This was taken from a live class transcript from the Hairdresser Business Club.

The Only System That Exists

There are only two systems in the world. Internal and external. That's it. No third process running underneath.

And if you go one layer deeper, there's really only one system that everything else runs on. Not a name. A function. It shows up in business, in relationships, in your body, in the universe. One system.

Giving and receiving.

That's the whole thing. You are either in a state of giving or a state of receiving. There is nothing else. You're eating or you're pooping. You're buying or you're selling. Every cell in your body is either receiving electrons or sharing them. There is no other action a human can take.

So when we build systems in our business, this is the only thing that actually matters. Onboarding is giving and receiving. Hiring is giving and receiving. Firing is giving and receiving. Doing hair is giving and receiving. The minute you forget that, you start building a 55-step onboarding process where 20 of the steps are pointless, and you miss the entire point of what you were doing.

It's not black and white

Here's where it gets tricky. Just because you call something giving doesn't mean it's giving.

Think about a narcissist. What makes them so manipulative is that they take giving and receiving, flip it upside down, and disguise it. They give to you, it looks like giving, but they're actually receiving. They act like they're receiving, but they're really giving. We all do this. Narcissists are just the easy example.

A lot of us think we're giving when we're actually receiving. "I want to give this client a great experience." Do you? Or do you just want them to stop bothering you, to not get mad, to leave you alone? That's receiving. You cloaked it in an action that looks like giving.

And it works the other way too. "I need help with this" looks like receiving. Most of the time it's giving. You're giving someone else the opportunity to show up for you.

The perfect system is when both giving and receiving are happening on both ends at the same time. I ask you for help. You give it. You're giving, I'm receiving. But I'm also giving you the chance to help, and you're receiving that. That's unity. That's the whole game. And it's hard to master, because we're human and we have a reactive system running all day telling us we're being cheated by everyone and everything. Because if you feel cheated, you'll stay in receiving forever. And who doesn't want to receive all day?

Bread of shame

If I handed you $100 every single day just for showing up, it would feel incredible. For a while. Droves of hairdressers would show up. The business would explode.

Then something would happen. First it turns into "why won't he give us more?" Then, for some people, "I want to give David something back." And that urge to give back isn't real giving. It's shame. Shame for receiving too much without earning it.

That's bread of shame.

Picture going to lunch with your best friend and they grab the check every single time. For a while, great. Eventually you say, I'm not coming unless you let me pay. There's a level of shame in receiving that much. That's not a flaw. It's an internal balancing system keeping the universe even.

Now look at what we do in our businesses. We try to make everything as easy as possible for people. Easy onboarding. Easy hiring. Easy, easy, easy. When you make everything easy, you remove ownership. When you remove ownership, you create bread of shame. And the person carrying that shame doesn't say "I've been receiving too much." They reach for blame.

The economy. The government. The coaching program. Their bad attitude. The minute you don't know what's going on and you reach for blame, that's your clue. There's bread of shame happening. You've been receiving without earning.

Love bombing is a warning, not a gift

This shows up with employees who love bomb you. "Oh my god, I love you, you're amazing, you're the best." On the surface, lovely. Someone thinks you hung the moon. There's a part of all of us that lives on it, because it tells us we're on the right path.

Every student who has ever talked trash about me loved on me hard for years first. I should have nipped it in the bud. Now the minute someone starts love bombing me, I know. If it doesn't stop, that relationship is going to end, usually within three months. It's not magic. It's a form of giving and receiving that isn't sustainable. One person ends up in shame, the other ends up in blame, and it turns into a nightmare every time.

The relationships that last are the ones where there's a little friction. Where you've got to earn space with them and they've got to earn space with you. It doesn't feel good. It's not a sellable feeling. But it creates equity between two people. Ownership goes against the reactive system, and the reactive system wants everything now. I'm hungry now, I'm mad now, I did the work so pay me now.

You will earn it. The only question is when.

Energy in the universe is finite. Not infinite. It cannot be created or destroyed, so it has to recycle. Burn a house down and it doesn't disappear. It becomes ash, dirt, plants, oxygen. Nothing leaves.

