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, coming back with something very exciting, because this is a teaser to our seventh annual Goal Setting Workshop.
This is very exciting. I actually think Goal Setting Workshop was the first free digital training that the beauty industry ever received, which is pretty exciting.
I started this back in 2015. This is way before Instagram Live, way before Facebook Live. I actually did it on Periscope, which is where a lot of digital educators came up through the ranks, and this was a really fun experience back then.
It is my most in-demand free training experience I do all year and it happens to kick off this week if you’re listening in real-time. So the actual experience is going to kick off on Tuesday, November the ninth, running Wednesday, November the 10th, and Thursday, November the 11th as well, so three full days of strategic annual planning.
This year I’m making it very easy and you can catch all of the trainings on my Instagram page. So if you’re following @brittseva on Instagram, you can tune in there nightly at 6 pm Pacific, 9 pm Eastern. I’m going to be coming on live and I will be taking live questions. I’ll be walking you through life exercises and all of these videos will stay up as replays for a limited time.
So if you can’t make it in real-time, let’s say you can’t make it at 6 pm but you can make it at eight, that’s great. Watch the replay. These videos are not going to stay up on my Instagram page though, so you want to make sure you watch them within 24 hours of the broadcast so that you can catch all the goodness and set yourself up for massive success in 2022.
Now there is a free workbook that goes along with this training I’m about to walk you through on the podcast and the full trainings we’re doing on my Instagram page. And if you want to get your hands on that workbook, again, we’ve made it very easy. I want you to write down this number. It’s (650) 750-1575. That’s a phone number. (650) 750-1575 and you’re going to text #goalsetting, one word, #goalsetting to that number. I’ll say it one more time. (650) 750-1575, #goalsetting and we will just send you a copy of the PDF workbook. We’ll make it super easy. Then you can tune in on Instagram, the evenings of Tuesday, November 9th, Wednesday, November 10th, and Thursday, November 11th, where I will workshop this with you, take your questions live, and make sure to set you up for massive success.
The question becomes, why do I do and how do I do this differently than anybody else? So I’ve explained this before and I’ll explain it again. I used to have a very unhealthy relationship with goal-setting. Anybody else? The reason I had an issue with it is because I felt like it was so fanciful and easy and dreamy to, at the end of the year, future cast to make all of these beautiful goals and decide what was going to happen.
Then inevitably, what would happen is life. Life would happen. It would disrupt all the beautiful goals I had created for myself and then I’d end each year actually quite bitter, like looking back and thinking, “Man, what did I do wrong? Where did I go sideways? Here’s yet another year wasted.”
It put me into this very negative outlook on progress and goal setting and even strategy in general. And I said, “I really think there’s a better way to do this,” and so I created a full goal setting, annual planning, business planning, and execution system that I’m going to introduce you to through these workshops.
That’s what makes studying my method very different. It’s easy to buy an annual planner, sit down, and write some goals. It’s easy to use a monthly planner and sit down and plan out your months and weeks and write down checklists.
All of that is easy. Easy is also not the way to get massive success. If it was easy, everybody would have already done it. Massive success comes when we get strategic and my goal through the Goal Setting Workshop and through the podcast I’m about to share with you is to help you to get strategic.
There are three big lessons that I think most of us took away this past year. It’s funny, I think 2020 was a big year of learning, 2021 was this funny year of reflection and recovery. And then 2022 seems to be when we’re all really feeling ready to hit the ground running, which is so exciting.
But the three big takeaways I think we’ve all picked up over the last couple of years is number one, financial security isn’t an option, it’s mandatory.
I think a lot of us took for granted our lifestyle in 2019 when finances felt pretty predictable-ish and life felt stable-ish. And even though we were maybe wishing for more things or hoping things were better, it’s like there wasn’t enough pain to make us get up off ours and actually do something about it. Comfort had set in.
Then in 2020, when there was this massive disruption—I’m in California, stylists here were out of work for seven months. In some countries, people are still out of work—and so it’s like, “Wow, if I’m not able to make an income for three weeks, three months, seven months a year and a half, what am I going to do?”
