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 really exciting and very poignant for about a thousand different reasons. Today we celebrate our 300th podcast episode, which is such a massive accomplishment. It’s something that less than 1% of podcasts created ever reach.
When I started this show back in 2018, most of the industry didn’t even know what a podcast was. I loved podcasts, and so I created this podcast here on this platform and released it to the world so excited and got hundreds of DMs of people saying, “…but what’s a podcast? Where do I buy it?”, and I had to literally create a PDF and video training showing people what a podcast was and how to download it.
It was one of the first podcasts for the industry. It continues to be the largest and most downloaded, and I don’t in any way attribute that to be anything I’ve done. I attribute it all to you, and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart because the Thriving Stylist Podcast is by far and away the thing I enjoy doing most every single week. It has become a true love of my life.
To be able to see the impact the show has had, to be able to connect with you all from all corners of the world through this little piece of the internet that I have has been so humbling. It is an incredible learning experience for me, and I couldn’t have imagined when I started this show five years ago that it would be here today.
So to those of you who have been here from the beginning, I am forever grateful to you. I have so much love in my heart and I’m so thankful for all of your support. To those of you who are newer around here, great to meet you and I’m excited to show you through 300 plus more and to continue on this journey.
But I just want to thank you all for a moment for supporting the show, for making it what it is, and for hanging with me every single week. I adore each and every one of you, and it’s truly an honor to be able to stand here with this mic every single week.
I saw this episode coming up a couple months back, and whenever there’s a landmark episode like this, I always get half excited, half nervous because I want to do it justice. I knew I was going to record this episode today, and to be honest, I had no idea what I was going to talk about. Then I got a DM last night from somebody I adore—and I don’t want to say publicly who it is because the message is pretty vulnerable. Instead, I want to just speak to what I would say to this person if we had 30 minutes together for coffee, of what I would say to this person.
To the person who hears this and knows that their DM was the inspiration, thank you for sharing your heart with me and hopefully if you’re willing one day, we will have this conversation and maybe we’ll share it on a future episode of the podcast.
But today I want to talk about what to do when your success feels fragile or fleeting.
Yesterday on my Instagram story, I put up a post that said, “What is it that you think gets in the way of your success?” This person responded and said, “My anxiety gets in the way of my success.”
I immediately DMed back and I said, “Oh my gosh, this is so relatable. I have to ask, do you feel like your success is fragile?” Because I wanted to understand what made this person feel like anxiety was getting in the way of them pushing forward, like how it was a blocker.
So I asked the follow-up question, “Do you feel like your success is fragile?”, and this person responded, “Yes, imposter syndrome is alive and well in this house.”
I said, “I really want to dig into this more because it’s just so real.” I think this is decently common, but one of those things where there’s this assumed shame in talking about it because what if nobody else feels that way? Admitting that you’re worried that your success is fragile can sometimes seem like you’re doubling down on the fact that something is wrong with you, which is of course a lie, not true. But the mind tricks us into believing these things, right?
This person said,”Yes, I feel like I’m the only person living in this impeccably shaky business house, but also just rational enough to know that everything is pretty good.” Then this person says, “Lol, my husband’s always like, ‘Oh goodness, here we go again with the four-month circle of doom.’”
We had a little chuckle about it because it was so relatable, and then we went back and forth about this and how in this industry, there’s this pressure to work 40 hours and look super famous.
She’s like, “I just don’t want any of those things, and it scares me that if I don’t do those things that are assumed to be the success benchmarks, am I making mistakes?”
I know that I coach to people doing things that are counter the norm, but following the norm in our industry keeps the average income of this industry at $24,000 a year, and I’m just not going to stand for it anymore. Our industry has stagnated at an average income per year of 24 to $25,000 for over a decade. No other industry is like that.
When people say, “Well, the only reason that that happens is because most stylists don’t claim their tips.” Even if every stylist who wasn’t claiming tips was being tipped 100%, meaning if a client paid $50 for a haircut, they were tipping another $50—I don’t think your clients are tipping 100%, but even if they were, that would mean the average income for a stylist in the US is $50,000 a year, which is still significantly less than the average income for every other industry on the planet.
No matter how you look at it, our industry is overworked and underpaid and it’s because of the industry norms that have been widely accepted for decades, and I’m just not doing it anymore. So I coach to things that are weird, but the fear is if I do things that aren’t the norm, am I going to screw it all up? I think that that is such a rational fear or for those of you who have found success or are thinking about pulling triggers towards success, there’s this idea of, but what if I make a mistake? Or you look around and maybe you have created an incredible life for yourself, but you’re like, “I don’t want to slow down to enjoy it because what if I miss something else?” The FOMO is so real.
