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 and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Britt Seva, and if I sound a little extra giddy it’s because I totally am. I’m actually recording this podcast right after executing the incredible 5 Steps workshop that I hosted this season. What an incredible experience!
The reason I wanted to bring this workshop to you all this season is because I really wanted it to be free education where you walked away with a success plan. So often when we are living our daily lives, all we’re doing is gathering information. When you scroll Instagram, you’re gathering information, whether it be for me or other educators or stylists you follow, you’re just gathering insights and information. When you listen to my podcast, you’re gathering information. When you go to YouTube, you’re gathering information. When you fly across the country to be certified in something and pay $2,000 to be there, truly you’re just gathering information. That’s all you’re doing.
Anything you learn, any skills that you gather, anything that you garner is not actually going to change your life or business until it’s put together into a plan and that’s what this five steps to success workshop was all about. I wanted to share with everybody who was in the room what it was going to take to 2x or 3x their life in literally one year—it doesn’t have to take that long—and 5x or 10x their life in five years, because that is fully possible.
And in the workshop, I shared examples of real-life people who have done it with visual graphics and everything. So in case you didn’t join us and you’d like to get your hands on the replay of that, you can still head to thrivingstylist.com/5stepsworkshop. You can see the full class in detail, but I want to share with you one of the concepts that really, really resonated deeply with us in the class today, because I think it’s going to really resonate with you too.
Now I’m actually working backwards a little bit here, it’s kinda like spoiler alert because in the workshop, we start with a full existing career analysis and assessment, like you can’t know where you’re going until you know where you are, right? Everybody breaks down personally what their career looks like today.
We define what we call freedom numbers, which are the numbers that will allow you to live your biggest, best life, whatever that means for you. For some people, their freedom number was like 350 grand in earnings a year. For some people, it was only like 120 grand, but working three days a week. So we uncover things like that, like, where are you headed in this career? What are you hoping to get out of it?
Then we determined your full career earnings potential, which was a really fun and engaging exercise. Then I shared the three inevitable success secrets that only Scaling stylists are using. So stylists who are like totally cool cruise-controlling at like 38 grand a year, 60 grand a year, 80 grand a year, and they’re like, “That’s cool, if I never make any more money, I’m happy,” then great. But those who do want to increase their income over time, I shared what it looks like to do that.
It’s just generally business knowledge as a whole in our industry, in any industry, and beyond, you need to be seeing 15% or more growth year over year. If you’re not, your business is slowly dying because the world around us is growing every single year, so you’re basically getting left behind. So what does it look like to ensure that you’re continually having that growth?
And then lastly, we got into business ascension model and plan, which is what I’m going to share with you on this podcast today.
This is the actual roadmap component to 2x-ing and 3x-ing your business. So when you got the PDF that went along with this workshop, the final pages were the actual roadmap. I’m looking at them right now, we have three. We have the Thriving Stylist Roadmap, Scaling Stylist Roadmap and the Thriving Leadership Roadmap. They are 8.5 by 11 pieces of paper and you look at them landscape way, so short up and down, and then long side to side. When you look at it, you’ll see at the top, there’s all the months of the year, so January, February, March, blah, blah, blah, all the way through, and then on the bottom, it’s broken down into quarters so we’re able to project the things that need to be projected monthly, monthly, and the things we need to look at quarterly, quarterly.
There’s a lot of science to this and what motivates us as human beings and with things like money, having that tangible win frequently is super important. It motivates us and we can all say, “You know, I would do this job, even if it didn’t pay me,” but I think that old adage died after 2020. We’re like, “No, but actually, I need the money,” right? We realized that. But I think that seeing our money increase monthly is really important. It feels like we’re on the pulse, like we’re checking our own pulse all the time.
There’s two categories on this roadmap that we’re tracking monthly and then the remaining categories we’re tracking quarterly. So how do I decide as a business coach, as we’re creating these maps, what gets tracked more frequently and what gets tracked less frequently? And why aren’t we tracking things like daily or weekly? Let’s talk about it.
