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 my friends and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Britt Seva, and I’m recording this episode pretty hot off the annual planning experience I had with my leadership team, which was absolutely amazing. It was by far and away our best annual planning session we ever had.
We always do our annual planning the last part of Q4 of the year. We did this one at the beginning of December 2021 and one of the things that we focused on big time was accountability.
Accountability is actually one of our core values. We have total of seven in my company and accountability is one of them, and I say that because everybody in my business, myself included—which could be the hardest person in the company to manage often myself—included We all have to be accountable.
When you’re looking at accountable, at least what it means by our definition is you own your ish is essentially what we say.
Mistakes are very allowed here. Mistakes happen every day. The thing you can’t do is pass the blame to somebody else. If a mistake happens in this business, the first thing that you see people do is owning their piece, and then we go around and figure out where the breakdown happened.
What we found is often it’s not just one and almost always at several. If it is one person over and over and over, then likely we have a bigger issue, but accountability comes down to really owning your stuff and choosing to continue pushing forward.
One of the things that I hear about a lot, I think, especially this time of the year, ‘cause we get a little reflection-y and we get a little bit remorseful and we start thinking about what we wish we had done or we look at how the year shook out and we’re like, “Well, gosh, darn it. There goes another year where I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to.”
We start to think about what would have been or what could have been if X, Y, or Z didn’t happen and we blame this word: accountability.
I thought this week we would talk about accountability blockers because there have certainly been lots of times, lots of years where I’ve struggled to hold myself accountable, and I spent the last few weeks reflecting on how have I become so accountable at this point, like I am going to do it, come h or high water, I’m gonna make it happen.
My team will tell you that the deadline will get hit. The work will get done. It will all happen. There’s no chance of like, “Well, shoot, best of intentions. It didn’t work out.” That doesn’t exist. We hold ourselves very accountable to the work we’ve chosen to do and so I started thinking about what was the shift that allowed that to be our truth, my truth personally, but the truth of my business as a whole.
And rather than sharing like those truths, which I think becomes just like another shiny object or another aspirational thing, I want to talk about the blockers that prevent a person or a business or a group of being accountable.
First of all, what happens when you are accountable? What is the point? Who cares? It sounds like a lot of work. So those who are accountable are achievers. I talk about the us a lot. I am built in this lifetime to achieve, I’m still seeking my full purpose of this lifetime. I think I’m inching closer all the time, but I know that I’m here with a quest to achieve. It’s a part of my DNA. It’s a piece of me. I can’t really turn off.
I’ve had periods of really deeper regret. And when I look at those periods of deep regret, it never has been that I didn’t work hard. My husband and I have been together for just about 20 years now and he’ll tell you that I’m one of the hardest working people he knows.
That being said, there’s definitely times where I’ve not been accountable. What happens is I’m just spinning my wheels. I live right now presently in my childhood hometown, and my husband and I both grew up here. I live in California, but I live in a predominantly farming community. We’re actually on the California coastline, but it’s a big agricultural community, so there’s a lot of offroading and big trucks and mud and all this kind of stuff. It’s very much that—all I know.
Sometimes I’ll get into this rut where I feel like I’m off-roading with my boys and the tire’s gotten stuck in mud, and my husband’s pushing the gas and we’re not going anywhere. The harder he pushes, the deeper the wheels get into the mud. They’re spinning and the truck’s becoming a mess and we’re not going anywhere and it takes the whole family to get out and get the boards and push the truck or get the tow and all the stuff just to get us back on the road.
Some of you listening to this are running your business that way. You are spinning those tires, I’m watching you do it, but you’re not actually progressing. The tires are either digging deep, but they’re digging back into the same mud you’ve been trying to get through for the last little bit.
Yeah, I guess you’re digging down, but you’re not actually pushing forward, some of you, and then some of you aren’t really spinning at all. Like the car’s run out of gas and you’re just chilling and you want to be moving forward, but you’re not. That is the lack of accountability.
I don’t have that stall out professionally any longer because of the way I choose to do things. So if you feel like you do get stuck in the mud like that, or you lose course, or you start to gain traction, like your wheels start to come out of the pit and then you slip right back down, this episode is so for you.
Let’s start by talking about the first big accountability blocker, which is going to be lack of clarity. There are so many people listening to this who think that they’ve got it all dialed in and it’s crystal clear. I hear you talk about it and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, they’re talking around in circles. They have no idea what they’re speaking to.”
It’s funny. It’s because often when we’re chasing success, we think about the token at the end, but we haven’t actually classified what that token is or what it means or why we’re working towards it. We just want to achieve it. The thing, the money, the glory, the praise, whatever we want that so badly that we give that the clarity and that’s not what it is.
