Give People A Reason To Give A Shit

So there is a number one rule that I have particular to marketing, but it's absolutely applicable to all the departments in your business in one way or another if there's another person involved of any sorts. I preach it all the time. It is give them a reason to give a shit. If you do not give people a reason to give a shit, then you are going to continuously always feel like nobody is listening to you, they're not hearing you, they're not going home and applying the same technique that you taught them.

They're not buying things from you. Nobody's liking or commenting on your posts. Your team isn't caring about what you have to say or actually implementing it or taking feedback from you. If you aren't always making sure that you are giving somebody a reason to give a shit, then you are oftentimes going to fail in your efforts in trying to get your message across and for it to actually resonate.

And I think this is one of the biggest things that I learned as an educator, to actually create great facilitation when a company has trained me, just in my own experience. Like, if I actually want people to take this amazing information that I know will change their lives and their businesses, I need to make them care. Because, yes, we all know that we need to take education, right? And, like, education is great, but in order for you to actually care enough to implement it, I need to sell you on the idea.

In order for your brain to give me enough calories that is allotted to paying attention to what I have to say, I need to give your brain a reason to care, right? Our brains are, it literally burns calories to think, to spend energy paying attention to somebody, and paying attention to a specific topic and learning about it. And so if you don't have urgency or enough desire around the topic, then it's not gonna resonate with you. You're not gonna be fully attentive.

You're not going to want to store that information as much as if it was something that you actually gave a shit about. And so you as the human being who is then communicating to others in your marketing, in your behind-the-chair, uh, uh, service when you are trying to sell retail, or when you're just trying to set expectations or educate your client, or when you're trying to get your team on board and when you're trying to coach them and give them feedback, you need to be very aware of if you are giving this person enough of a reason to care about what you have to say, so that way they will actually do something about it and actually retain it. And so Jodi found this specific statistic that we got from our consumer behavior study that we did this past year that made us kind of think about this topic and this concept that we wanted to bring to you and share. And so I'm gonna allow Jodi to share that with you guys.

Okay. So the statistic was, and it was surrounding education and the client's view on education. And so part of the survey was asking about basically, like, education building trust on the nose. And so it was 100% of clients who took this survey said education builds trust with their stylist.

28% of the st- the clients that filled out this survey also said, and they organically brought it up, that education is what makes their appointment feel worth it, and these are all, like, just to kind of reiterate, these are all, like, boutique salon clients who are paying higher ticket prices than the norm in our industry. And so w- that's kind of where we, we were thinking about this link here, and I think it's really telling that education builds trust, and so therefore every client says it's important when it's named. But a third of the people organically brought it up. The reality is, though, from my perspective, is people don't stay your client if they don't trust you.

And so education is such a huge part of this, because really this is going to apply to absolutely everyone to maintain that relationship with their clients. Yeah, and the education that you are sharing with somebody is not actually going to resonate with them and actually make an change in their life in the way that they're showing up to do their own hair at home if you aren't effectively communicating. Yeah. And so giving them a reason to give a shit about what you're educating them about- Yeah ...

is very important. So again, we may know that it's important for you to talk about the shampoo and conditioner that you're using. Right. And we may know that it's important for you to show somebody what you're doing when you're styling them.

But are you talking about the why? Mm. And even if you are talking to them about the why, are you talking to them about the why that they care about? Exactly.

Are you even pulling the why out of them? In the consultation, you should be starting to understand their own language around the struggles that they have and the desires that they have. Right. So for example, Jodi, what is one of the biggest struggles that you have with your hair?

My goodness. Um, tangling in the nape of my neck I would say- Okay ... is my number one struggle. So Jodi, I am spraying this detangler back here because it is a lightweight detangler.