Why aren’t we tracking things more frequently? Like daily or weekly? That’s an easy one. Has anybody ever been on a weight loss journey trying to lose weight? You’ve ever worked with a personal trainer? They’ll always encourage weekly weigh-ins or even weigh-ins twice a month. How come? Because first of all, you’re not going to notice enough of a difference day-to-day, and your weight fluctuates day-to-day. Like I could be losing weight, but still weigh more tomorrow than I do today, even though I’m losing weight. Our bodies are just funny like that and we retain water and all these things happen.
When you’re checking the pulse of your business too frequently, it gives you inaccurate data and it causes you to make emotional reactions and decisions based on things that just aren’t true, right? Like in my business, in particular, I have some quarters where we’re not actually profitable. The business runs at a loss certain quarters of the year, but overall, my business is very profitable, but there are some quarters where we run in the red for all three months, but it’s okay because cyclically, we know what things are going to look like, right?
When you’re looking at things like that, and you understand like, these are the trends in my business, it takes a lot of the fear out of how you’re running things. It allows you to make stronger financial decisions. Like when I just told you, there’s certain months out of the year my business runs in the red, but I don’t sweat it because we are able to allocate funds when the money is good to support those lower valleys of the business.
And then when you say, “Well, how much money is needed?” I’m tracking with this roadmap so I know how much money is needed because I’m actually on the pulse of my business and that’s what I need you to be as well.
So often we do things like we’re like, “Well, if I have $10,000 in savings, I’ll be fine.” Well, unless you break your leg and then how long is that $10,000 going to last you if you have to still pay your rent and pay all these bills and you can’t work for eight weeks, and is that enough?
When you plot things out in full, you have a more cohesive picture of what’s actually needed.
Let’s start by looking at our monthly benchmarks and we’re going to start with the Thriving Stylist Roadmap. So for our Thriving stylist, which is anybody taking home less than a hundred grand, if you’re not taking home a hundred grand, you’re what I consider Thriving. So long as you’re working towards earning more, you’re in the Thriving category, so your milestones are total guest visits, total new guests, and total revenue.
Those are your milestones and the milestones we’re tracking monthly. The other thing we’re tracking monthly is your finances overall, so your take-home pay and your profit margin. Those are the things we’re going to be tracking every single month.
On this roadmap, we’re actually going to be setting goals for ourselves, so it’s not just a business tracker, which is seen as one of actually the most irresponsible ways to keep an eye on your business. It’s what most of us do, so we reflect on the past instead of designing our future.
How many of you do that? Like you log somewhere what was done last month. So at the end of December, you sit down, or the first week in January, you sit down, you’re like, “Okay, cool. What happened in December?” That’s already happened. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it, but did you have super specific goals and benchmarks to meet for December? Or was it just like, “I hope it make 10 grand this month,” ‘cause that’s a pie in the sky goal. That’s not strategic at all.
We need to be plotting out, “Okay, if I’m going to grow my income by 25% this year, okay, come June, I need to be doing $4,800 in services every single month.” It needs to be strategic like that. That’s what allows your business to be proactive, not reactive.
When all you’re doing is looking at the past and hoping to create a better future, the better future is not coming. That’s not strategic, that’s logging and that’s organized and I like that, but that’s not what’s going to push you ahead. So in these milestones and in the finances, we are what we need to be doing every single month to push us forward and to ensure our freedom numbers stay on track and that everything gets reached.
Okay. So that’s monthly then quarterly, we’re tracking three different things. Now these are for Thriving stylists. Scaling stylists are going to be different. Quarterly, we’re looking at operations, retention, and marketing. So under operations, we’re looking at your schedule and your office hours.
For my Thriving stylist, I’m not super hooked on you like creating a dream schedule yet. I’m super hooked on you taking home a hundred grand, and then once you’re taking home a hundred grand, ooh, we can get fancy with it. We can do all kind of fun stuff, but I need to make sure that you’re really financially set before we get there.
