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 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 hairstylist. And this is the Thriving Stylist podcast.
What is up? And welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Britt Seva. Happiest holiday season to all. This is gonna be a little bit of a different episode. This is the time of year. I’ll explain kind of what’s happening in my business and where I usually end up. So this is the time of year in my business where we are prepping for the year ahead and the last eight-ish weeks of the year, I usually have for like exploration, learning, reflection. I’m going through wealthiest here yet for our business, just like I’m coaching others to go through it. And it’s where I often feel the most clear. I’ve done a lot of coaching in the past on what I call white space, which is where you create capacity for your mind to actually like be open. Usually when we’re grinding and and hustling and we’re working on projects and we have super hard deadlines, we’re much less creative, we’re much less inspired, we’re much less kind of like open to fresh ideas and you just end up so hyper-focused on what it is you need to do that you kind of close off from independent thoughts and possibilities and whatever.
And that impacts all of us. For me and my business, we intentionally set the last part of the year to be a place where we can reflect and dream and strategize for the year ahead. And in doing so this morning I had this very clear moment of insight that I just have to share with you. So this is gonna be a little bit more of like a woo woo mindset episode. I haven’t done one like this in a long time, partially because I only do them if it feels like very authentic. And I can only get to a place of like real clarity where I can speak to things like this when I’m not deeply, deeply in the grind probably like everybody else. And as I’ve come up for air, I just had this very, I guess profound moment of reflection on what has shifted in the industry at large that’s for lack of a better word, like crippling stylists and salon owners.
It’s like this silent virus that is cutting through the industry. And as I was driving this morning, I was like, oh my gosh, that’s what it, there’s like this undercurrent of funk and this feeling of like for years now we’ve heard a lot about like burnout. And it’s so interesting because 3, 4, 5 years ago no one was talking about burnout and now you say burnout and everybody raises a hand. You talk about resentment, you talk about like frustration and there’s just this funk that didn’t always exist. And I’m like, what is the source? And I think that I have found it and I wanna speak to that because, and it’s such a simple change. It’s like the simplest, easiest thing ever. And if we can just overcome this, myself included, I think it opens up a real world of possibilities. So let me go back to tell a couple stories ’cause I think they’re important in getting to the breakthrough I had this morning, I was at X Club retreat in May, I’m gonna tell a story about a specific person without giving their name and they’re gonna hear this story and realize it was them and realized the profound impact it had on me.
And I’m good with all of that. We can definitely talk about it if you want to person who I’m going to be talking about. But it affected me in a really deep way. And does anybody ever like think about that? How we live our lives having hundreds of conversations and sharing thousands of words And yet over the course of any period of time we remember moments and memories. And for whatever reason there’s certain things that really stick in our brains and stick on our hearts. And this is one of those things for me, like X Club retreat was four incredible days with an amazing group of stylists and salon owners. I remember how that experience made me feel. I only remember a very small handfuls of distinct moments and this was one of them. So at X Club or tree, I end up having a lot of one-on-one time with people and this person and I had just like a moment that was just the two of us and they asked me, how does it make you feel when people talk about how you’ve changed?
And when this person asked me that I had an answer and the answer I shared is what I stand by and I’ll share with you what the answer was. But I remember what was actually going through my mind and what was actually going through my mind when they asked that question is, oh my gosh, people are talking about me and the fact that I’ve changed. And that’s the conversation and the narrative. And when this person said, how does it make you feel when people talk about how you’ve changed, there was a negative connotation and I could feel it and I could sense it and I got it. And this person wasn’t like trying to like stir the pot. I know this person super well. That was not the intention, but I was like, wow, that was like such an interesting phrasing and they were coming from a really good place.
And the reason they were asking me was because they’re also somebody who is perceived as changing. And so basically the reference point was you’re somebody who’s changed a lot, how have you dealt with it? And have you dealt with, they didn’t say this word, but have you dealt with the criticism was was essentially the bottom line. And I got it. And what I said to this person was kind of like, the older I got, the more confident I’ve become in myself and I’m at a place in life and in business where I have to make the right decisions that make logical sense even if not everybody understands them. And I said, nobody understands the inner workings of my business more than I do. I understand more than anybody in the world, right? Anybody who owns a business understands it more than any of the other parts and players.
