If I've said it once - I've said it 100 times the beauty industry isn’t for the faint of heart!
It's the first week in February and I know some of y'all haven't looked at those goals you made for 2024 since you wrote them in December.
If you're already feeling behind, uninspired or you just need a pep talk to get your week started this episode is for you! 💖
Join me at the Aspiring Stylist Podcast group on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/theaspiringstylist
Aspire Barber and Beauty Academy:
http://aspirebarberandbeauty.com/
Can I ask you a favor? If you enjoy the show, will you follow us and leave a 5 star review? This helps our show move up in the charts to help more stylists. Thank you!
The Aspiring Stylist with Tracey Franklin is a product of Morgan Franklin Media.
If I've said it once - I've said it 100 times the beauty industry isn’t for the faint of heart!
It's the first week in February and I know some of y'all haven't looked at those goals you made for 2024 since you wrote them in December.
If you're already feeling behind, uninspired or you just need a pep talk to get your week started this episode is for you! 💖
Join me at the Aspiring Stylist Podcast group on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/theaspiringstylist
Aspire Barber and Beauty Academy:
http://aspirebarberandbeauty.com/
Can I ask you a favor? If you enjoy the show, will you follow us and leave a 5 star review? This helps our show move up in the charts to help more stylists. Thank you!
The Aspiring Stylist with Tracey Franklin is a product of Morgan Franklin Media.
Welcome to the Aspiring Stylists Podcast with Tracey Franklin. Where to begin, grow and aspire to become the best stylist you can be. Whether you're thinking about becoming a stylist opening a salon, or developing your skills as an experienced stylist the next step of your beauty career starts here. Each week we'll discuss strategic ways to design, plan and execute on becoming a stylist that excels behind the chair and above the bottom line. Here's your host, Tracey Franklin.
Tracey Franklin:The beauty industry is not for the faint of heart. And coming back from the holidays is never easy. Depending on the amount of time that you take off for the holidays, it may even feel really anticlimactic to only have a few days off after an insane holiday rush. And then boom, before you know it, you gotta be right back at the salon. This year, for the first year, I closed the entire salon for the week of Christmas, my team was obsessed. Of course, their opinion matters. And I wanted to make sure that this wasn't going to be a huge financial blow for them. And so I checked in Hey, how did this feel? I had one stylist tell me oh my gosh, next year, I'm gonna go to Puerto Rico, and I'm going to see my family. Another one said, Oh, it was so nice not to have to feel like I couldn't get everyone in because I only had a few days, the feedback was probably some of the most valuable information I could have asked for. Because now I know that this is going to be an every year thing. I mean, what does it do, it allows you to rest it allows you to reflect and spend that much needed time with the family and travel even so if you need to do that. But even with a well deserved break, it can still feel a little bit daunting to return to work for some people. So how do we shift our thinking, because that's really what it comes down to right? It's not the reality, it's the way we see the reality, our thoughts around that reality. And I think it starts with an attitude of gratitude. I mean, think about why you got into this industry in the first place, the creativity, the making people feel amazing. Take just a moment and think about that brand that you have that hates their job, you already know who I'm talking about, right? They sit at a cubicle, they check people out at a register, they do some other job that for whatever reason is not satisfying to them, it does not fill their cup, and they could have every other week off, and it still wouldn't feel like enough. You, on the other hand, have a career that you love. And it really is a gift. And you need to remember that because I feel like it can do a lot for your Outlook. So what stresses us out the most to stylist? What about our future feels the most stressful? And I think it's the uncertainty for sure, right? Like with every job, there's a level of uncertainty and in life in general. But one thing we know as stylists that maybe other people don't know is how dramatic our paychecks can vary. I mean, two cancellations. And my check is half of what it was last week. We're not salary and that uncertainty can really stress us out new clients. Oh, that's another one, right? I mean, on one hand, that can feel really exciting. But if you're a stylist that's still working on building your confidence. It can also be really scary. And this is where a solid consultation process is really going to come in and save the day. If you have something like that if you have a process, you know, the way that you ask questions, the way you're able to work through that lack of