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, and today, we’re talking about impulsive growth theory, the growth destroyer.
Just at the top of this episode, I’m going to tell you impulsive growth theory is not a scientific study. There was no clinical psychologist that worked on this. This is the theory I’ve made up and I wanted to give it a name because I have a feeling I’m going to be referencing it a lot.
I think that this impulsive growth that we’re seeing throughout our industry is causing the industry to feel extreme fatigue, to feel less than. I think it’s causing people to make really irrational decisions. I just want to unpack it a little bit if for nothing else than to bring awareness to some of the shifts that I’m seeing.
We’re going to dig into where I came up with this, if you might be affected by it, and hopefully by the end, you’ll feel some relief as far as how to grow your business forward.
First and foremost, I understand that everybody who listens to this show is looking for growth. This is a business podcast. This is not me coming on and telling stories about my day or celebrity gossip or news. This is a business growth podcast. I know that if you’re here growing your business, making more money, living a wealthy lifestyle is what you’re here for and I love that. This industry as a whole really caters to those who want to be self-made and want to make it on their own.
A lot of people in this industry say things like, well, I’m very multi-passionate. I know that doesn’t—often in this industry, that doesn’t make you an outlier. It makes you like the perfect person to become a stylist or salon owner or barber because that’s so indicative of the people that this industry usually attracts.
We’re creatives, right? We like the idea of being able to do our own thing the way that we want to do it. Having freedom and flexibility. I think those are the commonalities that bind us.
However, sometimes some of those things can also be Achilles’ heels and I want to explain why. Let’s get into the facts and figures for just a moment.
Historically—you can look up this data, just go ahead and Google it—the number of new business applications grows by seven to 8% a year on average. Some years, it’s less. Rarely is it more than that. But seven to 8% is the average number of new business applications growth year over year.
For example, in 2017, there were 3.18 million new businesses registered. In 2018, there were 3.4 million new businesses registered. It’s not saying that the number of small businesses grows by seven to 8%. It actually grows by a lot more than that. But the number of people interested in becoming entrepreneurial, interested in being business owners, that number is growing significantly.
The reason why this counts is when you look back to—I’m a millennial. When you look back to the Boomer generation specifically, or the Silent Generation who came before them and all these others, Gen X to a degree, but mainly the Boomer generation and the generations before, there was a very small number of people who owned big businesses and most people were employees.
There was the handful of people who owned small businesses in town, right? There was the guy that owned the grocery store, the woman who owned the diner in town, right? There was a handful of these people. More people chose to work for those people ’cause that was the model, right? Owning a business made you the minority. Most people were employees working for others.
That was the majority of how the United States looked. Flash forward—and for decades, we’ve been living in this time of opportunity where one of the amazing things about being here is you do get the opportunity to open your own business and do your own thing. There’s lots of freedom in that.
There’s been this increasing curiosity of people who say, “I really want to do my own thing.” Historically, we were seeing that seven to 8% annual growth. In 2020, we saw a 25% growth in people starting new small businesses. In 2021, we saw 30% growth, so you’re talking two to three times more businesses were created in 2020 and 2021 than ever before.
There was this huge entrepreneurial boom in 2020 and 2021 of these people who said, “This is my time. I’m going to start a side hustle. I’m going to finally go out on my own. I’ve had this creative idea that I’ve been thinking of for a while and now I’m going to make the leap of faith.” There was this massive number of people who took that opportunity. I think that it was almost the perfect time, the perfect storm.
I think it was a combination of a few things. One being stimulus. There was a lot of additional money in the economy. There still is. Inflation is at an all-time high right now, but there was a lot of opportunity financially for people to do things that they couldn’t do before.
Number two, thanks to the slowing of pace of life in 2020 and into 2021 based primarily because of the COVID-19 pandemic, people had more time.
The other thing that the pandemic gave us was renewed perspective. How many of you post-2020 just don’t want to work as many hours anymore. You want to have more life balance, you want to slow your pace a little bit, you still want to do business, but your perspective on what that looks like has changed.
