Answering your business Q's + doing an Instagram Audit (for bridal beauty pros)

Hey, guys. Welcome back to my YouTube channel. For today's video, I'm going to be going into a juicy Q and A that I did over on my Instagram stories and answering how I can help you guys within your business. Disclaimer. I was shooting other YouTube videos and rip to my camera, so we're filming on my iPhone. My apologies for the audio. And I also feel like a Karen at a concert who's holding up her iPad because I'm going to be answering these questions using my laptop since I'm using my camera to film. And that was entirely too much information that you didn't even ask for. So let's get into the questions Jennifer asks. Not sure if this is worthy of an entire video or not, but how you overcome imposter syndrome. Girlfriend. This is entirely worth, like a whole video that I could dive so much deeper into. But let me give you some tips. The first thing I want you to know is that you will never not have imposter syndrome, especially when you're doing anything new. As I've grown within my bridal hair business, at each different level, you are hitting a new level of incompetence. Meaning at each level you're new and you're like, oh my God, I don't know how to do this. But starting out, you're like, oh, I got this. And then when you get more into it, you're like, oh, I actually have no idea how to do this. This is a lot more work than I thought. Imposter syndrome for me has been hitting hard AF because I am creating Bridal Boss Academy, which is an online hair course for bridal hair stylists, teaching you the methods that I use on Instagram in order to build my six figure bridal hair business. However, even though I know I have the evidence, I know I have evidence that I know how to build a six figure hair business. I've never taught this to somebody else. So in my mind, what my mind is doing and what my mind is telling me is you don't have the evidence to support that. So my mind is in a constant battle right now telling me, you don't know how to do this. You don't know what you're talking about. You don't deserve to tell other people about that. When in reality, I know I do have the evidence that I can build a six figure bridal hair business. Your mind does funny things when you don't have the evidence to support your theory. So for you, what I can say is I'm not exactly sure What? You have imposter syndrome over. But something that has helped me is looking at all the evidence you have to stack up to say, actually, I know what I'm talking about, I know how to do this and I'm going to do the damn thing anyway. So list out in your mind whatever you have imposter syndrome over right now and think, what evidence do I have that I can actually support this? Why am I not an imposter? Everyone deserves to be here. Everyone deserves to be successful. I don't know what your imposter syndrome is, but believe me, you are worthy and I am so proud of you for showing up for your hair business. Okay, next question. How to start posting your biz on Instagram if you're afraid to post your work? This one hits home because I was so afraid to post my work. When I started showing up on Instagram consistently in 2018 and into 2020, I was so afraid to post my work. And let me tell you, the number one reason why I was actually afraid to post my work was because the hardest pill to swallow was that my work wasn't that great and that my hair photography photo skills were non existent. I didn't know how to take proper hair photos. So when I went to go post my work and I was constantly in the feed scrolling and looking at other people's work, I was like, mine just can't match up and I suck so why should I even show up here? So instead what I want you to do is focus on your hair photography. Focus on bettering your hair skills. Ask yourself, when I'm looking at my photos, what do I need to work on? Do I need to actually work on the hair skills itself or do you feel pretty secure in it? If you feel pretty secure in it, then you're going to want to focus on your hair photography. If you go over on my Instagram, I have some videos of hair photography tips that can help you out, but I am also releasing a hair photography masterclass on YouTube so stay tuned for that. It's normal if you are feeling like your hair skill isn't matching up or where you want it to be. If you're not investing in education outside of actually working weddings, you want to be investing in education and doing either online classes or in person classes. If you're just watching videos on YouTube or on Instagram and your hairstyles still aren't getting better, you're really going to want to invest in your technical skill because that is going to evolve over time and that's really what's going to give you the best return on your investment by attracting more brides? So I would go over those two things. Look at your photography skill. And if your photography skill is just not where you want it to be, start really focusing on that because you want to have a camera roll of photos in your iPhone that you are like, oh my God, I can't wait to share these with people. So start creating that now. I want to be able to post more to get more brides, but I'm not booked enough to post so much. Oh, my God. I felt this. I'm going to let you in on a secret. This was me when I first started out on Instagram. I had nothing to post. I was afraid to post my work because I didn't like it. So what I actually did when I didn't have anything to post because I wasn't booking brides yet, I faked it. You want to dive deep and get absolutely delusional and fake it until you make it. So because I wasn't actually booking brides, what I would do is I would have models and I would run out a studio for the day and I would do models at least once a week and I would do about three hairstyles on each model. So that way I could get so much content from one day and I would make it look like it was their hair trial and I would never say that it was a model. And when I started posting that work and started working with so many different models, I naturally started getting better at taking photos and editing my photos. So I was happier with my work and I really wanted to post it. And then what also ended up happening was because I was showing up consistently whether they were brides or not, people started ultimately finding me and booking me. So for you, let's get delusional and fake it until you make it. If you don't have the content, create the content. If you don't have