THINGS THAT GIVE ME THE SCARIES AS A BRIDAL HAIR STYLIST

In honor of it being spooky season where I come alive, let's chat about scary things inside of our industry that are spooky af. I'm gonna read them off my iPad because that's just the vibe right now. Is that okay with you? Cool. I'm gonna use my iPad. Things that give me the spookies, the scaries. As a bridal hairstylist inside the education space and just the business as a whole. Feeling absolutely bullied to join Wedding Wire or the Knot. Listen, let me tell you something about Wedding Wire. It has been proven that it is an actual scene scam. They are sending you spam leads. If you don't believe me, I'll link the Forbes article down below where there was a whistleblower in July of 2023 where it came out that they are actually sending you fake leads. Because if you notice when you are on these websites, as soon as you sign up you're getting inquiries like this and then it kind of goes down. And when you're actually looking at those inquiries and you're actually reading it, you're like, this feels spammy. Is it spammy? It is. People who work there actually came out and said that they artificially inflate with inquiries. Have some people had good experiences? Sure. However, I just think it is so spooky feeling bullied to be on these apps because let me tell you, it is not cheap. I would rather you work smarter, not harder. So if you think about it, your bride is finding you on Wedding Wire than not or Zola, whatever other website that you use. Wedding. What's the number one thing she's going to do after she finds you on those websites? She's going to stalk you out on socials. She's not immediately going to find you from that profile that you paid for probably hundreds of dollars a month and then just immediately book with you. No, she's going to stalk you out. Google actually did a study in order for them to buy from you needs to spend an average of 7 hours with you over 11 different touch points in 4 different locations. So what does that mean? It means a bride needs to spend seven hours with you before she feels comfortable in order to book you and pay a deposit across 11 different touch points. So a touch point can be anything from liking something on your social media, following you, sending you an inquiry, dming you, liking a response, responding on your story. And then four different locations can be your Instagram, your website, your Instagram stories on the Reels feed, finding you on Wedding Wire, you up On Google, reading your reviews on Google. So what I mean is, is why not work smarter, not harder, and put a lot more effort into something where they're already at, which is social media, something where they're going to be going after they find you on these profiles, versus feeling like it's a set it and forget it platform. Because it's not. And I just think it's not working smarter. Another thing that gives me the scaries, creating your rates from looking at what your competitors are charging. Listen, Linda, if I had a dollar for every time I tried to do a store stocky stock on my competitors to see what they were charging. So that way I could charge the same. Because I believe that's the only way to come up with your rates in the bridal industry. Because I'm like, oh, if this person's charging that, my brides aren't going to want to pay anything above or below. So what would I do? This is exactly what I would do. I would charge a little bit less and give a little bit more. And you know what that did? It didn't bring me in more bridal bookings and it didn't bring me in any more money. What it did bring me was the money mindset of whoever I was looking at and what they were charging. So their money mindset is setting their rates here versus my money mindset could be all the way over here. And I could have totally different past traumas, totally different money blocks than the person over here. They might believe that they could never charge more than that versus I might believe I could charge more than that. However, I'm setting a glass ceiling on myself by looking at my competitors and what they're charging and basing my, my rates off of theirs. You could be unintentionally, unconsciously taking on that person's money beliefs and you're setting that glass ceiling for yourself of my bride will never pay me more than this because of what Becky down the street is charging. And listen, I charge three times more than Becky down the street now and my brides pay for it. So please, it's super scary. Stop doing it. Being told to add more services to increase your profit. Listen, we should never be focusing on adding more. We should be focusing on getting better. Something I learned and it took me way too long to learn. So I'm going to tell you right now so you don't have to learn the hard way. Business 101. Actually, business is having one service with one ideal client using one marketing platform. That's business one on One. That's where all businesses start startup, one on one. I love skims. I wear skims all the time. I'm actually in head to toe skims right now. And when I look at skims, if you are also a skims lover, she has so many collections, like dozens and dozens of collections. However, when she started, she had one collection. It was the cozy collection. That was it. Because what she did was she needed to test out her market. She needed to test out, does this work? So she started with one collection, she didn't start with dozens. When you're starting out, you don't need to add more services in. You need to get better at the one service you're offering. You don't need to have 15 million ideal brides and want to service every everyone. Me, a currently recovering people policer. I thought I needed to give every bride everything that they wanted and service every bride who was coming into my inbox Versus when I learned business, I understood in order to attract my ideal bride, I actually have to repel people. And that was a little spooky. It was a little scary at first. But when I started doing it, I was like, oh my God, I'm working with more dream brides than I ever have. Because I stopped focus on adding more and I focused on getting better at that one service for that one ideal