And then there’s my team who deeply understands this business too. And there’s so much that goes on behind the scenes of anybody’s life and business that nobody else gets privy to. And I was basically saying to them like, listen, I’m just at a place where whether people like it or not, I know what has to happen. And sometimes decisions have to be made for the business that not everybody understands. And the reasons why not everybody understands them is ’cause not everybody understands all the parts and pieces of what’s going on. Everybody’s only seeing any business or any person from their own vantage point, right? And that’s why perception is the reality is that whenever we’re looking at any situation or any person or any experience, we’re seeing it through our own super jaded perspective of what we like and what we want and what works for us and what doesn’t work for us.
And we can’t understand why anybody would make a choice that doesn’t work for us. And that’s just like human nature, right? And so I was just kind of explaining that concept of like I had to realize that nobody else understands the why behind a lot of the decisions I make because of me and I follow this, it’s something I learned from an author named Les McKean. He has a book called Do Lead. I recommend it all the time. I think it’s an incredible book. And one of the things he talks about is the enterprise commitment and the enterprise commitment is that when you look at successful business, they put the life of the business ahead of everything else. And that’s really difficult to do because when you put the survival of the business ahead of everything else, it means ahead of the people, ahead of the customers.
And it’s coming from the place of, it’s not from a selfish place and it’s not even from a money place, it’s from the place of if the business dies, you have nothing left. Like the customers don’t matter if the business is dead, your reputation doesn’t matter if the business is dead, people’s opinions don’t matter ’cause the business has died. And so what he’s saying is like if you’re, if you’re putting people’s opinions or people’s perspectives ahead of the business, you’re slowly killing your business. And then at the end of the day it doesn’t matter and you’re just a tall tale of what once was. And that really stuck with me. And so I was, I was just kinda sharing that logistic, okay, fast forward and a few weeks later we had asked for feedback from that same event, the X Club retreat. And somebody who I’ve coached for years sent a message saying that being at this event isn’t how events used to be and meaning specifically how thriver’s events used to be.
And I was like, in my mind I was like, well of course not. This is a brand new event format that we’ve never done before. Why would it be what it was five years ago? Like why would it ever be that? Why would it ever be the same as an event that was four times the size that five years ago in a world that doesn’t exist anymore on a totally different format, why would it ever have felt the same? But that was my perspective. And what I slowly realized about that room that’s become much more clear now is this was a room of superstar high performers, high achievers who have adapted and grown and innovated so much. And I shared with you two stories, but there’s plenty of others I could share. This was a room filled with people who were longing for the past, people who were stuck in the past, people who were still celebrating the glory days.
And listen, I’m not talking negatively about that room of people. This is a highly successful group of people, high achievers who continue to achieve more year over year over year. And yet there’s this longing for the past. And when I was first in it, it really deeply affected me. I was like, what is happening here that there’s such a fear around things changing forward. And then over the months that followed that event was in May, so May, June, July, August, September, October, I’ve watched the conversation online within our industry become very heavy. I’ve watched stylists and salon owners get angrier and more frustrated about the state of the industry. We’ve seen for years salon owners calling stylists lazy and saying, you know, this industry is not how it was and I worked so much harder than these stylists do now. And this generation just doesn’t get it and I can’t believe all of the entitlement and they want things that they shouldn’t even have.
And I never had any of that. And people just don’t get it anymore. And then on the flip side, I talked to stylists who were like, you know, I used to love my salon and the salon’s not what it used to be and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. And it took me this long, it took me months and months and all these conversations to all these experiences to realize that I think collectively we are deeply craving the past. And I’ve spoken about this at a high level before and I’m gonna, I’m gonna dig into that again one more time ’cause I think it’s important. I just didn’t realize how deeply it was impacting everything. How that craving for the past is becoming like a poison and how it is the achilles heel for so many of us and how change has been demonized, but it really, really has.
And knowing what I know about like human behavior and about business, we’ve seen this for decades, but it’s coming from a different viewpoint. So if you’re a stylist who was ever like the outcast in your salon because you were successful, like go back in time, go back years and years and years and let’s say that you were somebody who was like a superstar and you grew super fast and you had like haters within your salon. They didn’t like that you were changing but you rose above it, you were like, I don’t care. I know I need to change ’cause I know I’m made for more and I have to be better and I don’t wanna be like these people or I can see these opportunities and I wanna seize the day. That kind of change was so celebrated even though it was uncomfortable, but it was like we embraced it, we were like, it’s okay.
And it was almost like the rebellion, like if you’re a Star Wars fan, it was like we were this community of change makers like rising above and it was like so celebrated that energy I feel like is gone in a lot of ways. And there’s still some of us like rebellious ones who were like, wait what? We’re like all of a sudden we’re avoiding change. Like now as I say it, you’ll see it. But the rebellion is almost getting like smaller or some people who were a part of the like I want to be bigger and be more and adapt and grow and shift. It’s like that game we became either exhausted by or adverse to, I don’t know. It’s like the love of that game of change and growth just radically shifted. And I think I understand some of the turning points, so I wanna dig into them.
