Belief Lids suck!

This episode is about how having a low belief factor in your life and career sucks! When your self talk is insulting yourself, that's bad. Do you have a belief lid on your success?

I talk about how I felt this career as a hairstylist felt like it was trying to kill me. The constant struggle was insane. Once I learned how to work my business successfully it was a game changer. My belief in myself increased and so did my profits. 

If you feel like you are slamming into walls instead of an easy transition from one step to another in your career, listen up.

Thank you for listening. Share this episode with a friend that you think would enjoy it.

I would love it if you took the time to leave a rating or review for the show.

Want me to go more in-depth about anything? Let me know.

Send an email with questions to skahrhoff@live.com.

Transcript

Shannon Kahrhoff: 0:01

Hello, how are you today? I have been thinking through the week. I am in a few different training programs, one for this podcast so I can understand the technology, the details, and how the heck to start it. So I've been doing this for about six months now, and I feel like I'm getting better. I might be able to get my thoughts across, but I feel like I'm missing something. I was listening to the podcast or the Zoom class with podcast, and a lot of thoughts were coming through. And then I'm listening. Another class I'm taking is about expanding my time and experience in my salon. I'm a suite renter, it is still owning my own business and running it the way I feel fit, but I'm learning and growing and changing because I was thinking this week, realizing being a hairstylist, working this business, it makes you feel like this career is trying to kill you. It is brutal. You have to grow and change constantly. If you try and just coast, there's a good chance you're gonna slam it to the wall. You know those video games where you're trying to race a cart or a car and you get distracted by something on the side, and all of a sudden you're slamming into the wall of the track. Luckily, it's a video game and not in person, but that's how I feel. I feel like I'm smooth. Everything's fantastic, and all of a sudden, bam. You're toast because you took your eye off the road. You got distracted. You thought you had it done. You thought you had it mastered. Well, guess what? You're wrong. Because unless it's me, maybe it's me. Maybe I'm the one who always feels like I have to learn and grow and expand to understand every little thing. Now, it's fine if I want to stay in the same place I've been. Or was all these years ago, but. I don't like staying complacent. It might be a flaw in my personality, but I feel like if I'm working, there's a lot more to grow and become in this career in my life. I am knocking on the big O five oh, which to me is freaking fantastic. I know I'm an odd one. I freaking cherish every wrinkle I have on my face every ache or pain that I might have in my body because I'm older because I had cancer removed from my body when I was 36 years old. I have a long line of cancer deaths in my dad's side of the family, so my dad passed at 41 every year. I get past 41 is a huge win for me. I know I have clients in my chair, my friends and family that are so upset with the gray hairs, with the wrinkles. The first time I saw wrinkles on my eyes, I wanted to cry with joy because that was a blessing. So many people don't get, sorry, getting emotional, but this is huge for me. This is. A huge win to be alive. And do you realize I plan on living over a hundred? So with just knocking, well, I got two years to go yet of getting to 50, so 48 years on this earth. And yes, I've had other cancers removed. Only one melanoma. So this is a huge blessing, but. I love everything with getting older. I love watching my daughter grow and mature and hit life marks, and this is a huge, huge win. But when I'm doing my career, oh my gosh, it's such a challenge and. If I'm gonna live to a hundred, I'm not even halfway through my life yet. I have a whole round to go to figure out what I wanna be and grow into and to become. I have this knowledge in my head from banging against these walls, through this career, through my life. I have not always been a fantastic person. I have learned how to let some walls down, become a better person, try and help others. But lots of battles in between and understanding my limitations and that I don't have to go above and beyond and take the abuse from everyone. Life is all about learning, and that's what I've become. So if you don't wanna keep hitting walls because you keep losing track of where you're going, then you need to. Find someone to follow, find a mentor. Find a educational program that help, that will help you find the direction you wanna go, that will guide you in a way to help you become a person that you want to be, But go find someone that you can learn from to become the person that you're wanting or learn a new skill.'cause I'll be honest, I fell into this training to become a better hairstylist, to run my business better, to understand how to market myself and how to become the person I honestly never thought that I could become, because. I think I mentioned last week, my subconscious mind, the thoughts in my head, they are not positive. They point out my flaws and my things I need to learn from, which are great. I am very good at knowing my flaws, but if I can't cheer myself on and know my own qualities, where, where is this taking me? It's kind of confusing. So when I was in my twenties