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 week we are talking about finding your business income blockers and blindspots.
There is a massive difference between people who are really great business coaches, people who are good educators, people who are successful, and people who want to be all of the above. I want to break down why I think it’s so important to talk about business income blockers and blindspots because it’s one of those things that I think I am really good at. I think that it’s the reason I’ve made it this far as a business coach is that I understand what it means to actually be a coach. I think it’s a missing piece that a lot of other educators or advisors don’t quite get and if I can give you some of the tools that have helped me get to this place I’m at now that you can apply to your own business, I think that all of us will be a little bit better off for it.
Let’s first talk about for just a moment the difference between, let’s say somebody who’s knowledgeable, somebody who’s an educator, and somebody who’s a coach. Somebody who is knowledgeable is able to do amazing things in business. To become knowledgeable, you have to be a really great learner, like an active listener, an active learner. Choose education and apply it. If you’re able to do those things, you are able to create a good amount of success.
Now, a lot of successful people can do it, and they can share stories or tips or ideas about how they’ve done it, but it doesn’t necessarily make them a good educator.
Let’s talk about what makes for a good educator. A good educator is somebody who understands how others learn and is able to break down topics in a way that makes people feel empowered, uplifted, educated themselves. The information feels like it makes sense, it feels logical, not tricky, and it is shared in a way where given some effort, there always has to be effort on the part of the student, but given focus and effort, they’re able to apply what has been shared and get a great result themselves.
There is a massive difference between people who are knowledgeable and people who are good educators. Most knowledgeable people aren’t great teachers and fortunately the gift of being a good teacher is one that is rare. Very rare in my experience, experiences I’ve had as a student and experiences I’ve had as an educator. I have paid good amounts of money for private coaching from people that I aspire to be more like only to find out that they’re terrible educators and certainly not coaches. Very smart people, very accomplished people don’t know how to teach, definitely not a coach.
What you always want to do when you’re seeking out people to learn from is look from somebody who can educate or coach.
What’s the difference between educator and a coach? A coach is somebody who doesn’t necessarily give you what you want and instead shares exactly what you need. Finding people who are able to coach is exceptionally rare. I’ve met I think one person who’s ever been able to coach me effectively and really share the things that I needed to hear in order to push past blindspots in my business so that I could achieve results.
I’ve worked with a lot of educators, definitely people who have shown me cool stuff or taught me great things, and that’s definitely helped, there’s no doubt. But when you align with a coach who’s able to push you through income blockers and help you to see your blindspots, that’s when your business world opens up.
Very recently, whether you know this or not, I’ve started taking on more private, one-on-one coaching clients because thankfully my business has scaled and it’s allowed me to get back to what I love most, which is truly coaching. I like educating. I think I’m a decent educator. I think my sweet spot, my Zone of Genius if you will, is in coaching, and so it’s really a joy and an honor to get back to that place and space.
What I help people do is to uncover their blindspots. It’s very easy for me, within five minutes of a conversation with somebody, within 30 seconds of looking at their business, within 10 minutes of analyzing their financials, knowing with 90% certainty exactly what’s wrong, exactly what they don’t see, and what needs to be shifted in order to get them the results they’re looking for.
Now, the trick with income blockers and blindspots is that most of us are blind to them in part because it’s the work that we don’t want to do or are scared to do. Often, we have blindspots because we’re very comfortable in our business and the fear of making a shift or a change is very real. Generally, fear comes when we think that we might lose money by making a change or we might lose respect from others. We might lose demand for our business. Rather than pushing through an income blocker in the name of resolving a blindspot, we stay comfy, cozy, and never achieve our maximum potential.
This podcast is dedicated to helping you find and uncover all of your blindspots so that your income blockers melt away never to be seen again.
I’m going to go through some of the details about income blockers and how to find blindspots, but I also had my team create a really amazing resource to help you. If you head to thrivingstylist.com/stylistsuccessanalysis, so thrivingstylist.com/stylistsuccessanalysis, we have a totally free quiz that does a 360 review of your business for you. It helps you to uncover exactly what’s holding you back from success. You’ll learn your learning style. You’ll get a pulse on the health of your business, identify what hurdles specifically are keeping you from achieving your goals, and way more.
I’m going to give you the down and dirty here on the podcast, but if you want a real detailed analysis of your own business, thrivingstylist.com/stylistsuccessanalysis would be a great next step for you.
There are four main income blocker blindspots that I tend to identify over and over and over, whether I’m working with a stylist, whether I’m working with a salon, a salon team, a salon owner, if I’m working with an industry educator, which at this stage of the game represents the bulk of my one-to-one coaching. When I am working with any of those capacities, it’s generally speaking the same kind of list of things over and over and over.