So let’s go back to, I’ve talked very openly about how I do think there is this craving of what the industry looked like prior to 2019. So the industry looked a certain way before the pandemic and it looks a certain way after the pandemic. That just is what it is. It doesn’t matter what state you live in, it doesn’t matter which market you’re in. That is simply a turning point in consumer behavior. It’s a turning point in the economy, it’s a turning point in social issues like that is a turning point. 2020 was a turning point. We can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube so we’re not gonna go back to 2019. And there’s always been a grievance of that because it felt like we actually had all of this momentum in the industry, right? If you were in the early days of social media 2015 to 2019, there were a ton of stylists and salons who were drooling over change.
Different was exciting, new was exciting. Rewards came easily because if you were an early adopter to any change, like any digital marketing change, any business growth change, branding, change like elevation education change, like introducing new services, this is when extensions really just hit the market. Laing services lived in, like we were seeing all of this change and it was exciting and it was working and it was like addictive and we loved it and we loved growth and we loved change and it felt good. And then 2020, it kind of came to this like staggering halt where it was like life stopped and it was like the train hit a brick wall. And when the train hit the brick wall, we felt extremely out of control. And what happened was multifold, one of the things was we all developed a deeper love for time. Our relationship with time really changed.
Our interest in like the grind and hustle really, really changed. If you, if you know Gary Vaynerchuk, I know some of you know him well and some of you don’t go back and watch his videos from 10 years ago. He preaches, don’t sleep, work harder, share a two bedroom apartment with eight roommates, save all your money, don’t sleep, take three jobs. Grind, grind, grind, grind, grind. That’s all he talked about. If you look at him now, he walks it back and he’s like, I love sleep. I sleep well every night. And I, I think that that is his truth. I think that grinding there is something to the grind. Like I talk about the grind too. If if you want to achieve a lot, there is gonna be sacrifices. There’s no doubt about it. But the messaging around like grind until you bleed, stopped being embraced.
And we said like the rest is the work and mental health matters. And what about family? And it was like there was this reprioritization so that that happens that takes place. We all feel it. There was this quest for freedom and time, balance and control of our schedules. All that happened, right? Combine that with, I’ve talked about how from 2021 to 2023, the industry was under a period of artificial inflation. And the artificial inflation was caused by tons of salons, closing tons of stylus walking away from the chair between 2020 and 2021, the US Bureau, I think it’s the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics estimates it was about 300,000 beauty providers. So that’s massive. So what happened was there was this huge surplus of clients. So if your business was up and growing from 2020 to 21, 21, 20 22, 20 23, that was fake. But it felt very real.
And even in the time it was happening, I called it, I said, this is fake. It’s not gonna last forever. I did not know how long it was gonna last. Turns out it ended in 2023. But when I was saying it was fake, it felt like bullshit. And I totally understand that. And that was the time where I was called a fear mongerer because it felt like what I was saying was manipulative and it wasn’t. But because people weren’t seeing it yet, it didn’t feel believable. It was the truth. So what happens when we reprioritize, which there was this reprioritization of time, there was this massive shift in consumer behavior. If you look at what economists are saying widely economists will tell you there was a bigger shift in consumer behavior from 2020 to 2022 than we have ever seen in the history of the US specifically.
And it happened in a period of two years and we’re still reeling and recovering from that. So it was a lot of change really fast. The game change, consumers change services being offered change, education change the way we wanna schedule change, booking patterns, change, technology, change, change, change, change. And I think what has happened is we became extremely exhausted. And what a lot of stylists and salon owners did is they settled into systems that had worked years ago and weren’t paying attention to how temporary the situation they were in from 20 19, 20, 20, 20, 21, 2, 3 was and why things were happening. They were just taking easy solutions. This was also a time where cash was flowing at scale. We had stimulus at play, people were just spending more freely than they are now. So people were making really bad education investments, taking bad coaching advice. We were feeling a lot more risky in our business making decisions because money was fast and free.
There was a lot of manipulative coaching that was being tossed around. There was a lot of just unproven advice that was being tossed around, but it sounded really good. And so people were taking a lot of chances that ultimately didn’t pan out. And if anybody’s ever gone to Vegas and gambled and lost money, what you learn being on the Vegas strip, I was just there, is that there’s a risk aversion factor. And some people are willing to go to Vegas several times a year and lose thousands of dollars, but they’re hooked on the game and they’re hoped to just come up one time and that rush of coming up one time is enough. And then there’s the people who go to Vegas and they drop $20 in the slot machines and lose it all and say never again. And what we’re happening, we’re in this, this place where we’re having this change of heart about risk, we’re having a change of heart about change and we’ve decided that risk and change is negative and I see it and I feel it and we’re tired.
