Self-Awareness [EP:191]

Self-Awareness: The Key to Personal and Professional Growth

In this solo episode, Todd explores the critical topic of self-awareness and its impact on both personal and professional life. 

Todd opens with a light-hearted take on family bonding over NBA basketball, underscoring the importance of real-life connections in an increasingly digital world.

He discusses the influence of ego, social media pressures, and living in echo chambers on one’s ability to self-assess accurately. 

Todd also shares personal anecdotes from the hair industry and his experience as a gym owner to highlight the importance of self-awareness in achieving success and continuous improvement. 

He emphasizes the value of journaling, mentorship, and remaining curious to enhance self-awareness. 

00:00 Introduction and Updates
00:28 The Importance of Self-Awareness
02:05 Opening Take: NBA Playoffs and Family Time
05:45 Self-Awareness in the Hair Industry
07:47 Understanding the Dunning-Kruger Effect
13:05 Lessons from the Gym: Tracking Progress
15:36 Podcast Journey and Social Media Strategy
24:32 Common Mistakes in Business and Self-Awareness
28:53 Practical Tips for Increasing Self-Awareness
31:59 Conclusion and Call to Action

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Transcript

todd: [00:00:00] What's up everyone? Welcome back. Happy Monday. All that fun jazz. Why is it called Jazz? Anyway, solo episode today. We've been traveling, we've had school vacation. We were gonna record the other day, and life got in the way. So here I am again, so low alone, independent, all by myself. Today I want to talk about self-awareness. Pretty basic topic, but something that we need to maybe basic is not a great word for it. Yeah. Maybe basic iss not a great word for it. I think self-awareness is tough because you have, I ego, you have an echo chamber of your friends and family and people you went to hair school with that are like, you're so great.

You have social media pressure, you have all these things that are [00:01:00] just sort of telling you, so you don't spend much time reflecting on your own abilities, your own strengths, your own weaknesses, because they're already sort of force fed to you. And it's kind of weird, but it's just one of the. One of the side effects, I guess, of this sort of digital world where you have access to all that stuff constantly.

So anyway, before we get into self-awareness, which is I think a, a huge topic, and I'll probably bring it up when we have Jen back because I think people could really benefit from, from. Hearing about how to become self-aware and what happens when you're not What? What happens when you are not willing to be self-aware or you just don't even know you're so oblivious that you don't even know that you're not self-aware, and that can set your career back, that could set back you on goals, all sorts of stuff.

We'll get into it, but first I'll do an opening [00:02:00] take. My opening take is, so NBA basketball is going on right now, whether you're a fan or not. It's heading into round two of NBA playoffs. Go Celtics. I'm a Celtics fan. Jen and I love watching basketball together. We watch it with each other.

We watch it with our kids, we watch it with our family. We text people throughout the game, family members and friends. Unless we've hit pause for more than a couple minutes, because we've had a few spoiler alerts over the years where we've hit pause to like. Move upstairs with the kids or to grab dinner or whatever.

And then we're 20 minutes behind and we hit play and the rest of the world is watching the game live. And we found out the hard way a couple times 'cause you're just not paying attention. You pick your phone up and you look and you're like, damn it. Now I know the end of the game. So that's become like a running joke at our house with our kids is they'll say like, Hey, don't text Auntie Jamie.

'cause one time. She was traveling and Jen texted her to say hi and see if she was watching the [00:03:00] game, and she said something and we were like, oh. And then Jen was like, uhoh damn. And then we were like, what? And she was like, I know the end of the game. And so, yeah, it just becomes sort of a running joke. But my point is, I think finding something that brings you and the people you want to be close with together is important.

So for us it's basketball right now. In the fall and the winter, it's football. We'll usually cook something at our house every weekend and it's sort of an open invite. We'll have family members come over, friends come over, whatever. And I think that's important to have. Think it's important to have something that's outside of work, something that's outside of maybe an individual hobby, such as going to the gym or.

You know, running or artwork or something, right? That's all individual. That's all great. But I think that real life human connection is [00:04:00] important. I think that's wildly underrated. Again, because we have such interconnectedness with everyone on the planet. I mean, I can go find out what somebody that I don't even know is doing.