bride using one marketing channel, which was Instagram, versus trying to be everywhere. Because it's so much harder to attract the right ideal bride by speaking to everyone. You want to narrow it down to one person believing the only way to earn six figures is to have a team doing weddings without you. Listen, grab the mother flipping handcuffs because I'm so guilty of this. When I started my bridal industry journey, I came from working on a team of 20 plus hair and makeup artists. So it was my mindset of, oh, this is the way you're successful. Oh, everyone else in my local area does hair and makeup. They have a bridal team, they're doing weddings without them. That's the way to scale. That's the way to have more money. That's the only way that I can have a six figure business. Why would I ever think that you could have a six figure business doing one service, not needing a large team and doing it so solo? There's nobody in my area doing it that I knew of. There was no proof, there was no evidence. I was like, no, everybody's going to the left, I'm gonna go with them. Versus I needed to feel empowered of knowing like, actually I'm Gonna pave a different way. I'm gonna go a different path. I'm actually gonna go to the right. And within 12 months of doing that, I earned my first six figures. I hit $156,000 in my bridal business and it was the most I ever made in my entire life. I was like, oh my God, I did the opposite of what everyone else is doing. But it did. Having that belief that this is the only way I can do it was it put another glass ceiling on myself of, oh, this is the only way to do it in the bridal industry. This is what I have to do. And it eliminated any possibility in my own mind that you could have a multi six figure bridal hair business as a solopreneur without somebody doing a wedding without me, without having a massive team of 20 plus hair and makeup stylists, without having to offer more services. If your goal is to have a six figure bridal business, but you don't want to manage, feel stressed out all the time managing a team. Hey. Hi. Hello. We just became best friends, but I actually talk about it more in this video where I walk you through the steps of how to stop doing both hair and makeup services. If you're interested in that. Being told to put luxury in your bio, thinking it will attract luxury brides. Listen, if I go on any luxury Instagram, any luxury brand, like on Prada's Instagram, go on Gucci's, go on Dior, on Chanel, they're selling bags for like tens of thousands of dollars. When I go on any of their marketing, like, I'm not seeing the word luxury, I'm just feeling it. They are luxury and I get it. But what I see is it's so spooky and scary that I see people coming from other programs and they're told that they need to put the word luxury in front of everything. But their visuals, their branding is not matching with the word luxury. Luxury is quiet, luxuries, understated. Luxury is a feeling, it's not a word. And I say that with so much love because I wish somebody would tell me that because I truly thought, oh, if I want to attract higher paying brides, you put the word luxury in my bio. I need to put the word luxury on my website. No, what you need to do is get better at your services and you need to give the brand visuals of luxury. Oh, go take a look at luxury brands. Look at their websites, look at their Instagrams. What do they look like they are giving luxury. And if you tweak your branding and you elevate it and you elevate your visuals, you elevate your content that you're putting out on social media. You're going to attract a luxury bride 10 times faster than just putting the word luxury in your bio. I promise. You must have a coach or mentor to make money in your bridal business. This gives me major scaries as somebody who's literally a bridal business educator. Like, don't want to feel like you need me to succeed. You may need a strategy, you may need some tweaking, you may need a little handholding along the way to make those decisions. However, what you need is to take the strategy, put it in action and then you need to trust yourself. There will be times in your journey where you're like, yes, need somebody's help. Yes, I need somebody to give me direction. I need somebody to help me with X, Y, Z. However, there's going to come a point where you need to start trusting yourself and your own decision, decision making skills. You absolutely do not need a mentor or a coach throughout your entire business journey. It's going to be helpful at certain pivotal point and to direct you to path that somebody else has taken for success. However, it's not essential like you don't need them for the lifetime of your career because what ends up happening is if you feel that way, you're constantly going to be spending money on coaches programs when you may just need to trust yourself and trust your own decision. You should be putting your contract terms in your initial email on your website. Listen Linda, this is giving trauma response. I love you so much but let me tell you the amount of hoops that we're making our clients go through just to inquire with us. They just don't have time for it anymore. What I need you to understand is right now we are in a bride's market. So what do I mean? So back during the COVID boom, back when we were getting so many requests for wedding, it was a stylist market, it was our market. We had the upper hand because there was so much demand for wedding but there was a limited amount of us, a limited amount of service providers who could perform the weddings for them when there were so much demand versus now we've evened out. There is not this major demand for weddings and there's the same amount of service providers. Think of it like the real estate markets. A lot of houses that need to be sold but there's not a lot of buyers. So that's when you have a Buyer's market, they have the upper hand. They can be picky with the houses that they want to pick and the ones that they want to ultimately buy versus when there's not a lot of houses on the market, but there's a lot of people who want to buy homes. Again, that happened during the pandemic when a lot of people wanted to move out of