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The Lie That's Keeping You Broke: Why Most Salon Owners Are Stuck in the Self Employed Trap · Salon Success Secrets — The podcast for salon owners who are done hustling harder and ready to break their revenue ceiling.

• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: I want to start today's episode a little differently.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm not going to ask you how business is going.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to ask you a different question.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: What is the thing you're most proud of about your salon right now is the exact thing keeping you stuck.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Sit with that for a second because most owners think the proof they have made it is a packed schedule.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's a phone that won't stop ringing.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's a team that needs them for everything.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that feeling of being needed for everything feels like success.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like being the one who holds it all together.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so today we're going to challenge three lies almost every salon owner believes without realizing it.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: And by the end, you're going to know exactly which seat you're sitting in.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, are you the employee, the self-employed, the business owner, or investor?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, that feeling Jen just described of being needed for everything, that's usually the first sign you didn't build a business.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: You built a really demanding job and gave yourself the title of owner.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I know this one personally.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: I started as a receptionist at the salon that I eventually bought.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought I was buying freedom.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: But what I actually bought was responsibility.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'd leave the salon exhausted and then spend the evening on payroll, inventory, occasional drama, uh, you know, trying to figure out how to grow.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I wasn't building a company, I was carrying one.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can, I'm sure you can relate if you're listening to this episode right now.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the trap that we're talking about today.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't feel like a trap while you're in it.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: It feels like proof that you've made it.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: So here's a lie number one, and it's the big one.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we were all sold the same story.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Work hard enough, build a big enough name, and freedom will eventually show up.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, hustle now, freedom later, grind now, ease later, you know, carry it now, hand it off later.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the that's the vehicle almost that every owner buys into without ever questioning it, you know, except later never comes, you know, because the harder you work inside that vehicle, the more the business depends on you, not less.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the qualities that got you noticed behind the chair, the perfectionism, the willingness to do whatever it takes, those same qualities quietly build a business that cannot survive without you in the room.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Working harder inside the wrong vehicle doesn't get you closer to freedom.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: It just gets you more efficient at staying stuck.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, that's exactly what I lived through.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't lazy.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I wasn't bad at business, but I was working harder than I ever had in my life.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: And the business was still completely dependent on me for every decision.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, every fire, every dollar we spent, you know, and I used to think that that meant I just hadn't worked hard enough yet, that freedom was still coming if I pushed a little bit further.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: And what actually had to happen wasn't more effort.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: It was a completely different vehicle, you know, a different seat.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that's worth naming clearly because if you've been pushing harder for years and freedom still hasn't shown up, the problem probably isn't your work ethic.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's the seat that you've been working from this whole time.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: So let's name the seats because you cannot change your seat until you're honest about which one you're in.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: So seat one is employee.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is where you trade time for money.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, seat two is self-employed.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you still trade time for money, you just own the job now instead of working for someone else, you know, and say seat three is business owner.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: So you build systems and people that create results without you in every moment.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And seat four is investor.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: You own assets that create returns.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, nobody is saying that one seat is better as as a person or one seat is better as a person.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they this isn't about worth.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's about which seat actually gets you what you originally wanted when you got into this industry.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because, you know, here's a question that we ask every owner that we coach.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I want you to actually answer it if you're listening instead of just skimming past it.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you disappeared for 90 days, would your business grow?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Not survive, grow.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and if the honest answer is no, you're not a business owner yet.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: You're self-employed with a nicer sign on the door.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: And hey, this is not an insult, it's just information, you know, because most owners we meet are convinced they're in seat three because they have employees and a building and a brand and all the things, you know.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: But seat three isn't about what you have, it's about what still requires you personally.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: And once you can actually see that gap, you know, you can't unsee it, which is exactly where we want you, you know.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: So let's go ahead and break that first lie completely.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: The lie is if I just work harder, I'll earn my freedom.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this is the one that traps the most talented people in our industry.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because the qualities that make you a great beauty pro or service provider are the same qualities that keep you stuck as an owner.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you're responsible, you you care probably more than anyone in the room, and you don't want to burden your team.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: So what do you do?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: You just do it yourself, and then you do it again and again until you know you've quietly trained yourself to be the answer to every single problem in the building.