A few weeks back, we talked about impulsive growth theory and this idea that you always have to be doing something else. What is the next thing? What’s the next thing you’re creating? We’re living in this high pressure world where it feels like if you don’t seize the day on every flipping thing that crosses your plate, you might lose it all. That is a boldface lie.
However, these are the things that anxiety, social pressures, our own minds, sometimes those we surround ourselves with convince us to believe and I want to talk about what to do to overcome those feelings when success feels fragile or fleeting, because I’ll be the first to admit I have those thoughts and fears too. 300 episodes into the largest, fastest-growing business-building podcast for stylists and beauty professionals today, I worry that my success is fragile and fleeting too. Even though history tells me, data tells me things are going really well, I think it’s a very natural common mindset. The difference for me is that I think I’ve been expressing these feelings for a really long time.
First of all, I’ll be the first to admit I’ve been going to therapy since I was probably 22 or something like that. On and off. I went a little bit as a kid when my parents went through their divorce and then as an adult, I’ve chosen to be quite active in therapy. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself. In doing so, I definitely have some support there, but also I’ve surrounded myself with some business professionals who are able to help me a lot. So business mentors that I work with privately. Also my CFO has been very helpful to me, and so I want to share some of the lessons those people have given to me as well that I think could help.
I’m going to break this down into steps, and if you’re somebody who feels like your success is fragile or fleeting or you’re terrified you’re going to make one wrong move and lose it all, this is for you.
I think understanding the five steps to success—I’ve made these up. There’s no scientific study, but when I look around at what has brought me success, what has brought success to those that I know, without a doubt, have financial success while living a really wealthy, balanced life where they’re not burning themselves out, these are the five things that people are doing in order to sustain them.
The first step is going to be inspiration, always. Some people calling it finding your fire, feeling your passion, getting clarity, alignment, your North Star. Okay, I like to call it the North Star, but getting inspired on what it is you want to do, what it is you want to create, what it is you want to achieve, focus, so you’re feeling inspired.
For me, I felt inspired to sign up for cosmetology school, best decision I ever made. That was the first step of inspiration on that journey. I felt a calling to it. I know it was what I was supposed to do. Turns out it was beautiful.
First, there’s the inspiration. Then the next step is always going to be education. Once you’ve decided what it is you want to do, you have to educate yourself. Unfortunately, this is the thing that people put on the back burner and they skip to next step number three, which is what puts you dead in the water. A lot of people say, “I would educate myself but I don’t have the money.” “I would educate myself, but I don’t have the time.”
If you don’t educate yourself, you are taking the longest path to success and the shortest path to frustration.
It goes inspiration and then whatever you need to do to educate yourself on whatever it is you’ve decided to chase or achieve, then next is execution.
Once you have clarity on what it is you want to do, you educate yourself on the thing, then you start to execute on it.
Execute is actually doing the work.
It’s funny, some people resist the education. They’re like, “Ah, I’m inspired. I just want to get down to it. I don’t want to have to slow down to learn. I don’t want to have to have somebody tell me how to do it. I just want to trial and error it.” Some people like to struggle and do it that way. That’s fine. Some people like to stay in inspiration/education, right? They’re like, “I don’t want to actually have to do the work. I just like sitting in on the classes. I just like listening to the podcast. I just like the feeling of learning.” I like the feeling of learning too. I love a good business book. I love a good documentary. I love a good podcast. You have to get past the education/inspiration and into the execution because until you execute, you can’t get to step four, which is reflection.
Once you’ve executed and done some of the work, now you have to look around and say, “Okay, what worked? What pushed me towards my goal, my North Star? What worked against my North Star? What actually is helping me achieve what I want? Am I even working in alignment with my goals?”
Then it gets us to step five, which is the final step, which is realignment. This is the piece people have a hard time with too.
One of the things I do in my company a lot is I’m changing things constantly. Things around here are changing all the time. Sometimes it can feel frustrating to my team that we are constantly realigning. If I just stuck to my guns and said, “Nope, we’re going to execute like this and there’s no flexibility and I’m never going to change anything,” I wouldn’t be recording my 300th podcast today. The realignment after the reflection based on the execution because of the education in alignment with the inspiration is how we continue to push forward.
Once we’ve realigned, then we execute again or we educate if we need to and then we reflect and then we realign again. It’s microadjustments to keep pushing you forward. Once you have mastered whatever it is you’re set out to achieve, then you can go back to inspiration, you can educate again, then re-execute, reflect, and realign.
Those are the steps to success. The reason I share that is if you ever feel frustrated, if you ever lose your way, you can always go back to those things. When success feels fragile, all you have to do is choose one of those five, whichever you feel like is soft for you and it’s like putting fuel in the engine again.
