What's Actually Draining Your Profit

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

David opened class with a question: what's draining your profit that has nothing to do with your systems?

Not your onboarding. Not your pricing. Not your retail program. Something internal. A belief. A pattern. A fear.

Here's what came back:

• I'm afraid of getting too big, because then I'll have no freedom and I'll have to work harder.
• I'm afraid I'm not big enough, and I'm holding myself back from the growth that would give me freedom.
• I'm afraid of being seen and judged.
• I know I need to network in person and the thought of it exhausts me.
• I've been a hairdresser forever and now I have to be a leader, and that's uncomfortable.

Two people in the same room with opposite goals and the identical fear underneath.

Nobody in the room was missing information

Everyone has taken the business class. Everyone has bought the online course. Everyone has sat through the master class.

You know you have to market. You know you have to hire. You know you have to build culture. There is almost nothing new left to learn.

What's missing isn't knowledge. It's momentum.

Put a room of salon owners together and have them coach each other, and they'd all give each other the right advice. The advice was never the problem. The problem is the will to make the decision and move.

Something got knocked out of sync during COVID. Everyone got a forced pause from that kind of work, and then someone hit play on capitalism and told us to go back. Some people bounced back like nothing happened. If you're someone who feels things, who looks for patterns, it put everything into question. Is this safe? Is this what I want? Is this the next twenty years of my life?

A lot of us never fully answered that. So we live up in our heads. All mental, no body. That gap between what you think and what you actually do is the drain.

Your brain is not on your side

Say you decide to go market in person. Your brain does not say, great idea, that'll be easy.

Your brain says: here are forty reasons that won't work. No time. No money. No energy. Not now.

It isn't malfunctioning. It's doing its job. As David put it, the brain is not wired for proactivity. It's wired for reactivity. It scans for threat and manufactures problems to keep you still.

Which is why there is no perfect system. Whatever software you use, whatever method you buy, whatever program you join — your brain will find the problem in it. That's the whole function.

So the question to sit with is: where is my brain telling me the next move is impossible?

Say a salon owner has already opened one location and hired a full team. She goes to open the second and can't make herself post a hiring video. No one will want to work for me. Who am I. Everyone knows I'm a fraud. She's done it before. There's no new information. There's just a brain doing what a brain does.

The problem isn't that the brain says it. The problem is that we believe it.

Social media doubles down on all of it

If you're consuming more than you're creating, your mental health is going to fall, and it will show up in your business.

There is no human benefit to scrolling. None. In any capacity.

But how will I know what's going on? You'll know. David calls it the Kardashian theory — he doesn't follow them, doesn't care about them, and knows everything about them. Being a hairdresser means the news finds you. People tell you. You do not have to go get it.

What you're actually getting from the scroll is the salon down the street to compare yourself to, and some new method somebody pulled out of thin air and is now selling you for a fortune.

David has watched students who are chronically online become chronically doubtful. It's constant — I'm not doing this right, I don't know, this isn't working. It builds a wall so thick that coaching can't get through. It's like someone who's been treated badly for years hearing I love you and thinking, I don't know if that's true. Truth can't penetrate.

The future splits into two camps: people who consume and people who create. You're going to have to pick one and live there. And it's hard. Even David puts the phone down telling himself he's not going to scroll and finds himself inside Instagram five minutes later with no memory of how he got there.

It's harder to make money when making money is simple

Ten hours behind the chair is physically brutal and mentally easy. Your back hurts, you're exhausted, you sacrificed time with your family — and the money feels earned. Pain justifies it.

Now get to the other side, where you don't have to be behind the chair. Go to the networking event. Send three hiring videos. Do the marketing. Physically easier. And suddenly making money feels impossible, because it feels like cheating.

Shouldn't I be working more? Shouldn't I be doing the towels so my team sees me doing the towels?

You hired a cleaner. Do you have to clean in front of them first? You can't do a filling. Does that disqualify you from asking your dentist to do one?

It's guilt. That's all it is.