The first is a business working within the wrong structure. When I say structure, sometimes it’s service menu or offerings, like the offerings don’t match the market. I did a podcast recently where I used women’s handbags as an example. I said that some people want to be a Birkin bag when the reality is they’re more of a Coach tote and their market doesn’t see them as the Birkin. I shared very humbly that I’m not a handbag gal myself. I have a couple of nice handbags, but I certainly don’t aspire to have a Birkin bag. Birkin bags are like collectors’ items. You can’t just go to Neiman Marcus and buy a Birkin. You actually have to be invited to spend like $60,000 on a handbag or more, multiple six figures on a handbag. You need to be invited to drop 200 grand on a bag. That’s Birkin-level, okay?
Versus a brand like Coach. Coach handbags range in value anywhere from probably like, I don’t know, $80 for like a wallet or a wristlet up to probably five, 600 bucks I would imagine is like a very high end, like a larger or maybe a travel-size luggage piece. It’s not that they’re inexpensive handbags, but when you look at the difference between a $500 handbag versus a $50,000 invitation-only handbag, it’s a fairly large gap.
When I say wrong structure, there’s some people who are positioning themselves like a Birkin bag in a Coach tote market. There’s some people who are showing up as a Coach tote with Birkin bag pricing and it’s really difficult to see in yourself because what we do as business people is we design aspirational businesses.
If I had a dollar for every time I went into our Thrivers community and people say things like, “Well, I’m looking to brand myself, but in three years I want to open a salon and have a salon team.” Okay, well, in three years when you do that, we will redo your branding, but what do you got going on right now? “Well, right now I’m a booth rental stylist in a salon.” Okay, so that’s what we’re going to brand. We’re not going to create an aspirational brand. We are going to brand you for exactly where you are today.
Sometimes people create these very luxurious brands, like really posh, really high end because it’s how they want to be perceived. But when I walk through the doors of your salon space, it feels like the neighborhood salon and there’s nothing wrong with the neighborhood salon. But if you’ve sold me on the dream of the Birkin bag and I walk in and your salon is a Target handbag, I’m pissed because now I feel very misled.
Again, the reason why that’s a blindspot is a lot of people create these very aspirational brands and then wonder why they’re not retaining clients or wonder why people pull back when they see their price point. It’s a blindspot that a lot of people can’t see because you’ve created this beautiful brand, like you’ve done everything right on paper, but it’s not working and it feels like maybe the system is broken.
The system’s not broken. The problem is you chose the wrong structure to push your business forward.
Some of the other structural things that hold people back is sometimes they choose the wrong pricing structure, right? I’ve done recent podcast episodes where I talk about a la carte pricing, session-based pricing, hourly pricing. All those structures work, all of them also completely fail when put into the wrong structure of business or the wrong type of business. So structural failure is a huge one.
Oh, let’s talk about the salon owners in the house. A lot of salon owners. I’ll look at their website and they think that they are killing it and they’re like, “Well, we got a training program and we got benefits and we got paid time off and we got all these things and no one comes to work for us.” When I analyze their structure, I’m like, “Yeah, I wouldn’t want to work for you either.” I see this list of things that you say that you’re offering and I, trust me, I understand that in your mind, you are the s and you’ve got it all dialed in. I see that like, trust me, I’ll read between the lines on that one. But the reality is your business is not being perceived that way and that’s why no one’s coming in and knocking on your door to apply. You think you’ve got it all dialed in. From somebody who’s analyzing your business, you are two years away from shutting your doors.
Again, it’s a blindspot. People really struggle to see the structural breaks in their own business.
Then we have pricing misfires. Sometimes it’s being overpriced, sometimes it’s being underpriced.
Let me tell you some stories. I was recently coaching a stylist who is very experienced, very talented, very accomplished, there’s no doubt about it. But recently she’s noticed a decrease in demand. It’s weird because her existing clients are very loyal to her, but there’s not a lot of requests for new business and her income is kind of stalled out. In my mind, I look at her and I say, “It is because you are deeply overpriced. You’re not showing up properly on social, you’re not being positioned well on your website. I don’t know exactly what your guest experience is like, but it hardly matters because it doesn’t surprise me that you have a slow flow of people coming into your space. The way you’re presenting yourself outwardly is poor.” When this person is like, “Well, I don’t understand. I’m very accomplished. I’m very educated, I’ve built a great business. Why doesn’t anyone want to come in to see me?” In my mind, I’m like, “Well, we’ve got two options. We either need to cut your price point,” which I hate doing. I hate—probably been five times that I’ve coached somebody to do that. And to be honest, it’s turned their business around and made them way more money, but it’s not my go-to at all. I very, very, very, very rarely coach somebody to decrease their pricing. The only reason where I talk about a price decrease is if somebody is again structurally off or has this massive blindspot they’re not seeing.