You can have, have you ever found yourself scrolling through? I joked about this before and I don't know that I've ever actually done it, but you find yourself scrolling through Facebook and then someone comments. So you click on it to see who the person is, and you're like, all of a sudden you're scroll scrolling through their, like Christmas photos, their family Christmas photos from like 2019, and you're like, what am I doing?

Like you're, you're able to get a glimpse into people's lives that you don't even know. And so I think it's important to have an actual connection with people too. And I don't want that to get lost, especially as we move forward with technology. Some of the stuff is like wildly exciting, but also I can see the flip side, like when virtual reality reaches a point [00:05:00] where it gets super real, where you really can't tell, I think a lot of people are gonna have a real bad time 'cause they are gonna get stuck in there living.

Some sort of fantasy that they want to live and avoiding the real world as much as possible. And like, look, I'm all for fun. I like games, I like all that sort of stuff. But I just think we need to be careful to not miss out on the real world with our friends and our family and our kids and our loved ones and our parents and whatever.

So that's my opening take. All right. Self-awareness. Self-awareness is something, Jen and I talk about this a lot. We see it a ton in the hair industry. It's everywhere else too, everywhere else. But the hair industry is the world we live in right now. Well, Jen will always be in the hair industry. I'm not sure what I'll do.

I like it. I love it. It's fun. The people are great. It's really [00:06:00] cool. But I'm not known to stick around. For forever in an industry. So either way we see this self or a lack of self-awareness in almost everyone that's coming outta hair school and it makes sense. Where I went to barbering school, they were really great at telling us that this was just the beginning, that when we finished school and got that piece of paper saying that we could cut hair, which is a whole other topic.

Because I think it's silly, but they were great at telling us that that was just your beginning, that you needed a jump off point and they provided it. And then it was up to you to figure out what you needed to do next, where you wanted to go, and how you were gonna get there. And in this industry, there's so many people that come outta school.

They think that because they've gone through school, that they're all set, they're not all set. They need to keep working. Some do and they find [00:07:00] success and other people blame everyone else and end up failing. I don't know if you guys have seen that. We've seen it come through. Hello. We've seen people that have come in and they blamed everyone before them and they leave and I'm sure they blame us.

I don't really hear a ton of that. I have in the past, but pretty much everything gets back to you. It's a small world when they say that it's true. So don't burn bridges, but that's a different, different topic. But yeah, a lot of people just aren't where they think they are. And if you wanna look, we've talked about it before, but the Dunning Kruger effect, basically the Dunning Kruger effect.

If you Google it, you can read about it. It'll take you 10 minutes and you'll know what you need to know. But basically, as people with a low level of competence, have the highest level. Of confidence. And then as we move through, we start to learn that we [00:08:00] don't understand everything. And you go through what they refer to as a value of despair, and then you realize that even as you progress and even as you gain knowledge, technical ability, skills, understanding all that stuff, as you gain that.

You realize how much more there is in that you're only scratching the surface. And so true mastery is something that it, it takes a lifetime and it takes dedication. It's not something that, oh, you finish school, so you're all set. And the sooner that you learn that lesson, the better. One time we had a stylist who we were talking to and they said, look, I have like 50 clients.

It's time for me to go rent a studio. Okay. No business background, no marketing background, no background in ordering products, no background in how to price things. No background in [00:09:00] anything. No self-awareness. Fast forward a year, I wanna say they close their studio. They don't do hair. That is not what we wanna see happen in the industry.

It's a fantastic industry. You can make a living, you can have a great career, you can be fulfilled and you can help other people. Those are all great things. I think that check boxes for people, but for some reason, and I don't wanna blame social media, I don't wanna blame schools, I don't wanna blame any one single thing, but for some reason people think.

The end goal is to get to being your own business, being your own boss. And for a lot of people, that's not gonna work. You are not a business mindseted person. You're not gonna be successful in business. It's just, that's just facts. I mean, if you had no interest in cooking, do you think you'd be a great chef?

