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 how to find your what’s next.
This has been interesting. I’m recording this podcast very shortly after I had my very first stop on the Thriving Stylist Tour at Salon ISH in Puyallup, Washington, which was so incredible. It’s always wonderful to really connect with the Thrivers Society community, boots on the ground, and understand what people are struggling with.
There was this overwhelming, well, there was a couple of themes. One of them was the amount of overwhelm and burnout in the industry, and we talked about that and I unpacked it and we talked about inevitable growth theory and fear of failure, and how all of these things relate to each other. I think that was very clarifying. Then we talked about getting to an inspiration cycle where you can get beyond those things.
Then towards the end, we were doing an exercise where we were deciding what the commitments were going to be that we were going to make leaving the class. One of the things a couple people struggled with is they were like, “This was great. I got some ideas and some inspiration, but I don’t know my what’s next? I don’t know where I’m going.”
What was very interesting is this room was a very accomplished room. Most of the people in this room have either already doubled, tripled, 5X their income with Thrivers Society. They’re already working a dream schedule. Now, not all of them. Some of them are still working towards those things, but a lot of them were like, “I’ve already done really great stuff. Now I’m trying to decide what’s next.”
Now whether you’ve already accomplished those big, amazing things, or you’re like, “Listen, I’m just trying to get started here,” sometimes the “What do I focus on next?” or “What is my next goal?” or “What is my next North Star?” or “What is the next hurdle I’m trying to overcome?” is so obscure that that alone feels overwhelming and can cause feelings of being lost or like you are inadequate or all kinds of other negative self-talk that’s actually not true. But our mind will play games on us and allow us to believe that we’re unclear or unqualified.
I really took the last few days to think about, “Huh, how is it I can coach people to finding their what’s next?” and I figured it out.
I will say, we are going to dive deep into this what’s next formula that I figured out in Wealthiest Year Yet this season, so if you are investing in my annual planner that I create, and especially if you’re doing the coaching. If you’re doing self-study, we’re not going to dig into this. The lessons are what they are, the planner is what it is. But if you are doing the coaching experience, the intensive, we are going to dig into finding your what’s next. I’m going to be doing some group coaching around that, and I’m really, really excited about it.
But if you have not signed up for Wealthiest Year Yet yet, or if you want to attempt to do this on your own without the group coaching, I want to give you the thousand foot view of what I think will help anybody who’s struggling to find their what’s next how to do it.
Whenever we’re deciding what’s next, the very first thing I want you to do is decide what season you’re in in your life and in your business. If you go back and you listen to episode 214 of the Thriving Stylist Podcast, I introduced a topic on expanding, scaling, shifting, and stabilizing. (It is still one of our most downloaded episodes.) Going through that process is going to be very, very helpful as you really try to determine your what’s next.
Giving the brief summary, there’s basically four options to determine what is most important to you right now. The first is expansion, the second is scaling, the third is shifting, and the fourth is stabilizing. All four of those are seasons of growth or seasons of what’s next, but it’s approaching what’s next in all different ways.
I came up with these buckets of what’s next based on what I’ve experienced in my business. We’ve been in all of these seasons, all of these seasons have pushed us forward. All of them have felt different, the work in each has looked different. Really determining “Are we expanding? Are we scaling, are we shifting or are we stabilizing?” will help you to figure out the what’s next.
Let me give you the bird’s eye view of what each of these is.
Expansion is something that will bring profit, but always requires a financial investment. When you look at that financial investment, sometimes expansion will cut into your profit margin or you’ll have to dip into your savings to pull it off. Always. It’ll be time consuming.
Whenever I look at resources or investment, to me, investment—I always look at cost of money, cost of time. When we expand, it’s going to be expensive time-wise and expensive money-wise. It’s also risky, but no risk, no reward. Expansion is one of the things that we can do whenever we’re looking for our what’s next.
The next thing we can do is scaling. Scaling has the opportunity to bring profit, and it does produce time wealth, right? We just talked about resources and how when we’re expanding, it’s going to eat into our time wealth. Scaling produces more time for you, which is always exciting, but often scaling feels boring.
This is why most come to a season of scaling and then choose to shift. We’ll talk about shifting in a moment. The work you do in scaling is boring AF, especially for those who are creatives and most of us in this industry are creative. We like the sexy stuff, we like the new stuff, we like vision, we like new challenges, we like launching new things and feeling shiny.
Scaling doesn’t feel like any of that. It feels boring, but it’s also something that can produce massive results for you on the flip side, if you can be okay with your business being boring for a minute, like maybe you can find your zest of life somewhere else. Something to think about.
Then we have shifting. Shifting has the biggest payoff of all four of these categories when done correctly. But most people avoid it because of the work involved and the fear that the risk won’t produce an adequate reward.