It's not gonna get all greased up back there or make it feel nasty, but it is going to actually take out some of that tangle very easily, and I'm gonna be using a wet brush, and I'm gonna be starting from your ends and working your way up so we don't cause any damage. 'Cause I know that tangling is a difficulty for you, but we, uh, wanna make sure that we protect your blonde at the same time, 'cause I know that you also shared with me that damage is a concern of yours, and making sure that your hair stays as healthy as possible is a concern. And so this is how we can solve the problem of the detangling without causing any further issues with the damage. That is how you sell something.

That is how- Mm-hmm ... you get somebody to care about what you're actually sharing with them, is because I'm using her words, I talked about detangling at the nape, and I'm also making sure that she fully understands why these things are gonna work, and giving her the clear solution and connecting it back to her. So instead of just saying, "This wet brush is really good at detangling," and then just starting to brush and like say whatever, I'm connecting it back to what Jodi told me very directly, and I'm making sure that I'm breaking it down in a simple, clear way and giving her a reason to give a shit. Yes.

That's so good, and I would buy that 10 out of 10 times- ... 'cause that's the thing, right? It's like, um, w- you know, this makes me think of back when I was a sales rep for a short period of time. There would be these periods of time, right, where it was like, okay, there's like this sale on this thing.

If you just walk into a salon, and this is like 15 years ago now, but if you just walk into a salon and you're like, "Oh, this is on sale," and that's it, they're like, "Okay, that's great. Thanks for the information." If you're like, "Okay, I looked at the last quarter and you ordered X amount of this product. This is the sale that it's on right now, so if you order your entire next quarter's worth of this, you know, specific product, you will save X amount.

It is going to increase your profit margin by Y." Right. And so as a salon owner or as a person, if I'm looking at that, I'm like, okay, now I can see in concrete detail it would be crazy for me not to buy this, right? Right.

So I think that's where when it, you know, even whether it's like a retail product, whether it is like, you know, making sure that your clients don't go to bed with wet hair if they have extensions. Like, b- you just saying, "Don't do this because it's important," is gonna make nowhere near as much of a difference as if you're like, "Don't do this because, you know, you're gonna have to buy new hair sooner, or you're gonna have to do this, or this is the actual- Exactly ... result for you." Yes, yes, yes.

Like, what is in it for them, right? Why should they pay attention to what you have to say? We, I just went to a restaurant the other day, and they were doing some, some sort of fundraiser for a charity of sorts. And they were like, and it was a notable charity, like everybody mostly has brand awareness around this charity, but like, it's like, okay, great, there's brand awareness around it, but I still barely even know where my money's gonna go.

Why should I even care about this charity? Like, why should I care about giving y'all a dollar? And the person who was presenting it to us did not do a very good job of giving me a, a reason to care about the charity. I'm just being- Right ...

solicited, right? Right. So, like, you want to avoid sounding or being salesy. Mm-hmm.

You have to first start with why is this relevant to you, and then therefore it becomes a, oh, this person is trying to solve my problem. Mm-hmm. This person is presenting to me a solution. They're not just trying to sell me something, right?

That's when, that's where we make that switch, but again, I think that we don't do a good enough job of actually finding those s- p- those pain points and those problems and the desires up front so that way we can connect them to solutions. If you're only talking about what's gonna happen that day, and the service that you're gonna be doing or whatever it may be, then you only know what you're going to accomplish with the service that you're doing, and that's all you're gonna get, right? And of course, you have to sell them on the service as well a little bit in your approach, right? But if you wanna go above and beyond that and you wanna add more value to your service, because you can get your hair done anywhere.

Anybody can get their hair done anywhere and get a pretty okay result, right? But when you wanna h- charge high ticket and you wanna show that you offer more than just a good service, then you wanna sell anything else, or you wanna make the different, value add something different, right, an extra, and make it actually sit with the client, make it something memorable- Mm ... then you have to give them a reason to give a shit first. 100%.

This also becomes very relevant with marketing. I can't, so we've talked about the levels of awareness before on the podcast. I teach about it all the time. What we oftentimes will do is we go straight to the bottom of, of the levels, okay?

