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, really excited to dive into the topic of scalability today.
So recently I realized that I’ve talked about scalability for quite some time. It’s something I’ve coached you big throughout all of 2020 as essentially where we’re all trying to get to. However, I’ve seen some comments pop up recently in my Thrivers Society Facebook groups in my Instagram DMs where it says, “Where do you coach to scalability? Where is the part about scalability? When do we learn the scalability piece?”
And I realized that there’s sometimes this misconception that it’s like, well, here are the four things you need to do and then you’re scalable. It doesn’t work like that.
Scalability is a destination and it can only be reached by compounded efforts that actually gets you to that finish line and I want to teach you how to start getting to that finish line, exactly what that finish line looks like.
We’re going to do a little quiz here today. We’re going to look at some scalability indicators and I want to help you to find your blind spots, the things that are getting in the way of your path to scalability.
I want you to help have a clear idea of what scalability is and how to achieve it, and we’re going to do some benchmarks into systems and how to make sure you are on the right track so you have a truly scalable business
So I’ve been talking about scalability on a big scale for probably the last year and one of the questions I get a lot is, “I don’t know if I care so much about scalability. I just want financial security. I just want to make more money. I just want to provide a better life for my family.”
I think often we think we want those things until we get to the place of Sacrifice stylist or Sacrifice salon owner, right? Have you heard me talk about my four stylist or salon owner archetypes?
We have Struggling, we have Sinking, we have Scaling, but we have Sacrifice. And a lot of us are actually shooting for Sacrifice stylist or Sacrifice salon owner because that’s what we’ve been coached to think we should head towards in the industry.
The Sacrifice stylist or the Sacrifice salon owner is working real hard for the money. They’ve achieved a lot. They often are wealthy. They make multiple six figures. They’re an owner, or they’re an educator, or they’re just a really successful stylist, and we look at them and say, ‘Wow, I love everything that you’ve achieved. How do I get that?”
They’ll tell you how they got that, but in the back of their mind, they’re also saying to themselves, “But I don’t think you really want this because I’m tired and I’ve sacrificed a lot of my personal relationships and I’ve lost a lot of myself and there’s a lot of heartache and I’m working so much that my body hurts and I’m emotionally supporting so many people that my heart hurts.”
That’s often where we think we are supposed to get in this industry. I want to open your eyes to the idea of scalability.
Imagine this: we’re going on this epic road trip. I’m like, “Hop in the passenger seat, let’s do this.” We all know what the destination is. Let’s say we load up into my car here on the west coast of California and I’m like, “We’re headed to New York.”
Well, everybody has a sense of what it would take to get from California to New York, right? That’s very tangible. Most of us, that’s how we think about the industry. We’re trying to get from point A to point B, point A being struggling, point B being successful.
It’s actually not true. Imagine if I said, “Well, we’re going to make that road trip. We’re going to go from California to New York, but along the way, we’re going to have the best, most amazing, most abundant trip where our life is enhanced. It’s nothing but joy and happiness, and once we get to the destination, life will be even grander than you imagined possible.” It’s like you will unlock this next level of joy and what life is truly all about if you can hop into my passenger seat and go on this journey with me.
Everybody would say, “Heck yes!” but often we’re living in a world where we’re like, “Well, what’s the fastest flight? What’s the cheapest way to get there? I just need to get to NYC. I don’t need the amazing journey and I don’t need the amazing destination. I’m just supposed to get there.” That’s how we’re living our life and we don’t take a step back and realize that we’re just racing through trying to check off boxes and you’re not going to be happy when you get to the destination unless you choose the journey filled with joy.
That is what scalability is all about and that’s the trip you’re committed to when you choose scalability as your predetermined destination.
Let’s look at the textbook, the Webster’s dictionary definition of scalability. In an economic talk context—because there are lots of different ways we can look at scalability and I encourage you to look up the word yourself. Go ahead and look it up.
There’s lots of different ways to think of scalability, but in the economic context, “a scalable business model implies that a company can increase sales given increased resources or improved systems.”
I’m going to say that one more time. In an economic context, which is how I’m using the word, a scalable business model implies that a company can increase sales given increased resources or improved systems. Okay?