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: And we call that hero syndrome.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, somebody calls out, the owner covers it.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: A guest has an issue, the owner fixes it.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a uh inventory is off, you know, the owner handles it.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: Every storyline in the salon funnels back to one person, and that person thinks it's responsibility, but it's actually a bottleneck in your business wearing a cape.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and here's the part that stings a little, you know, every time you rescue a problem, your team could could have solved themselves.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're not helping them.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: You're teaching them that leadership belongs to you, not to them.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: You're training your team one rescue at a time to wait for you instead of think for themselves.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so the belief isn't just wrong, is actively working against the outcome you want.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, working harder inside the hero role doesn't build a business.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: It builds a more exhausted hero, you know, with a team that's gotten very good at waiting.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the fix isn't doing less, it's deciding on purpose which problems you stop being the answer to.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And the second lie, you know, I just need better people, better service providers, more self-motivated people who care like I do.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard that before, right?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: We hear this constantly, and we get we get why owners believe it, because hiring can be challenging without the right plan.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, but here's the question we always flip back at them.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: What system is producing the behavior you're currently getting?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Every business is perfectly designed to create its current results.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: If retention is low, that's a system.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: If referrals are low, that's a system.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: If retail is low, that's a system.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: If accountability is low, congratulations, that's a system too.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the people aren't the variable at nearly as often as owners think they are.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, and think about Disney for a second, because Disney isn't hiring thousands of magical unicorns every summer.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: A huge number of the people creating those experiences are 19-year-old seasonal employees.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so the magic isn't the person, it's the system the person is operating inside of.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so Disney doesn't go out searching for perfect people.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: They build an environment where ordinary, well-trained people produce extraordinary results every single time, regardless of who's behind the counter that day.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and that's the shift we want every owner listening to make.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: You don't need better people, you need a system good enough that people, that good people can succeed inside it, you know, and once you build that, hiring stops feeling like a gamble because you're not betting everything on finding a unicorn anymore.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and here's the third one, and it's sneaky because it sounds like a compliment to yourself.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: The belief is what makes me valuable is that I know how to do everything.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, think about like maybe your grandmother's chocolate chip cookie recipe, you know, the one that everyone drives across town for.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: Now, imagine that recipe only exists in her head.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: What happens when she's gone?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the recipe goes with her.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that's most salons, you know, the consultation process, the recruiting process, the training process, the retail process, the guest recovery process, the culture, the standards, all of it living in one brain.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: And one brain isn't scalable.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: A documented system is, you know, the second you write down how you do the thing that only you know how to do, you've just turned your value into something the business owns.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: So instead of it, you know, just disappearing the day that you take a vacation, it lives there forever.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: So good.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: So your knowledge isn't actually the asset.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Your knowledge turned into a system, as Lindsay was just saying, is the asset.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that distinction, it changes everything about how you should be spending your time right now.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you're sitting on years of expertise that's never been written down, that's not job security.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's a single point of failure.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the reason you cannot take a real vacation without your phone blowing up.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the owners who finally get free are the ones who treat their own knowledge like something worth documenting, not something worth guarding, you know.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And here's why we wanted to lay all of these three of these things out before we go even further is because most owners think they need to try harder at the same approach, you know, push more, hustle more, sacrifice more.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not an upgrade.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's just a louder version of the thing that's already exhausting you.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: What actually changes everything isn't doing the old thing harder, it's stepping into a completely different way of operating.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's a shift from service provider owner to salon owner, you know, not a better version of doing it all yourself, a different identity entirely.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: One sees herself as the most talented person in the room who has to prove it every day.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: The other sees herself as the architect of an environment where people get to shine.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's a beautiful thing to think about, you know, and once you see that difference, you genuinely can't unsee it.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: Every decision starts to look different through that lens.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, hiring looks different, your schedule looks different.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Even how you walk the salon floor looks different because you're not asking how do I personally make this guest's experience great.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: You're asking how do I build something that makes every guest's experience great, whether I'm standing here or not.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and that's not a smaller goal, that's actually a much bigger one.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, most owners think stepping back means caring less.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's the opposite.