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 I thought this week starting off a beautiful new year, we will talk about how to feel inspired, driven, and motivated in your business.
It’s so funny. I am very well aware that burnout is alive and well in our industry. I have lots of previous episodes where I talk about how to overcome burnout, what I think the source of burnout is.
If you do a Google search for Thriving Stylist Podcast, burnout, all those episodes and resources will come up, so if you need help there, that’s available to you. But one of the things I think we’re all very aware of is the pace of life in the past few years has sped up. In order to try and keep up with that speed, we’ve added a lot of overwhelm.
What I noticed is a lot of stylists and beauty professionals are just not feeling in love with their business. They’re going through the motions. They’re like, “It’s this thing I have to do,” and a lot of people are craving—I’m going to call it stimulation. They’re like, “It doesn’t drive me the way that it used to,” and I want to help you to feel inspired, driven and motivated.
When I was heading into this episode, I was doing some research around how burnt out are we as a people right now, and I saw a lot of stats and statistics on stress, like Americans under stress. What they were showing is the amount of stress that the average American between the ages of 18 and 44 specifically has increased so dramatically since 2019, and it’s on the uproar, not the down roar.
I thought it was interesting also that after the age of 44, those stats fell off. It’s not to say that those in their later forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties aren’t stressed at all, but there’s not a significant jump.
When I look at those age groups, we’re mainly talking Gen Z, millennial, a little Gen X. The pressure on those age groups specifically is intense. We’re kind of the demographic where it’s harder next to impossible to buy a home. We are impacted by the 2008 recession, now the 2023/2024 recession. It feels like we’re in a pressure cooker in a way that previous generations maybe didn’t experience. I think for a lot of us, we feel like we’re constantly treading water, like we’re swimming, we’re doing the laps, but your head is continually barely above water. As soon as you feel like you’re getting a break, it’s like another wave is coming.
It was just very interesting for me to see the statistics of these two specific generations, Gen Z and millennials specifically, where it looks like the stress is mounting without signs of relief. When you looked at what their stressors were, one of the biggest ones was paying for day-to-day expenses. I found that so interesting. It wasn’t marital stress or financial stress. Financial stress played a part of it for people, but when they did more of a deeper dive into the financial stress, it wasn’t like, “How am I going to buy a home?” It was literally “How am I going to pay for groceries?”
I just think that the way that things are heading, it would do us all such justice if we could figure out how to feel inspired, driven, and motivated in our business.
One of the things I’m big on and passionate about is I do fully believe at my core, all of us are supposed to be deeply successful. I don’t believe anybody is supposed to struggle, but I think we’re living in a noisy world where people can get bogged down by the opinions of others and pressured to perform in a certain way. And a lot of people simply just don’t know what needs to happen to unlock their success, or they have someone in their ear telling them they’re not good enough. There’s all these external factors that cause people to not live up to their biggest potential.
I think that’s a good summary of what the last 20 or so years have looked like for a lot of us working professionals. I think we can choose to change that at any given time and I want to give you some tools and resources to help.
As per ush, I did a little research and I want to start with sharing with you the definition of the word “inspire.” It’s interesting, I had never looked it up before and the definition actually surprised me. It says, “Coming from the Latin inspirare, meaning ‘to breathe into,’ the word or inspiration was originally used in a divine context to mean a kind of mystical animating force, a profound idea or truth revealed to an unsuspecting person.”
I had chills when I read it and I’ve chills again reading it. I think that’s so incredible. People will say, “I need to find my passion. I wish I could feel inspired.” When you look at this, it’s a profound idea or truth, not just like, “Oh, cool, I took a class.” It’s supposed to be profound. “A profound idea or truth revealed to an unsuspecting person.”
A lot of times we’re hoping inspiration finds us because “I’m unexpecting. I hope that the inspiration lands in my lap.” I believe we have to create the opportunity for inspiration to come in. I want to show you I think how that works and how that looks.
The other thing I loved about that was the idea of being breathed into breathing in new life, exhaling. I think that’s a huge part of it too. When it talked about something being a mystical force, I don’t know about you, but when I’m inspired, it’s like the wind is at my back and it’s pushing me forward. As I looked at the roots of this word, it really took on a new meaning for me of how important it really is.