Now some of you are in areas where if you were making 75 grand and you were taking that home, that would be some real coin. So for those of you who are in an area where you’re like, “Listen, less than 10% of people in my area are making 75 grand,” okay, well then maybe there’s a shift to be had there. But when we look at the U.S. American average, only about 15% of Americans make a hundred grand or more take-home pay every single year, and that’s a really financially comfortable number to be living at because it allows you to save for retirement, it allows you to take debt-free vacations, pay down your home, like all of these things. I do want you to get to that place before you jump to the next level.
With schedule, it’s making sure that we’re working a schedule that allows us to grow. Like if your schedule is too limited, it’s going to prevent you from reaching your freedom number. If your schedule is nonexistent, it’s also going to prevent you from reaching your freedom number. I think there’s a lot of people who still believe if I’m available more hours, I’ll have more business. No. You can test that theory. I’m telling you, you’ll spend a lot more time sitting around at the salon, but just being open more hours doesn’t innately give you more business. That’s not how that works.
So getting strategic about our schedule and then office hours. Office hours are when we work on our business, not in our business. So in our business is doing things like clients. Anytime you’re working on a client, anytime you go to the beauty supply store, doing your accounting, stuff like that, all of that is working in the business. Those are the things you must do just to keep the doors open. You are obligated to do those things. Any kind of obligation is in your business.
On your business is doing this: Completing the roadmap, strategic marketing planning, right? Taking a program that shows you how to put your business together to scale, creating an annual budget. Those are things that would be working on your business. Not in it. Very different.
Then we have retention. So we have actual retention numbers like tracking retention, then pre-guest experience, trust, nurture, and loyalty, which we cover all of those things in the workshop. Then we have marketing, funnel progress, content, strategy, growth, benchmarks, and awareness efforts.
The reason why these ones are quarterly benchmarks is you can see they’re big kahunas. They’re these big buckets. Like under the trust category, what are all things you’re doing to build trust? What trust markers do you need to have in place by the third quarter?
And I know this sounds like a lot of work like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve never thought about my business like this before.” And that might be why your business isn’t doing 300 grand in services. Maybe.
You’re not just going to make more money by a miracle. You’re not just going to craft a dream schedule by chance. If you don’t get strategic, it’s not coming. I am pushing you to think bigger and get more strategic about the efforts you make.
Now, some quarters you might not be doing anything when it comes to content strategy, maybe in Q2, you’re like, “Honestly, I’m going to keep the same content strategy Q1 and Q2,” so you’ll just drag it over. Not every quarter has to be innovative. Every quarter has to have a plan, right? Okay.
For our Thriving stylists, we had operations, retention, and marketing. For our Scaling
stylists, we have brand positioning, elevate your experience, infrastructure and amplify impact. So the work being done is very different and it has to be.
We just had a recent episode where I talked about the difference in scaling and just building a business when you’re beyond a hundred K, what it’s going to take to push you to the next level, to push you to like really deep, incredible, tangible success is not going to be the same thing that initially built your clientele. You have to change the strategy.
With brand positioning, we’re looking at things like X factor and Zone of Genius, your methodology and how it’s growing, brand message. Then under elevate your experience, we have method enhancements, loyalty, and increasing your revenue. Under infrastructure, we have schedule control and systems and organization, and under amplify, impact content strategy.
And if, as I’m saying this, you’re like “Wait, wait, wait, you’re going too fast. I need to write this down,” you can just get a copy of the roadmap. I’m giving it away for free this season, so if you go to thrivingstylist.com/5stepsworkshop, you can just snag your copy of it. You don’t have to wait. You can just download your copy and then watch the training video that goes along with it. so you can see exactly how to put this all together.
Lastly, we have the Thriving Leadership Roadmap. So this is for all my leaders, and if you’re still taking clients behind the chair as a salon leader, you need to do either Thriving or Scaling Roadmap for your business behind the chair, and then you also need to do the Leadership Roadmap.
I know for some of our leaders, it’s like, “But that’s not fair. I have to do twice the work.” Yeah, you chose to take on two jobs. When you chose to be a salon owner, you chose to have two jobs. You work two jobs now, likely 65 hours a week or more. You have one job where you’re taking clients and you have a totally different job where you’re running a salon team. Even if they’re booth renters, you are running a salon team. So you need to do this twice.
