what is wrong. You have to stop and if something comes up, you have to have the belief that you’ll work through it, no matter even if that means the friendship ends or not the simple belief of no matter what comes up, I’ll be good. You’ll be good. We’ll work through it.”
That is like such a powerful thing to carry; instead of looking like “I knew it, I knew this would happen. This is how women are, this is how people are, this is how business relationships end.” Like you cannot ever say that or have that belief because that’s an ending of something instead of taking a lesson and taking learning and moving forward into something better.
Britt: Okay, so I’ve never felt so understood. I am that woman who walks into every relationship, like, “We’ll see. I wonder how this time’s going to end.” Like it’s almost it’s doomed before it starts and what the heck is that? And I know it’s from my past and all the lessons learned and it’s like, well, it never ends well, so why should this? It is such a healing process to see the good in people and to realize, no, there are amazing women out there who are open and vulnerable and will build trust with you. And that the fact that that is possible is not something that I even fathomed until recent years. Honestly, I started cultivating healthier relationships and then started to see the potential.
I want you to talk for again for a second—because this is especially live and well within my industry—do you think that some friendships, like some friends love drama, like they almost seek it out, like the addiction to drama or gossip or misery, or do you think that some women and maybe men thrive off that, like that is what they look for in the relationship?
Lori: I mean, unfortunately 100%, yes. Because we all have a need, right? We all have a need for connection and for being seen. Like every single one of us needs love and attention, and here is the thing: If they grew up with a mother or father or sister or a teacher or aunt, uncle, whatever who sought attention, or they saw that it got attention, right, just like a crying baby or a toddler who’s being funny, they learn what gets attention. Because it’s a human need to be loved and to be seen, you’re going to get it in the form that you learned or the cheapest form.
In my late teens or early twenties, I just wanted attention from men. So instead of doing something that was—and females, obviously, but I’m just going to use this as an example—like you do it in the quickest form, which is just like, “Whatever, let’s date, let’s hang out, let’s make out. Let’s try to stand out, let’s dress sexy.” Whatever that looks like.
There’s other ways to get positive attention, but there’s the easy ways, right, that you learn really quickly. I think what can happen is in friendships too, I learned really quickly that gossiping about people in my late teens or early twenties was an easy way when I worked at different restaurants or whatever that was, to get attention.
So what do you think happens? A lot of people want to get the dirt. They want to dish the dirt and it feels like, “Oh, she knows, or they know,” so they get attention and they’re popular because they’re creating this buzz around them. And this desire like, “Ooh, you’re in the inside circle.We know things about those people and this is what we talk about,” except it’s super cheap and it’s not lasting, and it’s not built on a good foundation because I promise you if you’re talking about someone and someone else is talking about someone, it’s a matter of days or years—probably minutes, to be honest—before they’re talking about you because they always need to get that hit. And so if they don’t have the hit, they’ll create the hit.
If they don’t have the drug, they’ll create the drug, meaning they’ll just start gossiping, make something up and then it’s not a lasting thing. It certainly is one of the worst things you could ever do or hear or learn about.
I know that we’ve all gossiped about people. There may be nothing worse than when that person finds out and you just want to die. Honestly, I have a gossiping rule, like zero tolerance, unless it’s something that needs to be talked about and worked through.
What I’ll do is I’ll confide in a friend and say, “Okay, am I able to talk about a situation with someone without you having a different perspective of them? Does this feel safe to you? Because I know they may show up in your life totally different than me.”
That’s the truth. You guys, there are people who you may hate right now, who are really for gossiping or for making you feel bad or being dramatic, but they may not show up that way in other people’s lives. It could essentially be that they are showing up in your life that way for a lesson.
This is the other crazy thing you may be showing up in someone’s life as their biggest lesson, and you might be triggering them and you might be that person who’s just like a huge problem. You don’t even know it because we’re all put here, not only to learn lessons, but to be lessons. It’s not always fun to be on either side, but gossiping, truly it is an addiction and you legit have to quit cold turkey when you find yourself doing it again.
