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 this is another ask and you shall receive episodes.
This is so funny. This is a great podcast request from a very seasoned, very successful stylist. I love her story and I’m really excited to share it with you. I’ve been getting a lot of requests recently asking me to speak to higher level, more complex strategy for those who are into the six figures, really successful already scaling. Yes, I can certainly do that.
On the flip side, I’ve also gotten a lot of requests from stylists who are just starting off or maybe rebuilding from scratch, newly out of cosmetology school, are just still in there asking if I can speak to that.
And I think often when I record shows, I’m speaking to the middle for the obvious reason. I want everybody who listens to every episode to get at least one little nugget. I’m like, “If I can give you one thing every episode, man, you’re getting hundreds of free pieces of advice listening to the show,” and so that for me is such a win. But I do think there’s a lot of benefits speaking to more highly specialized topics so I’m going to try and be better about that and here’s an example.
This stylist reached out to me and I’m going to tell you our backstory, which I don’t think she was expecting, but I think it’s important. She essentially said, “I’m making 135K take home,” so that’s her net as an employee working part-time.
For those of you—I talk about this on the show all the time, but for those of you who are like, “Oh, all the money’s in being an independent, all the money’s in being in the studio suite, all the money’s being in booth rental,” friend, she is taking home netting 135 grand working three days a week as an employee. Life is good.
So I want to share with you a little bit about her story. She joined Thrivers in 2020. I’m recording this podcast episode in 2022, so this is two years later and I want to read you her most recent message to me and then one from about a year ago, which I don’t know if she knew I held onto, but I did and I think it’s relevant to the story.
Recently she messaged me and said, “Can you do a podcast where you speak to what a stylist should do when they feel like they need more MORE?” And I responded and said, “Tell me more. What do you mean when you say ‘more’? Do you know what that looks like?”
Because when you hear the word “more”, I want you to close your eyes and picture in your mind when I say more, what do you think? Often it goes straight to money. When we think more, we think abundance for sure, but often it’s more equals money, more equals clients, more equals business. That is our natural tendency.
So I asked her, I said, “What does more mean?” This was the response. “See this is where I feel lost.” That was her first line to me. “I have my dream schedule already eight to four, Wednesday through Friday.” So this is a Thriver two years in, working Wednesday through Friday, never working evenings, not working weekends, an employee taking home 135 grand a year. “I make 54% commission,” which is great. That’s a great commission split. “However, my body is starting to go out. I’m getting neck and shoulder surgery soon.”
I think that’s important to share because this stylist isn’t even close to retirement age. So I won’t say how old they are. But just looking at their pictures and their profile and their lifestyle, this person is easily 20 years or more away from retirement. Now they could retire early, they could retire at 45 for all I know. But when we think about traditional retirement age of 60, 65, they’re not even close and their body’s starting to give out.
The reason I share that is I think it’s important if you are a stylist who’s like, “I love double booking, I love 14 hour days,” I get it. I’m an overachiever too and I work well under pressure and there were years of my life where I was certainly categorized as a workaholic. Your body can’t do it the way your mind can and it catches up faster to you than you can even imagine. And so when she’s like, “I’m already feeling it,” I’m not surprised and this person’s thinking “I got another 20 working years left at minimum,” maybe more.
I don’t know this person’s exact age or their timeline or their goals, but they’re not even close and they’re already having neck and back surgery. A lot of you are nodding your head. If you’re a seasoned stylist, you know what I’m talking about and that’s why when people double and triple book and they feel great about it and they’re like, “This is perfect for me,” sometimes, yeah. If you have a full staff helping you and your income level is there, then that can be really great. But for the vast majority it becomes a systematic breakdown over time. That’s what she’s feeling.
She says, “I don’t know if it’s educating for a color company that I should do next or anything else I can do. I plan to go down to two days a week by next summer, so probably about nine months from now to keep my body in check. But I’m craving MORE,” in big capital letters. “My current salon offers full benefits, paid time off, a 54% split. I love this life and this balance. I have no desire to go out on my own, but I do have a strong pull to help others.” I love this.