starting this career, I learned from stylists that were probably in their late twenties or thirties, and that sounds awful. I told you my age. They were old. Where were they going? And they taught me a lot of skills on how to do haircuts better, how to think through different things, how to speed up my skills. But sadly, they were lacking in the mindset of how to become better. They were happy working in the chain salon and just doing haircut after haircut, after haircut, after haircut. There was no creativity. There was no difference. It was complacency, which is fine. They had a steady paycheck. One was a manager, one was an assistant manager. They thought they made it because they were at the top of that chain salon, no problem. If they were happy, fantastic. Everyone needs to be in the part of the career that makes them happy. But I looked at my paycheck and realized, this isn't gonna get me far. How in the heck am I gonna afford my own place or a new car? And it was what it was. So I was this 20-year-old stylist, cocky, probably a smart ass mouth. And I wanted more. I knew I wanted more. I had no idea what the heck I wanted, but sure. So I went off to massage therapy school and learned that. And then I worked at a chain salon while I went to school for full time Worked a lot of overtime, but I made money. It was okay. I paid my bills, I got my car maintained. It was all fine. And then I came back to Illinois and my friend owned a salon and I started doing hair there and massage therapy and everything was okay. I was learning, I was growing. I was challenged. Challenge is the thing I need in my life. Challenging myself means I'm growing and changing It makes me happy. I want to learn new things and not feel bored.'cause I get bored every, everything is consistent and just, ugh, homeostasis, the equal balance of everything and not my goal. So I am growing and changing and I come into the salon and no one is older in the salon. I think they're in their thirties, which. Whatever. I learned different things from them. I'm keeping it growing and there's a lot of bumps in the road. No one's really happy. Things are changing and it is what it is, but I'm going down the road of my career and I'm trying to figure out. What the heck is this career about? You're coming home covered in hair. God forbid you do a bunch of men's haircuts and you're, you feel like a porcupine and you can't get this stuff off of your body half the time unless you use tweezers, so you're going and changing and growing, and before you know, it smack into the wall smack. Okay. What do I need to change? Who do I talk to? All these people are walking the same path that they're instructing you to do. Great. Do you want the results of that person? One of them was a business owner, but she quit so that she could have more time with her children. Okay. She didn't sell the salon for anything other than the equipment in the salon. So is that profitable? Mm, I don't think so. Okay. Keep growing. Changing. Bam. Another wall. Guess what I found a different salon to go to. But they all have the same mindset, small town mentality where you can only raise your prices to the equivalent, equivalent of whoever is the bravest one to raise prices in town. But you don't wanna go over their prices because no one will come to you because they can get it cheaper somewhere else. So stupid of a mindset. Because I learned now there's a whole different way of doing this. You become the person you want to be to get the pay that you need for the lifestyle you want. In the real world, people jump jobs and companies and everything to get to the next level. Well, guess what? Hairstylists don't have that skill. Unless we go to the big city somewhere and go to somewhere that. You can make more money. Sounds good, right? Well, no, not really, because you're still probably gonna be making the same amount of money, except for you have to have more fees. And if you move to a different state, which I would've done, you'd be paying two states taxes instead of just one state's taxes, and there goes the profit. And Okay. Whatever. It was not the challenge I wanted. I have a hard time building myself up into something that feels like a up on a pedestal above anyone else. I had the lowest self-esteem ever. Who was I? I was just Podunk little white trash girl that yes, I did call myself that. It is okay, but. It is one of those things that I had no belief system in myself, nothing, not a zilch, and it was normal to me. I didn't think that I had a problem with self-confidence because isn't it normal that everyone finds their own faults and live within the limits of their belief system? Who knows? I never looked that deep until I was older. But guess what? I am not a white trash old girl that doesn't deserve anything, and I have learned to become the person I want. I challenge myself to become better and learn, but. I fell into this class because I wanted extension knowledge. I wanted a new method for all my fine haired clients. I wanted knowledge on how to market myself better so I could actually feel comfortable in having an extension business in my salon. My, my suite. So I challenge myself and I pay this money for a class, get my hiney down to Arkansas and take this class. I. And you know what? I learned so much stuff there. It blew me away. I was actually speechless majority of the time because it was so out of my box of information. They were telling me about social media, how to promote it, why it's important to brand yourself, and how to accomplish so much