When I say you need clarity in order to be accountable, it’s who you are, where you’re going, why you want to be there, what the outcome will be when you land there.
I hear people say, “A top stylist in my community.” Okay. Why?
“Well, because I’d be really busy.” Okay.
“And I’d have lots of money.” All right, and then what?
“Well, then I wouldn’t have to stress about money.” Okay.
So then again, it’s like you’re not really clear on why you’re doing what you’re doing. You’re just chasing the token, which in that case is like money and financial stability, which I mean, amen to that. I want that too. I totally get it, but that’s not enough clarity to hold yourself accountable to that, which is why so many stylists get themselves stuck in the mud and the hole just keeps digging deeper, but they’re not actually progressing.
Industry educators do that all the time. They amass a really big following because they can talk about some cool stuff, but they’re not sure where exactly they’re going with that business, why they want to be there, what the outcome is going to be.
And so they’re just talking, the wheels are spinning, but there’s no traction actually being made, right? Same thing.
So many salon owners, you have a beautiful salon, the most beautiful salon on the block. Where are you going with it? Why did you open it? What is the outcome going to be? Why are you different?
“Well, we’re more beautiful.”
Okay, well, we have to dig a little bit deeper than that. That’s not enough clarity and missing just that piece will a hundred percent hold you back.
Start asking yourself what is the actual issue? What is the challenge? What am I trying to overcome here? What are you holding yourself accountable to? Because, generally speaking, when we’re looking to achieve, we’re looking to create a result which occurs when we overcome an obstacle, always.
Because if there was no obstacle in the way, you would’ve already achieved it. It would already be yours.
So whenever we’re working towards something and we need to be held accountable, you’re looking to overcome some sort of challenge. So what is that challenge? We have to identify it.
What is it that you’re trying to achieve by overcoming that challenge and why do you want to achieve it? Why does it even matter? Is it just an award to put on your shelf? Is it working towards a bigger picture? What is it? And until you’re really clear on that, the accountability will never come.
“What is the success path?” is something I ask myself all the time. Like I said, I’m coming in hot off the tails of my annual planning meeting, and my team holds me extremely accountable. They’ve gotten really comfortable with it.
I now have a leadership team—actually somebody on my leadership team, who’s absolutely brilliant, just joined us this year. She’s been such an incredible addition, but most of the people on the team have been with me for several years now at this point. One is celebrating her fifth anniversary. We have a fourth anniversary, a third anniversary, all coming up a second anniversary, all these things, really beautiful things. For all of them, when they started working for me, I probably felt like a tornado, like the Tasmanian devil coming in, and I’m spinning around and spitting papers out, and it feels wild and crazy. We’re at the point now where they really harness me and they hold me very accountable.
The reason I talk about that is my next question to you. When we’re talking about clarity is, what is the success path? Going into this annual planning meeting, they had a list for me of what I needed to bring if this was going to be successful. Now I’m their leader, but they’re going to hold me accountable to what is required of me for them to be able to do their job.
That’s why I say accountability is big in this business. It’s not just something I expect. It’s what we expect of each other. They need me to bring a success path.
So we sat there over a couple days, and my job as the CEO was to say, “Listen, this is where we’re going to be in 10 years. This is where we’re going to be in five years. This is where we’re gonna be in 18 months.” They chatted it up about how to get there and what that looks like and asked me hard questions.
They can’t decide where we’re going to be in 18 months if I don’t know where we’re going to be in 10 years. It’s actually impossible for them.
Now, will that 10-year target move? Of course, because even five years ago, I didn’t think I’d be where I am today, but it doesn’t matter. We know where we’re headed. Now when we achieve that 10-year goal in the next three to four years, which I don’t doubt that, then we’ll shift the objective, right? And we’ll continue to grow.
But that 10-year success path, vision dictates what we do tomorrow.
And so when I say, “What’s your success path?” “Well, I want to make it.” No, it’s like you’re still lacking that clarity and that’s why you can’t be accountable to it.
I am accountable to the things that I do because if I don’t do them, I won’t get to that 10-year objective. It’s fully impossible. So having that clarity is huge.
Short-term dreams and no long-term plan is a huge accountability killer. When somebody says, “Well, I want to make a hundred thousand dollars, I’ve been trying to hit $100K for six years,” like we talked about the podcast episode last week. “I’ve been trying to get there for six years, but I’m stalled out or I don’t have time or Instagram confuses me,” or whatever. You’re choosing to make excuses instead of holding yourself accountable because you don’t even know why you want the hundred thousand.