As promised, I want to go back and share with you what she messaged me a year ago, and this is what—I don’t even know if she remembers and she certainly didn’t know I was going to bring it up. She says, “Hey girl.” So this is a year ago, this is not recent, this is the year back. “At my commission salon, I have full benefits, dental, vision, 401K.” She was already working the dream schedule, okay? A year ago. Making the six figures. I’m assuming she’s probably making another 30 grand this year over what she made last year. But she was taking home six figures last year. She’ll do 135K this year.
“The only thing that makes me consider leaving is I’m really comfortable. I feel like I made for more sometimes. But I love my lifestyle of making a great living, having my weekends with my husband, and traveling with no extras. That’s my view. I’d love to hear this on your podcast of yours. My temptations include being my own boss, decorating a studio, having my own space, and doing my own culture. But the cons for me are no more benefits, no more paid time off or freedom of my free time.”
Look at what a difference a year made. So a year ago, imagine if I had given the advice for her to go out on her own, okay? So a year ago she was tempted to be her own boss, decorate a studio, have her own space, doing her own culture. Flash forward to now and she’s like, “I have no desire to go out on my own.” I think that’s interesting.
The reason I bring that up and I want to talk about it is because often I call it the trigger pull. I see so many people right now—it’s plaguing our industry and I watch people make these decisions and I know a lot of people are really excited about them, but I’ve been doing this long enough where I’m like, “Oh my gosh, in three years you’re going to be coming asking me for advice because you just pulled a trigger that you can’t go back on and you just jumped ship and made a short-term decision with a long-term repercussion.” I watched few people do it a couple years ago and they’re back in my DMs and they’re like, “Damnit, I didn’t do that right.” And I’m like, “I know, I know, I watched you do it and I’m not sure why you did because you had everything going for you and you were craving more M O R E,” just like this stylist is.
Often when we’re craving more, we make really irrational decisions—myself included—and that’s what I want to talk about on this episode.
Probably as I was reading that description, those of you who are scaling and are at that level of business, some of you were nodding your heads and you were like, “Oh my gosh, I so deeply relate to everything she’s saying.” This is very common in those who are driven, so salon owners, ears open. Driven stylists, driven humans are always seeking more, period, whether they’re employees, whether they’re independent.
This is why when people are like, “I’m hiring a stylist and they’re happy being an assistant for a couple years,” I’m like, “Oh, that was a bad hire. There’s no drive there.” People who are wired like that are made for complacency. They’re made to be comfortable. And listen, there’s a lot of people in this world who do great being comfortable. They would do great working in a cubicle or an office somewhere. They make great administrative assistants. They would do great working for a large corporation. Like, oh my gosh, if you want to be comfortable, an organization like Starbucks is amazing. They have plans to pay for your college. You get comfortable in the job, you kind of know what you’re doing. Those are great careers. If you like to just be comfy, cozy, take your time, there’s a lot of opportunities for you. This industry ain’t it.
This industry is an industry where you’re choosing to be an entrepreneur and I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding around that. I think there’s this idea of like, “Well, I’ll come in and I’ll figure it out and clients will find me,” and that doesn’t work. There was a time where it did work. This is not now. Right now, in order to be successful in our industry, you have to be driven and driven. People will always want more. It’s like the air they breathe.
Here’s the mistake is we misclassify what more is. A year ago, this stylist felt like more was decorating a studio, creating a culture, creating an energy, being their own boss. That is the fun, sexy, exciting stuff. I like decorating things too. The challenge is those are the fun parts of making a leap like that. Nobody thinks about the hard, stressful stuff and at no point did she say, “And I’d love to go to the beauty supply store on the evenings and the weekends because that’s what I have to do. Or maybe I won’t go to the store, I’ll have a shipment to the salon and then I’ll have to go in an hour early and unpack everything and I’ll have to do all of my own accounting.”
Nobody’s like, “I can’t wait to do that. I can’t wait to be the cleaning person who has to clean up my studio in full by myself.” Nobody thinks of it that way, right? Nobody thinks about, “…but when I take a vacation, when I’m an independent, I hope that I’ll have saved enough money to pay my rent, pay for my vacation, keep the wheels in motion, manage my books while I’m traveling, or have a great automated system to do so, so that I don’t go into debt to take time off.”