There was somebody, this was in end of last year, I was on a group coaching call with probably about 10 stylists and we were doing this upgrade to our Thrivers pricing calculator. This stylist was telling me, he was like, “You know, no matter what I do, the pricing calculator always has me low.” I input in his numbers and definitely the calculator had him low than he, no, lower than he was charging. And he’s telling me, left, right, and sideways, “See, the calculator’s wrong and this is an issue and we’ve got to change the structure.” And I had to bite my tongue a little bit because I was like, “Dude, you can’t even see your own blindspots, can you? You think that the calculator has you underpriced? But my friend, when you tell me about your demand, when I look at the way you are outwardly promoting your business, the calculator is dead on. You’re just in denial of the reality of the business that you’ve built. You’ve gotten a little complacent and you don’t actually see the truth of what’s happening.” So again, a blindspot.
Then I have the people who were underpriced. Usually this is a confidence issue, but they can’t quite see it.
Another thing that I look for when I’m looking for confidence issues is lack of effective branding. I was coaching somebody just a couple weeks ago and she was like, “Britt, I feel like I’ve built my marketing funnel perfectly, but I must have a blindspot ‘cause something’s not right.” So I pull up her funnel and I see why she thinks she’s done everything right. On paper, it looks good. She’s got the social media account, she has the online reviews, the website is beautiful. So why isn’t she getting enough demand from new clients? Well, when I looked at her stuff, I was like, “This is all gorgeous, don’t get me wrong. There is no personality, there is no heart and soul. I can’t tell who you are at all. Your values aren’t clear.”
She was like, I’m feeling a little bit defeated because I’ve put a lot of effort into this brand,” and I totally get it. Uncovering your blindspots does make all of us feel defeated. It kills me inside when somebody points out one of mine, but I have to suck it up, eat a bowl of ice cream, and get over it because until I resolve that blindspot, I’ll be left stressing with sleepless nights, wondering why my business isn’t getting where I want it to be.
Uncovering blindspots is painful. It is also necessary. Reckless business owners choose to ignore their blindspots because they’d rather sit in misery than be wrong. I don’t want any of you to do that because blindspots are income blockers and until we remove those blindspots, you will always be making less money than you potentially could be.
Let’s look at what needs to be potentially adjusted, focused on if you are feeling like you’re not getting the results you want.
If you feel like you have designed a beautiful business, but you’re not necessarily making the amount of money that you want to and you’ve got the time to fill, one-on-one coaching calls if you’re an educator. You’ve got the chairs available if you’re hiring for stylists. You’ve got room on your books if you are a stylist and/or maybe your books are filled, but there’s just not a lot of demand to come in and see you for the future, you are without a doubt lacking direction. You’re in the place where you have the clarity around your brand and your offer to build a great business, but you are focusing on the wrong areas and/or you’re unclear on what areas you need to focus on, a.k.a., lacking direction, right?
The solution for you is you need a step-by-step plan and the accountability to hold yourself to it. You also need to check your ego at the door. People who are in this boat who think they’ve got it all dialed in, the branding is correct, they’ve done all the work, and they’re like, “I just don’t get it. Things aren’t working for me.” Often that’s a little bit of the ego talking of like, “I nailed it, why isn’t this working?” Well, clearly you haven’t nailed it because if you had, all cylinders would be firing. So it’s an invitation to find that blindspot.
You should be using your extra free time to deeply understand your market and create a marketing strategy that effectively attracts them, which goes back to getting that step-by-step clear cut plan in order to make that possible. You’re also at the stage of business where you need to embrace the fact that you do have more time available than somebody who’s slammed and busy, and you need to make small shifts without fear in order to grow quickly.
Then there are those of you that are burnt the F out and still not making the money that they want to. You are exhausted, you’re working extremely hard, you are trying to keep up with the social media game, you’re trying to put the website together. You’re listening to every episode of the Thriving Stylist Podcast. You are super, super trying and you’re not getting the results you’re looking for. You need to push past the desperation and instead take intentional action.
Usually the people that have no money—when I say no money, they’re not making the money that they want to be making and they’re burnt the F out. They are choosing to burn time instead of spending some money in the right way, which sucks. I know. Because when you’re at the place where you’re like, “Britt, if I had the money, I would spend it.” You’re at the place where I was 10 years ago where I had to make a leap of faith and invest a little bit to push past the endless cycle of workaholism that I was sucked into. I wanted to break free of the hamster wheel of exhaustion that I was running on, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what I was doing wrong, why it wasn’t working.