For some people, it’s literally just to say they’ve done it. While I get that, like I like those accomplishments too, to make me feel like, “okay, now I’m in the arena,” like I understand the victory in that, but the reason why people don’t actually achieve it because they have not attached that amount to something more clear.
The clarity is going to be crucial if the accountability is going to come.
So number two, maybe you have the clarity. You’re like, “Eh, no, Britt, you lost me. I have all those things.” Well, sweet. That makes it easier. But it’s still maybe holding you back from being accountable.
Next is lack of organization. So couple things we need to do to stay organized. One, give yourself hard deadlines. Like I said, my team will tell you, I can count on probably one hand the times where it’s like, “nope, we’re scrapping a project. We’re not gonna do it.” It just doesn’t happen. Like if it means I have to pull three all-nighters in a row, we’re going to do it, and that’s what I mean when I say give yourself hard deadlines.
When we’ve got a deadline, we’re going to hit it. It doesn’t mean people can’t take plenty of time off and, and I hardly ever have to do that, but when I have to do it, I’m gonna do it because I’m accountable to it.
It goes back to the whole we-can-do-hard-things.
Now I’m one to say, like I hate—I’m really pushing for the death of the hustle lifestyle. I started talking about that a couple years back. Even when I kind of braggadociously say, “Sometimes, I pull three all-nighters,” it is miserable. I don’t like doing it. And in 2022, my commitment is to never have to do that. My team is fully on board because we’re starting to get more reasonable with the goals that we set with the health of—what is now Wealthiest Year Yet (formally Best Year Yet), when I say that that’s how we plan my business, I mean it.
We’ve gotten better about only choosing objectives that actually make sense and that are a reasonable amount, and it allows us to stay accountable without doing wild and wacky things.
But if you’ve overcommitted yourself, you still need to stay accountable to that. Then you can grieve the pain of it and make a shift and change for next time. But you don’t just get to throw in the trash can when you’ve overcommitted.
If you’ve committed, you have to hold yourself accountable to it. So give yourself hard deadlines with whatever you give and you do what it takes to get there.
You know why I’m a stickler for that? I think we learn a lot through pain if I can be fully candid and I don’t want anybody listening to this to feel pain, but I’ve done enough three all-nighters in a row to know I don’t ever want to do that again.
And so it changes the way I make future decisions in my business because, ouch, that hurt, I stuck to the deadline had. If I said, “Well, we’ll push it out a week. We’ll push it out a week. We’ll push it out,” there wouldn’t have been enough pain, and I likely would’ve stayed stuck in that rut with the wheels spinning.
Do you see where I’m going with that? You have to hold yourself to it.
Now also with the organization, we want tools. Obviously, a tool that I’m a huge fan of is my Wealthiest Year Yet planning system. It’s something that has evolved over a series of years.
For me—I’ll be candid. I created it for myself. I really needed it and then sharing it with the world was incredible.
Every year I do a lot of planner research. I purchased nine planners this year to see if there was anything I could do to improve Wealthiest Year Yet, and I gotta tell you, I didn’t find a single one that held a candle because there’s a lot that are very lovely and happiness and prioritized life, and here’s where you can plot out your month.
I get it. I love all that too. I think it’s really lovely and it can feel really nice. The challenge’s with planners like that is you end up being very reactionary versus proactive. In those kind of planners, you’re reactionary to your feelings, and short-term goals versus the long-term objective.
You need to get very strategic if you’re going to be truly accountable. Without having really strong organization and those hard deadlines, it’s easy to let short-term objectives to become 2, 3, 4, 5-year projects because you’re not putting that organization in place.
Next, we have lack of education or confidence. A lot of times we have really great ideas, but not the strategy behind them. Or if you feel like you’re flying by the seat of your pants or doing things instinctually, oh my gosh, the amount of years I spent doing things instinctually, it’s ridiculous.
It is very hard to be accountable to anything in your business when you’re gluing the business or the project together rather than following a proven method. Like if you are building the plan and the system, as you’re doing the work, you are taking the slowest possible path.
I was that person. I was like, “Oh my gosh, I’m not going to pay to take a program. I’m just going to watch a hundred YouTube videos. If I watch enough things on Instagram, I’ll figure it out.” Yeah, and I’ll be seven years behind the person who just paid for the freaking training, who just asked for the freaking mentorship, right?
So if you are lacking education or confidence, you might still get to the end result, but you are taking the slowest possible boat to get there, so really keep that in mind.
Education to me is like taking a shortcut. I’m built super scrappy. Like I said earlier, I’ll get it done. It’s not a question of “Can she do it?” I’m going to get it done. It’s fine. It’s just a matter of how painful it’s going to be for me. What I found is if I just invest in the freaking education, it’s so much less painful and it’s so much faster.