No. So running a business [00:10:00] is its own set of skills. It's its own job. It's its own thing. Just because you're good at hair doesn't mean that you're gonna be good at business. Just because you're good at hair doesn't mean you can teach others to be good at hair. You might, the people that teach how to do hair, not all of them are great at doing hair.

They're great at teaching. Some of the people you see on Instagram, they're great at building a following. They're not necessarily great at building anything else. So you've gotta be careful with that stuff, and you've gotta have. Self-awareness. Where am I here? I got some notes, so,

all right. Another time we were meeting with somebody and they said that they were totally kick ass at everything. Basically from scissors to clippers to formulating whatever you brought up. They were your go-to person. They were, they had no concerns. They had no worries. They had no whatever. 

Well, turns out not only were they not kick ass, but they weren't [00:11:00] even really entry level because they had such an ego. They probably, and I'm sure you've met people like this, but they check out while they're in school. They're like, I have nothing else to learn here. And they think they're all set. You always have something to learn.

So if that's your mindset, you're in trouble. So get rid of that mindset. You always have something to learn. I try to learn every day. I try to learn from everyone I speak with. I was at the grocery store earlier and had a little mini conversation with someone and I was like, oh, I never thought of it that way.

There's always something to learn. Anyway, a huge ego and a lack of any sort of self-awareness. Led them down the path of thinking that they were a hair God. And then fast forward. Their clients, a couple of their clients reached out and asked, can you help this person? They're super nice, but they need help with doing hair.

That's a true story. And again, ego is what held that person back because they're just not [00:12:00] aware. They think they're all set. They think they know everything, and that's tough. It's tough to overcome, but you can, you have to be willing and you have to be willing to put in the work. And you have to be honest with yourself, but you gotta be able to do a self-assessment as well.

And then you'll become more self-aware. And the more you do it, the better it gets, the easier it gets, and the more aware of how you are interacting with others, how, what your skill levels are, how you move about your day, the, the more things become clear. I have a gym story, so I obviously, I used to own a gym unless.

That's not obvious to you. And if it's not obvious, we talk about it a ton. But I owned a gym for 10 years, so a full decade of helping people, helping people get stronger, helping people lose weight, helping people with flexibility issues, helping people come off of medications. I had people that lost 20, 60, 80, I [00:13:00] don't know if I ever hit a hundred, but I had people in the 80 to 90 pound weight loss range, so.

One time I had a client say, Hey Todd, I want to increase my strength. They wanted to get stronger. Can we chat? Yeah, sure thing. That's a great goal. Getting stronger is never bad. Becoming physically stronger is going to lead to being mentally stronger. It's gonna give you confidence. You're gonna feel good, you're gonna look good, everything's gonna be good.

There's never been a point in history where someone has said, dammit, if I wasn't as strong. I would've been able to do that, never, not once. So anyways, I met with the person, I asked about their goals, and I found out their why, and then I asked, where are we starting? What they replied, what? Well, what's your starting like, where are we starting?

What's your back squat? What's your deadlift? What are you clean? Et cetera. Oh, I don't know. That was [00:14:00] their answer. Oh, I don't know. I don't track my lifts. Okay, here's the deal. If you are not aware of where you're starting, then there's not much we can do. You're gonna have to test everything first. So it's not a huge deal.

But the reason that I bring this up and the reason that I instructed all of my clients, a hundred percent of them, I was very crystal clear on why you should track stuff is because even if you don't now, your goals will change and you'll have a reason to have those metrics, to have that information. And if you don't have it.

You're going to have to then start there and by starting to starting the process by testing when you've already tested it, just because you simply are either too lazy or you don't see the value in recording your information. Now that just adding another step, so we're a step further from you reaching your goals than we would be if you had the information Now.

Self-awareness. It's, it's so important when you're trying to accomplish anything. [00:15:00] So I'll, all right. I'll share a story about this podcast. When we started, our plan was to publish an episode every week and share some sound bites on social media. We had a heavy focus on Instagram. We cool. We published our first episode on September 13th, 2021, so three and a half years ago about.

