How To Stay Consistent On Social Media When You’re Over It

It's so often that a stylist will come to me and they'll say, "Hunter, I am not getting as many new clients as I once was," or, "I just have these gaps this time of the year that I normally never have. Granted, I haven't been posting as much, but this just seems really weird. What do you think is going on?" And the answer, my friend, if you've ever felt like this or if you feel like this right now, it is in what you just said, right?

"I have not been posting as much." We, like, gloss over that as if it's not a big deal, you know? Like, this... Posting consistently on social media or doing anything consistently, as far as your marketing goes, it's a faucet that you either keep on or you end up turning off, right?

And we need to keep that on on a consistent basis to get you results now, later, and in the future, right? So it's not a surprise to me if you've taken a little bit of a change or break when it comes to posting consistently, and then you say, "This is so weird. Why don't I... Why do I have these gaps," right?

And I think it's so... I think what ends up happening here is we wanna blame it on anything else because we don't wanna face the fact that it's this annoying thing that we all hate, right? None of us like doing this for our job. And Jodi came up with the analogy before I got on here, which I thought was so clever.

Like, do you ever... Nobody feels like doing social media. Nobody feels like doing our taxes as business owners, right? 100%.

But it's an essential, and we need to start viewing our marketing efforts just as, as just as essential as doing our taxes, you know? And so today, I'm gonna talk to you guys about how to stay consistent on social media even when you don't feel like it, because it's not a matter of necessarily feeling like it. It's a matter of making it so you're set up for the most success so that way it becomes easy to do something that you don't feel like doing, right? 'Cause your business is not here to entertain you, and this priority is not going away anytime soon.

So, we actually polled our, uh, Instagram audience, and we got a couple of reasons why you guys felt it was so hard for you to stay consistent on social media so that way I could diagnose how we're feeling about it right now, where this comes from, and then also share with you... and make sure that you know that you're not alone with this, right? So... And then also share with you the tangible ways to defeat those feelings or those tangible things that are holding you back from actually being consistent with social media.

So, Jodi Brown, thank you so much for being on the podcast, as per usual. We are gonna have Jodi read me a couple of these answers that you guys shared with me, and then we're gonna dive into it today. So this broke down. There's tons and tons of comments 'cause this is such a hot topic, obviously.

People are feeling it. So it kinda broke down into three, four main things, and that is time and energy burnout. Stylists feel like they don't have time. They feel like they don't have the energy to be, like, creating and posting and doing all the things on top of everything else.

Lack of results, therefore lack of motivation. So they're not excited anymore because they are not seeing the, the results from it, and so because it's not helping their business grow in their mind, they're just not doing it. Overthinking and perfectionism. So, one of the comments was, "My brain is mean to me."

There was comments about how, which I totally understand, there was comments about how it's just like they feel like they're not good enough at it, so therefore they don't wanna put anything out there. Um, and then the fourth kind of theme and category was, uh, lack of structure and systems around it, so like bad lighting, not anywhere to put the equipment. So those are those four kind of main things that tons of these comments fell into. Totally.

And so, therefore, it's not having the energy, it's not seeing the results when you do post, and then it's the overthinking/perfectionism that's making you hesitate and then maybe feeling like a lack of structure. So, thank you guys so much for those of you who put into that poll. I really appreciate it. And let's go over why these things become such a hindrance.

So, first off, I've been talking about this forever, and I think it's a very interesting phenomena because I definitely experience it as, as a human being for sure, particularly in my business, where when you do something and it does not give you tangible return, your brain has no incentive to be excited about doing it again, right? And maybe that's not just from the emotional side of things, but maybe that's also from, like, the actual strategic side of things. Maybe you're thinking, like, "Well, what's the point of doing this if I'm not getting any ROI on it?" Which I think is absolutely valid, right?

I do think that that's, that's valid, and we can figure out if this truly is, like, what you need to be doing through, like, strategic marketing, market research, and data, which is what we walk our students through. Like, where is going to be the best use of your time, right? Um, but from an e- more emotional side, because the majority of us need to be creating content in one way or another to be able to grow our business and post consistently somewhere, right? From the emotional side of things, like, of course, like, if something is not giving you anything for all the work that you've done, then you have no reward chemicals processing and sending off in your brain.

