Intro:
Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hairstylist?
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 weren’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 life long 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
What is up and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
I’m your host Britt Seva, and today we’re talking about salon owners’ biggest mistakes and regrets.
This is a bit of a two-parter.
This episode, I’m going to talk about functional and structural mistakes and regrets, and next week, we’re going to get into the financial stuff.
I want to explain how this podcast came to be.
I recently had the privilege of having some very impactful conversations with salon leaders about their lowest lows, which is like not party talk, like this is not the stuff we’re supposed to be talking about, and it made me realize how important it was to talk about it.
I think that I sit in a very unique position in the role that I have in the company that I’ve built.
Thrivers Society has coached 17,000 stylist and salon owners.
I’ve seen a lot of shit, good, bad, ugly.
I’ve networked a lot.
I’ve talked to a lot of other coaching companies.
I’ve talked to a lot of owners who have been coached by me and other people.
I have a lot of perspective on the reality of what it looks like to own a business in our industry.
Also, the way that I personally work is, yes, I’m in the beauty industry.
I coach stylist and salon owners primarily and other beauty professionals, but at the end of the day, I’m a coach.
I don’t consider myself an educator or a teacher.
I really do think it’s I’m a coach.
It’s a different way of producing results, and that is what I consider myself to be.
In order for me to be a good coach, I have to network and learn and have my own peer group that I turn to.
Also, I’m in the digital education space, which digital education space didn’t even exist 11 years ago.
We are still in uncharted waters.
I always say I was the very first digital educator in our industry.
No man’s land, wild, wild west, had to try and figure it out, and this is a space that is still figuring itself out.
Like if you’re jumping in now, you’re like, what is going on around here?
Because it’s very unique, and I had this perspective that I’m watching in both these industries I’m a part of, of how much, I want to say this in a really classy way, how many false narratives are floating around?
How many businesses look great on Instagram and the back end isn’t going so well?
But we don’t talk about that, right?
That again, that’s not party talk.
We can’t talk about the businesses that are not going well.
We can’t look like we don’t have it all figured out.
We can’t look like we’re going through hard times.
We have to hide it.
It’s too embarrassing.
We’re the only business that’s not perfect.
So instead, you just smile and film another Instagram story and hire another stylist and pretend like everything is great.
And inside, you’re laying awake at night wondering what’s wrong with you and why you ever thought you were equipped to own a business.
Anybody?
I think it’s very important that we start to have transparency around talking about how challenging owning a business is, whether you’re a salon owner and you have a 60 person team.
If you’re a salon owner with a 12 person team, if you just hired your first assistant, if you’re just in a studio suite, if you’re a commission stylist, whatever.
I think we need to normalize talking about how hard this shit is because it’s really hard.
And my role as a coach is to make it as easy for you as possible, knowing it will always be hard.
Just like if we were on a, I’m a big sports enthusiast, so I talk about sports analogies all the time.
If you’re new around here, you should know this.
If we were a baseball team, my husband is a baseball coach.
He coaches like three teams at any given time.
His job as a coach is to make sure his players are the best they can be, even if at the end of practice, they’re crying and saying they will not speak to him for another week.
That’s fine.
He’s fine with that.
His commitment to that team is to make sure every player reaches their highest potential.
I feel the same way.
You can be mad at me.
The advice I’m giving you is what I believe you need to hear in order to be successful.
I don’t think we’re having enough of those conversations.
I think we’re talking about things that feel comfortable.
I think that we are looking at a lot of businesses that look amazing on social media, and the reality is they’re hurting and creating more channels where we can talk about what it really looks like normalizes the reality and helps us come to better solutions without so much shame attached.
That’s the point of this episode.
The other point of this episode is if you are new to ownership, if you’re thinking about ownership, if you’re an employee who never wants to be an owner, I want you to understand what it actually looks like on the back end of ownership quite often.
I think one of the reasons why people are willing to share their stories with me, which by the way context, the reason I’m creating this episode is I’ve had some very poignant conversations with owners about what it’s really going on in their businesses.