Fast forward to quarter four of last year, so the end portion of 2024. I said to Jen, we're posting on Instagram and not really getting any traction. I'm gonna stop wasting time on that. How else can we get word out? So after talking, we figured word of mouth would be worth trying. So word of mouth is tough in the digital age.

When you think about it, because it's easier to reach a bunch of people randomly on Instagram than it is to talk to people every day, but [00:16:00] we realize that we have an advantage. Jen teaches, so she's in a ton of salons, and sometimes I tag along or I get brought in for something or I'm just there picking her up or whatever, and meeting these people also.

So we thought. We'll just tell people face to face that we have a podcast and we'll tell 'em what it's about. We'll tell 'em why we think it might help you.

After we stopped posting on Instagram, we watched our number numbers increase, sometimes even doubling what we were doing in the past, and I haven't posted since the end of December. So for the first few months of 2025, we've watched our numbers. Increase to the point of mostly doubling what we were doing for downloads before.

So does this mean that we won't attempt another run at social media? Not at all. Definitely not. YouTube has always fascinated me and I like it. It's very engaging when you find the right content. So maybe we'll try that. The important thing I think though, [00:17:00] is when we became self-aware enough that we realized that we needed a different trajectory.

That's when we started making progress. So three years, we'll say of just publishing. And now, don't get me wrong, we were having fun. We were having fun. We were publishing. We were publishing good content. Just wasn't getting in front of the right people, wasn't getting noticed. Or maybe it wasn't good content.

Maybe our content changed and that's why our numbers doubled either way. When I stopped focusing on social media. Our numbers doubled, and so now we have a bunch of new ideas to try out this year too. That should be fun. We've always sort of dabbled with guests. It's always been difficult for us to, like, I'm doing this episode solo.

It's always been difficult for us to nail down guests because our, our schedules are all over the place. Jen might be behind the chair one day and then not the other, and I might be over there or [00:18:00] doing this or whatever. And it's hard for us two to get together. So to bring in a third or a fourth person is tough.

But we have some ideas for this year and we'll try them out and we'll see what happens. And we'll be aware. And if it's not working, we're not gonna waste the time stressing about it. We'll move on to something else. Here's another gym story. So I, we talked about strength, weight loss. Super common, right?

So, or a super common goal. I had a client ask me what to do to lose weight? Let's take a walk. That's what I always used to say to people. Kind of pun intended, right? Let's take a walk. So I'd like to take people on walks and talk about their goals. I think that's just, that was my way of chatting with them.

It was my way of getting them out and getting some activity and. Just connecting and your brain is when you're in a really low state of physical exertion where there's almost like, not even exertion, say you I mean we have a [00:19:00] ride on lawnmower 'cause I have a lot of grass. But say you're mowing the lawn, that's the time.

Say you have a push mower, you're mowing the lawn, something like that, or you're taking a walk or you're sitting on a bike and you're just biking. So you're getting a little bit of activity. That's the time where you can learn the BO the most. So I recommend listening to your audio books, listening to your podcasts, listening to interviews, whatever, while you're doing some sort of low intensity physical activity because your brain is set up to absorb the information better in that state.

So let's take a walk. Weight loss, pretty common question for me to get nutrition. So that's the answer that 99% of the time the correct answer. And if you're listening and you're like, I wanna lose some weight too, it's your nutrition. It's not your hormones, it's not your anxiety, it's not your mood. If you feel like doing it, it's your nutrition.

If you ate less calories, you would lose weight. [00:20:00] That's how it works. That sounds blunt. Well, I went to school for it and I promise you that's the answer. So. By the way, 100% of the time when I had a client listen and follow my plan or the directions that we set up for them, they were successful 100% of the time.

And the other times where people weren't successful, they wouldn't follow the plan or they wouldn't stick to it, or they would go back and forth or they would find some new fad diet online and they would want to try that because they're not really after the goal. They weren't even self-aware enough to know that that goal wasn't important to them.

It was the idea. They loved the idea of looking different. They loved the idea of being lighter, so feeling better and having more energy. They loved the idea and the thought of that, but they didn't actually wanna do it. Well, this guy said, my diet is really clean. I don't know what else I could do. [00:21:00] So I asked if he was tracking his nutrition and you can guess what his answer was?