communication because the lack of communication is the barrier. It's really hard to meet a client's expectations if we don't know what those expectations are. So just avoid all that discomfort by asking the questions. I feel like for stylists, it's really not that hard to reset our outlook, you know, especially on the year. And if you feel like you're already falling behind, let's chat for a minute. Okay, so I like to have a checklist. I am like a big kid in this way. I mean, give mom a gold star for getting something done. I also like to have little rewards in place for the progress that I make on my way. So hitting a small goal on my way to a bigger goal sounds like a damn good excuse for a new pair of shoes. And the organization helps keep order in my mind and it helps me stay on track. But if you do fall behind remember the simple truth. We can't change the past but we can start over tomorrow. So do what you have to do so that that tomorrow does not turn into a month of them. What about a short term goal on your way to a bigger goal? Like what if you feel like the pressure of planning out your whole year is just way too intimate? Eating. Well, I like the three to one method. I like three small goals to medium goals and one big, fat juicy goal. Some examples of a small goal might look like something as simple as cleaning out my closet and getting rid of things that don't fit me anymore or that I don't feel good in that don't feel good on my skin, whatever the reason is, I want to get rid of those so that when I prepare in the morning to show up looking and feeling my best I've got organization, I know exactly what I've got to choose from. A medium goal for me this year is it's actually kind of big. And that's getting everywhere. I'm supposed to be 15 minutes early. If you know me at all, you're probably chuckling right now. And for my big goal, I want my salon to have a million dollar year. compartmentalizing these goals help me keep the order and the focus. And hopefully, if you do this, it will help it feel less intimidating to you as well. There's so much power in the small habits and the little things about our lifestyle, and how those help us with our goals. I want to make a book recommendation. It's called atomic habits. And it's by James clear, and I gotta be honest, like, I'm kind of a woowoo girl. So this was a little bit more cut and dry for me a little bit more black and white. But I think sometimes we need that, right? We need that sense of order sense of fact, you know, the things that we can use moving forward to help propel us closer to our goals. And that really is in the small, everyday habits. Some of the most successful people in life are those people that get up really early in the morning, I've started doing something, another book recommendation, it's called the 5am Club. And it's really, it's really been transformative so far, you know. So this process requires that you wake up at 5am You spend the first 20 minutes of your morning doing vigorous exercise, the second 20 minutes you use meditating, praying, writing in a journal, whatever you need to do to release. And then the third 20 minutes is consumption like you're either reading a book or you're, for me, I love audiobooks. So that to me, sets my day up for success with just a few small habit changes in the morning, I'm waking up and my mornings aren't feeling as hectic as they used to, I'm able to accomplish the things that I want to accomplish like exercise because I do them right away. So before I grab my phone, before I let the world in before I allow myself to get distracted, I'm committed to this first hour because I'm worth it. And because I know it's going to help me in the long run. So what makes goal setting so hard to achieve for most people? I think it's in the perfectionism. I think we have this belief that it has to be flawless that it has to be absolutely perfect, or we can't even start and it's freaking paralyzing. Like if we let it this perfectionism, this fear of getting it wrong will keep us stuck. Like we're just going to be too scared to try anything new, we're going to be too scared to move over. Because what if we don't get it right? When the truth is, it's better to get it wrong, to learn from those mistakes, and to have another whack at getting it right than to sit still forever and never even try. What will a stylist have to do to have a measurably different 2024 than they had in 2023? As a stylist? What if you woke up in the morning and you were already feeling in a funk? What could you do to pull yourself out of it? Again, it's all in the mindset. It's all in the gratitude. You have to remember the why behind what you're doing every single day. It's not the what it's not the you know, getting up and putting on your makeup and arriving at the salon and clocking in and clocking out and doing the thing. It's all the magic that lives inside that day. I don't know about you guys. But as a hairstylist, every time I turn over a new client, I've got another opportunity to spend a few hours with someone that I really like somebody that I consider