I’ve had some owners very openly share with me their lowest of lows, and I opened up the conversation.
I opened it up on Instagram and on my email list and in Thrivers, and I said, hey, if you have gone through high highs or low lows in ownership, and you’d be willing to share your stories, reach out.
I got just over 100 responses.
This is a very vulnerable thing to ask of people.
None of them were anonymous.
All of them shared with me who they were.
That was important to me because I didn’t want any bullshit stories of people trying to make stuff up or create drama.
Sometimes I get DMs and I’m like, oh, this is a stylist trying to throw their salon owner under the bus, and I wanted to make sure that that wasn’t happening.
That’s not happening in any of these stories.
These are all real stories.
The other thing is I think that the real reason why people are willing to share these hard truths with me is because I’ve done a few expose style episodes before.
I will never blow up somebody’s spot.
I don’t think there’s any benefit of doing that.
I’m never going to.
It’s not slanderous.
Like if you’re here for the tea, you’ve come to the wrong channel.
My hope in doing this is to drive awareness and normalcy.
And my hope is also that for those hundred or so owners who share their stories with me, they get to listen to this episode and realize they’re not alone.
And I hope that all of you in listening to this realize you’re not alone.
And if life isn’t perfect, amazing, you’re like 99% of other business owners who realize this is way harder than they thought it was going to be.
And my hope is that no matter where you’re at in your ownership or leadership journey, if you’re a stylist who might want to open a salon one day, if you’re a brand new owner, if you’re an owner with 30 years of experience, you find some camaraderie here and I open up some blind spots and help to prevent some future pain.
So I’m going to share a handful of stories with you this week.
And then I’ll let you know next week, we’re going to get into some financial stuff.
So if you’re like, talk about that money, we’re going to do that next week.
I want to talk about the other things this week, because I think we’re always really quick to jump to money and marketing, and there’s much more important stuff going on on the inside of ownership that we all like to avoid and turn a blind eye to.
So my first two stories are the dangers of having friends, family and a sorority type vibe in your space.
Oof, I know I got you on that one already, huh?
Okay, so this first story is from a salon owner who had an eight stylist walkout.
She says, honestly, spiritually, I know everything that’s happened to me has happened for a reason.
And there’s huge lessons in all of this.
At the end of the day, I prayed for this.
It just doesn’t make the blows necessarily any easier.
My human emotions are hurt at how everything was handled.
We’ve always had a great culture in our salon.
All of this really stemmed from one bad apple starting rumors.
And I also put myself in a situation I never should have.
I was seeking friendship within the salon.
We had a very family like environment.
You’d almost describe it as a sorority sisterhood.
However, eventually this led to toxicity.
It was eye opening for me as a leader to realize that I had created something so beautiful that I did not get to be a part of.
It’s hurtful that they all had plenty of time to let me know that they were planning to move on.
They knew that I was adding in as many stations as fast as I could for everybody and still chose not to communicate their plans.
However, all eight of them sat in my meeting, hearing what I had planned, watching what I was working on, and they left anyway.
It was wild.
That was also on me, though, for leading with my heart and not my mind by allowing unqualified people to run my salon and never wanting to put anyone out by upping their rent.
How many of you call yourself a heart-centered leader and you do things like not increasing your rent?
Lots, right?
And I think a lot of leaders go into ownership with this mindset.
Like if you are an owner who left your salon to open your space, my guess is there was a part of you that thought to yourself, I can do this better.
We’re going to be happier.
We’re going to have more fun.
It’s going to be more XYZ, blah, blah.
Wait until I get into some more of these stories, you’ll realize where that all goes sideways.
But most owners start with that intention.
And often, like I’ll be curious to see to this owner, I’ll be very curious to see what happens to those eight stylists who moved on from your space.
I wish them well.
I hope that they work together for decades and life is amazing.
What usually happens, though, is whomever opened that business is now the new you who thought she was opening a business where she could be friends with everybody in the building and then nothing would ever change and they would just show up and have fun and do hair and wear matching outfits.
