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 loves? Britt Siva here and I hope you’re having a great week. I have to thank you so much for all the feedback after last week’s episode. What a blast. I’m so glad you guys are loving the archetype quiz and framework.
If you haven’t already done so you can take your quiz at brittseva.com/quiz and you can listen to last week’s episode for a full breakdown.
One of the things that I mentioned last week and one of the things I’ve talked about before is my idea of wealth. Now I can remember the younger version of me, and then not that much younger version than me—like the me in my twenties—who thought that money equals happiness. I think that’s something that’s ingrained in a lot of us. I think that when I look back generationally to those of us who were raised at any point over the last 60 years, there was this mindset of the way to find a lifetime of happiness is to find a job that is secure, make enough money to feed your family hustle and work hard, and that is the meaning of life, which is not the meaning of life to me.
But I remember being raised that way. Then when I looked back on what caused my family turmoil, it was always centered around money. I mean, literally every problem we had went back to money. We couldn’t take vacations because there wasn’t enough money. My parents fought because there was not enough money. Somebody was secretly spending because they didn’t want to get caught because there wasn’t enough money to go around. It was like money was the root of all evil. The car breaks down. We can’t fix it. We don’t have enough money. Then there’s more anger, frustration, tears, embarrassment from the kids, everything. It was just a slippery slope, a slope of it all led back to money.
I grew up thinking, “Well, my gosh, I certainly don’t want that to my future, so what I’m going to do is whatever I have to do to make the most money,” which is ironic because if you’ve ever been in a position where you do make more money, the happiness doesn’t necessarily come at all. The two things are not intertwined.
I know, even as I say that, you might laugh and say, “Maybe not for you, but for me, money would make me pretty happy.”
I’ve talked to some people who’ve come into some money and it doesn’t work that way. If you ever heard the saying “Mo’ money, mo’ problems,” very similar to that. You think it’s going to fix all the things. It doesn’t.
You end up with new things, the old things that were still there are still there. Nothing really changes except for that. You pay more taxes and you end up having more bills anyway It’s odd.
That’s why a lot of times you’ll find really rich, really unhappy people. So it was in my later twenties that I realized, “Okay, so it can’t be money that creates happiness. What is it?”
For me, it comes down to four things and I created a system that I call the Four Pillars of Wealth. If you’ve been following me for a while, you’re probably familiar with my pillars. These are the pillars that I believe are what contribute to a wealthy, happy, fulfilled life.
If you follow another coach, they may coach to something different, but from what I’ve seen and what I’ve experienced, these are the four pillars that create a life well-lived. I want to share them with you today because when you as a stylist or you as a salon owner start to see wealth as more than just money, you will get more money and you’ll get more of all of these other pillars as well. They all relate to each other. It’s a full circle and that is the circle that creates a life well-lived.
We’re going to cover all four pillars today, and I’m going to start right at the top with the pillar nobody likes to talk about which is the health pillar.
Health wealth. And I know when I say that, you go, “Oh my gosh, I need to put my health first.” We all say that health goes on the back burner. Always.
“I’ll work out next week.” “I’ll start a diet tomorrow.” “I’m having a cheat day.” “I’ll go to the doctor next year.” “I haven’t had my teeth cleaned in five years.”
I mean, just all the crazy, funny things that we do for ourselves. “I don’t deserve a massage. We can’t afford things like that.”
Health goes on the back burner first and foremost, always, which is so funny because if we don’t have our health, we literally have nothing. If your health goes, you will lose all the other pillars in a heartbeat.
Health is the foundational pillar of all other wealth. Yet it is the lowest priority in life for the vast majority of us. And if you’re like, “Oh, look, I work out. I think I put my health first.”
All right, let me run a couple things by you because in our industry, we’re really good at rationalizing. Not taking lunch breaks.
You spend an eight to 12-hour workday connecting with your clients. Emotionally giving everything that you have being the shoulder to lean on.
If you’re a salon leader, you’re there supporting another team of industry professionals. That is physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting. It does take a toll.
I want to give you some real talk. If you were your own employee…you work for you and your boss, i.e., you said, “I expect you to work 10 hours a day on your feet. You can take a five-minute lunch break. That’s it. No more. You need to meet your sales goal. I need you to run the calendar entirely by yourself. You need to physically produce all of the products in your business. I need you to show up with a smile every single day. Vacations are a no no.”
Are you in? Who in their right mind would take that job? Nobody ever, yet that is the job that so many of us in this industry are working.
No breaks. You’re there to serve everybody else. You’re the last person who gets served and you are exhausted.
When I say, “take a moment for yourself,” what have you done for yourself lately? “I’ve had no time for myself.” Then you’re not putting your health first.
If you fail, everything else falls. Health is the most important pillar of wealth.
What I want you to do right now is ask yourself where do you feel like you’re cheating yourself in health wealth at this moment? Is your schedule too much to bear? Are you stressed? Do you have anyone who’s emotionally supportive of you? Are you taking good physical care of your body?