the brides booking you right now, create the content with models, other income options. Other income options other than bridal hair. Okay, I'm going to answer this question super honest, and I want you to first ask yourself, why are you looking for other income options? Starting out, when I was building my bridal business, it was a bridal beauty business. I did hair and makeup. What I always was looking for was other income options. And here's why. That absolutely never worked for me because it took my attention to focus on all of these different things instead of focusing on how I could maximize bridal hair and make the Most profits from Bridal Hair. When you are focusing on offering all these different services, you're taking away the time that you could be spending on actually investing in your business in order to raise your rates and raise the perceived value within your client's eyes. And instead you're offering all these separate different services at average rates. So instead what I would focus on is one thing. And what I did was for an entire year I focused on just offering Bridal Hair and at the end of that year I was a six figure earner. When you're looking at other people in the industry, it is highly unlikely that people who are offering a multitude of separate services and looking for other income streams are able to really prioritize one service and give their absolute best for that one service as well as scale their income. You can scale your income a lot faster. If you are not looking for other income options. You may also be heading into the winter months, which is our down season. So you may be looking for other income options at that time. And I know this might not work for everybody right now, but what I did and when I really saw my growth was when in those low service months when it was our down season. And I prioritize putting all of my energy and effort and investing back in my business instead of working on it, I was working in it. So I was focusing on my marketing, my advertising, my client experience, working on things behind the scene to make my experience with my clients and better instead of taking my time that I had during the week now or on the weekends since I was not servicing clients. And instead of trying to get more clients and take my time away by servicing clients and actually working that way, I worked on the back end and that built business that I was able to scale a lot faster. So personally I wouldn't be looking for other income options. Again, I don't know your story or exactly why you're looking for other income options. However, that is just what I would suggest. If you are looking to scale your business, focus on one thing instead of a multitude of other things. Feel like I'm bringing value to my content, but I seem to be attracting other pros and not brides. Why? I know why specific types of content will attract brides while specific types of content will attract other hairstylists. So let's talk about it. When you are posting content like tutorials or Get Ready with Me or things where you are showing in depth hairstyles, you are likely going to start attracting an audience of hairstylists. It is not necessarily going to be attracting brides. Brides are looking for a very specific thing. When I think of the types of content that is going to attract a bride versus a hairstylist, they are really similar. Now why I say that is because your bride is on Instagram and if she's following you, the number one thing she's looking for is hair inspiration for her wedding day. However, if you're looking at it in terms of people following you or people interacting with your posts are a lot more hairstylists versus brides. That's okay, and here's why. The Instagram algorithm takes those interactions and sees the types of people that are liking your posts. And when those kinds of people are liking your post, they're going to send it out to people similar to their audiences. Which is actually a really good thing for you. Because if a bridal hairstylist or a hairstylist is liking your post, they're going to take that post and when it's engaged with, they're going to show it out to their audience, who could be full of brides or other potential clients. And you also have to think of how long have you been posting these kinds of content? If you've only been posting this kind of content for a couple weeks, you need to start giving it longer in order to start getting that traction. Instagram is a long game. So if you are looking for brides to follow you, ask yourself, what are some ways that I can nurture my brides? Go deeper with my brides, and what kind of content are they looking for? Think like a bride. If you're thinking like a hairstylist. A hairstylist on Instagram is probably always looking for hair tutorial, content creation tips, anything surrounding business. So if you're talking about those kinds of topics, you're naturally going to be attracting a hairstylist versus if you're talking about topics that actually relate to brides and their wedding day. It may take a minute, but stay consistent with it because you will start attracting them. Please look at my work on Instagram and let me know how I can improve or where I'm lacking. Let's do an Instagram audit. Before I do this audit, I do want to say that I did get permission from this hairstylist. So let's dive into some things that she should be focusing on, some things that she shouldn't be focusing on, and what I would actually change about her Instagram in order to start attracting her ideal brides. Before we dive in, I do want to say that I was chatting a little bit with this stylist within the DMs, and she was letting me know that she works with American Brides, Indian Brides. She does hair, she does makeup, and she also lives in the Texas area. And she was feeling like she's only attracting budget brides. So before I actually even get into her Instagram, I can already assess the biggest thing that she needs to focus on. And the biggest thing that I would focus on here in order to stop attracting budget brides and start attracting your ideal bride is figuring out who she is. And I would niche way down. I honestly feel as though she's offering too many services and she needs to niche down. If you are offering hair, you're offering makeup, you're offering services for American Brides as well as Indian brides. Niche down your offerings in order to attract one specific bride. Now, if you're not exactly sure how to do that, how to find your signature