And it would be so great and they’d all make good money and they wouldn’t have you, right?
Generally, what happens is something different.
So when you choose to be a leader, you can’t lead from the side.
You have to lead from the front.
And what I mean is when you stop leading from the side, you might not get invited to cocktail hour on Thursday nights anymore because you’re not a friend.
You’re the leader.
You’re standing in front.
It’s like I hate using family analogies.
I actually one of my pet peeves is when salons say, we’re all a family here.
That’s very manipulative behavior.
You don’t get fired from a family.
You can quit the family, but you don’t get fired from the family.
Let me tell you, in good salons, people get fired from the business.
That’s how you run a smart business.
If there’s no repercussions, there are no goals.
There’s no guidelines.
There’s no rules.
What is a rule without a repercussion?
It’s just a suggestion.
So when salon owners say, my team doesn’t follow the rules, my first question is always, when was your last termination?
And when they say never, I say that’s why people don’t follow the rules.
Not because people should be fired all the time, but if I can do whatever, and you’re just going to put up with it, well, who cares?
There’s no real leadership, right?
That’s leading from the side.
When somebody is at the front of a business or at the helm, they are most likely not the most beloved, favorite person ever.
That person can be loved.
I’m not saying they should be hated.
It’s not that either, but they’re not a peer anymore.
There’s somebody who does have to make hard decisions and does have to be in tough positions.
And the dynamic does change.
And that can be very difficult.
The other thing that this owner mentioned was rumors.
And this bad apple starting rumors.
I feel a couple of ways about that.
Rumors are often based in either some form of reality or in team member discontent.
So when a team member is very unhappy, they start spinning a narrative, hoping everybody else is unhappy too.
For me, when I find somebody doing that, they can either quit or be let go.
But I can’t have somebody in the space who’s just miserable, spreading misery.
That doesn’t work.
So to the owner, it’s always like, if you knew they were a bad apple, they should have been invited to leave.
Now, maybe you didn’t know they were a bad apple.
Like you felt like you were friends and maybe you had no idea that any of this was happening.
Here’s the hard rub is that to me, it comes back to you still, because why didn’t any of those eight people feel like their relationship with you was strong enough to tell you something was wrong?
So I hope my team doesn’t feel a type of way hearing this.
In my company I own now, team members come to me several times a year saying, hey, I think you should know so and so said this, or hey, I think that it’s important you understand such and such as feeling this way.
When stuff is getting funny in my business, there is enough trust amongst my team that one team member can go to another in confidence, but it’s likely going to get back to me in one form or another.
And I don’t always even tackle it.
Sometimes it’s not necessary.
Sometimes it’s just a note for me to modify behavior or to understand that we likely have a system breakdown somewhere.
If your team is not coming to you to report when things are going funky, and by the way, I promise everybody listening to this, there’s things that are going funky in your business.
Everybody.
No business is perfect.
If you’re not getting reports from your team that stuff is going weird, there’s an issue in communication and your team doesn’t trust you enough.
So it’s just a call to think about, like, okay, what needs to change in our culture?
Friendship is great.
There should be a camaraderie for sure, but it’s certainly not friendship if there’s no trust, right?
And so really understanding what a good leadership relationship looks like helps.
Okay, next story.
This is from a salon owner who had a three-team member walkout.
So she says, we started with six team members, three left and we were down to three service providers.
This all happened within a few months.
One of the people who left was considered to be a salon leader and a top revenue stylist that I thought was my friend.
Again, that friendship thing, right?
At this time, I knew I was struggling being a leader and this didn’t help me at all.
I get too close to my employees and I do see them as friends.
I don’t have real guidelines and the ones I did have, I was too scared to enforce because again, who wants to enforce a punishment on your friend?
Nobody, but that’s why the friendship dynamic is really hard.
She says, I wasn’t great at training.
Mostly, this was growing pains that I prolonged too much because of fear.
I took a step back and realized that the team I was left with was a group of amazing, talented women.