For the majority of the workforce, it did. You look at corporations now who are trying to get their employees to come back to the office. It’s so hard. These employers are losing 30% or more of their staff because no one wants to come back, right? There was this increased interest in “I don’t want to listen to what somebody else has to say, I want to do my own thing and I want to prioritize life in a different way,” right?
Then lastly, we have influencer culture and I think layering that in created this curiosity, right? We saw people, we still see people blow up on social media and you watch somebody who’s doing dances on TikToks and next thing you know, they’re getting million dollar sponsorships, right? They’re getting these incredible opportunities.
When I’m scrolling social media, I see so many posts from people who are like, “You should do drop shipping.” “You should do this new thing and you’ll make $10,000 passively a month.” “You should try this. This is how I made money fast.” We were living in this time where it felt like whoa, people are up to big things and they were. The data shows that they were.
In 2020, 25% of new businesses started, increased by 25%, and in 2021, that number increased again by 30%. You are talking about millions and millions of new businesses starting.
What happened is we got a little jaded. Yes, you did see lots and lots of people sharing stories about how successful they were. The problem is the overall stats didn’t change.
Historically and still now, 90% of startups fail. Here’s the trick. Only 10% fail within the first year, so 90% fail over time, but only 10% fail in the first year. 70% fail in years two through five.
What we understand is that a lot of the businesses that we’re starting in 2020 and 2021, 70% will fail before 2026. What happened was there was this explosion, and there’s still a lot of that explosion radiating, of people who are really trying to make it. And you know what? 10% will. Statistically 10% will, but we’ve already lost 10% who didn’t make it in the first year or two and now we’re going to see another 70% not make it, based on the statistics. I’m not saying that to deter you from starting a business. I’m actually going to share some strategies in a moment that are going to encourage you. But what I want you to understand is that I think for a lot of people, they felt this FOMO if they didn’t do something creative or new or explore passive income or it felt like a lot of pressure to do something radical.
Which leads me to this impulsive growth theory concept.
Something else you have to understand was that by the end of 2022, consumer debt was up by 16%. That’s a lot in one year and it’s not any one thing that caused that. A lot of people want to point fingers and say, “Oh, it’s because of business closures,” or “Oh, it’s because of layoffs.” It’s actually not.
When you do the research and find out why debt went up, it’s a combination of things, but a huge portion of it is people taking out loans or or things to start business ventures and not getting the revenue back to recoup it. It’s just part of where we’re at.
There was this big culture of “get rich quick” and now as the reality of oh shoot, it’s not that easy is finally starting to hit. Everybody’s starting to realize that, like, “Oh man, this is not as easy as I thought it was going to be.” The reality is starting to hit and people are realizing maybe that wasn’t such a good thing.
One of my favorite quotes from Gary Vaynerchuk is that running a startup is like being punched in the face repeatedly. It’s exhausting. And when you look through the industry, there’s so much talk right now of burnout and um,
One of my favorite quotes from Gary Vaynerchuk is “Running a startup is like being punched in the face repeatedly.” I think that’s so true in that when you start a business, you have to be ready for the blows there. It’s not going to be easy. Whenever you’re looking at anybody’s business and thinking, “Wow, I want what they have,” you are seeing the best of the best of them all the time, they’re not showing you the messy behind-the-scenes when they’re crying in the corner and it’s all falling apart. It’s easy to say, “Oh, well, that’s not so hard.” It’s all hard. If it was easy, everybody would be gazillionaires, but they’re not.
Running business is hard and when Gary says running a startup is like being punched in the face repeatedly, I think a lot of the industry is feeling that right now. I think there’s a lot of burnout. We talked last week about imposter syndrome and how people are using that as how they’re feeling. I don’t think they’re feeling imposter syndrome. I think they’re feeling this impulsive growth pain and I want to talk about that.
Let’s look first and foremost at the definition of impulsivity. Impulsivity is broadly defined as “Actions without foresight that are poorly conceived, prematurely expressed, unduly risky, or inappropriate to the situation and that often result in undesirable outcomes.”
Oof.