Number two, and this one’s very simple: Realize that nobody’s lucky. Whatever success you’ve already achieved is not because you rubbed the lamp and the genie came out and the genie granted you three wishes and one of your wishes was to be successful in business. Is that any of your story? I don’t think anybody has ever had that journey for themselves. I wish it was so easy, but it’s not.
Know that you’ve already achieved success once. Once you’ve achieved it once, it’s actually fairly easy to replicate. I’ve seen people lose businesses and rebuild something better the next time around.
When they say good things fall apart so great things can come together, the older I get, which is so sad to say, the more I see that true, and that’s a funny thing that comes with age is the wisdom and the life experience. I’ve yet to see somebody lose it all and really try with focus to gain it back and not come back swinging. I’ve seen people lose it all and then choose not to go back to the five steps of success for sure, definitely. But the idea that you only struck lightning one time in your business, it’s never going to happen again, you’re going to do something so major that it’s not recoverable is slim to none. You got here based on hard work, focus, dedication, education, inspiration, execution, all those things. You could lose it all today and tomorrow pick it up and do it again. You didn’t get lucky. Your efforts got you here, and I want you to remember that you’ve done it before and you could do it again.
Number three, understand your money story. I think this is very important. A book I strongly suggest if you’ve never read it before is called The Psychology of Money. It’s a fantastic read. I like the style of the book because it’s like a series of stories. The author is saying this is Maggie’s story, this is Joe’s story, and talking about different people’s perspective on money, and you’ll be able to see yourself in one or a few of the stories. And it’s really helpful for me. I grew up in a family that had literally nothing, like nothing. If you wanted to look, there’s local articles in my local newspaper of my mom begging the community for money. When I say we came from nothing, we came from nothing. And so I had this money story that money is very fleeting, and so I’m always going to be fighting that.
The more you understand your money story, the better you’ll be able to understand your relationship with why you’re so afraid to lose whatever it is you feel like is fleeting. I really encourage you, if not that book, find something else. Really figure out what it is your relationship with money looks like because once you understand it and are able to at least heal it to a degree, you’re able to have a different relationship with it and not be so scared of losing it.
Next, these two things go hand in hand: I want you to determine what makes you feel successful from a lifestyle perspective. For some people, it’s the ability to take vacations. For some people, it’s something like sending their kids to a private school or buying a home or driving your dream car or the kind of clothes you wear or the kind of handbag you carry, whatever. We all have different lifestyle things that make us feel successful.
I want you to make a list of yours and the reason why the list is so important, and this is something I learned from my CFO because I felt like for years—and some days I still do feel like my success is fleeting. His advice to me was, “Britt, I want you to make a list of the lifestyle things that make you feel like, damn, I’ve made it.”
My list was so simple. It was like take a vacation to Lake Tahoe with my family debt-free every year. I want to own a family home, and we live in a very simple three-bedroom single family home. For me, I’m good. I drive a 2016. I don’t have a brand new car, but it’s my dream car. It’s a car that I always wanted to have. I wanted to have it for 15 years. It’s not brand new, but it’s okay. I love it all the same.
It’s like what are the lifestyle things that make you feel successful?
Now, what’s funny about that is I had a moment. A few weeks back, I was in Lake Tahoe with my family and we were on our annual vacation. Again, this is one of my success benchmarks. We pulled up to the rental house and I saw my car and my husband’s car sitting in the driveway, and we were there on a two-week vacation. We had never taken a two-week vacation like this before up at the lake. I pulled up and I was on a walk with the dogs. I walked up, I didn’t pull up, I walked up and I thought, my beautiful family’s inside. I’m driving my dream car. I’m here on my dream vacation. Life is so damn good. It gave me this chance to have a moment of gratitude of like, “Girl, you made it. Take a minute to appreciate what you’ve got.”
Because I have this list of lifestyle success benchmarks, it forces me into gratitude all the time. It’s so easy to be like, “One day, I want to own a super yacht,” and it keeps you in this mindset of “I’m not enough, I’m not enough, I’m not enough. I can’t afford to fly first class. I can’t afford to have the mega yacht. I can’t afford to have this other thing.”
Stop with that story. Start with the story of what were your success benchmarks. Work to achieve those things. Work with focus to achieve those success benchmarks. Once you have them, stop with the mindset of “My success’s fleeting, I’m going to lose it all.” Look around you and be so thankful for what you have.
I’m sharing my success benchmarks. Now, if somebody had asked me 10 years ago what my success benchmarks were lifestyle-wise, it might’ve been things like I rent a home where each of my children has their own bedroom, which 10 years ago, we didn’t have. Our infant son was sleeping in the master. My husband and I were sleeping in the living room and our daughter had her own room. If you asked me 10 years ago, our lifestyle success benchmark would simply be each of our kids has their own bedroom. The exercise is the same. Ultimately, we were able to rent a house where our kids did each have their own bedroom, and thank goodness my husband and I got our bedroom back.