Instead of focusing on the loss, I needed to press through the mess.
One of the things that Britt announced at the time, I was going through all of this, was the Hire Your Dream Team Bootcamp.
This is something I hosted last August.
What she said was, it helped to reignite my passion and kick my butt into gear.
The crux of what she gets into in this next paragraph is, I hosted this training where she realized you can have structure and fun.
Both things can happen, but without the structure, it’s like a ticking time bomb.
Adults really do need structure.
Whether it’s a booth rental situation or an employee situation, any business without structure is really going to struggle to succeed.
What she realized is, I can have it all and my team can enjoy being around me, and we can still have systems in place that allow this business to be successful.
Then she goes on to say, four months after that boot camp, I hired the perfect team member.
It was January of 2025 and she’s been completely amazing, and already fits our new established salon culture perfectly.
I’m now only behind the chair two days a week and my team members are offering wonderful services to their clients.
They’re booked, they have the schedule they want, they keep the salon up and work beautifully as a team.
That’s all the result of structure, right?
So when you go into a business really leaning into that family environment, just be really careful because often it’s lacking in the trust that would be necessary to prevent walkouts and rumors and secrecy and those other things.
Next, allowing team members to call too many of the shots.
And if you’ll remember, I shared on my podcast about two weeks ago, my experience with allowing team members to call the shots as well.
So this person says, letting the opinions of independent renters paralyze me from taking action and allowing them to think that they had as much weight in decision making as I do.
Friends, the stylists in your building are not your partners.
They’re not your peers.
They are team members.
You are the leader.
You’re the CEO.
They are not.
There’s only one CEO in any company.
So there could be collaboration.
They are not in charge.
And as soon as you allow that power dynamic to change, not only do you start to sink, they sink.
Everybody sinks.
There has to be a captain of the ship.
Then she says, I realize slowly I’ve been growing more confidence in my ideas.
And every change I’ve made independently has only improved our salon overall, regardless of what any individual might think about it.
Now, instead of fearing that my stylist might get upset and leave, I am totally at peace knowing that they might just do that.
It doesn’t change the way I act because I know I have to do what’s best for this business.
If somebody leaves, it’s simply because they’re no longer a good fit for the brand.
That’s exactly right.
Decision paralysis or making decisions that makes it more comfy cozy for your salon team, generally speaking, if it’s not rooted in good leadership, will cause you harm down the road.
Next, lack of proactive hiring.
At the end of 2020, I had to step back from active leadership for a bit.
My salon actually did fine financially when I stepped away, but the repercussions of not having the appropriate systems in place hit us two years later in 2022 when I hadn’t hired a single new stylist for two years.
As life happens, a few stylists left and we were down to five on the team.
The salon functions well at 10 plus, it snuck up on me and it was painful.
It felt dark, hopeless and depressing.
Honestly, I was at the place where I was ready to sell my salon.
I went into panic mode.
I hired all the wrong people.
I’ve now spent the last couple of years focusing on building out systems and structure and hiring the correct people so that I have real stability and growth opportunities.
The lesson learned there is knowing who your right people are.
Your right people aren’t the ones with the biggest Instagram followings.
Your right people aren’t the right cultural fits.
A lot of times we do that, right?
Where we’re like, they’re so good full to culture, but you don’t even 100% know what your culture is.
If I said, what is your culture, what is it?
As soon as you say something like, we’re all passionate, we’re all driven, we’re all friends here, you’ve lost me.
That’s not culture.
That’s not what I’m asking about at all.
And usually a salon lacks culture when there’s no strong vision, there’s no core values, there’s no growth path, there’s no growth plan, there’s no brand standards, there’s not KPIs, there’s not KRAs.
All of those things lead into the culture.
Most people think the culture is good vibes only.
That’s like a cultural statement.
It’s not the heartbeat of the salon.
The heartbeat of the salon is all the systems and structures that keep the ship sailing in the right direction.
Okay?
So what this person realized is just hiring to fill is not going to do it.