I think that over the last few years, this idea of being a stylist isn’t enough, I’ve got to be a salon owner. Being a stylist isn’t enough. I’ve got to be an educator. Being a stylist isn’t enough. I’ve got to open six locations. This idea of not enoughness bubbled up from this weird once-in-a-lifetime vacuum that all of us got into, thinking that I don’t want to miss out so I’ve got to do something new because that’s what millions of people were doing. The reality is most people didn’t start anything new, but the people who did start something new were the loudest because of social media and they were trying to become influencers and that’s how you grow business and all these things. The pressure really mounted, thinking, “Oh my gosh, this must be what success looks like.”
I don’t think it is. I don’t think it ever was and I want to relieve some of that pressure and talk about what you actually need to focus on to build business today.
The fastest way to make more money, the fastest way to get that flexible schedule you want, the fastest way to build any business is never going to be to start something new. It’s always going to be to maximize what you’ve already have.
I have had the privilege and pleasure of working with some very amazing business coaches today. I think there’s one mastermind I was a part of that is fairly well known. I was a part of it. Most of the one-to-one coaches I’ve worked with in the last two years, y’all will never hear about the partnerships. There was NDAs involved and private consulting and what I noticed is when I made these big asks to these huge business consultants, one of the stipulations every single time—it was like the only consistent stipulatio—is none of these business coaches would work with any business owner who had more than one business.
If I was doing this and then something else, I was doing this and I was still owning a salon, I was doing this and I was still taking clients, I was doing this and then I also had a cupcake shop. I was doing this and I was also hand-crocheting socks and selling them on Etsy, they would not coach me because really good successful entrepreneurs know that success does not come by having three businesses and this idea of multiple streams of income. It makes people really jaded. It’s not actually true.
When you look at somebody who does own multiple businesses and you’re like, “…but that doesn’t make sense,” the people who own multiple businesses are not running them on the day to day. They’re like investors in them and that’s how they own them. But you don’t see a lot of people who are the CEOs of three companies.
Yet, in our industry, we’re seeing that. We’re seeing people who are like, “Well, I’m a stylist and I also educate for such and such a brand and I’m working on opening a salon.” So you’re the CEO of three things and then we wonder why people are burnt out. It’s because we’re making these very impulsive growth decisions because we think that’s what growth looks like.
No strategic, very wealthy, very successful business coach will advise you to do that. It’s essentially the fastest way to burnout and the slowest way to build and scale or slow build and scale your income.
I think back even to my story because let’s unpack my story for a second and talk about what you think I may have done. My story is I joined the industry in 2007. I’m licensed in the state of California. I assisted a salon for a couple of years. I grew a clientele there in a really innovative way and the owner of my salon asked me, he said, “Listen, Britt, love you, girl. You’re good at building business and optimizing systems and training. You’re not so good at the hair.”
I said, “Thank goodness somebody said it ’cause I felt it.”
He said, “You have been able to build a clientele for yourself while being terrible at doing hair. If you can do that, imagine what you could do for this business promoting those who are actually good at doing hair.” I totally agreed and so I stepped away from doing the hair myself and I started coaching my team internally and changing the way the business operations ran in the salon.
What I did happened to work, profitability increased, and because of that, other owners in the area started asking how I was doing what I was doing too. The coaching grew very organically. Even at that point, I did not say, “Amazing. What I’m going to do is I’m going to stay in this salon and be the salon director and I’m also going to run this coaching business.” I knew from the jump that I could not do two jobs and make a living and a life for myself. I knew from the start.
What did I do first? I tried to buy out the owner of my salon. I did not say, “How do I scale this business as an educator? I’m really onto something.” I said, “If I can make this salon triple in revenue and increase in profit massively, why wouldn’t I just keep doing that?” Honestly, that would’ve been the easy shot. My life actually would’ve been simpler and I still would’ve probably made about the same amount of money at the end of the year had I just kept doing that. That would’ve been much easier. I couldn’t come to an agreement with the owner of that salon. It didn’t work out.