Then we need to think about what increased resources or improved systems are.
So often we hear resources, we think money. Nope.
We actually have five resources to build our business with in a tangible sense. I always talk about the two biggest resources we have to build business with being time and money. Time is actually not going to make this list.
Time is what the result gives us when we achieve scalability and that’s the funny thing about scalability. When you are scalable, the result is time and time is one of the greatest resources we have in life. It’s the only resource that is constantly winding down and can’t be replenished right? Once a day is gone, you can’t get it back. It’s just gone. Versus money, you can always earn more.
When we say we’re looking to achieve scalability, it is so that the end result is time.
When I look at the five resources we have at our disposal to create scalability, they are physical, human, intellectual, financial, and systemic. I want to go through all of them here with you now for a moment.
First we have the physical resources and this is probably fairly obvious. If we had a bigger salon, we could create scalability, right? If I had a better location, my business would be more scalable. If I had more stations, if I had better styling tools, if I had natural light to take my social media photos. And how many of you feel like you don’t have a great place to take photos and to hold you back? Okay, a great place to take photos as a physical resource, got it. Better shears, better quality hair for my extension work. Anything that physically can help to enhance your business. It is tangible, something you can hold or see with your eyeballs is going to be a physical resource that can help to create scalability for you. So that’s resource number one.
Number two, human resources, and I don’t mean like head down to HR for your employee writeup. I mean, human beings, people that can help get you to scalability.
Human resources could be a receptionist, an assistant, a social media manager, you and how you show up in the business, and then either a coach or a mentor to help you along the way.
You are the greatest human resource. You—whoever’s listening to this podcast, whether you’re the stylist, the salon owner, you’re still in beauty school—you are the number one resource in your business and the way you show up is going to determine if your business is scalable or not. It all comes back to you.
We can stack our team really well. We can build a beautiful crew around us, but until you as the leader, you as the hub, you as the visionary, you as the CEO show up 100, you can’t expect to achieve scalability. It would actually be physically impossible.
So when we look at human resources, it’s the support you bring around you, you being the number one resource, and then a coach or mentor to guide you along the way.
I never in the time that—my business is now scalable. It took a long time to get here. I needed a coach and mentor get me to scalable and I don’t think I will ever now do business without a coach or mentor.
I’ve sought out coaches and mentorship in all different ways. I think there’s benefits to all different kinds of coaching and mentorship, but that is a huge, crucial piece of the process.
Then we have the intellectual resources. You can call this IP, like intellectual property.
Have you ever heard me say, “be special, have a specialty”? That’s one of my favorite coaching phrases. When people say, “I don’t understand why my business isn’t growing out, growing faster,” what makes you special?
I do good hair. Wrong. That’s basic. What makes you special?
The kind of extensions I carry. Wrong. You and thousands of other people carry those extensions. Keep trying, what is your X factor? How can we market you to be different than anybody else?
That’s when we start to get into IP, intellectual resources, and that’s when we can start to create real scalability, because it’s like, “Oh, shoot. So-and-so has what nobody else does. This is special. This is amazing and this is something we can build on.”
So a couple of clarifying questions. Do you have a clearly defined brand and could it be stronger? Is it clearly woven through all that you do now? Remember, a logo isn’t a brand. A logo is a branding element.
There’s a lot of logos that look real pretty, real cute, real stylist/real salon, but are not branded and don’t make you stand out as special and are actually working against you in the efforts you’re making to grow your business.
So do you have your intellectual resources stacked? Are they working for you, right? What is your guests’ experience? Does anybody have one that is similar or is it highly unique to you?
It’s so funny to me when I say, “What do you do that’s amazing for guest experience?” Great consultations, head massages, I’m great hugger. My clients love the way we communicate, a lot of trust, I text them after the first visit and ask them how their hair is.
How many of you do that? Did you guys just see around the world all the hands that flew up in the air? That’s basic. None of that is special. That is basic hairstylist—I should hope you’re doing all of those things.
So what do we do that’s a cut above, right? I serve wine in the salon. No, basic. What do you do that is a cut above. What do you do that is different? Do you have a specific method? Are you clear about what that method is and why it’s the best? Well, this is my patented method. It’s the Britt Seva method. Oh, awesome.