You have to know when we say I’m hiring the right person, right person for what?
Where do they want their career to be headed?
How do they know that that’s what you’re going to provide for them?
If you are not clear on that, the people that you hire are not going to be either.
Next, bad partnership.
In 2022, it was the most stressful time of my life.
I didn’t sleep at all and I had a constant pit in my stomach, so bad that I thought I was going to give myself an ulcer.
Ultimately, I regretted going into business with my former business partner.
She was extremely toxic, always wanting to do things in a shady way, and created a hostile work environment for everybody.
We decided to do a major renovation together and had five stylist leave immediately after that, some of which I had been friends with for years and worked with at salons before.
When they left, they told me privately that they were leaving because of her, not me.
They said they couldn’t stand her leadership style anymore and it just wasn’t a place they wanted to be.
They said the time off that they had to reflect during our expensive remodel was what made them realize it was time to go.
I managed to stay with my business partner for another two years just out of the fear of the unknown.
When I had a second walkout threatened, I just decided to end it all, even if it meant we closed the salon.
But instead, she let me buy her out and I managed to do it amicably.
Over the next nine months, since the buyout was finalized, it was like a whole new place.
People are happy to be here again and have been happy with my more hands-on approach to leadership.
So what I found interesting about this share is the owners of my salon did the same thing.
I’m going to share another personal story.
It’s my opinion.
If the other people in my salon don’t see it the same way, I’m fine with that.
I think I have a different perspective because I was on the back end inside.
We hired a business coach that was not a good fit for our team culture at all.
And things started to go south and ownership started to get nervous.
And what they decided to do was a huge multi-six-figure salon remodel.
They were like, what this team needs is a more beautiful, modern place to work.
And I openly said, I think we’re putting lipstick on a pig.
And I remember the phrase.
I remember saying lipstick on a pig.
And I think this is a bad idea.
And they decided to do it anyway, because guess what?
I wasn’t an owner and it wasn’t my business.
And they should be entitled to do whatever the heck it is they want to do.
And so what they did is they sunk over $100,000 into an expensive remodel.
And then slowly they started to have a walkout.
I think a lot of owners do this.
And instead of doing the real leadership work, they try and host spa days and more parties and more kickbacks.
And we’ll do a remodel.
And what they need is another education class.
Know what they want is for you to run the business like a business.
They want real growth opportunities.
They want to know this is the best place for them to work.
And not because of the wellness day.
They want to know it’s the best place to work because the opportunities provided cannot be surpassed anywhere else.
I understand that’s a big ask.
But when you are fulfilling on that ask, you will get the best talent.
And they will perform for you at the highest because you are the best possible place to be.
That’s the call.
It’s not do a remodel.
But I had story after story after story.
If we did a remodel and it was a huge mistake and I lived it.
And what I realized after living it is, oh my gosh, these owners are avoiding doing the actual things that need to happen.
They don’t want to reconcile the reality of they hired a bad business coach who gave bad advice and is sinking the ship.
And instead they think throwing more money in and making it prettier is what needs to be done.
It was so bonkers.
But as I read through these stories, I realized that that actually happens a lot.
Okay, next.
And I loved this one because I think that this is the perfect example of what a lot of stylists do when they decide to go into business.
So this story is a tale of lack of business plan, vision and structure.
Our salon hit a major low six months after we opened.
My business partner and I started our salon in fight or flight mode.
We left another salon together with three other stylists.
So they were essentially part of a five person walkout.
We decided to become booth rental.
So these two people opened a salon together and three of the other stylists who left with them became their renters.
This is so common.
This happens all the time.
We had no real plan, just a vision of creating a hub or a shell of a business for independent stylists.
So here’s the business plan.
We’re going to do it better than it’s ever been done before.
It’s going to be booth renters only.
It’s going to be so happy.
The vibes are going to be great.
It’s for independent artists who want to come in and do good work and vibe.
And the culture is there and we’re going to love it and it’s going to be amazing.