And if we are naive enough to say, “Well, we made it through the pandemic. That won’t happen again,” that is a scary way to think, because if it’s not a pandemic, it will be something else. The pandemic was the first time that, as a collective industry as a whole, we ended up uncertain. First time ever, no doubt.
But as a people, this kind of stuff happens all the time. Injuries, life events, massive moves, stuff happens, natural disasters, right? Where you end up unexpectedly out of work or what you thought was secure is no longer.
When we talk about being financially free, it’s that life can throw curveballs and your life carries on. The bills are paid. The roof stays over your head. You don’t have to sweat it. You actually don’t even have to worry about unemployment because you’re so set up.
I know sometimes I talk about that and people think, “Well, yeah, but that’s impossible in our industry.” There’s a time I would have agreed with that, except for that I got so many, I mean—I’m telling you guys, hundreds, I’m not even exaggerating, of DMs during the pandemic of stylists saying “I’m embarrassed, but I’m actually really enjoying this time off because I have so much financial security that the break is actually nice,” because they didn’t have to worry about missing weeks of work.
But there was this tremendous guilt that went along with it too, right? Because that wasn’t the story for the majority of the industry so people couldn’t talk about it. It was like they were confessing to me that they were financially free and how wonderful it felt to have a career that really created this lifestyle for them.
They work because they can and they enjoy it, but they don’t need to. That’s where we all need to be, okay? And that doesn’t happen by chance. That happens by choice.
Number two, money is great, time is priceless, which goes right along with that first point I just made, but it’s almost like to the contrary.
For a lot of us, we’re like, “Okay, so it’s make more money. So I’m going to grind it out, hustle, work 12 hours taking as many clients as I can, just charge top dollar, double book.”
I don’t know about you all, one of my big takeaways from, I mean, even previous to 2020 for me, but definitely in 2020, it’s that time is the resource we really don’t get back. It’s fleeting. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever and it’s precious and we need to be taking the most advantage of all of the time we have. Our tomorrows are not guaranteed and tomorrow is uncertain anyway, so we need to make the most use of our time now to set up that financial security all while putting our friends, our family, our sanity, our mental health, our physical health, all of that stuff first, because if you were sacrificing so much of your life and of yourself to make a dollar, what is the point?
When you look at data, there’s all these great studies that people who go into nursing homes and ask people who are aging in their eighties, nineties, even have reached a hundred, “What advice would you have for the younger generations?” It’s always things like work less, family more. Find a way to really make the most out of your lifetime and grinding it out is not the way.
I think what’s really exciting is we’ve seen an end to the hustle culture. Thank goodness. It’s about time. So the question becomes how do we create that financial security without sacrificing our time? That’s what I’m geeking out over right now, so we’ll talk more about that.
Number three, and this is a harsh reality. This is when I’ve had to uncover for a lot of people this year. If your business isn’t actively growing, it’s slowly dying. Slow growth and stability—stability is so dangerous, friends. Stability and slow growth will lead to a sinking career.
What’s wild is right now, the economy around us is actually growing.
We can complain about things like cost of color. We can talk about how there’s ships off the shore that can’t get in to deliver the products that we need so the cost of everything is rising. But the reality is the cost of everything is rising so the economy is shifting, prices are going up. If you’re not making more money, and a lot more money, you’re being left behind.
We can say it’s annoying, it’s unfair, it’s frustrating, all of that. I totally empathize. But then we have to sit back and be like, “All right, so how do I stay ahead of this?”
What you can try to do is just jack up your prices and hope that that works. My fear for you is that it won’t, so it wouldn’t be what I would advise you to do, although I think it’s what a lot of people will do, which is unfortunate.
Instead, we need to make sure that we’re safe-proofing our business so that we don’t do wild, wacky, wonky things that cause us to lose our footing, right?
Those are, I think the three big takeaways that we have, and that’s what a lot of this experience is based around this year.
When you look at the Goal Setting Workshop that I’m hosting on Instagram, like I said, coming up this week, if you’re listening in real-time, there are three things that we’re going to cover.