Do you talk about the methods on social media? “No, they have to come in to see it.” You’re never going to get them to come in and see the patented method if you’re not talking about it.
Are you using all of your intellectual resources and are they actually working to build scalability for you?
Then we have number four: financial resources. Financial resources always help to create scalability, right? Money makes things better. However, you don’t need money to create scalability.
It certainly makes things easier and as you become more scalable, you’ll always have more financial resources. That’s one of the fringe benefits of it, but you don’t need more money to get more success at all.
Financial resources empower us to do things like remodel the salon, expand our business, work less and gain more free time, pay to run ads instead of investing a lot of time doing social media posts every day, captions every day. That’s time consuming.
What happens is when we don’t have the money, when we can’t pay to run ads, we have to invest our time. We don’t have anything else to invest. If we don’t have the money, we have the time. So we invest the time when we don’t have the money, right?
But once we do have those financial resources, it frees up our time, which remember I said at the top of this episode, when you create scalability, time is the resource you earn back.
As that scalability comes, you get more financial resources that can allow you to gain more time. Also, when you have more financial resources, you get to do things like the inevitable wealth method that I coach to in the Financial Reset and you can invest those funds so you don’t have to work so hard and can live off the investments.
I’ve shared very openly that my family and I bought our dream home. We are a block from the California coastline. We’re at the beach every single day. It’s absolutely amazing. And we bought our home because we invested in the stock market at 18 and 19 years old. That is the secret for us and it’s never too late to start investing. You just have to pull the trigger and start, right?
So is your money working for you or are you still working hard for every paycheck?
Well, until you have that scalability and those financial resources, you might not have the funds to invest in the stock market. And I can respect that, but this is why I want you to get you to scalability so you can do things like that, right?
Then we have the systemic resources. This is number five and these are the processes that create a structure so that human resources aren’t responsible for producing the results.
Let me ask you this: How many of you still allow clients to text for appointments or you still call clients or they leave you voicemails or they even send you emails? How many of you, if you stepped back and you stopped answering those texts, returning those phone calls, responding to those emails, your business would die?
And then the argument can be made, “Well, if I don’t do that, who would?” The scalable systems would. I don’t respond to any email ever. There’s nobody who can email me and get a response. I don’t do email. It’s not a thing for me, right? There’s no reason a student would get my phone number and be able to text me or call me.
I have scalability in the business and you need to have that with your clients as well, right? So the systems that you can create make that possible.
How many of you on a Sunday afternoon get frustrated when you’re trying to eat family dinner and a client is texting you about her highlights? That cannot possibly be the finish line, yet in this industry that’s been considered normal and we have to get out of that. If we’re going to achieve true scalability, we need systems built in our business so we don’t have to do those kinds of things, right?
Here’s another systematic break that’s very common. Let me ask you this: Do you have set prices for all of your guests or do you have to adjust each ticket every time because of the complexity of your service menu? Right? Everybody gets booked for whatever and a total is auto-calculated, but oh, but Becky $5 more, $10 less for Sarah. Add this on, take this off. Ooh, $400. I can’t possibly say that, so I’m going to reduce it to $325.
That’s not scalability. That’s not systematic. You have a systematic break that is preventing the scalability, right?
As I went through that list, there should have been some indicators to you as to if you’re scalable yet or not. There’s probably already some red flags coming up, but I want to work through a little quiz.
If you’ve been hanging with me for a while, you probably know I’m a big fan of a quiz. I must’ve read too many like teen beat magazines as a kid. I just love them too much.
I want to run through a little scalability assessment with you and you’re going to end up being a color. So you’ll end up being green which means fully scaled, yellow which means successful but not yet scaled, or red which is work in progress. No matter where you land, it’s a great result.
Let’s keep it 100, we’re all still a work in progress, but I want to just give you a good sense of where you are as far as scalability. So if you have big dreams but they aren’t coming together just yet, if you feel like you work hard but the money doesn’t justify the workload, like you’re working too hard for the money. You work so hard and then you look at how much you’ve earned at the end of the week, and you’re like, “Man, that doesn’t even feel worth it and wasting my life away.” Okay. That sounds like you.