And it’s going to look so cute and we are such happy, positive people.
It’s going to be awesome here.
And that’s, I’m super over exaggerating, but you get what I’m saying.
It’s like, let’s just keep it simple and create a space where people can do good work.
And we think it’s enough.
It’s just such a common vision.
So this person goes on to say, what we didn’t expect was the divide that formed.
And half the team wanted a complete freedom model while the other half started asking for more things, education, structure, growth.
It created a culture of confusion and resentment.
The misalignment led to gossip, tension and a toxic environment that almost broke us.
These were five people who were friends who left together and then it created a toxic environment because of lack of structure.
We regret not having a clear vision from the beginning.
We were trying to please everyone, offering too much to some and not enough to others.
We hired too quickly, bringing on people who weren’t allied with the direction we were starting to move forward.
We thought they were cultural fits, but what happened to this business owner is brilliant, because what this person realizes, they had created a culture, they didn’t create a vision or direction.
When you’re hiring people that vibe, but you don’t know if you’re headed the same direction, it’s going to be a fail in the end.
That’s what they came to realize, is that having an energetic connection is not enough to have a viable salon structure.
We also waited way too long to set up and enforce boundaries, which allowed toxic behavior to linger and spread.
We sat down, got radically honest about what we wanted, and we rewrote our vision.
We created and enforced strong policies and let go of leaseholders who did not align.
We built an intentional culture around growth and education.
We launched a co-stylist program and started offering growth and leadership paths, business and behind the chair classes.
We focused on hiring the right people.
It took time, but our environment shifted.
Our revenue grew exponentially and our purpose became clear.
We now have a waitlist for our co-stylist program and cannot keep up with the demand.
That’s a booth rental salon.
I hope those of you who own booth rental salons realize that’s what’s up.
It’s not just people come in and they work and they pay rent.
Like this booth rental salons that are doing really well have built something bigger and better and have realized structure is important.
Structure in all of these businesses was important.
Rules, guidelines, directions, true leadership, somebody at the front, not leading from the side.
All of this was critical in all of these stories.
And all of these owners just didn’t realize it until they were already in.
So key learning lessons.
You don’t know what you don’t know and you don’t want it to come up and bite you.
And that be how you learn about it.
Coaching and consulting is a good idea.
But only if you’re certain that the coaching method you’re seeking is a good fit for the culture and the vision you have in your business.
Don’t just take coaching blind.
You have to know that whatever coaching you’re bringing in is really a good fit for the direction your business is heading.
Rules, guidelines and repercussions are your best friends.
As a leader, you have to release the goal of being the best friend.
You can be a trusted mentor, somebody who’s well respected, that your team enjoys being around.
But the more you try to be their peer who has the power to fire them, the more toxic the relationship becomes.
Running a salon financially blind can and will destroy you.
Bad business partnerships are worse than bad marriages and are much harder to get out of.
Lastly, I want to give you an insight.
More recently than ever, stylists have been coming to me, confessing to me that there’s a walkout brewing in their salon space, which always puts me at conflict.
But my promise as a coach has always been full discretion.
So while I could go to those owners and let them know that it’s happening, instead, I always advise stylists to tell the owners themselves and give them at least the opportunity to know it’s coming and to have the conversation.
There’s a real commonality in the stories of all of these stylists who are coming to me, talking to me about an impending walkout.
They all feel like their owner is not self-aware, meaning the team sees something in the owner that the owner does not see and or address.
And or the stylists feel like they’re coming to the owner very transparently saying things that are not working out and the owner becomes defensive instead of listening.
So I invite you if you are an owner and your team is coming to you expressing concern, you don’t have to bend over and agree with everything that they’re saying, but I invite you to explore some self-awareness and maybe seek some of the truth in what they’re saying.
Maybe understand that you don’t know what you don’t know and that you do have some blind spots, and that if you were able to dedicate a little bit more time to leadership and to understand what leadership really meant, everybody might be a little bit more successful.
As I always say, so much love, happy business building and I’ll see you on the next one.