So, you have no incentive to keep going in a natural chemical sp- from a natural chemical space. Right. And that does not feel good, right? And of course, we wanna maybe look at the things that are giving us instant gratification that are shooting off those receptors in your brain, such as maybe focusing on our client experience in the chair, right?

Or the results that we're getting with our current clients instead of focusing on how to get new clients, because normally those efforts are a lot harder and not as exciting, right? And don't light us up. But the important thing to understand, and I believe one of the answers to this poll was, "I feel like I'm annoying people," right? Yes.

Like, did somebody say that, Jodi? Yep.People are like, "I don't wanna be annoying." If you don't post consistently, you're not giving anybody the chance to even get to know you and your services and start to trust you.

It- this is a relationship you're building with a potential customer. A lot of the time, es- especially with something so precious and so important with hair, right? And even especially if you do have a higher ticket for it, people- it takes time for people to actually, like, really, like, bite the bullet and decide to book with you, you know? So the, the post that you post tomorrow is not to get you a client tomorrow.

It's to get you a client maybe in six months from today, in a year from today. How many times have you guys maybe had this experience where you had a client who sat in your chair and they were like, "Yeah, I've been following you for a long time," or, "I've known about you for a long time and I finally decided to, to, to pull the trigger." You know? If you were not consistent, then you may have lost the opportunity to continuously show up for this person and nurture them more and more and more to where they felt comfortable enough to hit that point, right?

Yeah. And we know, especially if we're talking algorithms, right? Then if we're talking algorithms, then if you aren't posting, there's nothing for the algorithm to show this person. And so then they're, they're gonna get fed something else from another stylist who is posting consistently and tr- and building that trusting relationship with them as well, right, or instead of.

So therefore, you posting is not for you to get immediate results. I don't want you to be getting immediate results from posting on social media consistently. That's not the point. The point is for you to build up this trust over a long amount of time, for people to be able to binge through a bunch of your posts when they are deciding whether or not you're the right fit for them or not, for you to consistently, slowly but surely build up some sort of audience, even if it's small but mighty.

And it takes you time to do that. So if you don't get the immediate results that our brains are craving and wanting in today's day and age because of short form content and just because of the way that the world works was so fast and we expect everything to come to us tomorrow, right then and there, right? If you don't keep going, you'll never get the results. So I'd rather you stick at it for a long time, consistently, steadily, and not get results for a long time, versus you not even give yourself the opportunity or the chance to see if it's going to work, right?

Yeah. So I would like you to reflect on, do you not feel like doing this or is it hard for you to stay consistent because you are- your brain is telling you this is not exciting because it's not even worth it at the end of the day? Are you allowing those feelings to stop you from showing up even when you're not really supposed to be feeling those feelings every single time that you post, right? The other thing that I think holds people back hardcore is that we oftentimes think that we- whenever we post, it needs to be something new, interesting- Yeah.

exciting, extraordinary. And I absolutely do believe that there is validity to every now and then experimenting, doing something different, right? But the majority of the time you need to be just posting the shit that your people care about and a lo- or your people need to know, especially a new person who has never heard from you before and has not been able to see your most essential posts and essential education that you posted last year. You need to give those people a fresh and new opportunity to see that side of you, to get that education, to get that value from you, right?

And so you actually posting the same thing just a different way maybe, or talking about the same thing just a different way many, many, many times is actually your job. You don't want to be posting something extraordinary and experimental every single time you post. And you need to stop letting that hold you back. I would even go as far as to say go to a post that you did a year ago, and if you thought that it did well or the content of it did well, there was value in it, take that same value and just repackage it slightly and just post the same damn thing now.

I promise you- 100%. it's not that deep, right? And that's exactly what we want you to be doing to be able to get results. You need to be able to talk about the same thing over and over and over again in different ways for a long amount of time.

Now, like I said, there is validity in trying something new and doing something exciting. I'm not saying that we shouldn't do that. I'm just saying we need to stop that misbelief from stopping us from posting. Yeah.

Just fucking post. 100%. Um, three of my favorite analogies for this are Taylor Swift, who recorded all of her own content, re-recorded it over and over again, and released it and everyone still bought it. Number two, Disney is literally remaking every movie they've ever made, like even the ones from five years ago, and they're doing well financially.