Then I tried to open another location, two times, three times. It’s getting blurry now. How far I made it all the way. But I looked at multiple locations, fell apart in city permits over and over again. I did not want to have multiple jobs. I wanted to do the thing. I knew I did well in the simplest possible format when all those avenues closed for me, I went all in on coaching and at that point I stopped working at the salon and just did this because I knew that this idea of start a side hustle, you can do multiple things. I knew back in 2015 that that was not it. I had the sense back then as a 28-something-year-old something person that this was not going to be the way it was done. I had to go all in.
And so in a massive amount of debt, not making very much money at all at the beginning, we lived on a shoestring so that I could go all in on just this business. I know that’s not for the faint of heart. I can’t suggest anybody follow that path because I am part of that very small 10% who was able to take a startup and make it. I know that.
My point and message in telling that story is I would’ve been smarter, safer and potentially made even more money had I just stayed in the thing I was good at. From the start of running salons, owning salons, I could have opened multiple locations using this format that works for me, right? I had that dialed in. That would’ve been such the easier path for me. I’m almost a decade into running this business I have now and now finally I’m getting some lifestyle balance back.
The reason I share that is any business coach will tell you it is so much faster and easier to scale and maximize the business you already have than to start something new. Even if the business you already have right now is not going well, it is so much more logical to focus on the thing you’ve already started, maximize that till the cows come home and then look at potentially stepping away from that and into something different.
I want to unpack the reasons I think that people start new businesses or choose to get certified in new specialties really impulsively rather than creating a strong growth strategy where they are.
First reason: they’re bored. This is such a common thing amongst especially driven successful people. There’s something that people don’t tell you about success is that you start with any goal or any ambition or any dream and you say, “Oh, I just really want to achieve that thing,” and in your mind you think once I achieve that thing, I’m going to be content. Anybody who’s achieved the thing they set out to achieve, you get to the top of that mountain, you smile and then you say, “Now, what’s next?”
Pretty much every driven person is wired that way and it’s that drive and that ambition and that quest for more that got them to the top of Mount Everest in the first place. But often people find success, they make all the money, they’re working the part-time schedule and they get bored professionally and then they overcomplicate their lives when instead they could have scaled their business, been making all the money, working two days a week and then spent five days a week on a hobby or giving their time to charity or spending the time with their family.
But that’s so not normalized in this culture we have today. There’s all this shame around like, “Oh, you only work two days a week,” as if there’s something wrong with you. Man, if I could just work two days a week and make all the money, you better believe that’s what I’d be doing. And in the salon industry, that is possible for you.
The owner of my salon only worked 90 minutes a week in the salon building. 90 minutes. The idea that you have to work 500 hours a week is where the break is, and so often, people get bored and or burnt out and they’re like, “Forget it, I don’t want to do this anymore. I need new stimulation, I’m going to start something else.”
Very bad idea. Don’t do that.
Number two, not seeing the results they want in their current business. “I’m not seeing the results where I have right now, so the grass is greener over there.” “So and so seems to be doing well, working for such and such brand. I’m going to try that.”
My friends, the grass is not greener on the other side. Be very careful.
Number three, feeling underpaid. Often when you’re making the money that you want to, you decide, “Well, this venture must be no good, so I’m going to try something different because again, so and so or whomever seems to be doing well financially. So if I just do what they’re doing, I’ll see the results they’re getting.”
No. Statistically, 90% of the time that will fail. Instead of saying, “I wish I was making more money, I better start a new business,” it’s much smarter to maximize what you have, right?
And reason number four is feeling the FOMO. You look at somebody who’s a hundred steps ahead of you and a decade into what they’ve built and you say, “I want to have what they’re having. I’m going to take my foot off the gas in the business I have right now in the goals I have right now in the pieces I have in place right now. And I’m going to buy a new car and I’m going to have one foot on the gas in the original car and then I’m going to have another foot on the clutch in the other car and I’m going to try and drive two cars at once.” It doesn’t make any sense.
The other thing is often when you see somebody who’s successful that you look up to, they are years, if not decades, ahead of you. You have to know, okay, if I’m going to do that, I’m going to be making massive sacrifices for a time. You have to ask yourself, “Is that really what I want to do?” I really want you to think it through.