No. So I pointed out that he was holding a Gatorade and he said, I don't drink a ton of these. And I said, look man, you're getting in extra calories from somewhere, but you're not tracking so we don't know where I'm going to guess you are drinking them in the form of sugar, which is literally the worst thing you can do if you wanna lose weight, drinking sugar.

So if you're out there and you're like, oh, I want my Starbucks. Extra. Extra whatever. Vanilla. A frat bullshit. That's great. That's not helping you for weight loss, I promise you. And if you're like, it's only one a day, that's like an extra. So put it this way, here's a fun fact for you. People that track their calories versus people that don't track their calories tend to overeat by a third.

A third. So if you're supposed to eat 2000 calories a day to maintain, you are probably eating. An extra 600 calories [00:22:00] on average. Some people far more. Some people I'm sure less, but I've seen studies that show it's a third, so you're overeating by a third. That's a lot. It's just that we're not self-aware.

We can't, you don't, you're not going to remember everything that you ate throughout the day, so there's no way to accurately do that without tracking. So anyways, back to the story. I let him know that drinking sugar was probably not a great thing for him to be doing if weight loss was his goal, and he agreed after I convinced him a little bit to just try it.

Drink only water for a month. You don't even have to track anything. Here's a little hack for you. Drink only water for a month. So that's what he did. Now. We had a couple things in there. I said, if you wanna drink a coffee, fine. No milk, no sugar. If you wanna drink tea, fine. No milk, no sugar. Mostly drink water.

If you have wa, if you wanna have soda, water or something [00:23:00] like that with a lemon, perfect. That's great. Not anything sweetened. So basically water, 30 days later, he was down 15 pounds. 15 pounds. All he did was not drink sugar. All he did was not extra stuff. He just was unaware. He was unaware. And so anyways, he went on to become super successful.

He kept losing weight and he got to where he wanted and he noticed his mood changed and he was feeling good and he was strong. And yeah, the rest is history.

So what else is throwing off? Self-awareness. We talked about people. Not really thinking for themselves. People getting force fed their ideas. People living in echo chambers. I talked about that earlier. And I think the whole, and again, I'm gonna preface this by saying I'm not anti booth rent. I think it's cool.

Jen did it for many years. I think that the [00:24:00] industry is super confused on what it is, what it's supposed to be. I know for a fact that there are all sorts of, you know, independent places that are telling people what to do, what hours to work. I just saw the other day looking for booth renters 70 30 split commission split.

What are you talking about? How is it a commission split if it's a booth rent? So, and it's just so confusing because it's really not that difficult to grasp, but everyone thinks they understand it, so they're just making stuff up. Okay, so that whole renting side of hair has a lot of people confused.

People think once I get good at hair, I'll run my own business, except you've spent zero minutes learning how to run a business. That's the first mistake. First mistake is the first mistake at least that we see, is that people think it's about the hair. They think if I'm good at hair, I'll be able to run my own business again.[00:25:00]

Those things are not, those skill sets are not managing books, managing, ordering, managing, having insurance, managing everything that you need, software and the logistics, and coming up with systems and creating standards, playbook, creating your foundation. So your mission, your vision, your core values, all that stuff is, doesn't come from getting good at coloring hair or cutting hair.

How would you develop those skills By cutting hair? It doesn't even make sense. So I don't know why people believe it, except that we live in this world with echo chambers and you go girls and boss babes and all that stuff. So, yeah. The second mistake, people, what we see is that people think they can do it on their own, and most of the time they cannot.

That's why you see. Booth renting, but it feels like a team or booth renting. But we're family. Join our family because people are realizing you can't do it alone. You cannot do it [00:26:00] alone. We've had a bunch of people leave I, well, I don't know of bunch. I don't know how many. I just wrote bunch because I didn't wanna count it out and I don't really care that much.