The other thing I found to be interesting is it said that inspiration is often evoked by a trigger. It may come in the form of an inner encounter with a new idea, insight, or outwardly through exposure to art, nature, books, people, et cetera. Regardless of the nature of the trigger, when inspiration hits, it charges us with energy and radiates us for action.
Knowing all these things, if you are over the age of—I’m going to say shoot over the age of probably 23, maybe 24, 25. If you’re younger than that, you may not remember this, but if you’re over the age of 22, 23, 24, 25, you’ll remember at least some parts of a world before social media, even if it was parts of your childhood. I can remember a life without social media in my early adulthood, but from the time I was in my later twenties, social media was around.
It’s so ironic because I think education, inspiration, inspiration was much harder to find in some ways you had to seek it out or you had to be very open-minded. You had to be curious. There wasn’t a lot of awareness around business books. Podcasts didn’t exist. There weren’t educators on Instagram, nobody had social media. If you wanted to be inspired, you would literally fly across the country to take a class from an educator. Your local beauty business rep would tell you what educators were available or the brand you were working with in the salon had educators who they decided were appropriate for you. Maybe you’d go to the local bookstore because by the way, Amazon didn’t exist. You’d go to the local bookstore and browse the self-help book section, but man, self-help books 20 years ago are not what they are today. Now, self-help books are on the rise and everybody loves them. 20 years ago, it wasn’t like that and people would feel inspired going to church. Now you look at attendance in churches and things like that being an all-time low. Why is that? Because people are living in this noisy world where the sound and the voice that we hear the most is the sound of Instagram, the sound of Facebook, the sound of TikTok, the sound of reality TV.
When I say it like that, it really brings full circle how much noise we’re all bringing in all the time. When we see the inspiration generally comes from a trigger, we are being constantly triggered. I think the word “trigger” has a negative connotation today, but I want you to imagine that it has a neutral connotation that you can be positively triggered or negatively triggered.
A positive trigger is you see something cool on TikTok or Instagram or wherever and you’re like, “I love that idea. I should do that in my business.” Now you’re inspired by that idea for the day, but then what happens is two hours later you see something else and it’s a negative trigger, and that negative trigger makes you feel like you’re two inches tall and you’re worthless and you’ll never be good enough to do that idea that was exciting for you two hours ago so you decide to table it. Then you listen to a podcast driving home from work and you’re super inspired because there’s three new ideas, you’ve got three new triggers and you’re like, “I’m going to do it.” But then you go into work the next day and one of the coworking stylists that you work with is full of drama and full of hatred and is sharing gossip, and now you’re negatively triggered.
It’s like we’re in this noise cycle of constant triggering versus I am telling you what, like I said, if you’re over the age of 25, you may remember a simpler life when we kind of just were blissfully unaware of what was going on. And was it harder to find education? Yes. Were there much less resources to learn from and be inspired by? Yes. But in some ways, the idea that we had to work a little harder to find the inspiration or truly be focused on it prevented us from making really irrational choices or being overly stimulated.
The other thing too, we know we’re living in an entrepreneurial era where everybody wants to start a business. Everybody wants to be a business owner because of all the things that I just said. It’s not a bad thing. I definitely got a taste of that bug and it changed my life for the best. I can get emotional thinking about it. It’s the best decision I ever made.
However, sometimes it also serves as this huge distraction and it causes us instead of just focusing on one thing and doing it well, which 20 years ago you didn’t see all of these possibilities and all of this potential you had to focus on the one thing. Now that we don’t have to focus on the one thing. We are overstimulated. We’re completely confused. We’re convinced the grass is greener on the other side. We’re uninspired by our life today, and we look at what’s better and what’s next.
I was listening to something about dating culture recently, and they were talking about how dating apps is truly ruining a lot of people’s potential for long-term relationships, and social media and dating apps are ruining what should be rock-solid marriages. I got so sucked in because the study was fascinating, and it was talking about how years ago when there was no online dating, if you were looking for a life partner, you met them through basically what I call referrals. A friend of yours says, “Oh, I have this friend. You guys should talk. I think you might be a good match,” or whatever. A lot of people met that way. You’d meet somebody at work, you’d meet somebody in the local coffee shop, but you literally had to meet human to human. Kind of how inspiration opportunities were slimmer, the opportunity to meet and find somebody new was slimmer.