She doesn’t have to worry about any of that stuff. She’s got paid time off. Everything is taken care of for her. She’s got a retirement savings plan. She’s living the good life yet she’s still craving more and where she went, right? And where I want to praise this stylist because it’s where a lot of people go wrong is she realized more doesn’t mean more chaos, more doesn’t mean more responsibility. Often when driven people think more, they make their life so much harder.
I have to ask this question: When you got into this industry, was it so that you could work your ass off for the rest of your life? Or was it so that you could build a beautiful life with balance? Because I think some people really got that twisted and they got caught up in the hustle and grind, which was very much the culture for the last five years. Finally, we’re closing that chapter. It’s about time. And more meant chaos and more meant overwhelm. I’ve watched influencers, friends, mentors lose marriages, lose families, lose their mental health, lose their physical health because more meant more, because more was adding to the plate when truly they could have had everything they ever wanted and they got caught up.
I really want to praise this stylist for reaching out at this crossroads because she’s on the verge of that and she now is confident enough in herself and experienced enough to know she’s not willing to sacrifice her lifestyle and her happiness and her marriage and her joy and her health in order to fulfill the drive.
What I want to focus on for a minute is the drive. I want you to imagine that drive is a little glass that sits on your station at the salon and your drive glass wants to be full all the time, right? For driven people. That’s what I want to talk about and I want to focus on the drive for a minute.
I want you to imagine if driven people were born with this test tube in their belly or this vial in their belly that not everybody’s born with because I’m going to call it like it is. Not everybody’s driven. Probably 10% of the population is deeply, deeply driven. Drive is hard. Drive is exhausting. It’s rare. There’s a lot of people who are big dreamers but that’s not the same as being driven. It’s a very different thing.
Imagine if those who are driven have this vial in their belly and it’s filled with this beautiful liquid, choose whatever color you want. It’s going to be pink because it’s my favorite color. But yours can be filled with whatever color you want and it’s glowing and it’s beautiful and it’s warm and it feels good and drive is amazing. But what happens is untapped drive overflows and it causes the problem.
Imagine if you’ve got that drive and you’ve been using it and tapping into it and tapping into it and tapping into it and it’s been feeling good, but as you don’t tap into the drive and you don’t deplete the resource, it starts to overfill. As that vial overfills and spills out everywhere, you now have a mess and it causes problems for you.
For driven people, we’re always on this quest to burn that drive, burn that fuel. We can’t help it. I don’t know about you, if you’re a driven person—I struggle to just sit down and watch TV, like sit down and watch a movie. In the movie theater, I’m pulling out my phone and taking notes about my next podcast and my husband’s like, “Dude, can you turn it off for a minute?” I’m like, “I can’t. My mind is racing all the time.” The drive is there, I can’t shut it off.
When you’re a driven person, you’re always looking to burn the fuel. That’s where this stylist is at. They’ve got this fuel in their belly and they want to allocate it in a way that doesn’t add chaos to their life.
This is one of the things they’re thinking: becoming a brand educator. I love brand education for a lot of reasons. One, I feel like you cut your teeth in a safe way. There is a real difference between being smart and being a good teacher. Not the same skillset. There’s a difference between being an influencer and a great educator. Not the same skill set. When you work as a brand educator, you learn what it looks like to be a good teacher because it’s really different than you think it’s supposed to be. Affecting people, teaching people, guiding people, motivating people is not the same as knowing stuff. If she chooses to be a brand educator, she could learn how to educate and what she said was she feels a strong pull to help people that could fulfill that.
My challenge with that is when I go back and I reflect on the message she sent a year ago, she says, “I love my lifestyle of making a lot of money and having my weekends with my husband and traveling with no extras.” My friends, if I’m being fully vulnerable and transparent, which I’m trying to be better about, the traveling and the weekend commitments of educating are the only thing that’s ever threatened my marriage. Full transparency, like my husband and I are great partners. We are a good match. I truly think we’re made for each other in this lifetime. We struck gold meeting young, but we really are a good match for each other. If the education travel and commitments, especially over the weekends, didn’t almost break us. It was brutal because it’s for real.