And Netflix is bringing out new series of the same reality TV shows over and over and over again because they know that it works, and these are multi-billion dollar operations that have access to the best minds in marketing, and that's what they're doing. Like, I feel like we can really learn from that. Yeah, and I think, like, to build on that, you know, you could argue, you could argue, well, they have, like, a cult following, whatever it may be, but that's exactly the point is that, like- Yeah. people who have already seen these things are the audience, the perfect audience who is buying into that stuff and is excited about it, right?

Like, that is exactly the point here. So even your existing audience who has seen this stuff before is excited to be reminded of it again. We think that because we live in our own brains, the world revolves around us, right? Yeah.

And so we are so caught up in our own experiences that we think this post that's going out there is such a big deal and there's so many things to think about around it, when in- from the other person on the other side of the screen's perspective, this is just something that they read with 30 seconds or less of their life and then just scroll right past, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Another reason why we need to be doing this consistently, because...

They're consuming this in such a short amount of time, right? Therefore, we need to give them multiple opportunities to build up that trust in such- when you have such a short amount of time to be able to compound the amount of time that they've actually consumed from you, right? So great analogies, Jodi. Thank you so much for sharing that.

Think the last thing I'll say here is, of course, this takes energy. It takes labor. I do not think that there's any, you know, case in which I disagree with the fact that when you're a full-time hairstylist and you go home and you have to worry about this shit, it is not fun in any way, shape, or form. For the person listening to this, and if you're listening to this podcast, I'm gonna assume that you are- you are shooting for or you're already in the top 10% of stylists, right?

Like, that's where you wanna be. You wanna be well beyond the $35,000 a year average of a hairstylist in the United States, right? For you, that's the- that's why you're taking this business seriously. If you didn't want to get to those places, you would just let your business coast, right?

Like, you would just not do all this shit, you would just not post on social media, and maybe you'd get along just fine, right? Maybe you would just stick with the $35,000 to $40,000 a year. There's nothing wrong with that amount of income if that is comfortable and good for you and you're happy with it. But I'm assuming that you wanna go well and be- well above and beyond that, and that's the reason why you're posting in the first place, right?

So, can you name anybody who has gotten extraordinary success by not doing extra shit even when they had the full-time job or they already did so much, right? They had to work for it. They had to do something a little bit extra. And if you...

And the whole point is, is so that way, maybe you build your demand so much, you're able to raise your prices enough that then you have less working time behind the chair to be able to focus on growing the business. But it's gonna take you short-term sacrifice for long-term gain, right? Now, this is your opportunity listening to this right now, my friend. If it's not worth it for you, that it- you get to decide that for yourself, you know?

But I would say, as somebody who has done the damn thing myself, somebody who has freaking been full-time behind the chair, and I have stayed up extra late working on the business behind the chair, dealt with the posting on a consistent basis, and have gotten to the point where I was, like, really successful and scaled beyon- behind the chair, right? And where I had plenty of time to now do that business stuff, where I wasn't exhausted and it wasn't after work, it's 100% worth it. Give yourself that opportunity to try to get there by showing up and posting and doing the damn thing anyway. Now, of course, we wanna make it...

In order for you to be able to do that, it has to be at least easy or as easy it can- as it can possibly be, right? And the way that we make things easier is we create some sort of structure for it. We create some sort of system for it, and we also wanna make sure that it's something that we're confident in because a big thing that will hold us back is that overthinking. Is this going to be the right post or not, right?

We wanna just be able to know, like, I know exactly what I need to post, I know what I need to talk about to make sure that it's good posts, and then go from there. And the way that you come up with that structure is by creating an actual marketing plan, doing marketing research, and then coming up with a plan for yourself, knowing exactly the different topics that you need to hit and how you're gonna talk about them in different ways in a content form, right? So in our program, Chief Marketing Hairstylist, Modern Stylist Movement at the time of recording this, you go through market research. You go through understanding who your ideal clients are, where you're gonna show up to be able to find them, what you need to post to be able to create a connection between their pain, what they desire, and your solutions.

So that way, it's something that you can just open up. It's a tangible document. You open it up, and it just tells you exactly what you need to do, and then it takes the guesswork and the thinking and the overthinking out of it, and you're just like, "Okay, what's my- what's one thing that I can just do or say to cover this one topic very easily?" So half of the work is just the guesswork, right?

What am I actually gonna post? So we take that all away when you have a plan, a documented plan based on real data and research that you can trust and you're confident will work. Another thing that oftentimes holds people back is, well, in my salon suite, I don't have great lighting, or I don't know how to take a good photo, or I'm comparing my photos to everybody else's photos, or whatever it may be, right? Or I don't know how to make the hair look good for photos.