Money mimics energy because all systems are giving and receiving. So if you receive a pile of it without earning it, the universe eventually shows up and says, that's not yours.

You can pay two ways. Up front, by going through the pain and chaos first, which puts you in a deficit the universe fills in and you don't owe back. Or later, by receiving first and repaying with interest. A bank loan is the cleanest example. Did you earn that money? No. So you spend the next 30 years earning it, paying back way more than it was worth. You're buying money.

Any process that removes ownership hasn't erased the earning. It just moved it to the end. Love at first sight feels amazing and costs nothing up front, so what happens later? It breaks down, and you go back and earn what you skipped. Someone hands you a million dollars, that's not your lucky day. The earning just got moved to a later date, on a deeper level than you can see.

There's no getting around earnership. And it doesn't stop. There will be nights you think you've earned enough. You haven't. There's no finish line, because the point was never the end. The point is the process. There's some money at the end, sure. There's no guarantee of fulfillment, no guarantee anyone stays, no guarantee any of it works, unless there's a real earning process built in.

Don't coach people who didn't ask

Don't coach people who didn't ask

This is where it gets practical. Say a talented stylist on your team tells you they want to lower their rate. Your instinct, all of our instincts, is to jump in and fix it. Offer ideas. Ask why. Psychoanalyze. Become their therapist and their best friend.

Don't.

They didn't ask for help. They made a statement. Asking for help is a completely different transaction. If they came and said "I'm struggling, I really need your help figuring this out," then they're in a state of receiving and you can give. No bread of shame. But "I'm lowering my rate" is not a request. The second you start convincing them otherwise, ask yourself why. Usually it's reactive. You need something from them. You're worried about your minimum, your vision, what the rest of the team will see. The moment you push to protect what you need, you stopped being a leader and became a taker. And now the giving and receiving is broken.

Their earning process is that they get to make the choice and live with the consequences. Yes, there are consequences for you too. You might make less. They might leave for a suite and charge less and it all falls apart. But a reactive decision doesn't produce a proactive result. It just produces another reactive result. At least you'll sleep at night. That's the whole job, really. Don't lose sleep.

And don't try to sneak around it with "hey, do you want to ask me anything?" That's still coaching someone who didn't hire you to coach them. That's the convincing and coercing realm, and we don't go there. You can't pour water into a cup that's already full. There's no vessel, so it just spills off the top and makes more chaos.

The difference with a coaching relationship is simple. Money is being exchanged for coaching. Permission was already granted, so we don't have to ask before giving feedback. An employee doesn't pay you for advice. The permission isn't there. The earning isn't there. So you wait for the vessel.

You can't do this perfectly

I think about consciousness like tennis. The number one rule is that wherever you go to hit the ball, you return to center. Hit, return. Hit, return. That's reactivity. You react, you come back to center. You react again, you come back to center. But if you just stood at the center the whole time and never moved, you'd lose the game. You're allowed to be reactive. You just don't live there.

So don't try to get it perfect. Leave it rattling around in your consciousness and let it work on you.

The whole thing is backwards

Everything in this world is upside down and inverted, and you can prove it scientifically. Your eyes literally see the world upside down and backwards, and your brain flips it. Researchers put glasses on people that inverted everything, and within about a week the brain auto corrected and flipped it all right side up again. The reality in front of your face is not what's actually going on.

Color works the same way. When you see red, you're seeing the one color the object is rejecting. It's absorbing everything else. The color you see is the color it refused.

So when those of us who do everything for everyone feel taken advantage of, we think we're giving. We're receiving. And the people who delegate and make others step up think they're being lazy. They're giving. Giving is receiving and receiving is giving. Everything is backwards.

Once you start to live like this, once it actually clicks, you'll lead differently. You'll hire differently. You'll fire differently. You'll stop reacting, because you finally understand what's happening on a bigger level. We only react when we don't know what's going on. "Why did I lose that money, why is everyone leaving, why does no one love me" all translates to one thing. I don't know the system.

Now you know the system.

This is what we do every week inside the Hairdresser Business Club. Join here.