When I pulled up to that house, I was able to say, “Damn, girl, you made it,” and you celebrate these micro improvements that you’re having. It really changes that fleeting feeling. I suggest doing that.
The next thing you do is a secondary list and it’s what makes you feel secure. The first was what makes you feel successful? The second is what makes you feel secure? What does your savings account need to look like? Do you need to be debt-free or do you not care about that? Some people don’t care, right? That’s fine. Do you need to own a home or is that not important to you? Do you need to own a vacation home, and then is your vacation home lifestyle or is it security? Because it’s different for both people. Do you need to have a certain amount of money in retirement savings or do you not believe in retirement savings? There’s beliefs around that, right? Do you need to be self-made?
For me, that was one of my benchmarks is I need to be able to carry my own weight. That’s part of my money story. Again, it goes back to the money story thing, but for me, I only feel secure if I know I can cover myself. I don’t need to rely on anybody else. Not everybody feels that way, but for me, that’s a security benchmark. I could not feel like my success was earned until I had that.
We’ve made two lists: What makes you feel successful lifestyle-wise and what makes you feel secure?
Next, you have to choose, and this is going to be hard, which of those lists is most important? Is it the success factors or the security factors? This is going to be hard because you’re going to want to fall in love with both.
You’re going to have to choose between lifestyle or peace of mind. Now, for me, I choose security. Not everybody chooses that, but when I say what could make my success feel fragile or fleeting, it’s the security things that feel more risky. I could not take a vacation and still feel okay. Like I said, I drive an older car. I still feel okay about that. Not everybody would, and that’s fine. I’m not here to judge.
But would you rather have the security things or the lifestyle things? If you ask my husband, he needs the lifestyle, and it’s not because he’s fancy, it’s because his perspective is “Life is really damn short and I’m not worried about the money in the bank account. I’m worried about the memories with my children,” and I can deeply respect, understand, and relate to that. But you can see how these conversations also lead into great partnership conversations and things like that.
We’re constantly balancing my success feels fleeting if we don’t have the security things, his success feels fleeting if he doesn’t have the lifestyle things, the memories, right, all that stuff. But it allows you to have this peace of mind at the end of the day of like, okay, we’ve checked these boxes, we’re good.
Which leads us into our second-to-last step, which is creating benchmarks for each. This is something that actually my therapist and my CFO advised me to do is saying, “Okay, Britt, I want you to make a savings account benchmark and you tell yourself, “Okay, so long as my family has fill-in-the-blank, $20,000 in savings, we don’t need to feel like our success is fleeting.” You can increase benchmarks over time.
Maybe for you right now, you say, “So long as my family has a thousand dollars in savings, we don’t have to feel like our success is fleeting.” You need to create psychological benchmarks for yourself. “So long as my family can pay their rent on time, our success doesn’t have to be fleeting.” You need to give yourself these benchmarks so that at the end of the day when you start spinning and spiraling about, “What if I do something wrong and I lose it all?” You lay in bed and you say, “But you know what? The rent is paid. We’ve got a thousand dollars in savings. The kids went to summer camp this year.”
Again, that leads me into my last thing. You ask yourself, “What is the worst thing that could happen if you professionally lose it all?” Truly, your success was fleeting. Everything I said on this podcast was a lie. You lost your entire business. You couldn’t garner it back. There was nothing you could do. What’s the worst thing that could happen? Literally the worst.
I know what my worst thing that could happen is, and in my worst case scenario, I still get my husband and my kids and I could be okay with that. And in having that, knowing and in having that reality of, but what really matters at the end of the day, if it really all falls apart, it gives you that mental piece of life is so much more simple than the money. Life is so much more simple than the business success and the business success definitely matters.
And guess what? Sometimes success is fleeting, and at the end of the day, that’s okay, but it helps to relieve that anxiety of, “I’m so afraid to make a critical error. What if I screw this all up?”
I want you to reflect back on this, create those benchmarks for yourself, really get clear on what matters to you and those you love the most. Really honor and respect the fact that you’re here and you’ve created this career and you’re listening to this podcast, whether you’ve been in the industry for five minutes or 15 years is a massive accomplishment.
And guess what? The best is yet to come. Your success doesn’t have to be fleeting. It’s not fragile. There is always a way to better your life, and I’m here to help you every step of the way, no matter how I can.
This was a touchy-feely one for episode 300. As I always like to say, thank you for being here and for being a part of this show. So much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