And I think that’s where a lot of the burnout comes from is there has been so much change and people are like, I need a break. I don’t wanna change anymore. I, I just want to do what I know and do my best. And why can’t anybody just appreciate that I’m doing my best? ’cause that’s not how life works. That’s not how it worked when we were in elementary school. How many of you got bad grades in elementary school or middle school or high school and you’re like, I just can’t do it. This is not for me. Nobody gives you an a forever. It doesn’t work like that. I saw this clip from Brene Brown. She was doing an interview and she was talking about aversion to outside opinion and that really resonated with me as well. What she was saying was, in order for systems to thrive and grow, they need permeable boundaries.
When she said permeable boundaries, my ears perked up and she elaborated and she said, permeable boundaries mean that people and businesses need to allow feedback to flow. People need to be aware of what better solutions exist and they need to be open to change and open to feedback. As she said that, I was like, holy shit. That’s what’s lost the openness to change the permeable boundaries, the what other solutions are out there. We are living in a time where none of us like our ideas being challenged. We don’t like having to adapt, we don’t like having to be uncomfortable. We like how our social media feeds serve up exactly what we want and what we like to see and what we like to hear. And the algorithms are so perfectly curated. Your TikTok and my TikTok look totally different and yours are based on your opinions and your values and mine are based on mine.
And we like that. We like it when other people agree with us. We don’t like it when people don’t agree with us. We’ve adjusted to a social norm where when somebody says something you don’t like, you’re allowed to rip them apart for having a different thought process instead of like being curious and saying like, that is so interesting to me. Like why do you think like we have lost the art of curiosity and being open to change and thinking differently and seeing differently to the point of business loss, in my opinion, to the point of like we’re digging our heels in and we have become so exhausted by change and by the reality that change is not only good, it is required that we’re turning change into a bad thing. We’re so close to thinking about what could be different that it’s having this massive impact on growth and on business for some people, not everybody.
And I wanna say that too. So like going back to that event I was talking about, I was also sitting next to a salon leader, a very successful salon leader who turned to me in the middle of one presentation and said, I didn’t realize how much things had changed and how business is passing me by. Passing me by was the word that this person used. And this person was like, I’ve been caught up in my own success that I didn’t realize that other people are innovating faster and that there’s opportunities I had not been paying attention to. And it was like a wake up call. That person is not somebody who’s adverse to change. That’s a person who celebrates changed. But I’ve also watched that person get quieter and the person who hears this will also know that I’m talking about them. And I don’t think quiet is a bad thing, but I think that person has gotten quieter because change is not celebrated the way it once was.
And so when you’re somebody who thinks different and is open to different and wants to be permeable and not settle for the norm and and is somebody who asks, I know that we’re doing it this way, but how could we do it better? That’s not celebrated. And so what happens is people are innovating in silence. And what happens when people innovate in silence is they grow incredibly fast while the people who are too stubborn to change slowly cripple themselves. If this resonates with you at all, if you think potentially you’re somebody who’s become adverse to change, if you think you’re somebody who maybe made some bad decisions over the last few years, I mean myself included, I totally fall into this. Like I can see where I become adverse to change to. But I know that the past 18 months I’ve changed radically and I have seen what the results have been and they’ve been very good.
And it’s been so interesting to know that the changes I’m making are producing such a good result. And the narrative is change is bad. It’s just fascinating to me. If you think there’s a a chance that you’ve become adverse to change, I want to give you a few questions to ask yourself and they’re gonna be hard questions. Number one, what am I doing wrong here and who can help me? What am I doing wrong here and who can help me? You have to admit that you’ve done things wrong. We all have. And admitting that you’re doing things wrong is the first step to positive change. Number two, how can I change to be better? And what does better look like? Do you even know number three, who is seeing better results than I am? And number four, where have I made mistakes and how can I fix them?
The change starts with you looking within. We have become very good at pointing fingers and we need to point thumbs back at ourselves. You can’t change anybody else. The only person you can change is you. You can change your perspective, your reaction, how you show up, the way that you choose to pour in the change starts with you. And change is the only way to succeed. Holding onto the past will only cripple you, your business and your life moving forward. A little bit of mindset to close out the year. So much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