the cities and move into rural suburban neighborhoods. There wasn't a lot of houses on the market. So that's when it's a buyer's market. Same thing with the bride. So right now, brides have the upper hand. They can be picky. They're not just like their contracts, they're a little bit pickier with who they want to go with and who they want to secure for their hair and for their makeup. So what I mean all this to say is, I get it, you've been burned in the past. You're like, I need to put my contract terms everywhere. The wedding you did last weekend, they violated a term in your contract. Now you're updating it and you're adding something new to make sure that never happens again. But what I need you to understand is it's a turn off when you're putting your contract terms, when you're talking in that contract language, when you're in a sales process. So when a bride lands in your inbox, the sales journey is really taking off at that point. When you're having conversations with them, if you're talking about things like what's in your contract term, it's not coming off warm, it's not coming off friendly, it's not coming off feel good. And they want to feel good in their buying decision. They want to feel good in hiring you. Again, they have the upper hand. There's a lot of options, so they have the upper hand. It's not like, not a lot of people are available like in the COVID times. So instead of putting your contract terms in that first email, putting it on your website, keep it on your contract, make them aware of it when they book with you. There are certain things that they don't need to be aware of when they're booking with you or hiring a plumber. Imagine you send an inquiry to a plumber. You're on the website, rains clogged, you're like, wow, utf. I gotta get this fixed. So you send an inquiry, you get an immediate response and they're like, thank you for your inquiry. Please note there will be an additional 300 fee if any hair needs to be Unclogged from your drains. You're like, okay, I'm scared. I don't know what to do. I don't really feel safe here. It's not giving feel good vibes really making me want to hire this plumber. Versus you go to another plumber and they're like, oh, we can actually be out there. And less than an hour, here's what our rates will be like, okay. And then they get there and they're like, oh, actually it's an extra fee for XYZ problem. After they've assessed it, like, okay, sounds good. Oh, instead of up front punching them in the face with your contract terms, when you're in the moment, you can use your contract to like, like back it up, but you don't need to like shove it down their throat in the beginning. I love you so much. Like, so much love. There's a time and a place for it. And I just feel like right now you're turning more people off versus bringing more brides in just might be something giving them the scaries. And it gives me the scaries. When you're told to do this, all they're hearing is, wow, this girl is so strict. I'm kind of scared of her. Versus, wow, this girl is so professional. Which is like, I know you want, you don't want to give off that vibe. So that's why I just think it's a little spooky. You'll earn 20k months passively, not disclosing that you'll be building a team. Here's the thing that I learned in our line of work. Passive income income just like exist. And any passive income anyone will tell you, number one, it doesn't start out as passive income. It has to have active income before you go to passive income. So don't be sold that lie. It is spooky. It is scary. Having a team is not a passive income stream, meaning you will need to be actively managing that team daily, weekly. You need to actively be the administrator who's in the emails, who's scheduling, who's getting the team together, who's keeping everyone aligned, who's keeping the culture of the team alive and well. Nothing passive about having a bridal hair makeup team, especially if you're doing it the right way. So if you feel you're going to have passive 20k months when you're having a team, what you're going to have is a lot more expensive. You can earn six figures fast and easily. I mean, if I knew this, it wouldn't have Taken me five years to do it. Does it need to be hard and complicated? No. Can it be simple? Sure. Will it happen overnight? No. Don't we wish? Chances are. Where you're at right now with your bridal business, everything that you have right now is a result of the actions that you've taken to this point. It is a result of the beliefs and the mindsets that you have at this time. You've built the business that you have today. You're comfortable with where you're at and what it takes to get from a five figure business to a six figure business is a lot of change. With your mindset, with your skills, skill set, putting new strategies into place, taking action even when it's scary and it's going to require a new version of you, new effort and sacrifice on you in order to show up and get there. Meaning six figures isn't going to happen in three months. But if I told you in the next 12 months you'll be able to generate and have mapped out your six figure year, the faster you take action, the faster you will reap the rewards of that success. What I have found is that wealth loves speed. The faster you take actions, the faster you remove a mindset block, the faster you implement, the faster you take sacrifices, the faster you're able to learn to say no. There's just so much mindset of getting from a five figure mindset to a six figure mindset. You have to unlearn all these bad habits and you have to instill new habits. It's 3,000% possible I've done it, but I just don't think the belief that it's quick and easy and it's fast should be the narrative because that's a little spooky. The second you release the short term mindset and go towards a long term mindset is one of the first action steps you can take to hitting six figures in your business. And if you're ready to take your business from five figures to six figures, join the wait list for Bridal Boss Academy which is opening in November. Don't let any of these spooky scaries freak you out. Enjoy Spooky season. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.