Here’s how to grow without being impulsive.
Number one, if you’re bored, explore something new without trying to have that make you any money for a full year. I understand the feeling of boredom. I’m one of those people who can’t even watch a movie in the movie theaters ’cause it’s too long and it’s boring for me no matter what the subject is, it doesn’t matter. I need more stimulation than that. I think where people mess up is they say, “I want to try this new thing. How do I monetize it?” You don’t. Just try the new thing. If you’re bored and you’re like, “I think I need a new challenge, I want to open a salon,” great. Just know the salon’s not going to be profitable for a year. It’s going to be stressful. It’s like having an infant where you’re not going to sleep, you’re going to feel totally lost, you’re going to feel completely inadequate. But if you want a new challenge, you can do that.
But what I want you to think of is, “Am I so bored that I want to spend the next year doing something that makes me no money?” If the answer is yes, then you should do it. For me, if I am bored right now, I’m going to pick up running again. That’s never going to make me any money, but it’s going to bring me personal fulfillment.
Don’t try to supplement boredom with monetized strategy. It’s just too impulsive and not the way to build a successful business.
Number two, you’re not seeing the results you want. If you’re not seeing the results you want working as a stylist, I promise you education is what’s missing. You are trying your best. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re not stupid. Remember I admitted in this episode I was terrible at doing hair and still built a clientele because I had the systems and framework to do so.
If you’re not seeing the results you want in the business you have right now, all you need is education. You don’t need to add on an additional challenge or do something completely new. You need to educate yourself so that you have the skills to get you where you want to be.
Number three, if you want more money, double down on the business you already have. We shared in the stats today, your odds of making more money in the new business are slim to none. Do some people do it? Absolutely. 10% do.
I’m a huge fan of failing forward and making the leap of faith. Nobody ever found success by playing small. But again, going back to step one, if you decide to make the leap of faith, I think you should do it without planning to make an additional dime more for at least one full year. If you’re like, “That’s okay for me, I just need the challenge, I need the stimulation, I’m okay to do it even if it doesn’t bring initial money for quite some time,” then it might be worth it to you. But if you’re making the decision simply because you want more money, be very, very careful. There is so much more financial potential in the business that you already have, no matter what it is.
If you’re a stylist, if you’re a salon owner, if you’re an existing educator, whatever, there is more money in the business you already have right now than the thing you’re randomly thinking about starting. I promise you that you’ll only know if you’ve been working at this new venture for a year if it has legs or not.
Okay, number four, stop looking to anybody else and stop catching the FOMO. You have no idea what anybody else is experiencing. If you look at somebody on social media and you judge what they’re doing and you’re like, “Oh, I want everything they have,” we know social media is simply the highlight reel. We know that all anybody is showing is the best of the best. Very few people are showing up on their worst day. And often those who do show up with the crying videos on social media, why are they doing it? Because they want to go viral. You don’t even know how much of that is authentic. Is that really what you want? You want to expose it all? Probably not. It’s probably not the direction you’re actually heading in.
Don’t say, “It looks like so and so is experiencing this. I’m going to follow their format and hope to strike the same gold.” They may be hitting coal, they may not be hitting gold and diamonds. You have no idea.
I hope that this idea of impulsive growth theory has made sense. I wanted to sum up and put a bow on a lot of the emotions that are running in the industry. A lot of the pressure that exists in this industry right now and I want to remind you the story I’ve shared quite a few times.
The stylist that I saw for many years was an incredible woman and still is in my eyes. She passed away from cancer in the early two thousands and still to this day, her funeral was the most attended funeral I have ever been to. If you’re buying into the idea that being a stylist isn’t enough or you’re not making enough of an impact or you can’t create the wealthy life you want to, I’m doing air quotes right now, just being a stylist, you’re so caught up in what’s happening on social and you’re so caught up in this impulsive growth theory that you’re not even seeing the forest through the trees. You are enough. This industry is enough. I know tens of thousands of stylists who make an insane living working in this industry, working part-time.
You can have it all. Gain some perspective, gain some focus, look inward more than you look outward and let the impulsivity go.
Y’all, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