more. But my self-belief lid was pretty darn low. Let me tell you this. I heard a story years ago about fleas. Fleas can, fleas can jump a large height for those teeny tiny little bodies. They can make some, do some great air, but if you put a lid on the jar on these fleas, they will learn that they bang their bodies against this lid. So. After doing it a little bit, they learn that their belief window is lower. Does that shock anyone? That was the analogy of my life. I always felt I. That I was being uppity. If my belief system was too high, I would leave a class think, oh my God, this is fantastic. I can so do this. My customers are gonna love it. Oh, this is fantastic. I get into the salon and do it, and I'm like, oh yeah, not good enough. It's not as perfect as the class. It's not this. It's not that I was putting my own Limitational lid on myself because it wasn't where I wanted it to be. This is a huge problem for me and probably for some other people because we all have our issues. We all have a life that we grew up through we were in, and if you are not good at being your own cheerleader of thinking, you can achieve anything. You might be in the same boat that I was and you might have to work on it a little bit more to believe that you are worth more, that you can excel in anything you put the effort into the time, the effort, well should, should raise your belief sy belief system so that you can deserve more. And I know I've heard clients talk about how they have a yearly raise and they have evaluation and they get mad if it's not a large percentage increase. That kind of blows me away because in my career field. If we raise our prices, we are so nervous and worried that someone's gonna yell at us because who do you think you are raising your prices? Everything else is going up in the world. Why in the heck do you feel like you deserve more? We're scrimping and saving here, but we still choose to come to you. So don't you wanna discount? And my lack of belief and confidence I gave that I was giving discounts to people that were going on vacations. Monthly, or at least twice a year. And these were not little trips to Branson, Missouri. This was across the country to different countries, and I felt like they needed, I. A reason to come to me. So the discount was there, and I can guarantee that prices that I was charging probably was already cheaper than the area that they lived in. So they're already getting a discount, and then they come to me and expect more discounts, just my own problem. This is me, not the clients. It is just where my thought process was. I wasn't good enough for someone to come to me consistently unless I gave them a discount. This is wrong. This is how I financially struggled for so many years. One year after I had this class for the extensions that taught me all this business mindset and taught me how to actually price myself and not compare myself to anyone else, it was so eye-opening. But again, that belief lid was so low. It was crazy the limitations I put on myself because I never felt worthy, and you have to know. Your value whenever you're putting everything into people, into the cuts, the colors, the processes, they have a lot of trust in you. And if I have a bad day, which I have had. It's, it's hard whenever they walk out the door and you're not a hundred percent happy with the service you gave, gave them, they might totally be happy because it's something different and they love, but it didn't turn out the way you wanted it and you can't take the disappointment off your face, or I couldn't take my disappointment off my face. This is how. I survived in this career, slamming into the wall constantly with my failure mindset. I could fake it. I had that confident look, I have a bristly exterior at times, and I loved having that B word attached to who I was because if I had that exterior. Vibe to people. They didn't mess with me, and if they didn't mess with me, I didn't have to turn to a puddle of mush whenever they were disappointed in me, they asked me for anything, or if I didn't believe in myself enough to stand up for myself. So I had that mentality that I had to have that gruffness there so they didn't screw me over. That doesn't get you far either. But God bless it. I went to that class and I learned so much and I created a new price system for myself. I began, began starting to make more money charging what I needed to, but you know, it's very hard keeping that positive, positive mindset when you're not around positive people. You slowly evolve in, or I guess you regress back into who you were because someone is not encouraging around you. Do you ever been around the people that suck the energy out of you? The positive, the encouraging mindset. Everyone has different reasons for doing it, I'm sure, but when you're around people that do not want you to grow and change, it's exhausting. I, I know this career is very competitive. It shouldn't have to be competitive because to me, in a salon, when everyone's growing and changing, it should increase the reputation of the whole salon. I own my own business. Majority of the people in the business own the, or they rent their space, which means they're all their own businesses. Why do we feel like we have to compete with people that we work with? I love whenever we can all help each other. When we are in a bind or we go on vacation, we can ask someone that we work with if they can catch our client when we're outta town. Wouldn't that be great? I love it. I love seeing the excitement of a coworker that is