Trust, believe, sister. My first salon suite was this ugly 100 square foot room with no windows, disgusting overhead lighting. Like, not cute. Very hard for me to get a good picture.

Before that, when I was like really hustling to grow a clientele, I had this salon that had this, like, turquoise... No offense to you out there if you're listening to this. I'm sure you're not. Uh, they had this disgusting...

I'm so sorry if you're listening to this, Margaret. I love you so much. They had this disgusting turquoise wall paint, like all throughout the salon, and it was just not T. And then they had like a photo shoot situation, and it had their logo all over it, and it was just so ugly.

So I have been- Step and repeat. What'd you say? A step and repeat, like that logo- Yes. That's what it's called.

Yeah. That's what it's called. Yes, a step and repeat. So it had like the logo like repeated all over it, right?

Mm-hmm. Oh, ugly dude. So I've been there. Like I know how that feels, and I'm gonna validate you and say like, I want you to be posting good photos.

Like, of course you're gonna be overthinking and not posting if you don't feel like you have the setup that you need and the education that you need, knowledge, capabilities you need to post good quality shit.So, I could sit here and say, "Doesn't matter if it's not quality, just post anyway," and there is validity to that. But I'm not here to be an inspirational speaker to you, I'm here to be a business coach for you and give you actual, tangible advice that's actually gonna help you be successful. So, when ...

So, therefore, do something about it. Get the education, figure out the workaround, set up the lights and the things in your studio, do what you have to do. I would bring my clients outside in the dead of winter with snow on the ground, and I would make them pose with their hair for 30 seconds, and I would just say, "Sister friend, I'm so sorry. Your hair just looks so good and I need to photograph this.

And it will look so much better if we go outside. So are you willing to freeze for just 30 seconds with me?" They'd be like, "Fuck yeah, Hunter." And the reason why is because I made them feel special and they were excited that I wanted to photograph them.

And we'll get to that in just a moment. But education destroys fear. Knowledge destroys fear, right? And when you have that education for how you can take good pictures, which there is plenty out there, and we have tons of resources for you with guest speakers in Modern Stylist Movement.

Once you have that, you are now able to approach doing that much more confidently. You'll be more willing to do it, it'll feel less effortful, and it'll feel like you're getting more return for the time that you're trying, the time that you're spending and trying to get that good picture, right? 'Cause if you're always tak- if you, maybe you show up and you take the picture, it always looks like shit, you never wanna post it, of course you're never gonna wanna do it, right? Same, goes back to lack of results, lack of return of investment, you're never gonna wanna do it ever again.

Get the fucking education for how you can take a good hair picture, okay? And learn to- And the tools. And the tools, yeah. Yeah.

There's so much available now. And the tools and the setup, and it definitely does not have to be expensive, right? So, I mean, I mean, even the education out there is, like, YouTube videos, bro, so figure out how to take a good picture, okay? And this needs to become something just as essential as you taking somebody's credit card to pay for their service, okay?

Because another thing that holds us back and what's shared is, is that sometimes just getting the content- Mm-hmm. is something that we forget about, we feel like we don't have time for. We need to think about taking the content as, as important as the client paying you, right? That is something you would never let somebody walk out the door without doing.

You need to think about this step as just as important. You need to be able to plan your timing, your environment, your flow for being able to take content. You need to have a mosquito in the back of your ear all ... In your ear.

I don't fucking know. You have to have a mosquito in your ear always saying throughout your service that this is important. And I'll tell you why it's important and why you should have that mosquito in your ear. Of course it's to help you grow the business.

It's of course to help you have content that you can actually post on a consistent basis. I think I've made my point very clear as to why it's important for w- you being consistent on social. But on the flip side, we live in a day and age in which hair is so photographed- Mm-hmm. and it influences so many people, including your clients, and especially if you are already posting on social, your clients are thinking to themselves, "What is wrong with my hair?"

whenever you don't post their hair or photograph their hair. I have tons of tattoos. I don't really have tons of tattoos, but I have a fair bit of tattoos. And every time my tattoo artist takes pictures of my tattoos, I am going on their Instagram, refreshing for the next month, every day, 'cause I wanna see if they post my tattoo, okay?