Well, now you can open up an app on your phone at one in the morning or one in the afternoon, browse thousands of profiles of people who may or may not be single, but are advertising themselves as interested in finding somebody. A lot of people are saying, “Well, why should I be in the relationship right now where I could go out and date Sandra? She looks great.” It’s the same thing for your business. Why should I work on the business I have now when I could go out and try this new business, which looks so much more fun and light and exciting and I’m inspired by it versus my existing business that’s not inspiring me anymore. It’s because we’re overstimulated and we’re being fed too much information and it’s cluttering our minds.
Woosah, I want to take a break and pull back and look at what it looks like to feel inspired, driven, and motivated in the business you have today and when to know if you should look for a new venture.
First things first, if you’ve not already done so, I want you to go back and listen to an oldie but a goodie Thriving Stylist podcast episode. It’s episode number 004. The episode was recorded in 2018, still to this day, every single year, it’s one of the most downloaded, most listened to episodes. So 004 if you haven’t already. It’s the four-part cycle that causes breakdowns, boredoms, and stagnation in your business.
Here’s a teaser. The four-part cycle looks like this, inspiration, education, execution and action, and then falling into overwhelm or boredom. I’m going to speak to those who are already in overwhelm or boredom today. Go back and listen to that episode so you can understand the cycle.
First of all, if people fall into overwhelm or boredom, which you may be there now, especially if you’re listening to this episode, generally speaking, what people in that phase of business do is they first off, they say, “I’m going to take a break.”
How many of you—and I call that the B word, how many of you have been like, “I’m just going to take a break?” Somebody told me recently “I’m not taking a break, I’m just taking a slow roll.” I was like, what’s the difference between a slow roll and a break?” They were like, “Well, I’m still doing the work. I’m just not actively growing or trying.” I was like, “That’s the same as a break.”
By “break,” I don’t mean you’ve given up on life, but when you say, I’m just putting things on pause or it’s on a slow roll, or I’m cruise controlling, that’s a break. We do that when we are feeling overwhelmed or bored.
Number two, they decide to start a new business. I was just talking about for lots and lots of time a few minutes ago. It’s because we’re seeking new stimulation and we’re in a world where we are constantly feeling like stimulations at our fingertips, so the mundaneness of our existing business feels dull compared to the shiny, sexy, exciting stuff that we see going on beyond our four walls, right?
Number three, they decide they need a new challenge for the same reason as starting a new business, or number four, they just choose to stay frustrated, miserable. They choose to talk negatively about people. When you see people who are gossips, they’re generally overwhelmed or bored.
Usually one of those four things or all of those four things happen when somebody’s uninspired, not driven or not motivated in their own business.
Let’s go through, I have seven steps here to walk you through how to overcome that and get to a place of clarity.
Number one, get very clear on what isn’t feeling fulfilled. I like to think of that in four categories. I call it the four areas of wealth. I always say money, time, love, and health.
Are you feeling uninspired because you feel like you’re working super hard, but the money’s not worth it? That would make anybody feel uninspired and that’s understandable. Or is it that you don’t have enough time? Again, you’re working super hard, but you’re burnt the F out. Maybe you are making enough money, maybe you’re not making enough money, but either way, you’re not happy with how you’re spending your time. You feel like you’re on a hamster wheel.
For some of us, it’s the allocation between I’m working hard, family/lifeing hard, and being a friend hard and there’s just not enough hours in the day. That causes burnout, overwhelm, and frustration. We don’t have enough life balance and we don’t have enough structure in our business, but that’s a different podcast for another day.
Then we have love. For me, love is romantic, friendship, familial, whatever relationships love. Also to me, because it’s relationship, it’s between coworkers. If you’re a stylist, the relationship you have with your owner, and when I say “love,” you don’t need to be in love. It doesn’t need to be lovey-dovey, even send-a-birthday-card kind of love. But having love in your heart for the person, wanting the best for them.
As I say that, some of you’re like, “I do not want the best for my salon owner.” “I do not want the best for my brother.” “I do not want the best for my wife”. Some of you are in that place in space. Getting in tune with what is not being fulfilled for you relationship-wise.