learning and growing and gets excited for a new service that they're understanding. I love helping them market it because that's something else I learned how to do in this class was how to market myself, my salon, and my coworkers. I believe rising tide raises all ships and whenever you encourage everyone around you to grow and change. By you changing and growing. That's the true win. I don't wanna be the only one growing and changing in my area. I want everyone to become better, to challenge themselves because someone else is growing and changing. They're seeing that difference in them, and I've had so many people talking about how I'm a different person. I carry myself different. I work differently because of the changes that I have implemented. Through the last few years because I've been encouraged by someone, a company, to actually become more, it's okay to become more. They are encouraging you step by step, and if you take baby steps, they're still encouraging. It's crazy. But it is. It is good. So I walked into that first class. In Arkansas, and I'm gonna tell you who I was in my own eyes, I felt old because I was expecting all these 20 year olds sitting there, beautiful, young, all excited with being a few years in the career. And luckily there were a few older stylists there that helped me feel a little bit more normal. But sitting at the table of my class, it was interesting seeing. And hearing how they all carried themselves. And there was one that I recognized myself in how she was talking, and it's the defeatist talk. You're losing, you're struggling, and it's just where you are. And I could hear that and understand. That's what I'm fighting against in my own self because I don't wanna be defeated. I want to learn new things. I want to market stuff. I wanna be excited about what I'm doing and knowing that I'm doing the right thing for myself and for my clients. So I was also around the younger ones in my class. One was a salon owner that I still follow on Instagram. And I love seeing how she grows and change and how she's amazing at marketing herself. It's incredible seeing how, and I have no idea how she was before this class, but I can see the stuff from that class and how she's growing and maturing. And it's amazing because in one of my other classes, she was mentioned last year about how she's. Really incorporating a lot of these things into her business and how she's become even more profitable through the years because of that. So I'm in this class and they have us walk in and take our professional pictures. Social media was rough for me. I had Facebook and Instagram, but Instagram was not really my thing. I used it through COVID to learn different things from different companies and different influencers about the career and learn new techniques and mindset thinking. Great. I loved it, but I did not post anything ever. In fact, they were laughing at me because I had so few followers and. I think I had two or three posts, so they were looking at me in shock. It's okay because of where I was then. So my lovely negative self-talk, I was a single mother, which. It was shameful for me at most of my life because no one was a single mother. Whenever I was a single mother, everyone was happily married, or by the time Grace was older, they just expected me to divorce that I was divorced, no big deal. So it was shameful. I was a single mother. I'm a self-employed hairstylist that barely made any money. I mean, it was a struggle and it was up and down and sideways and upside down and positive and ugh. I was constantly stressed about consistency and making sure the money was coming in when it needed to come in. So I felt horrible about myself because I was financially unstable. Luckily by then, my daughter that I homeschooled from kindergarten to senior year in high school was in college, so I never had to. Um, explain why I homeschooled my daughter anymore.'cause that was a shameful thing whenever I homeschooled her. So when I started homeschooling, my daughter, most of the people homeschooling because they were military, they were a religious family who thought that the public school system was harmful for their children, no problem. Or your child was not smart enough to make it through the public school system. This was pretty much the stigma of homeschooling when I first started teaching my daughter, so my daughter had issues with school. I, I let her go into the regular schools and do band, and she played sports with kids until it was strictly a school activity, so she was able to be around a lot of kids and feel normal. I don't know, I just wanted her to have abilities to access things that I had no information on. So she had to deal with a stigma of homeschooling, and she still does. If by chance someone asks her where she went to school, where she graduated high school, she's graduated from college now, so it's really a non-issue unless by chance they ask. So I was beaten down so much by people giving me crap about being a single mom. Being a homeschool mom, how dare I homeschool my child because I wasn't smart enough. I'm just a hairstylist. Yes, I did have someone tell me that, and I wasn't hugely profitable. I wasn't hugely profitable. I was a whole new person at that point because I actually had free time for the first time in my life since I had my daughter. So I actually got to rest and figure out what I like to do and understand myself. So this was my journey after my daughter was in college of who I was, who I wanted to become because I had time and energy to invest in