I was soaking up so much education and I was learning like a sponge, like I was an education maniac. And I still wasn’t able to break through these hurdles that I was seeing financially, to be honest. I had to get out of the desperation mindset, release the fear, and make investments in the right place and space and investments of time and money.
Even if you’re like, “Oh, it’s all about the money.” No, no, no, no, no, investing time and money in the right places, not all the places, just in the right places with the right people. That’s why I went back to saying there’s a difference between learning from people who are successful and know some stuff, people who are educators, and people who are actually coaches. If you’re at the place where you feel like you’re working really hard but the money is not there, you might need to check yourself before you wreck yourself on where you’re turning for education and ask yourself, “Am I going all in? Am I cutting corners? Am I really going as deep as I possibly can to find the solutions to my problems?”
Then there are those of you who are making a ton of money, but you have no free time. You’d be working for the weekend except for that you haven’t had a real weekend where you didn’t work at all for two and a half years. You know what I’m talking about. “Sundays are my catch day where I do my business paperwork,” and stuff like that, or “I love my creative content Mondays.” Do you really or would you rather be watching Netflix, like catching up on Georgia and Ginny or sitting lakeside with your toes in the sand? It’s so adorable to say that we love our Sunday catchup days, but I would much rather be relaxing and you probably would too.
If you are in the salon working 12 hours a day, if you’re a leader who is constantly on standby for your team, you’re lacking structure, you’re working too hard to the point where the money almost isn’t even worth it, and your personal life, health, and mindset are suffering.
Now you can actually stay in this structure-free zone for a while until you have a full and complete breakdown. The breakdown is coming. I’ve seen this happen dozens of times. The breakdown will come. I understand this is sustainable for a while. I stayed in this mode for a long time until I hit this breakdown cycle where it was like, do really well, do really well, work really hard, crash and burn, crash and burn crash, but recovery, recovery work really hard, do really well, do really well, crash and burn, crash and burn. That will aid you, take a toll on you. Take a toll on your relationships and you will look back in life and say, “Why the heck did I choose that?” And I don’t have an answer for you, but you gotta break the cycle and choose to focus on creating structure in your business rather than stay on that busy bus.
Then there are those of you where the blindspot is, “I feel like I’ve done it all, but there’s still a missing fulfillment piece.” Ah, that hits home. For some of you, maybe you’ve built a business that others really admire, like they aspire to be more like you. You’re getting accolades for what you’ve built, but in your heart, like when you go to bed at night, you’re like, “Mm, something’s off. Something is still missing. I’m not feeling fulfilled. Maybe I’m not feeling accomplished, maybe I’m feeling like I’m meant for more and I’m not either getting recognized in that way, compensated in that way, validated in that way.” You need clarity on your next step in your next adventure.
Those who do get to the place where they’re making plenty of money and do have a really good lifestyle are generally very driven and driven people aren’t satisfied with good enough. Driven people like to feel like they’re always pushing forward. Driven people, this is why you see a lot of people who make a lot of money and then end up deeply depressed because they’re not continuing to fill that inspiration, changing-the-world’s tank that generally got them to that place.
Now, what a lot of people do when they get to that place is they’re like, “Okay, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to overcomplicate my life,” and rather than actually sinking into their next adventure, which feels really effing good, they take a step backwards and they go back to the lacking-structure busy bus where their plate is really full, they’re making great money, but they are a days off are a joke. Very common to slip backwards into that when you haven’t strategically chosen your next adventure and how to make it possible.
When I talk about the financial blockers in the blindspots, what I invite you to do is spend the next week, until the next podcast comes out, really asking yourself, am I working within the right structure? Do I have a brand message and is it actively attracting the right target market clients in true abundance? Is my pricing right? Do I know that it’s right or did I just choose my pricing based on the money I wanted to make or the money I need to fund my lifestyle? But maybe I’m not really working within it anymore, and am I lacking direction? Am I lacking inspiration? Am I lacking motivation?
I’d love to know where your answers are, so you can hit me up in the DMs and let me know how this podcast hit for you and what additional questions come up for you. You can leave me a rating or review on iTunes letting me know what questions come up for you.
But if you need a little help and you need a little bit more insight as far as really where your business is at and what might be a good next step, thrivingstylist.com/stylistsuccessanalysis and I hope that it helps. I look forward to digging into this deeper with y’all.
So much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