When you look at expansion, it’s like, what if you have one salon location and it’s going well? Well, if one is good, two is better, right? Or you’re like, “We’re doing really well at this salon location, we’re going to expand and pick up an extra 1500 square feet.” That’s expansion. It’s expensive, it’s time consuming, but you’ve already got a model that works, so the odds of the model working in a bigger space is pretty darn good so long as you have the systems and the structure in place, which we’re going to get to in just a second here.
Shifting is different. Shifting is like, “Okay, what we’ve been doing has worked, but what if we can make it better?” and it’s making it better without expanding. It’s generally a restructure. New systems, new processes, something I call pioneering.
When we shift, it’s like, “Whoa, what if we put what’s been working on the back burner and try something new?”
I was coaching this—the stylist I was coaching is going to know exactly who it was as soon as I say this. I was coaching the stylist at the Thriving Stylist Tour, and she was like, “I’m a successful colorist, but I want to focus on bridal,” and I was like, “Okay, that’s great.” Then we went through this exercise of writing down on a note card what are the next three steps you’re going to make in your business? None of those three steps had anything to do with bridal.
I was like, “Wait, I’m so confused because 30 minutes ago you just said you’re a colorist, but you want to shift to bridal.” She was like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, but I have to do this thing and that thing and the other thing, and then,” who knows when, it didn’t even make it onto a card, “then I’m going to shift to bridal.”
So often we’re like, “Well, I want to have this thing, but I have 15 other things I could be doing. Instead of doing the thing I want to do, I’m going to do the other 15 things, and then someday I’ll get to do bridal.”
Right now, maybe she’s right, maybe she’s wrong, maybe she should do the next thing I’m about to talk about first and then shift to bridal. I don’t know. But I called her on that and I said, “Bridal is what you want to do and yet you’re worried so much about essentially scaling what she’s already done. Do you really want to be in a scaling season of scaling or is it time to be in a season of shifting?” Right?
Shifting would be saying, “You know what? I’m not going to be a colorist anymore. I’m going to go all in on bridal, and that’s going to take me to the level I want it to take me to.”
Shifting involves massive change, but often can produce a huge result. The huge result is often not just financially, but emotionally too, which is really nice.
Then the last option for your what’s next is what’s called stabilizing. When we stabilize, we get organized, we clean things up, we don’t add anything new. When we’re stabilizing, often we take things away. Sometimes when we stabilize, we delegate.
Let’s say that you decide ultimately you do want to expand, you’re going to open a second location, you’re going to need to have a really strong salon manager or an alternative leader in order to do that. Much as I know you’re such a badass listening to this episode, running two locations is going to be hard for you. You can’t be two places at once unless you want to double your current workload. Your family life is probably going to suffer. You need somebody else to be boots on the ground leading the day to day for you. I would spend a season stabilizing, meaning training somebody to truly, truly, truly be your right hand. Somebody who can speak for you in your absence, somebody who truly understands your vision and can really run the ship without you, and then do the expansion.
The season of stabilizing is sometimes critical before you shift or before you expand or before you scale. Shifting also feels boring because it’s like, ugh. It’s that grunt work. The systems, the processes, the SOPs that are generally, again, not super fun, but if you try to expand or scale and you’re not stable, all you’ll do is create more overwhelm and nobody wants that.
When you’re thinking about what’s your what’s next, I want you to take a step back and say, “Okay, am I in a season of shifting, scaling, stabilizing, or expanding?” Okay.
Then the next clarifying question we ask is, “Who do we want to help?” We have options when we look at who we want to help: others, your top three, or yourself.
Others would be like I decide I want to be a bridal stylist, so I’m going to help brides. That’s really where my heart is at. I want to be an amazing bridal stylist. I’m going to help brides. Okay, great.
Or you might say, well, “I want to be a bridal stylist, but if I can be honest, my family life’s a little rocky right now, and I’ve been chasing this career so hard for two and a half years. And if I’m being honest with myself, my marriage is feeling it. My kids are sad. I haven’t seen my parents in months.” Maybe you’re starting to think about like, well, as much as I want to help the brides, what I really need to do is focus on my family.
So when I say my top three, I have a top three and it’s the three humans that live in my household: my husband and my two kids. The reason that I’ve always had a top three is it’s a really great clarifier of when I’m thinking about a business decision. For example—my team is going to hear this and laugh—I just was offered an incredibly luxurious, amazing, fairly long speaking partnership contract abroad. On paper, it looked so gorgeous and so phenomenal and truly a dream opportunity. I messaged my team and I was like, “Yeah, for me it’s going to be a no.” They were like, “Are you okay? What do you mean it’s going to be a no?” I was like, “This is not good for my family life, as much as it would be great for my career, as much as I would love it, as much as it would make my soul happy,” and I’d get to do so many wonderful things and meet so many wonderful people and it would be like checking a career dream box, it’s not good for my top three, which is my husband and my kids, so I’m going to walk away. I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I wasn’t clear on what my what’s next was, right?
Knowing, am I in a season of focusing on family, focusing on career?