Then last is health. Whenever I say health, it’s mental, spiritual, emotional, physical, all of the things. What isn’t feeling fulfilled? Generally speaking, when I say that, people say all four.
I know for most of us, we would like improvement in all four of the areas to a degree. I actually just did an assessment on—I’m working with a brand new business coach right now who I love. She’s amazing, and I’m working with her and she had us do a similar assessment. She uses actually seven factors versus my four, and it was so fascinating when I plotted myself out to see I’m frustrated probably in all four areas, but when I did the assessment, it was showing where I’m actually more fulfilled than I was giving myself credit for.
Ask yourself, could all four areas improve? Yes, but what is causing you the most strain? What’s keeping you up at night? What is the source of a lot of your lack of inspiration?
Then you’re going to choose one of those things to start with. Let’s say you chose money. Okay, great. We can go back and we can choose time or something else later, but just for a second, choose money. I’m going somewhere brand new with this, so if you’re like, “Oh, I feel like I know where she’s going with this,” you don’t, trust me. I’m going somewhere brand new.
Choose one thing to start. Once you’re clear on what you want to see grow, this is step three. Choose one action and educate on that action and then execute on it.
For me, giving yourself what I call a micro-win, which is step number four, think about what you would need to improve or change within that segment that would make you feel proud and balanced again and give you a micro-win.
One of the things I’ve noticed is it’s so easy for me to say you’re uninspired, read a book, but it’s like, “F I need to make more money. I don’t want to sit down and read a book.” I totally understand.
I think for a lot of us, it’s almost like we need a jumpstart. If you’ve ever been on a fitness journey—this is the new year, so probably you’re seeing fitness apps and gym advertisements all over the place, and often what they’ll do is they’ll say, “Lose 10 pounds in the first 30 days,” or “Commit to a diet plan for 30 days and create habit.” Everything is big on “Let’s give you an instant win,” and if we can give you an instant win, we release that serotonin again and you start to feel like, okay, I can do this.
Sometimes we need just a little win before we get into that grind mode or that heavy focus education mode.
I want you to give yourself just that little micro-win.
Don’t focus on changing your whole life. Focus on what good can I do within the next 10 days given what I’ve got that would make me feel better, stronger, more motivated, more inspired. Give yourself a little something to get yourself through.
Then this gets much harder. That was the basic stuff.
Suggestion number five, understand that generally we don’t see progress because we’re avoiding the work that makes us uncomfortable. Oh, sorry, that hit a lot of us in the feels. I am a big proponent of the idea that most of us are fairly well aware of the things that could or should change in order for us to have everything that we want. We’re just unwilling or unmotivated to make those hard decisions. Make that big investment, make that heavy commitment, make that big life change.
I know people without outing anybody, I know people who have been in unhappy marriages for years and won’t leave. They say things like, “Well, I’ve got kids. I don’t want to disrupt anything.” Well, I mean, I can only speak from my own personal experience on that. I grew up with—well, I have a very complicated upbringing, but my mom married the man that I considered to be my dad when I was eight and a half or nine years old. I loved him so much as a person, so much as an individual. He and my mom had an incredibly tumultuous relationship where they tried to stay together for me and my sister and watching what they went through, there was no gift or blessing in them staying married. As the child of divorced parents, when they got divorced—and when I was 13, I think I was like, oh my gosh, it’s the best day ever. There was no piece of me that was like, “I wish they had stuck it out.”
Often we do these kind of things where we’re like, “I’m just going to stay at the salon I’m unhappy at. I am just going to keep doing the clients doing. I’m not going to learn how to market myself. It seems like too much work. I’m just too overwhelmed to even think about it.”
We avoid doing the things that we know would likely make an impact for fear of the work or the hurt or the heartache that would be involved short-term to get the long-term results we’re wanting.
When I say short-term, for some of you—I was just coaching a stylist this week and she was talking about how she opened a salon in 2020 right before the world shut down. Earlier this year, she walked away from it, three years in, and she was like, “The emotional trauma I had to go through in opening my salon and then realizing within a few years that I didn’t want to do it anymore,” that’s hard. It’s truly grief. It’s a loss. Stepping away from a big commitment like that is challenging, but she knew it was the best decision for her.