Now here, the benchmarks change pretty significantly. So monthly, our milestones are total stylists, meaning how many people you have working in the building, service revenue, booth rental revenue, and total revenue. Some of those you might track. Some of you might not.
If you own a strictly booth rental salon, you’re not tracking service revenue. That’s none of your business. All you’re tracking is booth rental revenue. If you have an employee-based salon, then there’s no booth rental revenue, right? You’ll track what means most to you.
Then in the finances we have take-home pay, profit margin, and compensation because compensation is something we should be reviewing all the time, right? At minimum two times a year, at absolute minimum. So reviewing your structure, reviewing compensation for all of your team, all that good stuff.
Now quarterly, our benchmarks change as well. We have stability, standards, and structure. So under stability, we have trust, loyalty, and leadership, then transformational leadership skills. Under standards, we have brand standards, training, and praise. And then under structure, we have business foundations, purpose, culture, roles, and responsibilities.
Now the one that I think is goofy for people is the praise, and a lot of people want to start there, like, “Ooh, I’ll start with praise,” because praise is the fun one. And it’s like, “Ooh, team luncheons and potluck parties and Cheryl’s having a baby, so I’m going to plot out her baby shower.”
The thing with praise is that everybody receives praise differently and you can’t just offer up generic praise. There was a member of my team recently who got married and I reached out to my director of HR and I asked her, I said, “How come we didn’t do a bridal shower for so-and-so?” I said, “I think we missed the mark there big time.” And she was like, “Oh no, she didn’t want it.”
So imagine if I assumed every single person in my building all wanted the same thing. They don’t and it takes a lot of time. I’m still in the process of figuring out what every single person on the team needs to feel praised.
And as I say that, sometimes we feel like, “Oh my gosh, I’m supposed to custom create something for every single person.” No, you’re just supposed to be multifaceted, and the more you get to know your team and the more they feel uniquely identified as people who are deeply important to you, the longer you’ll retain, the higher they’ll produce, everything comes together.
It takes time. It takes effort to do those kind of things. So the reason I share that is don’t be tempted by the praise, thinking that’s the easy one, like, “Oh, holiday party.” And you know, be careful of that because it’s not as easy as you think.
A lot of people focus so highly on praise and don’t worry about anything else and then the praise falls on deaf ears. Any salon owners out there who feel like they give and they give and they give, and their stylists are never appreciative. It’s not that they’re not appreciative. It’s that you’re focused so highly on the wrong things.
So what you feel like you’re serving up super well is fine, but it doesn’t compensate for all the areas that they feel you’re doing poorly, and that’s the catch there.
Like I mentioned, this was just one piece of the workshop that people really enjoyed. I think the visual of roadmap was just really impactful to be able to sit down and make a plan and really start to get strategic about what do I need to focus on monthly. What do I need to focus on quarterly for where I’m at in my business today, not where I want it to be tomorrow.
And then when we did things like freedom numbers or career earnings potential, knowing what their tomorrow could look like if they wanted to put in the work to make that happen.
Again, just a little teaser, you can still get your hand on a copy of this roadmap in case you missed it and also sign up and watch the replay of the full two-hour-long workshop masterclass. You’re not going to want to miss it. It was absolutely incredible.
To those of you who did join me, thank you so much for spending your time with me today. What a blast we had. I can’t wait to do it again.
In case you need to register for the workshop, ‘cause you need to get your hands on this or you want to watch the video head to www.thrivingstylist.com/5stepsworkshop.
And if you’re listening to this in real time, I’m still doing Q & A sessions all this week. I’ve got a Q & A session which is going to be today, Monday the 14th, where I’m talking to the Thriving stylists, so those earning less than a hundred K. I’m talking tomorrow to Scaling stylists earning a hundred care more, and then I’m talking to salon leaders later in the week.
So the schedule for all of those Q & A, private coaching sessions, or group coaching sessions, I should say, details for all of that are at the same link, thrivingstylist.com/5stepsworkshop. So if you have a specific question about your business or want to hear what’s working for others, make sure that you tune in.
And as I always say so much love, happy business building, I’ll see you on the next one.