We’re going to spend a day reflecting, a day dreaming, and a day strategizing. You may ask yourself, “Why did you choose those three things?” Well, after studying annual planning, goal setting, strategic business growth, and what makes the top 10% of businesses actually continue to financially grow year over year, I came to these six common components and I’m going to share them with you now.
The first is what I called the North Star, the second social content strategy, the third reflection, the fourth dreaming, the fifth strategizing, and the sixth execution. I believe there are six phases to effective annual planning and not just the planning, but the achievement.
Let’s walk through all six really briefly.
You’ll see the first one I noticed is what I call the North Star. The North Star is where all of this is working towards. A lot of us as business owners are like, “honey, if I could just make more money, I’d be happy.” I’m telling you that is the softest business plan of all time. You will find yourself very financially frustrated and very short on time if your goal is just to make more money. I’ve seen it happen over and over and over again.
The North Star has to be much deeper than that. What is all of this working towards? If I want more money—which to me, money is a byproduct of a well-designed business. Can I get an amen? It is. I understand that’s why we go into businesses to make money and if you’ve been listening to the show for a while, I don’t have bones about that. We’re all here to make money. You dig? That’s why we’re in business. If we weren’t, we could just like be on vacation somewhere and that’s totally rad, but we’re here to make money.
You’re only going to make money if you have determined the vehicle that’s going to get you there, why you’ve chosen that vehicle, your purpose, what makes you unique, and all of the objectives you want to achieve within your industry or your business of choice. If you’ve not figured those things out, I’m not surprised you’re growing slowly. It’s like the idea of if I gave you a brand new car and I was like, “Get out there and hit the open road,” and you just hopped in the car and you started driving, my ask of you was, “I want you to drive 2000 miles,” you would drive 2000 miles. You could do it. But if that car has no GPS, and I’ve not told you the destination to hit, even if I say, “I want you to get in this car, drive 2000 miles, and if you find me at the end of the 2000, I’m going to give you $6 million,” would you ever find me? No.
You could actually probably drive around this country for years and never find me because you don’t have the direction. You don’t know where you’re going.
For a lot of you, that’s how you’re living your career. You’re driving. You have the fancy car. It looks great on social media. You’re cruising. You’re doing work. It’s not for lack of effort, but because you are unclear on the destination and why that destination matters and what that destination is going to provide for you, you’ll never get there.
That’s the North Star.
Then we have the social content strategy. Now what’s exciting is social content strategy section is a new section to our Wealthiest Year Yet planner that is rolling out this week. Very exciting. It is a physical planner and core system that I host annually and the social content strategy is a new section. It used to be just a small component, now it is one of the largest sections in the planner.
What we look at is how we’re using social, why we’re using the channels we’re using, our messaging on each channel, and then pre-defining our voice message and strategy on each channel so we don’t lose our way.
Do you ever just see something cool and you’re like, “Oh, I love this. I’m going to talk about it on Instagram.” You can do that, but that’s how people become popular and not profitable.
It’s actually very easy to find topics or posts or content that will give you a lot of likes, even a lot of comments and DMs. That’s pretty easy. Posting the content that is actually going to get you closer to your North Star destination, much harder.
That’s why we’ve included that social content strategy section in the Wealthiest Year Yet and why I think it’s so important in annual planning.
Then we have reflect. You can’t know where you’re going until you’ve looked at where you’ve been. I just did the reflection for my own business this year and it was eye-opening because—it’s funny, as we go through week to week, month to month in our business, we feel the feelings and you’re reacting to things as they come up.
You know how they say hindsight’s 2020? I think it’s like 2030. It’s just so sharp and so good. When you look back and you say, “Wow, this is why this is where it’s. This is why this is failing me. This is why this broke down. This is why I’m not getting the result I’m looking for.”
When you actually take the time to reflect and troubleshoot, you would be amazed by what you actually discover, and through that discovery, you’re able to plan for a brighter tomorrow.