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: It means caring enough to build something that outlasts your two hands, you know, and this is where our be-do-have framework comes in.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because most owners try to change in the wrong order.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: They think once I have more money or more time or more team, then I'll finally become a real business owner.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: But it actually works backwards.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: You have to first decide who you are being.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, are you being the hero who does everything?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Or are you being the architect like Jen just talked about, who builds the system?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, once you decide who you're being, your actions change.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: You stop asking, how do I do this myself myself?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you start asking, how does this get done without me?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: And only then does the having show up, you know.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: So the time shows up, the revenue, the team that runs without a babysitter, you know, you have to be first, do second, and then you get to have last.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: And most people try to have their way into being, and it never works because you can't out-earn an identity that you haven't actually claimed yet.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Lindsay, that reminds me that order matters more than people give it credit for.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we watch owners chase the having part constantly, you know, more revenue, more service providers, more locations, hoping that once they have enough, you know, they'll finally feel like a real business owner.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: But the feeling never catches up because the identity was never built first.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the owners who actually break through are the ones who claim the identity before the business finally proves it.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they they start making decisions like the architect before they have the perfect system, before the team is fully trained, before it feels comfortable.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: The discomfort is the is the proof that you're finally in the right seat.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: So let's make this practical because Insight Without Action is just a nice podcast episode.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: So three questions starting this week.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Question one: what are the only things I can do?
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: If someone else can do it 80% as well as you, it's probably not your job anymore.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: Just did you hear what I said?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: 80%, not 100%.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: 80% as well as you, it's probably not your job anymore.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Not because you're unimportant, but because your highest work value needs to stay yours.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Question two, what do I repeatedly answer?
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, every repeated question is a missing system.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: If your team has asked you the same thing three times, write it down.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you just created a training tool instead of answering the um, instead of staying staying the answer key.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: And question three, and this is a big one, where am I the bottleneck?
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, where does work stop until you show up?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Where do decisions hit waiting on your approval?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, that third question, where do decisions sit waiting on your approval?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, where you are the bottleneck, that's the one that changed everything for me personally, because the answer was almost everywhere when I was honest about it.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, inventory waited on me, scheduling conflicts waited on me, new hire training waited on me, even just small guest issues waited on me because I'd never given anyone else permission to handle them without checking first.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and that's exactly where your freedom is leaking out of the business.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it's usually not one giant bottleneck, it's a dozen or more small ones scattered across every part of your day, each one quietly keeping you in the seat that you are trying to leave.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and here's what eventually changed everything for me.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: My job was never to be the best service provider in the building.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't even to be the best manager.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, my job became building the environment.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, leaders don't create followers.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: Leaders create more leaders, you know, and once I actually believed that about myself, not just said it out loud, you know, I started making completely different decisions about where my time went.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: I stopped solving problems that my team was capable of solving, you know, and I started writing down the things I'd never bothered to document because I figured everyone just knew them the way that I did, you know?
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I started asking, like, how does this run without me?
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: Instead of how do I personally make sure this goes well, you know?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: And when I did that, the business started to feel less like something I was holding up and more like something that was finally holding itself up.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and Lindsay, that's the real shift that we want every owner listening to to walk away with today.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you build people instead of carrying them, you build systems instead of solving the same symptom on repeat, and you scale impact instead of scaling effort.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, none of that happens by accident, and none of it happens because you finally found the right unicorn employee, right?
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: It happens because you decided to be a different kind of owner because the business gave you permission to.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, and if something stared inside of you, um, or if today stared something up inside of you, that's not a bad sign.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, feeling stuck in the self-employed trap doesn't mean you failed.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: It usually means you've outgrown the way you've been operating.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not a setback, that's a doorway.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're not going to lay out the entire roadmap for getting out of that trap today.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's a longer conversation than you know this 20 minutes allows.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: But we will say this it's exactly the work we walk owners through, seat by seat, system by system.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: So if this episode named something that you've been feeling and couldn't quite put words to keep that feeling close, you know, we'll we'll be talking more about exactly how to make the shift and the episodes ahead.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining us for another episode of Salon Success Secrets.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: And remember, your salon should create freedom, not steal it.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see you next time.