Was that easy? No. Was it cheap? No. Did she know for certain she’d be successful on the other side? No. But does she now say, “I’m so glad I walked away?” Yes, because she wasn’t afraid to make the choice and she wasn’t afraid to be uncomfortable for a minute.
Most of us stay stuck, stagnant, uninspired, and unmotivated because we’re scared to do the stuff that would make us uncomfortable. Success and growth live on the other side of discomfort, so until you’re willing to get a little uncomfortable, you don’t earn the privilege of gaining that inspiration, that success, sorry. It’s earned. It’s not a given.
What I encourage you to do is educate yourself. For a lot of people, people avoid education. They’re like, “I’m just going to do the free education,” or “I don’t have time to read books,” or “I don’t have time to take that class.” Okay, but you’re cheapening your experience.
When you’re choosing not to invest in educating yourself, you’re choosing to not be inspired, driven, or motivated.
Two, I want you to allow yourself to have to struggle. For me, I procrastinate on the work I don’t want to do because I hate struggling. I’m a perfectionist. I’m an achiever. I’m an Enneagram 3W2 if you know the Enneagram. Feeling like I can’t achieve is the most painful thing that I experience in my life as a whole. When I’m looking at something and I can’t do it and can’t do it well, it causes me pain and it causes me to feel uninspired and unmotivated.
Too bad.
I need to educate myself and figure out what I need to do to get past these roadblocks so that I can have the success.
Number three, ask for freaking help. Humble yourself a little bit. Admit that you don’t know everything. Ask somebody who does if they can help you.
Number six, if you’re feeling uninspired, undriven or unmotivated, decide if you want long-term success, short-term success, or mental stimulation. They are all different.
Some of you got hit in the feels when I said mental stimulation. Some of you’re like, “I hate my business,” or “I’m so uninspired as a stylist,” and you’re bored as heck. You don’t actually hate your business. You don’t actually hate your clients. You don’t actually hate coloring hair. You’re actually great at formulation. You’re really good at cutting hair, and you’re just bored.
Go back to what I just said. Do the stuff that makes you uncomfortable. Put yourself in a class, network with somebody you’ve never met.
Now, when I said mental stimulation, for some of you, it does mean taking on a new skill. For some of you, it means to be inspired. Remember, inspiration was breathing new life into something, feeling triggered by something. When’s the last time you felt inspired to change something in your business? If your business feels boring to you, guess who else it feels boring to? Your clients. If your salon feels boring to you, guess who else it feels boring to? Your stylists.
Then we’re like, “I’m not making enough money.” It’s like, yeah, because you’re not inspired at all. Literally fall in love with what you’re doing.
I have a podcast episode coming up where I’m going to be talking about what it takes to become the “it salon,” and it’s going to be full of ideas for inspiration. That’s coming up. Stay tuned for it. But if you need mental stimulation, that’s fine. Just recognize that if you want short-term success, do not choose start a new business. Do not choose start a new venture. If you’re going to choose discovering a new strategy, like trying something new, wonderful. But generally that falls into the long-term success category. You’re going to have to work at it for a while, but that’s okay. It might make you feel inspired and give you that mental stimulation. But when you’re feeling uninspired, not driven, and not motivated because you’re not making enough money, I promise you there is more money in your existing business and your existing life that you just are not doing the work to tap into.
Because going back to point number five, you’re avoiding the work that makes you uncomfortable. Focus on doing that work, and you will find that short-term success.
I say all the time I’m a business coach. Teaching people to make more money is the easiest thing I do. I can teach everybody listening to this podcast how to make more. I can teach you how to double your income in one year. I can do that with my eyes closed. That’s so easy. Getting people to be inspired and getting people to be accountable and getting people to hold themselves to habit so much harder. So much harder.
That’s where I want you to be.
Number seven, know that the grass is rarely greener and you are likely two to three hard decisions away from being so much more inspired than you are today.
My friends, lean into the hard decisions. Lean into the hard conversations. What is it that you’ve been putting on the back burner? What is it that you’ve been avoiding? What is it that your soul is craving? How can you breathe into that as we head into this new year?
I hope you’re feeling inspired listening to this one. Listen to episode 004 if you haven’t already. As I always like to say, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