We always start with having a reflection component. Then we dream and the dreaming is what I think most people do in goal planning. Dreaming is great. Dreaming is a big fat waste of time unless you’re going to get strategic. Literally, there’s no point cause we all have big dreams. I have big dreams, but if I’m not going to include a strategy to make those dreams happen, that is in alignment with a North Star, with a social content strategy, to get me there, it’s never going to work. It won’t.
You know how people say dreams die on the vine or dreams are unattempted wishes? That’s why. Because you don’t have the support to ensure that that happens, so creating the strategy to ensure the dreams actually come together is crucial.
Then we have execution. So those first five are awesome, but the execution is what actually fails most people.
How many of you have started any kind of life change journey and you end the year so fired up to do it…and then January rolls around, you get it started, and, oh shoot, by mid-January, life’s gotten busy? Stuff’s come up and you’re like, “Oh, I just can’t get to those dreams. I’ll get to them later,” and then later never comes?
It’s like the tale as old as time, right? Or it comes, but you just chip away at pieces of it and the goal never really comes together. Getting strategic about the execution is how we make sure that that doesn’t fall apart.
Like I mentioned, we’re not going to have time to hit all six of those annual planning steps in this podcast or in the free workshop. However, I do cover all six in my Wealthiest Year Yet program and I am going to cover three of the six in the Goal Setting Workshops. We’re going to do reflect, dream, and strategize. We’re not going to be able to get into North Star, social content, or execute, but we get the middle three and we get some really good work done.
As we reflect in the workshop—I’m going to give you a brief overview here on the podcast. You can get your wheels turning—I start by talking about money because money for a lot of us is the greatest indicator of success as you evolve in your business. What you’ll realize is that the money is awesome, but like I said, it’s the vehicle that allows you to live a bigger, better life.
Like just money in the bank doesn’t do much for you. It’s literally just pieces of paper. It’s what you do with the money that actually changes your lifestyle, right? We dive deeper into that, but we start with money because it’s what most of us are here for.
When I have you reflecting on money, listen to what I’m asking you to reflect on: your overall earnings, like your service dollars, retail dollars, all that kind of stuff. Then your take-home pay and whether you’re commission, booth rental, salon owner, whatever, I want you to look at both. Your personal savings, your professional savings, your retirement contributions, your investment account earnings, like saving for retirement is no good unless you’re investing and those investments are earning, right? There’s literally not much point if I can be totally candid. Then education investments, debts, and on a scale of one to 10, how happy are you with your finances?
We’re going to talk deeper about all these things in the workshop. So if you’re like, “How do I start investing? What do you mean we have to have all these savings accounts?”, we will talk about that and lots more of different things that you can do to get smart about your finances in the workshop so make sure you’re signed up!
In case you missed it before, if you text #goalsetting to (650) 750-1575, we can get you registered for the experience.
I have you take a look at your 20 21 business strategy. What was it? And did it work for you? By what percentage did your business grow in 2021 over 2020? And we’re going to talk about some real numbers as far as like industry overall, what growth looks like right now. I’ll share with you some averages and some statistics. You can take a look at how your business holds up and then, again, on a scale of one to 10, how happy are you with your current lifestyle?
That to me is a really interesting question. There’s people who make a lot of money who are completely miserable or who make a lot of money but are burning it, so their lifestyle is actually not that great, right?
We want to be really aware of is that revenue generating the lifestyle that we’re looking for?
Then I also have you reflect and rate your efforts. This was a big one for me. I had a bit of a curveball year. If you’ve been listening to the podcast, you know exactly why I’m not going to go back and rehash it. But this year didn’t go to plan for me in any way, shape, or form. It was a rough one. And so for me, my efforts fell flat in a lot of ways, not in the student experience ways, not in the Thriver Society ways, not in the marketing ways, but in my team and it’s very unfortunate. I look at all of the ways I could have really been better as a leader and I see how my shortcomings as a leader to them in areas that I probably would have been able to show up in had I been emotionally present in the way I needed to be this year. It would have been just so different.