So at the top level with the levels of awareness, I'm gonna give you guys, like, a very brief description. The levels of awareness is the, the journey that a c- customer goes through in being aware of their problem and becoming aware of you as a solution, basically. So when we are normally marketing to a specific, or to anybody, we oftentimes are going straight to, "How can I prove that I'm valuable enough?" Okay?

"How can I show how good my work is? How can I show how awesome my client experience is?" And we normally are skipping straight to that. Or we will straight up show them, "Okay, we have a sale of this product," or, "This is our product of the month."

We are very direct. Right. And what that oftentimes creates is complete white noise to people, because especially in today's day and age, we are so oversaturated in that type of marketing, in, like, billboard marketing where it's just, like, pushed in front of your face. Like, w- we are, our brains are now trained to just, just blank that stuff out and not pay attention to it.

But if you approach it from a lower level or higher level, I guess, I, I think about it, I'm thinking about it, like, physically and visually. Like- Right ... at the top of the funnel of level, levels of awareness, they go down and deeper into it. Right.

So I guess, like, top of level, levels of awareness where, like, they aren't necessarily aware of you as a solution yet or considering you as a solution yet or whatever you're selling them, you need to start from the higher part of it where you're even sharing with them what their problem maybe even is. Like, making them aware of what the problem is. So maybe it's, "Are you experiencing a lot of tangliness in your nape right now?" Right.

Right? Right. And then you talk about, "This is why you're experiencing this." So now you're like, "Oh, my gosh.

I, this is, this is completely relevant to me. This is something that happens to me. I'm gonna pay attention to it." You get educated about the topic, right?

Because now, and now you're seeing this person as an authority, so it's already building trust, right? Mm-hmm. Because they're talking about something that's specifically relevant to you and sharing with you why it's happening. And then they share with you s- the solution.

That directly counteracts the why it's happening. So the reason why this detang- this tangling is happening is because you have hard water, and you may have not known that before, but it's, most of the time that's why. And so therefore, we have this detox treatment that is going to take out all of that, those minerals that are causing all this tangliness, and therefore you will be able to save 30 minutes in the morning detangling your hair and not breaking your hair off or whatever it may be. That is, like, how we should approach things.

Instead of saying, "I do detox treatments and this is what they all do," or, "This is what this does," we start with, "Let's give this person a reason to care about your detox treatment," because they're completely not even caring about it. They don't even wanna know about it. Why would the fu- why the fuck would somebody care about a detox treatment if they feel like that's not even something that's relevant to them yet, right? We need to approach the hook first.

We need to make something feel relevant to somebody for their brain to want to pay attention and pay energy to it. And I think that we're skipping that a lot of the time, and then we wonder why nobody's actually paying attention to our solutions. So true. I think even when people who are really, like, in the know with marketing, um, and are thinking about, you know how we, like, always talk about, you know, businesses solve a problem, right?

So speaking to the problem. I think this is that layer beyond that, which is where there's so much opportunity. It's like we're not speaking to the problem directly all the time, but it's the manifestation or the symptom of that problem. What is that everyday experience that is making that problem a problem?

You know what I mean? So I think that's, yes, 100%. Like, meet your person where they're at, 'cause they're not there yet, you know? Like, they're not there yet.

They're not in the market when they're scrolling Instagram. They're not in the market for whatever you're about to directly sell them yet. Make them be in the market, right? Make them want to actually see the situation.

You have to pull them in and invite them in first with something that they care about, then they'll actually start paying attention, and then start considering you as a solution. Now, where this then leaks into leadership and speaking to a team member or whatever it may be, is let's talk about maybe you want your team to sell more retail, right? You could talk to them about, you know, okay, you could talk to them about their maybe objections a lot. I think this is what a lot of salon owners do.