I will still once in a while, I’ll be with friends and find myself saying something, and then I’ll say, “I am so sorry I just said that. I’m going to look at this perspective and she could be going through this. This is what they could be dealing with. I have no idea and I apologize.”
Because I’m used to not gossiping. I feel so much guilt around it that it’s like, I want to just clean it up.
Britt: Yeah, I have to tell you when I was working in the salon, the running joke was Britt’s hair is full of secrets ‘cause I lived for knowing all the details. Just last week I sent a text about a mutual friend to a friend and I wasn’t intending to be gossipy. I truly wasn’t. It was a text of concern and I remember driving the next day and I was like, “Oh my gosh. If she read that text about her, she would be livid.” It made me realize that sometimes we don’t even realize we’re being gossipy or we’re fueling a negative fire when we’re just trying to communicate or bond over something. I sent her a preemptive text, I was like, “Listen, I got into a conversation with so-and-so, you came up,” I sent her a screenshot. I was like, “This is what I said. I just want to clear the air.” ‘Cause I thought, “Oh my gosh, this could totally come back to bite me unintentionally.” It’s wild how sometimes we enter into these conversations or relationships thinking it’s all good or it’s all fun, or this is the tone, and you can be really hurtful to people unintentionally. It really is a fine line.
Lori: It really is and I think that’s such a beautiful awareness to be like, “Hey, I did this and now I want to clear the air,” because if this was about me or if they found that out, just like you said, it could be the end of a relationship. I think just that acknowledgement right away, obviously you’re in that place of, “Okay, where could I be sabotaging myself?” See, it’s so crazy, ‘cause you don’t realize like, “Wow, I have this old belief of this is where it crumbles” and this is how it happens that we can do these self-sabotaging things without even realizing it.
Britt: It’s so true. It’s so true. Okay, one of the things I want to talk about is, Lori, you’re so accomplished in business. You could easily be one of the business coaches out there—there’s a gazillion business coaches out there, but one of the things you focus on is spiritual well being and emotional thriving for women.
It’s one of those things where I wish I could shake some women and be like, “We can work on your business later. You need to be spiritually well and emotionally well and fostering healthy relationships first.” Do you think that is step one? Why have you chosen to go that direction versus being like, “Let me teach you how to build your online business” or “Let me teach you how to maximize yourself as an Instagrammer”? Why have you said I need to help women mentally, emotionally, spiritually first?
Lori: Exactly what you just said because I actually think there are some—it’s like if I could write down the laws of business, they would be the laws of really taking care of yourself and your mindset. If you don’t know those first—I think we could look at every single successful business. It’s not the business that is successful. It’s the behind the scenes. It’s the person, it’s the core values. It’s the mindset. It’s the problem solver. It’s the person who’s willing to keep going when they fail. It’s the person who’s working on their relationships. It’s because all business is built on relationships.
If you can’t maintain a relationship, that means you’re having something within yourself that is—all of a sudden, if you look around and you don’t have a relationship that you’ve maintained really well or built, it’s not all the other people who are the problem. You are the problem.
That’s not a super fun spot to be, but it’s also the most powerful place, like, “Okay, what do I need to do? And who do I need to be to be the person who could have this business?” Until you’re that person, you’re never going to have that business.
It doesn’t mean that you have to be that person first. I mean, do you need to be working on that person at the same time as you are your business? It’s not like you have to go “I’m enlightened!” ‘cause I don’t think that’s even a thing.
But you do have to say what’s going to happen if you are in business and you have to make tough decisions? How are you going to handle firing someone? How are you going to handle when somebody does something wrong to you? Are you going to burn that bridge? Or are you going to know how to stay calm and make the best/worst decision?
We talk about that a lot. Like are you capable of making the best/worst decision when there are no good decisions? Are you going to be the person who’s going to move through that with grace? Doesn’t mean you don’t lose your shit in the background and cry and freak out, but can you move through it with grace? Are you the person who has the ability to pause and not fly off the handle, or not make emotional decisions? Business is a game of how much emotion can you take out of this situation and give yourself the space to wait and pause and assess from every single perspective. Because if you’re going in with one perspective, if you’re really headstrong, it’s not going to be good.