Now that’s one of those things that if I could go back in time, I can’t heal that. The reason I had to take a step back was legitimate. However, my efforts do dictate some of our results, right?
I lost some team members this year. Some were asked to leave, one chose to go, and I have to look at what about the way I showed up made all those things happen, right? I had a lot of reflection and revolution about what I could do differently next year to shift our position.
Then we shift on to dream and I’m going to share some examples of strategic dreaming in the workshops so make sure you sign up if you want to see examples of that, but I give you some space to dream and think about the vision for what your life could be in 2022 and I asked you to get really clear on that.
Most people, when they goal set, they’re like, “I want to make this much money and I want my business focus to be X, Y, Z, and I want my schedule to be blah-blah-blah.” That’s a really good first step. I’d like to see you dig deeper. Those goals to me are far too shallow, and that’s why they often don’t come together, so giving more depth there is what’s going to make those a lot more strategic and possible.
Then we do a wealth analysis, which is something I always like to walk through. So we’re going to look at time, health, money, and love, and I’m going to walk you through some poignant questions just to ensure that you’re really on the right track there.
Then we get strategic, so then I started to ask, “What skills do we need to make sure this comes together? How are you going to choose to educate yourself? What needs to shift in the way you spend your time at home, the way you spend your time at the salon, the way you spend your time on marketing, the way you spend your time with money, the way you spend your time with your staff, the way you spend your time with your salon owner,” right? All of these things.
We start to get much more strategic.
Then I ask you, “What will your rewards be for a job well done? There’s a salon owner, I won’t say her name, but I am going to say the number. She messaged me, and she said, “Britt, I’m so excited. We’re going to have a $2 million year this year.” I said, “H yes! I’m so excited for you. What are you going to do to celebrate?” She said, “I don’t know.” I said, “Figure it out because that is such a tremendous achievement.”
I’m guilty of this too. We do these things that five years ago if somebody told us we were going to achieve it, we would have burst out in tears. You’re joking me that I’m actually going to do that. Are you kidding? Are you sure you’re telling the right person? Like that can’t possibly be me.
I bet if I went to that salon owner two years ago or five years ago and said, “Guess what? In 2021, you’re going to make $2 million,” she wouldn’t have believed me. Now she’s done it and she’s not chosen how to mark that incredible achievement.
When we mark those achievements and we honor those achievements, it is an acknowledgment to the powers that be, whomever those people or persons or energies are to you, it is an acknowledgment of appreciation and gratitude where we say I am so thankful for the blessings in my life, I am so grateful for myself, and I acknowledge my work, my focus, and my efforts, and my selflessness to get here. It’s really important that we mark those things, right?
So this exercise I’m walking you through is just a snippet of the three hours of coaching that I’m going to be walking you through to ensure that we not only really take a look at 2020 and 2021, but plan for our best possible 2022.
I’m here to tell you, friends, the industry is mid revolution. Are you feeling it? I’m feeling it big. I’ve been feeling it for a while, but right now the ground is shaking in a really new way. If you don’t get down with the rumble, you’ll be left behind.
I used to say that kind of tongue in cheek, “But don’t worry. I’m here for you.” Now I’m going to say it a little bit more sternly because I’m actually fearful. We saw a massive walkout of our industry in the last 18 months. I can share some statistics about that with you too, in the workshop if you’re curious.
What’s interesting is our industry is set for growth. The demand for our time and our services has increased and the amount of people enrolling in trades right now is at an all-time high. You can look up the Bureau of Labor and Statistics if you want the deets on that.
The competition is coming, it is going to get stiffer, and there is a need for us to show up. Don’t be left behind. This is a survival of the fittest era in the industry, and I want you to be damn fit. I want you to come out on the right side.
I strongly encourage you if you’re not already signed up to text #goalsetting to (650) 750-1575. Make sure that you are a part of this free training experience. If you’re like, “I know 2022 has to be the year that my business explodes,” I invite you to check out thrivingstylist.com/WealthiestYearYet and hopefully, I’ll see you on the inside of the program.
You all, so much love, happy business designing, and I’ll see you on the next one.