a friend. I've worked really hard to cultivate a clientele that allows me to enjoy my work that allows me to feel energized instead of depleted when we have these energy exchanges. Another thing that you should ask yourself is, am I available to new opportunities? Have I decided what I want my 2024 to look like? Because if I don't know that, then I'm nowhere. Like I have to sit down with a pen and a paper and I have to write out a few things that I would like to accomplish. And then I gotta timestamp those. I gotta give myself By when or you know what we're gonna be having the same conversation in 2025. And I'm just not here for that. So you got to plan it out, you got to map out your success, nobody ever woke up accidentally successful, you have to be intentional about it. And you have to get that out there, you have to let the universe know what you're available for. So it knows what to serve up next, having goals that aren't just money related, you know, when it's not just about money, and what it can buy you when it's about other things, when it's about maybe your health goals. Or maybe you know, you want to have deeper and more meaningful connections with someone, maybe you're ready to meet the love of your life, maybe you're ready to start a family, it's all going to take planning, it's really no different than setting a business goal or a financial goal, you have to sit down, you have to map it out. I know a lot of times we do we make goals around money. And it's not just about making the money. It's also about what that money lends itself to, right. It's about the things and the not things you know, the the experiences, the memories that you're allowed to make the trips that you're going to take with your family, being able to pay off debt and have that peace of mind. So many of the goals that we make in our personal life that we don't think have anything to do with money still do. You know, I mean, money fixes a lot of things and it can't buy you love and it can't buy you happiness, but it can certainly help you afford it. Some great goals that you could have outside of just your paycheck could be about how meaningful your work is. When I decided to become an extension artist, don't get me wrong, I was super excited about six figures. I'd had that goal for several years. But you know, turning out great hair color and good haircuts was just like not enough to get me there. I was really excited about the potential. But when I started diving in to this industry into the added hair industry, it became so much more, I was able to help women regain their confidence, I was able to help them fall back in love with our hair. I mean, the adornment of hair, the connection that women have with their hair goes way, way back to biblical days, maybe even caveman days, who knows, you know, it really is such an important part of I feel like what makes us feel good about ourselves and what makes us feel beautiful. So when I was able to mix that really great feeling with also earning a good living, that's when I really saw my career start to come to life. So yes, there are a lot of things inside of your career that you should be mindful of outside of the money, you need to be finding work that lights you up, like what makes you excited to come to work, open up your schedule and take a look. And I want you to keep scrolling until you find a service that you're absolutely in love with. And if that takes too much time, it's time to reorder, it's time to figure out what you need to be doing more of that will Yes, help you make more money, but also create more joy in your work. Having measurable and attainable goals is important. Or else we're just walking around in this sea of gray, not really knowing if we're getting it right, we cannot rely on our emotions to let us know whether or not we're doing well. Because you could create beautiful work post a picture of it, it could go viral and all of a sudden you're fill in like a rock star. But as soon as that dies down, you have to go back to being a regular non celebrity stylist, right. And so we have to decide was that actually beneficial? Because you know, you can measure it by how many followers did I get? Or how many likes did I get? But if you don't have clarity on what a successful outcome looks like, then you don't really know if you hit the mark, you know, yeah, maybe you got a bunch of people to look at your content but if they don't live in the same city as you and that doesn't translate into you know, a booking or something like that, then it's probably not as big of a deal as you might think it is. A lot of times when a stylist starts to work at my salon, you know they're fresh out of school or probably within their first year behind the chair. I love to hire people in that demographic because I feel like for one thing as a salon owner I get to train I don't have to go in and untrain and then go in and train it saves me this you know very time consuming step. But I also feel like you know, they also come to me kind of like Joey I you know, they're really inspired. They're really excited. They're not