Then the third category, focusing on yourself. It’s a clarifier. Now that being said, I wouldn’t say overwhelmingly I’m in this season of family first. But I am at a point in my career where I’m like, “It’s not worth sacrificing my family to, to make a dollar,” which we’re going to get into in just a second here. But using these clarifiers of what is it I want to do to help right now? Do you want to help others? Meaning help stylists, salon owners help clients, right?
For me, it’s stylists and salon owners. For you, it’s clients. Do I really want to work on helping brides? Do I want to work on helping extension clients? Do I want to work on clipper cuts? Whatever.
Then your top three, like, do I really need to just focus on family this season? And from you, it might be a top five, okay? It’s probably not going to be more than a top 10, but what is it going to be? The core people in your life or yourself or you’re like, “I’m burnt out, I’m exhausted. Yes, I always want to be looking to my what’s next, but I’m not sleeping well. I’m not happy with how my body’s feeling. I’m not happy with my mindset.” Then maybe it’s time to stabilize. Maybe it’s time to take a step back and, and do the stuff that’s not so exciting or not so splashy or doesn’t look so cool on social media, but it’s good for your soul, right? And maybe that’s the what’s next.
Having that clarification of am I in a season where I really want to pour into those I serve, am I in a season where I want to pour into those I love, or am I in a season where I want to pour into myself? Very clarifying.
Lastly, you look at your wealth wheel. When I talk about the wealth wheel, it’s time, love, money, and health. When you look at that wealth wheel, I want you to ask yourself, which of those categories is going well and which of them is not going well? Which of them is going quite poorly? Generally speaking, one or two of the categories will be booming at any given time, and then two, three or four will be not going so great.
I want you to look at that and say, “Okay, am I in a season right now where my relationships are going great? My family life is great, I’m feeling super balanced, my health is good. I’m doing yoga four days a week, but if I’m being honest, my bank account looks sad.” This might be a season where you need to focus on making some cash.
I like to talk about money really openly on this podcast. This is a business podcast. We’re here to make money. I’m a big proponent of making money while serving your personal life in the process. But we don’t—generally, people who listen to my podcasts aren’t running non-profits. You need to make a living for yourself.
Whenever I say that, people get in their feelings and they’re like, “No, no, no, I just love serving my clients.” Okay, great. Would you serve your clients if you were not making any money at all? You were just showing up at the salon three or four days a week and you never got paid? No, we’re doing it for the money. If the money dries up, we’ve got a problem.
Thinking to yourself, what is it I need in this season? Do I need more health? Do I need more love? Do I need more money? Or do I need more time? And asking yourself what is most important?
In Wealthiest Year Yet workshop this season, we are going to be doing an exercise where we figure out how to determine all of these things. But if you’re not doing Wealthiest Year Yet [Intensive] and you’re just doing this reflection for yourself, I want you to think to yourself as I’m saying this, what’s next? Why am I not satisfied with the status quo? What is going on in your life in this moment that’s not feeling right?
Whenever we’re looking for a what’s next, it’s almost always because we’re feeling not satisfied, we’re feeling bored, or we’re feeling overwhelmed. Where are those feelings stemming from?
Now I want to walk through one other really quick exercise. I read an article recently that was talking about lack of clarity and what is mental clarity and signs that you are lacking it. There were five signs that I was obsessed with.
Number one, you’re indecisive.
Number two, you’re having feelings of self-doubt.
Number three, you’re often forgetful.
Number four, you have a short attention span.
And number five, you have feelings of anxiety.
If any of those things are true or all of those things are true, it’s a huge sign that you are lacking mental clarity. Often, we lack mental clarity when we just have too much stuff going on. Your head is noisy, your to-do list is long. You’re starting to fill with self doubt, fear of failure, the FOMO kicks in, right? When all of that happens, our thoughts get fuzzy and our mental clarity suffers.
When mental clarity is suffering, it’s very difficult to do any of the things I just talked about and to really hone into your what’s next?
So this time of year—I’m recording this podcast in the fall if you’re listening in real time. It’s such a beautiful, reflective time of year where we start to think about what we want, what we don’t want, and we’re taking a step back to center around family at the holidays and things like that.
I want you to use this season in this time to really think to yourself, what am I doing all this for? Where am I going with all of this? How can I help myself? What are the things I’m truly seeking clarity on?
If you need help in this season, Wealthiest Year Yet is now available. You can head to thrivingstylist.com/wealthiestyearyet. This is my annual planning system. It comes with a physical planner, shipped right to your doorstep and all kind of planning goodies. I walk you through exactly how to figure out what actions you should take to make massive progress in your business without the overwhelm. Certainly available to you. thrivingstylist.com/wealthiestyearyet.
But more than anything, I want you to really think about what’s in your heart, what’s in your mind, the people in your household, and what you need to do to feel most fulfilled in this season of life.
Y’all so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