But we've had a handful of people leave Hello to Go Rent. We generally wish them luck and have no hard feelings at all. It is what it is. It's. It's written in our handbook of when you're leaving, here's how it's gonna go. We are not gonna care. Not in a mean way. I wish you the best, but my focus is gonna be on the people that are in our business, working for our business.

It's not gonna be what's going on outside of my business unless I'm researching something. I really don't care. It's outside of, I guess, things that entertain me. I'm not interested in it. So anyways, we generally like wish people luck and, and you know, tell 'em stay in touch if that's something that makes sense and sometimes it's not and whatever.

No big deal. We also generally watch them fail. [00:27:00] We've seen people have to pick up several jobs just to make their rent so weird flex to be like, I'm, I'm my boss. But you know, it's monkey see, monkey do mentality and it's. It's that grass is the greener gra, or grass is greener mindset where everyone thinks it's, if I'm over there, then I'll be, you know, I'll be all set.

It doesn't often work out like that. And you don't realize because you're, you're not realizing, you're not aware. That's the whole point of this episode. You're not self-aware enough to realize that you are the one that needs to do the work. It's not the whole world that needs to change. It's generally you.

If you want something changed, it's generally you,

and those are the mistakes that we see people make constantly. So let's close out. How can we increase our self-awareness? Journaling. Journaling is a simple way. Just tracking your own life, tracking your own stuff. How do you know you're getting better at something? Or how do you know if you're getting worse at something?

[00:28:00] If you're not progressing, you're regressing. That's the only direction you can either move forward or you can move back. You cannot stay still within action. Doesn't make sense at all. So journaling, maybe you have something in your booking software that allows you to make notes. You make notes on your haircuts.

Maybe you have a work journal. Today I worked on this. I think increasing self-awareness is taking a look at your own self and asking questions. How can I be? Better at the fundamentals. How can I no one wants to do this, but how can I learn how to hold my comb better? How can I learn how to hold my scissors better so that I, last Jen was just telling me she met a girl I think in her twenties already has carpal tunnel, has awful technique.

Is not bad at cutting hair. Just needs to work on her ergonomics. Imagine having a carpal tunnel in your twenties because you [00:29:00] just weren't aware that your wrist is cranked like that. First of all, shame on the entire world around you for not telling you or pointing it out, but that's one of my other points we'll get to.

So yeah, asking questions challenging ourselves is another way that we can become self-aware, but this one comes with a caveat. You've gotta be honest. It's gotta be an honest challenge. If you challenge yourself and you're like, yep, nailed that, I always nail everything. Odds are you're missing a whole bunch of information and feedback, and then you're leaving that awareness on the table.

How about remaining curious? So when you're curious and you continue to question things, it it, it forces you to evaluate yourself. What am I learning from this? How? Why am I learning? If you're learning something, it's because you don't have the information. You don't have that information. You don't have the current information.

Maybe you have some,

again, maybe it's a technique thing. Maybe it's ergonomics. [00:30:00] Another thing you can do is be mindful of how people react to you. Pay attention to other people. They'll tell you whether they tell you or not. They'll tell you. You can see it, and then having a mentor, we'll close out with that one. You need a mentor who's gonna be honest with you because if you had one, they would be fine with pointing out the mistakes you're making that you don't see.

It's not to make you feel bad, it's to make you better. Get over it, get over your ego. Be okay with somebody pointing out your mistakes. A good mentor is gonna point out your strengths as well. They definitely are. But a good mentor is not there for your ego or to care about anything except getting you to your goal.

All right guys. Thanks for listening so much. Sorry Jen wasn't here. I'll bring her back next week. Promise. And if you need anything, reach out. Get on our email list. That's another thing that's been growing. It's since we've kind of switched that up, I was. Talk about self-awareness. I was plugging away just writing emails and then I was like, I need a, like a [00:31:00] formula.

And I, so I started doing the 3, 2, 1 structure that I have now, and it's been awesome. So check that out. If you're not sure how to get onto that, reach out and I'll add you manually. Or you can just click the links in the bios. There's stuff on our podcast links, there's stuff we still have the Instagram page gonna revive it.

Just not sure what I wanna post on it yet but you can get on those lists anywhere. Thanks for listening guys.