They will, they will try to change the behavior without changing the thinking. We, we talked about this in a podcast episode recently. But they try to change the behavior without changing the thinking. So they recognize, okay, my, my team does not wanna sell retail because they feel salesy.

So then they're gonna teach them to educate instead of sell. They're gonna say these, they're gonna give them scripts, they're gonna give them everything that they need to be successful in selling retail. They're gonna create incentives. So they're gonna create, like, a, a month where whoever gets the most retail wins a vacation or some shit like that, right?

The problem with this is you're not giving somebody an actual deep core reason to think that selling retail is important. You're not giving them a reason to give a shit. Why is it relevant to them? Because honestly, my friend, in their head right now, they're just thinking, "Salon owner wants me to sell more retail because it makes them more money, and I only get 10% commission, so why the fuck would I care?"

Right. Exactly. Like, why would they care? Besides for the, maybe the negative reinforcement of you're penalized and you're not making, getting raises if you aren't getting the retail sales or, or you're gonna get yelled at or you're getting constantly nagged.

Like, which is just not sustainable and not actually the s- recipe for massive success, as we've talked about in the last episode and what we're gonna be talking about in a episode coming up, I'm pretty sure. Yeah. In one way or another. Um, you have to change the thinking.

So again, you have to give somebody a reason to give a shit. I didn't give a fuck about selling retail until it was connected to me and what I give a fuck about. So it was like, do you care about actually making an impact in your clients' lives? Mm-hmm.

Do you want your retention to go up, so that way your book is more full, and that way you make more money, right? Do you want your clients to be happier? Do you care about your career as a hair stylist and what you're signing up for, right, and actually showing up and doing the best job possible? That, when, when it was put, it, when it was put that way to me and the things I actually really give a shit about, because tha- those are my core values as a hair stylist, I was like, "Oh my God, this makes so much sense to me.

Now it's something that I wanna do, and I'm gonna put in my own initiative and effort to make it actually happen," right? But it wasn't until then, when it was explained why and somebody gave me a reason to care, that I actually started doing it consistently. Yeah. So across the board, this communication skill, I think that we are very much, we just primarily live in our own heads.

We don't, we are, we are very bad as human beings in stepping into other people's shoes. We can all think that we are good at this, but none of us are naturally good at it, and it takes a lot of discipline and a lot of experience, and even just leadership, to be able to actually step into somebody else's shoes and predict how they're gonna think or even be able to pull out of them where they're currently at, so that you can then connect where they're at to whatever you're trying to achieve. And if you have that missing piece, you're never gonna be able to get your message across effectively. 100%.

And that's all I have on the topic. So do you have anything to add, Jodi Brown? I think we covered everything. I think, like you said, it's just making sure that people know why they should care.

That's all it comes down to. You can spew off as much information as you want. If people don't understand how it makes their lives or their situation better, they're not gonna listen and they're not gonna take the action that you are educating them so that they will take. Period.

I want you... Thank you, Jodi. I want you, my friend listening to this, the next time that you're scrolling on whatever you're scrolling on, notice why you stopped your scroll- Mm-hmm ... or why you skipped the post and why you did scroll on.

I want you to just be self-aware and take note of that. And maybe you stopped scroll just 'cause it was entertaining. That is valid as well, too, right? Like, something can be entertaining enough or shocking enough to sh- to strike curiosity, but there's other reasons why you may stop that are more relevant to you and actually give you a reason to give a shit.

It's the same device, right? So then you have to be self-aware of, okay, well what am I doing to stop the scroll? What am I doing to make somebody actually pay attention? Because the way that your brain works and the way that it's kinda gonna, gonna decipher- Mm-hmm ...

what it pays attention to and what it doesn't is very similar to all the rest of us as humans. So take note of your own experience, so that way you can make better decisions about how you get people to pay attention in the future. Thank you so much for tuning into the Modern Hairstylist podcast. Peace out, Girl Scout.

Bye-bye.

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