One of the things that I did as a stylist that I’m now embarrassed by is I would wear three or four-inch heels most days. If you have not seen me in person I’m 5’ 2” on a good day and having that additional height helped me. Even with the chair at its lowest, I needed that additional height versus standing on a stool, which was way too embarrassing. I needed it and it killed my back and neck. I still have problems from it.
All of these years later, what are the things that you do to sacrifice your physical, mental, or emotional health because of the career choice you’ve made or the personal choices you’ve made? The relationships you keep in your life that are unhealthy for you?
Let’s start thinking about those things and start saying, “If I was wealthy in health, what would that look like?” How would you care for yourself? What health investments do you need to start making so that your health tank is full?
Next, we have time wealth and I love time wealth. Talking about time wealth is like talking dirty to me.
We as individuals all value these four different areas of wealth differently. I’ve only gone to two of the four. I’m going to go into the other two in a second. But for me, I would take wealth of time over anything. My time wealth is always like running on fumes. I am somebody who does struggle to find enough time. I do feel like I’m physically healthy, emotionally healthy, mentally healthy. All of that’s all good. The other areas of health doing well. My time wealth has been poor for a long time.
For me personally, this is where I always would like to be wealthier. I used to wear what I called the busy badge. You probably have one on right now. Look down at your shirt. Are you wearing it?
Let me tell you what it looks like. Somebody asks you, how are you doing? And the first thing that comes to mind is I’m good. I’m busy.”
Not good. If one of the first thoughts that runs through your mind is “busy”, or you have to say things like, “Oh, I meant to get back to you. I’ve been so busy.”
Busy is an excuse and busy is like the bandaid that we put over the fact that we are bleeding out time wealth. We are not allocating or investing our time properly.
So we have to wear the busy badge so everybody knows exactly how overwhelmed we are.
I remember in years past being in like busy competitions with my friends. I still don’t know why, but it was like, “Hey girl, how are you?” “I’m busy,” and then you would list off all the things that made you busy.
“I volunteered at the school. I worked 60 hours last week. My husband and I were fighting like crazy. I had to cook for the bake sale. I’m running around. My kid’s got soccer today. How about you?”
And then my friend would go on about how busy she was and how she was so much busier than me. She hasn’t watched TV in weeks. She can’t catch a break. She doesn’t even sleep anymore and we’d have a good laugh about it. It was crazy, but it was like a competition to see whose life was crappier.
When I look back, it’s just wild, but it was almost like had I said, “You know, I’m actually doing really good. I’m finding a lot of free time, I’m training for a half marathon, which I enjoy. It’s just been so nice to get that time to myself. Me and the kids are doing great. We found a lot of time to connect with this nightly card game that we play now. And me and my husband are doing amazing. We’ve been doing date night, twice a week. It just has been such a blessing. I’m working less. I’m earning more. Just life is good.”
Can you imagine telling your friend that? Never. Why? There’s almost shame around being time wealthy.
Not for me anymore. I want to flaunt that time wealth. I want to be that person who’s able to say all of those wonderful things to inspire people, to achieve that as well. That is so attractive.
And yet, for so many of us, there’s shame around even wanting those things because that busy badge is screaming so loudly that we almost believe that’s how it’s supposed to be.
That is not how it’s supposed to be. It is not wealthy to feel busy. It’s wealthy to feel abundant in time.
So here’s a cross check to see if you are time broke. If you’re in debt. Okay?
If you say things like, “Oh, I’d to do that, I just don’t have the time,” you’re time broke.
“I am absolutely going to prioritize putting in the time on that next year.” Broke. You know what’s going to happen next year. You’re going to say the same thing one more year. Next year, the following year, the year after that, “Next year is going to be my year.” It never happens. You never get there. You’re in debt on it. You’re never going to catch up. You’re in the hole already.
How about this one? “I need this time to focus on my family.” So you were in debt with family time before then, and you’re trying to invest there, which is admirable. I should hope that you invest time into your family, but it’s almost like this thing we do as an afterthought. Like I’ve been neglecting that for too long. I need to get back to it.
We should be investing in our family 365 days a year. But often we are all too—what B word —busy to invest in things like our family, like ourselves, like our health, right? Like what we just talked about.
For me, time wealth is the greatest wealth that I’m seeking for you. You might feel comfortable, confident, and well invested there, and I commend you for that. But if you’re wearing the busy badge, like I was for so many years, time wealth is likely something we need to prioritize.
Then we have love wealth. Love wealth is a really tricky one for me. If talking about love, the L word, brings emotions to the surface for you. I’m right there with you. I want to first clarify what I’m talking about.
Love. It’s not just romantic partnership, marriage, boyfriends, girlfriends, that kind of thing. Love comes in many forms. So when I say love, I want you to think of it more as an umbrella term for functional, healthy, soul-filling relationships. Relationships that are filled with respect, commitment, understanding forgiveness, no judgment, unconditional trust, and plenty of room to grow. That’s love.