hairstyles, your ideal bride, and niche down within the hair industry. In November, I'm actually launching an online hair course for bridal hairstylists where I teach that exact thing, how to find your ideal bride. And that is the number one thing that I would focus on. In order to scale your business to six figures, I'll give you the step by step by step methods as well as Instagram marketing that actually sells to brides. So if you want to be the first to know when enrollment opens in November, check out the link in my description so that way you can sign up. Let's dive into the stylist profile. So I am on her Instagram. So first thing that I see that I would optimize better for my ideal bride is her bio as well as her tagline. When you're looking at her tagline, it's her name with bridal, makeup and hair artist. What you want to do to be able to be search friendly within the Instagram algorithm, which is the absolute lowest hanging fruit to start attracting your ideal bride is changing your name. And I wouldn't put bridal, makeup and hair artists. What I would do is put your city and put what you do. So one, I would narrow it down to one, I would either pick hair or I would pick makeup. Again, you want to be super niche, you can always scale up and go to a broader audience. But what happens is if you're trying to attract this huge broad audience, you wind up speaking to nobody. It's like screaming into a void. Nobody's going to hear you. So the one thing I would focus on for you is I would focus on doing hair or doing makeup. And then later on you can bring those back in. But it's a lot harder to attract somebody when you're trying to specialize in both. So I would change the name here. I would do maybe bridal makeup. Maybe I would do Dallas. It looks like she lives in Dallas, so I would do Dallas bridal makeup artist. That way, when your client is actually searching in the search bar, Dallas makeup artist, your profile will be more likely to show up. Okay, let's move on to her bio. When I'm looking at her bio, it says specialize in minimalistic with a touch of soft, natural bridal glam with a hashtag brides by. And then it says Dallas, Texas, available to travel. Tap link below to secure your date. So I would focus on what you actually specialize in. So what do you specialize in? It says soft, natural bridal glam. But how can you help me if I am popping on your Instagram? If I'm a bride and I'm looking at this, this profile, this doesn't exactly speak to me specifically and it's not going to make me feel like you can help me with my problem. So I would optimize that a little bit better and be a little bit more specific. When I'm going down and I'm scrolling on her feed, her photos are really nice and I can tell that she does specialize in Indian weddings, which is actually a great niche to have. They are a very specific bride and I would honestly stick with that. She does amazing with them and they're looking for a very specific, specific stylist. They have very intricate styling that they need with the hair pieces that they need. They usually have jewelry that they get placed on them. It's usually two different ceremonies, the Hindu ceremony and the Mendy ceremony, which is over a couple days. So if it were me, I would make sure that in my bio I talk about specializing in Indian weddings. That's going to attract the Indian brides a lot faster for you because she's going to know this bride specializes. Okay. So the next thing that I'm looking at as I'm going through her profile is in the month of September, she only posted seven times. Something I want you to realize is people need to see something seven times in order for them to want to buy it. So if you're only showing up on Instagram seven times in one month, that's not enough for a bride to find you or for your content to get visible in front of your ideal bride. It is also not enough content for the Instagram algorithm to categorize you to see your content and understand who actually to put it in front of. The Instagram algorithm focuses on three things, relevancy, recency, and relationships. If you're only posting seven times in one month, you're not really able to build relationships on the app. You're not staying consistent with posting. So your content, when you do post, isn't recent. They are a very recent app. And your content does have a shelf life. So you want to make sure that you're optimizing that. So if anything, you want to make sure that you're at least posting four times a week instead of only seven times in one month. Another thing that I'm looking at when I'm going through these photos, when I'm going through her photos, they're beautiful and I can tell she does great work. However, it's not clear to me what her signature hairstyles or makeup looks are. So if it's not clear to me when I'm popping on your Instagram profile, what exactly you do, what you specialize in, those hair looks, those makeup looks, whatever they are, it's not clear to me how you can help me as a bride. Another thing that I see a lot of hair stylists and bridal makeup artists do do is you post pro photographer photos thinking that that's what's going to book you brides. This stylist is using a lot of pro photographer photos, which there's nothing wrong with that. However, when I'm on her Instagram, it looks almost like a wedding photographer instead of a hairstylist or a makeup artist. You want to be choosing photos that are focusing on the hairstyles. Think about when your client is on Pinterest or the photos that she's showing you at her hair trial, or what bridesmaids are showing you on the wedding day. They are likely showing you a close up shot of a hairstyle. That's the kind of stuff you want to be posting. So I would focus on posting more, getting more specific within your bio, changing the tagline so that way you can start showing up for Dallas brides and getting more content that actually focuses on what you specialize in. Because when you're serving content that's for a specific bride, she's going to be able to find you a lot faster. And then when you're posting that content consistently and frequently, the Instagram algorithm has that much more information to show to other people and knows how to put your content in front of other brides thank you so much for letting me audit your Instagram. Thank you so much for all your questions. If you guys want a question that can be featured in my next YouTube video, make sure you follow me over on Instagram and I'll see you guys in the next video. Bye.