If you end most weeks feeling burnt out or overwhelmed, if you often feel professionally and or personally lost, if you feel like you carry a tremendous professional weight, if you aren’t on all the time, the business will fail.
How many of you are of that belief?
“If I don’t respond to every text, if I don’t answer every call, if I don’t show up on social media, my business will fail.” That feels very fragile to me. How many of you can relate to that, right?
You’re often in debt, so personal or business debt. Social media and marketing in general is overwhelming, confusing, and doesn’t always work. And you’re considering working more to make more money. “I must have to work more if I want to make more, because maybe if I make more, all these problems will go away.”
If you believe in most of, or many of those statements, or all of those statements I just said, you’re red right now, which is work in progress and that’s okay. But that just means we need to start getting scalable.
Now you’d be yellow if you’ve achieved some big dreams, you aren’t in debt or actively progressing out of debt. You work hard, but you’re achieving very tangible results month over month. You have some support to help you through human, physical, or systemic resources so you don’t always have to be in the business for it to succeed. You don’t feel so tied to the business. You started to put some systems into place so the business runs to a degree without you. You may have used a social media organizer, maybe you do an online booking system, right? Some of the things like that. you have a social media plan and it is producing predictable results month over month. You know where you’re headed professionally and have a solid plan to get there. You rest easy at night knowing you’ve achieved a lot of progress each and every day and every year gets just a little bit more stable, secure, and wealthy.
If you feel like all of those statements are pretty close to where you are, you’re yellow. So life is pretty good, right? You’re not yet scalable yet though. You’ve just found success. Really? Yes.
So let’s talk about what scalability looks like. So you’re green if you pinch yourself, when you look at all of you have achieved. You have poignant moments in your day where you stop, take a look around, and you’re like, “Are you kidding me? I actually did this.” That’s a huge sign of skill. You have systemic, human, financial, IP, and physical resources in place so that you don’t have to be on all the time. You have all five resources kicking versus when we look at who’s yellow, they probably have like three.
So the examples I shared are human, meaning you know how to show up in your business. You may have an assistant to help you or a social media manager to help you. But the human aspect of your business is fire. You have physical resources, meaning money is there so you can do the things you need to do to improve your salon space, to provide amazing amenities, to use really good tools, really good extension hair, things like that, right? Those are physical resources. And then systemic. You’re putting systems in place to ultimately achieve scalability, right? That was yellow.
If you’re green, you already have all five: human, systemic, financial, IP, meaning intellectual property, and physical resources. They’re all on and they’re all kicking. You work a dream schedule, meaning you have no hesitations saying no to meetings, commitments, anything that does not fit in with your ideal schedule. It’s a hard no, you can’t be persuaded to do something that doesn’t fall in line with your dream schedule. You spend more time enjoying life than you do working. Working is just something that comes up week to week, but it’s not this huge heavy burden. You don’t wake up saying, “Oh, I got to go to work today.” That’s not an indicator of scalability and scalability. You would never think or say that. You could take an extended leave of absence without incurring financial hardship.
I know some of you, I saw you in California who were out of work in the salon for five months and did not incur financial hardship. Those stylists and salon owners were scalable and that’s what made that possible for them. You feel light, you feel hopeful and you feel like anything is possible.
So even if you’re not green yet, I’m going to guess that hearing those key indicators gives you hope. This is not a pipe dream. That green that I just described is the reality for the top 5% of our industry and my goal as a coach is to make it so that the top 40% of the industry feels that way.
I don’t think scalability needs to be just for the elite. I think that scalability is achievable for anybody so long as they’re willing to put the systems and structure in place to make it possible, right? So long as they’re willing to look at all five resources and say, “How do I incorporate more of this into my business?”
My goal is a business coach is to get more respect for our industry, create scalability so you guys don’t feel like you have to work Tuesday through Saturday, evenings, weekends, all this crazy stuff, and you’re able to truly have the dream job that we all sought out for when we joined the industry in the first place.
I hope this has given you some insight as to what scalability truly is, what you need to do to start achieving it, what resources you might need to look towards, and you’re getting inspired to create scalability in your own business.
You guys so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