Britt: So true. I hope the leaders in the room heard that, that was powerful.
Lori, can you tell us a little bit about your mastermind? Something that my listeners are a huge fan of is the idea of getting together with a group of likeminded women and finding support and finding comradery and gaining more awareness with people who see the world the way that they do. What are some of the masterminds you’ve put together and how can my students find out more about them?
Lori: Oh, you’re amazing. This is why I love you because this is what you do with women. When I got to speak at your event, I was just like mind blown. And I hadn’t really gotten to connect with you yet, but I had gotten to connect with all of the women that you attract and I was just like, “This is amazing.”
It’s so powerful. I think it’s where all the power is, is when we connect. I love what you do.
We have a mastermind that’s called Fast Foundations. It’s for anyone making $500,000 and down. And then my husband has an elite mastermind that’s $500,000 and up. We actually have stylists in both, which is super powerful and very exciting.
With that said, it’s all about creating that foundation in the beginning. This is the Fast Foundations mastermind for $500K and down, creating that initial foundation and growing your business. So it’s for anyone from one to 10 people on their team, whether that’s an assistant or virtual assistant right down to running a salon or running businesses, whatever that looks like. That’s really powerful because we do connect everybody in that group and we lay the foundation of, if you’re going to come into this mastermind, you’re going to give an equal amount as you are taking.
I think that’s why we’re so successful with people. The people who see massive jumps in their income and just themselves are the people who are really taking the self development piece and running with it, and taking the connection piece and running with it, and giving back in the groups. They’re an exchange, getting people who want to show up for them, and give them contacts, and help them out, and help them with launches, and all of these different things outside of just, “Oh, we’re in a group together. We’re just here to learn from the teachers or learn to learn,” whatever that looks like. We do it as a true mastermind where you are using the brains of everyone in there.
Britt: Okay, I love that because probably you and I both have been in some amazing masterminds and some heinous ones. The ones where it goes well are where you’re attracting people who almost want to give more than they take. In that environment, everybody wins.
To those of you listening, if you’ve never been in a mastermind. hearing the way that Lori describes hers, that is the dream. And it sounds like, “Oh, of course, everybody goes in with that mindset.” Not in all masterminds. Like what you’ve created is exceptional and incredible, and I’m just so thankful and grateful that you have this deep understanding of stylists and salon owners and my listeners and my audience because they are badass. Often they don’t find groups where they’re respected as such.
So if anybody’s looking for a great place just to connect in level up and create these powerful conversations, I’m going to share links in the page for this episode. But working with Lori and Chris and any part of their team would just be a huge gift to you guys.
Lori, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today. You are absolutely phenomenal. Where can we learn more about you?
Lori: Oh my God, well, thank you so much for having me. I think I say this every time I get to talk to you or briefly see you, whatever that looks like. But anytime I get to talk to you, I’m just like, yes, more of that. We’ll have to create that, but anyway—
Britt: I’m here for it. I’m here for it anytime.
Lori: Find me loriharder.com, litepink.com right now. And on Instagram, I’m really hanging out at, um, @drinklitepink or @loriharder.
Britt: Lori is amazing. If you reach out to her, interact with her on social, she will be there for you. She’s absolutely incredible. Lori, love you to pieces. Thank you so much for taking the time today and we’ll talk soon.
Lori: Thank you so much.
Britt: Lori, again from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for joining us this week. If you want to follow Lori, you can head on Instagram to @loriharder. You have got to follow @drinklitepink. It’s an Instagram account that promotes her new, amazing sparkling wine seltzer line, but it’s also really inspiring. Really, really fun. It’s one of my new favorite Instagram accounts to follow. And then you can also find the Earn Your Happy podcast on Instagram @earnyourhappy.
You guys so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see y’all next week.