I don’t think people realize that whether you choose to educate independently or you choose to educate for a brand, that is a part of what you’re signing up for. And it is a stress and it is a challenge. Here’s the rub is that I spoke about this on an episode, I don’t know, a couple months back, I can’t remember now. Digital education is waning and I talked about how the new trend is experiential education. And when you talk to Gen Z, they do not want to learn online. They did the online school thing during the pandemic. It was a nightmare for them. They hated it. They’ve been traumatized for it. So if you’re getting into education because you’re like, “It’ll be cool, I’ll just educate digitally,” you’re in it for the short game like I talked about earlier. Short-term decision with the long-term impact.
Education is going to be immersive, it’s going to be experiential. We might trend back to digital at some point. However, it is changing and it is changing really, really fast. And if you want to stay on the cutting edge of it, it is going to include travel and creating experiences and events and one-to-one instead of one-to-many. Things are just shifting and changing. Thankfully for me, I’ve already negotiated that into my marriage and we’ve got to plan for it and all that kind of stuff, but that’s not easy.
So when she’s saying, “What I’m not willing to sacrifice is the simplicity and the weekends with my husband and being able to do what I need to do with no extras,” that’s where the education becomes a little bit tricky and crunchy. I’m not saying you can’t do it, I’m saying you have to know that’s what you’re signing up for. That is a part of the package and I do think in the next months and years, it will even more so be that way.
That being said, what I found to be interesting is that you said you educate at your work—this is where it all comes full circle, my friend. Are you ready? I spoke about this in Thrivers Society. I shared with them a little nugget of what I think working for a great salon is going to look like in the years to come. I think assisting programs as we know them are about to die. I think assisting programs the way they are structured today have an 18-month to two-year lifespan, and by 2024, 2025, assisting will look nothing like it does in this industry right now. I really think so. And I shared in Thrivers Society a breakdown of exactly what I think needs to happen.
But to this stylist, I think your salon owner would be so dang smart to have you as just a full-time lead educator who is hosting six-week intensives, educating, managing, mentoring, leading, teaching these stylists how to do what you’ve done, having weekly meetings with them, showing them how to use social, running your salon social. I think if you were the lead, maybe you’re the director of marketing and education for your salon, you’d be a jackpot. If I had a salon, I’d hire you today. Not even joking. The thing I like about that is it allows you to give back. It allows you to make an impact. You will 100% affect the bottom line of your salon.
The reason I can speak to this so confidently is I was that person. I was a non-income producer in my salon, right? I didn’t take a client, I didn’t work the front desk. I essentially worked downstairs in the little cave and I managed the salon team and I ran all the marketing and our profit margin sword while I was sitting in that seat. I was a non-income producer, but the way I led the team and motivated the team and taught classes and trained our new hires and ran staff meetings, allowed us to generate enough profit that my salary was covered and the owner took home six figures not even being in the building.
So when we say, “Well, you know, you put a salon manager in, how do you afford it?”, how do you afford not to have it? We wouldn’t have been able to reach the levels we had and hire top talent and build the way we did without somebody sitting in the seat like I did.
To this person, I think that could be the next step for you. I think you’d be such a tremendous asset to a salon company. You could make as much as you’re making now or more taking clients, not taking clients. I don’t know about that part. That’s something you’d have to negotiate. But literally just facilitating incredible marketing, education, business management for your salon, sitting on their advisory board, talking about branding and marketing. Like you said, you want to decorate. Your salon should be updating their decor every couple of years. We need to keep it fresh. We need to keep it funky. We need to stay on top of the trends, right? I think you can have it all and be a huge asset to your salon team.
Now if you want to educate, if you want to go independent, if you ultimately want to go into a studio suite, then I think you should do it. What I think is underestimated and not talked about enough is that when you choose that as more, you’re choosing to build a second company, a second business, take on more responsibility, take on another job. You might make more money, you will also work twice as hard, and you have to ask yourself, “Is that the lifestyle I got into this for?” ‘Cause it’s not for everybody. And really thinking, “What do I want of this life? Why did I get into this industry and what makes the most sense for me?”
Get creative, my friends. This industry is changing rapidly. The jobs that are available now are going to shift in the next two to three years. Stay open-minded. There is so much possibility and so much potential and I can’t wait to help guide the industry in the direction I know it needs to go in.
Y’all, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