at all tainted, you know, the nothing has happened that has made them question their self worth yet. They're just this clean slate and it's so beaut Before to get to work with them. So when they come to me, they probably haven't even set their first goal yet, you know, I really do wish that the schools would work more on the business aspect of goal setting aspect and things like that with their students. But until that starts to happen, you know, it really falls on us as salon owners, and it's very beneficial for us, the salon owners. So it's important that we don't overlook this, because at the end of the day, their success is also our success. So you better know that, yes, I'm going to sit down with them. And I'm going to help them set some goals that we can measure and that we can attain, and we're gonna hand out gold stars and buy new shoes all along the way. So maybe you're thinking, You know what, I'm really busy, I'm super booked, okay, I don't need to be setting goals, I don't have time for it, it's not important. Or maybe they're feeling like, Hey, I've already achieved the things that I wanted to achieve. So I'm gonna just rest for a minute, hey, that's totally fine. I think it's really important that we live in the moment that we celebrate our victories along the way. But successful people always have their eye on the future. So once you have accomplished a goal, celebrate the crap out of yourself, and then move on to the next one. When you're super committed to accomplishing your goals in the workplace. A really beautiful side effect of that is that you're going to experience a lot of personal growth as well. And I find this to be incredibly important, because the stylists that do really well. And I'm sure this is true in any industry. But if you're going to do really well at work, it's probably stemming from this really kind of well rounded life that you've created for yourself, right? If you are putting too many of your eggs in one basket, if everything that you do is geared toward growing you as a professional, but your personal relationships are falling to the wayside, and you haven't tucked your kid in in the last week, maybe it's time to reprioritize and find the balance so that we don't completely lose sight of our professional goals, because we're in this panic mode of oh, now I've got to focus on my family, you really can focus on both, but it's going to take some intention, you're gonna have to set some healthy boundaries around your work life and your personal life so that they accept each other really well and aren't counterproductive. So you may have heard me talking about this and in in a previous episode, but I'm really focused on my health right now I'm really focused on you know, making sure that I'm taking care of myself that I've got the energy and the in the clarity that I need mentally to be the person that I am, you know, I wear a lot of hats, and I really love them all. And I want to be really good at all of them. But in order to do that, I have to remember to fill my own cup, I have to remember to take care of myself first, so that I can take care of others. So for me, it's important that I have separate goals for the separate parts of my life. I have my work goals, the things that I want to accomplish, like I talked about earlier, with my salon goal of having a million dollar gross year, that is completely possible if I'm staying connected to that goal. But that doesn't help me at all with my health goals, right. So that's going to require a different version of me, it's going to require a different set of goals, I'm going to have to show up differently in that part of my life. Because sometimes the balance and the healthiest thing that I can do for myself is nothing at all. It's just to unplug. It's just to take a break. It's just to binge watch a show on Netflix, or maybe take a nap on a Sunday afternoon for God's sake, whatever it is that I need, I know it's going to change every day. So it means I'm gonna have to stay connected to me, I'm gonna have to make sure that I'm tuned in and I'm gonna have to make sure that I'm creating space to be able to deliver those needs. I really do love a new year. I really love this clean slate, this rebirth, right this opportunity to show up bigger, better, stronger than I did the year before. But the important thing to remember is that you don't need a new year. You don't need a new month. It is never too late to start over and start showing up as the most fierce and committed version of yourself.
Morgan Franklin:Thank you for joining us on this episode of anytime soon. The Aspiring Stylist Podcast with Tracey Franklin. If you enjoyed listening and you want to hear more, make sure you subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify or wherever you find your podcasts. The Aspiring Stylist Podcast with Tracey Franklin is a Morgan Franklin Production. Today's episode was written and produced by Morgan Franklin editing and post-production by Mike Franklin. Want to find out more about Tracey and the Aspiring Barber and Beauty Academy go to aspirebarberandbeauty.com