myself. Finally. And this pretty much was my first jump into it with this class. So to say that it changed my life is very minimal because it did truly put me in a direction that I needed to go. So going from feeling like this career was trying to kill me. It spun me around and I felt like I was finally in the driver's seat for myself because I chose to learn to grow, to become better, to give myself the ability to become better, and to stretch myself and my old knowledge of taking the power of my own mind and my own thoughts back into the positive. It's a rough road. It's up and down. But if we actually take the time to listen to our thoughts and stop it, and I, it's kind of sad, but I do catch myself when I'm home by myself. If my thought goes to the dark side, I, tell myself to stop and I try and picture the positive outlook that I want, the positive reactions and results I want from this correct mindset because I don't have to think the worst anymore. I can think for the positive and expect it because of this one class. I'm getting to the income that I feel like I deserve. I've been in this industry for a very long time, and I feel like I'm actually getting groundwork because I'm focusing on myself. I'm doing things the correct way, and I'm doing the job that I freaking love. So I don't feel like my career is trying to kill me anymore, except after 10 hour days when my body is so stiff I can hardly stand back up once I sit in my car. That's okay. That's one of the fun things of being older and doing some of the skills I'm learning because I stand in one spot when I do it. It's okay. I love this life. I know that it's gonna take me far, and I'm hoping this podcast reaches people that need it to understand it and not be lost in this career. It's just a guidepost for you to feel like you can take control of your life and every career. It doesn't have to be as, as a hairstylist. Anyone that has a nine to five job. You have the ability to make changes in your life. Think how old you are, how many more years you have in your career, or how many more years you want on this earth and see, is this the life I wanna have for the rest of my life? Are you okay being complacent and staying where you are? If you're happy, that's fantastic. Good job. But if you look at your job and you come home upset, angry, and. Stress to the max. Your life is in your hands. You can do anything you wanna do. You just have to take a step to find what you want, what you need, or just start working on yourself. Your own mindset Start listening to that voice in your head that is trying to. Help your thought process because if you stop listening to the radio in the car or you stop watching TV and you just let your mind wander, what are you wondering about? What are you thinking about? As a mom, when I had, um, I was raising my daughter, I knew in my head I was running down the list of things I had to do before I could go to bed or things I had to do with my daughter before she could get ready for bed, because that was my mindset task master. I had all these things that had to be accomplished from. And doing laundry, washing dishes, making food for the next day, all these different things, helping her study for the tests that we were gonna have the next day, making sure she did her homework. That was normal day to day. And I had to return phone, phone calls for work, and I had to double check. I have enough products that I needed for the following week because the sales rep was coming in and I needed to double check. I had everything written down. It was a nonstop list and I know a lot of people have that also, but figure out if you're happy. Figure out if this is a life you want. What would you change if it was in your power or if you were too scared to take the next next step to figure out what you want different? The world is huge. There's stuff everywhere. Most people have 4 0 1 Ks. It doesn't lock you down into one company. You can grow and change. And change is not as scary as you think. Sometimes it's what everyone needs.'cause sometimes it's just sucking the life out of you doing the same thing day in and day out. There was a time at certain salons that I worked at that was very stressful, very hard. And I had that in the pit feeling in my stomach, knowing that I had to go to work on Tuesday. I'm off for Monday, so I don't get the Monday dread, I get the Tuesday dreads or did. And those are the salons I left because it wasn't the work. My work moved with me every salon I went to. My clients love me, they follow me. It's fantastic. Why? Because I'm dedicated to them. I do good work and I treat them very well. You have to understand that if you're miserable somewhere, if you're not happy, if you have that dread in the pit of your stomach, it's time to look closer. Figure out what is making it happen. Is it the atmosphere? Is it just you, yourself, and your own life? Is there something you feel like needs to change or you're letting too much stuff slide. It's your life. You make the decision on if you wanna keep slamming into the wall or if you're going to take control of the wheel and not get distracted. It's your life. What do you want out of the rest of your life? I know that life is not promised. Years are not promised. I'm gonna value every year I get, every wrinkle I get, every line I get. I love it. So it is one of those things. Cherish what you can. Love what you can, and keep growing and changing. Have a good week. Look inside yourself a little bit and see where you stand with yourself. Have a great time. Bye.