And while you're feeling guilty, know this: everyone already thinks you're taking their money. Every client thinks it. Every stylist thinks it. So you lower your prices, because times are hard and people are struggling — and now you're paying for the fact that people are struggling. People will always be struggling. That's the human condition. There's no version of the future where that resolves.

Face the pain or struggle until you do

That's the whole formula. There is no third option.

The drain in your business is located exactly where you're avoiding pain and choosing struggle instead. There is no other drain.

David said it about his own company: the methods are good, the structure is good. Why does it stall sometimes? Because he and Cyd avoid it. There are weeks he doesn't want to make a video where someone yells at him. And that's before you count the sick relative, the tax bill, the actual life happening.

You will not move at a consistent speed. The only consistency in life is inconsistency. There will be months you're out in the world and weeks you're on the couch. Nothing wrong with that. If your body needs the couch, take the couch.

Just know the trade. If you don't touch the business, the business doesn't grow. That's not punishment. The universe isn't built to punish you. It's cause and effect. Don't pay the bill, the collector calls. Don't parent the kids, the kids run wild. Yell at your neighbor, your neighbor hates you.

Which means: stop looking for who did it

It's got to be the stylist who wears slippers. It's got to be the one who showed up late three times. It's got to be the economy. Climate change. The algorithm.

It's you. Every time.

And thank God it's you. Imagine if it really were everyone else. If your business hinged on a bunch of people you can't control, none of us would make it.

The four phases, and why you keep hiding in phase two

Phase one is the idea. Mental. Phase two is the physical work. Phase three is the challenge. Mental. Phase four is manifestation, fulfillment, and eventually boredom.

Phase two is the only phase with real physical work in it. Which is why, when phase three shows up, we run backward into phase two. We clean the closet. We reorganize the color bar. We remodel. Physical work is a fantastic way to discharge stress from the body — and a fantastic way to avoid the mental thing that would actually unlock the next level.

You need to hire, so you remodel. You need to do your taxes, so you spend an hour on a Reel. You need to confront one specific person, so you start nitpicking about towels.

And nothing you buy will fix it. Not the expensive retail line. Not the social media manager. Not repositioning as a luxury salon. Not repositioning as the affordable salon. None of it works, because none of it is you taking responsibility for what the business actually needs.

A note on money and visibility

The more put-together someone looks online, the less money is usually there. Remember that.

One of the real privileges of wealth is being free of social media. If you have money, you don't need it. If you don't, you're required to perform.

Have a presence, always. But there's a difference between having social media and being on social media. As the business grows, you're required in fewer and fewer parts of it. Social media works the same way. Right now it might mean more posting, not less — but it isn't forever, and it isn't the only lever.

In-person marketing keeps you locally relevant, and locally relevant is how you make money. Social media mostly supports the stalking people do before they book. When David gets invited to a restaurant he goes straight to the profile — not for the food, for the lighting and the vibe, so he knows what to wear.

You do not owe anyone your attention

If you're growing and afraid of being the face of it, use social media to market and stop consuming feedback. Don't read the comments. Don't answer the comments. Promote, and leave.

Feedback is not required. There is not one person on earth whose opinion you're obligated to absorb, no matter how loudly they offer it. Delete, block, move on — and get fast at it.

Those people never had access to you before social media existed. They don't need it now.

When someone leaves something cruel, there's a fantasy that if you just engage, you'll convert them. You won't. Normal, well people do not go to a stranger's page to tear them down. That behavior is coming from someone in pain who wants company in it, and your job is to not volunteer.

One last thing: your accountant

Find someone who does more than file. You want someone who helps you build and hold wealth — who tells you where the money should go, what's shielded, what compounds. An accountant who only does taxes will only ever do your taxes.

And if they treat you like your business is a hobby because you're a hairdresser, move on. Say it in the interview: I need someone who takes my business seriously.

Your assignment

Name the one thing you've been avoiding. Do it today.

The ones named in class: send the recruiting video. Call the CPA. Book the networking event. Finish the payroll. Hire the assistant.

None of those take long. They take an enormous amount of time in your head and about fifteen minutes in real life.

Do one. Then do the next one.

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