I spent the majority of my youth being like the F love girl. Healthy relationships were not modeled to me. I didn’t know what that looks like. It was hard for me to understand what unconditional love might mean, or even what a healthy relationship would look like. It was so foreign that it was hard to even believe that that was true.
I had become so used to people being jealous, or making up rumors, or treating me like a doormat, or not celebrating what was great about me yet, putting down the things that were maybe my flaws.
And I thought that was normal. I thought “That’s just how people are.” It’s not how good people are. That’s not love. That is dysfunction. And it took me a really long time to see that.
I experienced that dysfunction in family relationships and romantic relationships and friendships and absolutely in professional relationships. So learning what it truly means to have an abundance of love and to have a wealthy life filled with love, oh my gosh, it’s a complete game changer.
Here’s the trick, and I think that this is why it took a minute for me to really understand what it meant to have loving, healthy relationships as well is that you can’t truly experience healthy relationships until you are madly in love with yourself. Like you just think you are the shiz, like you are everything.
And not in a conceited way, but you just love on yourself in the way that you invest in health, and the way you invest in time, and the willingness to say, “No, I’m going to put myself first.”
No one else is going to put you first. No partner, no children, no parent is going to put you first. You have to put yourself first and until you can respect yourself enough to do that, why should anybody else? They’re not going to; you have to love yourself deeply first.
What I want you to do as a love exercise, is to really sit down and think about what are the things that make you incredible. If you say “Nothing,” that’s where I want you to start, ‘cause that’s not true.
Nobody was put on this planet by accident. You were here to be amazing and you were here to live a huge, incredible life. And for some reason, you’ve been conditioned to think that you’re not enough, which is just a huge lie.
Learning to love yourself enough to not allow yourself to be treated poorly is step one. Finding your voice, finding your confidence, finding your path, creating healthy relationships is where it all starts.
And it’s a snowball because once you start making those powerful decisions, which centers around the power of no, not saying yes to everything, and to making scary choices that could lead to incredible abundance or may cause you to fall flat on your face. But it’s okay because you love yourself enough to have the confidence to know it’s all going to be all right in the end. And you can see why having that self love is really the catalyst for all of the other amazing things that we can create in this lifetime.
Amazing things such as money and money is the fourth pillar of wealth, okay? So we’ve covered them all: health time, love, and now we’re at money.
And the reason I saved it for last is because money is the most obvious and, ironically, the least important. It’s wild. It sounds completely backwards, but I have to let you in on a little secret that only wealthy people know.
When I say wealthy, I mean wealthy in health, time, love and money. Money is a byproduct of solid time, love, and health investments.
Until you have invested well in all of those areas, the money will not come. So for those of you listening to this who are like, “I’m working my butt off, I have worked so hard. I deserve so much more than this,” You’re lacking in one of the other three areas.
I don’t know which it is offhand on this podcast. I could certainly tell you if we sat down and talked together, but you are lacking in health time or love. And because you’ve missed allocated your funds there, you cannot get the money because something else is off.
The money only comes if the health time and love are in alignment. If not, you’ll never get the money. You can chase it your entire lifetime and you’ll never find it. You know what’s funny is if you did find it, it still wouldn’t make you happy, so wouldn’t solve your problems anyway, ‘cause your relationships would be down the tubes. You would have no time because maybe you’d be killing yourself to achieve it or for whatever reason. The time wouldn’t be there and your health would take a sacrifice.
When you look at some of these incredible, incredibly successful men and women, unfortunately pass away in their forties or developed carpal tunnel in their thirties because they worked too hard, what’s the point of all that? That’s crazy.
So we have to make sure that we’re allocating enough time, energy, and focus to all of the other areas so that we can get that money wealth. Which I trust me. I know it’s what we’re all seeking and money does beautiful things. I don’t have shame about talking about money. I know that’s why a lot of you follow me is because you want your businesses to succeed, right? You want to have more money. I’m not naive to that. Money is what makes our world go round. It provides opportunity. It allows you to do amazing things with your family, like go on vacations, buy beautiful homes, retire successfully.
And we want to do all those things, why? Because when we go on vacation, it helps with our health, our mental/emotional health. It also brings more love into our life. When we can spend the time with our family.
Do you see how they all connect? Money is the tool that makes all of the other pieces come together. They speak to each other. You cannot have one without the other. They all come together.
So my point in sharing this week’s episode is that if you’ve come to me looking to make more money, I’m so here for it. I’m passionate about it. I love talking about making more money.
We also need to get on board with creating more health, time, and love. If we’re going to get there, I’m down to be on this journey with you and I’m so excited to make it happen.
If you are not already saving the dates, make sure you mark your calendar. Sunday, September 20, I’m teaching a series of masterclasses where we’re going to talk about creating more of this in your life registration coming up soon.
I promise to shout it from the rooftops here on the podcast, when it’s available until then, I want you to do the deep work. Really think about your health, time, love and money, where you’re investing all of your efforts, what is being neglected, what is seeing more investment than it needs, and how to reallocate those funds.
You guys so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