Going back to confidence, you will self-sabotage yourself if you allow self-doubt or imposter syndrome or roadblocks due to lack of education deter your success. The solution there is also education too.
Next accountability blocker is lack of time or too many priorities. Having too many priorities is the same as having none at all.
So again, I’m going bring it back one more time to our annual planning meeting. This is laughable. If my team listens to this, they’ll have a real nice chuckle about it. So no joke, no exaggeration, heading into this annual planning meeting. I sent my team, wait for it, a 26-page document about all the things I wanted to achieve next year.
In one year.
26 pages.
They’re so sweet to me and I’m sure they were waiting for it to come and nobody complained, but can we all laugh about it now? And then so great, so I get in the room after they’ve all read this 26-page document, and I said, “Y’all, I am so excited to be here. We are going to pick one objective for the year and six projects to get there.”
I mean, ridiculous after reading this 26-page document, but we did it. And the way we got 26 pages of my wishlist projects—plus I had six people in the room with me, they all had their own stuff, too. We were able to condense my 26 pages plus all of their beautiful brains into just six projects for an entire year, all speaking to one objective. That is how we will hold ourselves accountable and that is how we will achieve. We say no more than we say yes.
You’re going to have to do the same. And you know what’s going to be hard is squirrels are coming. Someone’s going to call you. Someone’s going to DM you, an opportunity’s going to come up, and you’re going to be really tempted to say yes…and I’m gonna push you to say no, because if you say yes, it is going to push you further away from achieving the goal you finally got clear on in the clarity step and you’re going to be taking steps backward and backward and backward, and you’ll keep spinning the wheels, and they’ll stay in the mud, and people will come along and watch your show and watch you spin your tires. But you’re never going to get any further until you start saying no.
Watch out for the FOMO monster, that fear of missing out monster. He’ll get ya every single time. Eyes on the prize.
One of the things I want you to walk away with after this episode—and you know I talk to it all the time in Thriving and Scaling Stylist Methods. The key to success is to do less but do it better. Only do the things that get you closer to your objective.
But the problem is that a lot of people haven’t defined the objective. The objective is more money. The objective is more followers. The objective is more clients. Got it.
Except for that all three of those objectives are byproducts of the actual work. So no one is focused on the actual work. All of those things, more money, more followers, more clients, those are all results. You have to be accountable to the work, not just the results, if you’re actually going to get to the finish line.
And lastly, allowing your current circumstances to define your future reality or relying on external circumstances to make your success possible.
When we say things like “I would do what they’re doing, but I don’t have that kind of time,” oh, okay. So you think that that person just had this innate advantage of time and because you don’t have that advantage of time, you’re just gonna throw the objective in the trash can and not be accountable to it.
I mean, that is a choice, but then don’t feel badly when you don’t achieve that thing you are shooting for. That is the reason these are accountability blockers.
When you allow those reasons for your lack of achievement to come in, you don’t have the time. You don’t have the resources, you don’t have the education, whatever. Okay. So get it. You’re going to have to figure it out. You’re going to have to make that room somewhere in order to achieve that thing you want.
Another thing I really go back and forth on this is the idea of accountability partners. Accountability partners can be great. The challenge is you have to choose an accountability partner who they themselves are able to be accountable.
You put a couple of people who are both struggling with accountability together, it’s like you can’t even be accountable for yourself, but now you’re gonna babysit me too. It’s it becomes a little bit like the blind leading the blind.
The reason you wanted the accountability partner is likely because you were doing all the things I just rattled off. You have too many priorities. You don’t have enough time. You’re lacking the confidence or the education. You don’t really have the organization and you’re lost on the clarity. So here’s another person who’s struggling with those five things and let’s struggle together. You know what I mean?
It’s not to say, like when I think about my masterminds, I’ve met amazing people who have lifted me up and supported me. Not a one of them has done anything to keep me accountable, and it’s not their job.
If I miss a deadline, you know what they do? “That’s okay, friend. No worries. You’ll get it next time.” Because that’s their job. They’re my cheerleader and my support system. They’re not my accountability partner.
My team would not say, “That’s okay, no worries,” if I didn’t hit my goals. They’re also not my accountability partners. I am accountable to them. Do you see the difference?
So when I talk about accountability, I want you to think about it as holding yourself as an individual in this lifetime accountable. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, my greatest fear is looking back on my lifetime and saying woulda coulda shoulda, and wishing I had done things differently.
For some of you, you feel the same. The solution to being in that position is to hold yourself freaking accountable to the stuff that matters, to the family that matters, to those you love that matters, to the work that’s important to you. Don’t let it slip away. Figure out a way to prioritize what matters the most.
Y’all so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