Funny story, one time, they, I had a artist who did a, a caterpillar on me, and it was around my very first tattoo that I got. It's called, it says, "Trust the process," and it's just blown out, it looks ugly, it's an awful tattoo, okay? But the caterpillar was, like, around "trust the process," all right? And so, this tattoo artist actually posted my caterpillar, but the words were in it, my "trust the process" were in it, and a bunch of her tattoo artist friends were like, "Oh my God, that 'trust the process' is so ugly and busted and yada yada ya."

And leaving all the comments. But you know what? I didn't give a fuck because she posted my caterpillar and I was so excited about my caterpillar and I was like, "Wow. She's proud of my, b- proud of the work that she did on me.

This must be a very special and great tattoo." And that's- Right. how you should be making your clients feel, right? So, you have a missed opportunity every single time you don't take pictures of them.

Not only do you have a missed opportunity, you are actually possibly creating negative connotations and experiences. And the next time that that client is maybe gonna just dip their toes with i- in with another hairstylist, and that hairstylist takes a picture of their hair, they're gonna feel much more special than they felt in your chair, right? We even did- That's- ... in our surveys, in our surveys to clients and across America the past year, this is something that was said.

Like, "I wish the hair, I wish hairstylists felt more proud of their work with me." Oh. And so, this is a great way to make that happen, and it's a win-win-win-win-win-win-win situation, okay? Yeah.

And I'm not even gonna get in- this is not, this is a different episode, but, and maybe this should be an episode, Jodi. I'm not gonna get into, like, how to get your clients comfortable with taking a picture, how to ask them, what to pose. Let's do an- we'll, we'll do another episode about that. Do it.

But, like, it's fucking easy. Stop over-fucking-thinking it. Just act excited about it and get the person to be involved with you and make it cool, okay? Just make it fun.

Make it exciting. Act like a real, authentic human being and just tell them that you like it and you love their hair and you wanna take a picture of it, let's go freeze for 30 fucking seconds. No more excuses. You can do this, okay?

Make it fucking happen. And I'm gonna be frank-We have a really great resource for you that you can use to make this a lot easier for you. It's called the Hairstylist Template Vault. If you're a Modern Stylist Movement member, you have access to every single template that we have in there.

And we have multiple. We have, uh, social media graphics, we have social media captions, and there are tons of social media templates in there that you can take and reuse for different specialties, that you can take and from inspiration from and make your own to make it so it is even that much easier for you to come up with the ideas, but then just throw something out there to make sure that it's done, right? You don't need to worry about... Another little tip for you guys, 'cause this'll hold people back a lot of the time, the picture does not have to match the caption perfectly, right?

You can talk about whatever you want to in the caption, as long as it's not completely off from what's in the picture, but any fucking- Mm-hmm. picture of hair, you can talk about anything in the caption, right? Of course, it's better if you talk about what's in the picture, right? But stop freaking out about, "This needs to match this," right?

I oftentimes will coach, and I, it works better for myself to figure out the captions separately, batch them myself first with the captions separately, then figure out what picture or whatever's gonna go with them later. Figure out the concepts, right? And so that's what you can do with our Hairstylist Template Vault. There's so many different topics in there with the caption template that you can just start with the caption, make it your own, and then figure out what visual's gonna go w- with it.

So you can check out the Hairstylist Template Vault at the time of recording this, or whenever this is gonna come out, we're probably doing some crazy Black Friday deal about it. You'll probably know about it if you check out the show notes below, and if you check out my social media, whatever it may be. But, uh, yeah, those are all the ways that you need to get the hell over yourself and start posting on cons- consistently on social media- ... and hopefully some tangible strategies that will be helpful for you as well too.

So good. So good. You know, I just think that when you were talking about the captions, I just wanna call out, 'cause I'm sure at least half the stylists that are listening to this probably have a ton of hair photos and videos on their phones that they have not posted because they have no idea what to put in the caption, or they're not sure, they don't know what to post about. And so I feel like for whether you need to get the content or whether it's already on your phone, like, just knowing and having the tools to get the captions out there will solve most of your problems.

I agree. I completely agree. So Jodi, thank you so much. Thank you so much, my friend, for tuning into the Modern Hairstylist podcast.

Go post something on social media right now after li- after listening to this episode. Like, do it by the end of the day. Don't play around with yourself. All right?

Peace out, girl scout. Bye-bye.

End of transcript. © 2025 Hunter Donia LLC.