The 3 Types of People-Pleasing Hairstylists and Boundary-Setting Tips for Each

Hello, my friend. Welcome back to the Modern Hairstylist Podcast. So, if you guys have been listening to the podcast for a long time, or if you've just been in my world for a long time, you know that I started my entire business education all around boundaries. Like, that is really, really, really what the beginning of all of this was, because so many hairstylists told me that I had the gift of knowing exactly what to say, how to say it, to set really strong boundaries in the most professional way possible.

And throughout my journey of podcasting and educating, et cetera, et cetera, I've just felt like I have spoken about boundaries so much, that I haven't really talked about them in a long time because I felt like I already gave so many different episodes about them. But as I continuously moved through this journey of business education, and I get to talk to so many different hairstylists, I've started to recognize a pattern of three different reasons why somebody may be more of a people pleaser in their business and have a difficult time setting boundaries. And I'm all about making sure that we're offering personalized solutions, and in order to offer personalized solutions, we need to understand where the source of the problem is actually coming from, so that way we can approach with solutions that are specific to those problems, right? So, when it comes to boundaries, and when it comes to people pleasing, I truly believe, like, there are three different things that may be coming up for most people, or for different types of people based upon their childhood and their trauma, and we're bringing that into our businesses.

And obviously, that's gonna hold us back from achieving our goals and achieving the work/life balance that's possible for us. So, in today's episode, I'm gonna be going over the three different types of hairstylist people pleasers, and I'm gonna be sharing with you some mindset work that I suggest you do for whatever type you are, and then also some tangible solutions for you to be able to set boundaries, um, with a more strategic angle, all right? So, if you're ready to get into it, let's go. What's the tea, friend?

My name's Hunter Donia, industry business educator for hairstylists, but my friends just call me Hunty. Whether it be growing your clientele, making more money, or automating and streamlining your systems, in the next 20 minutes or so, you'll be hearing realistic, actionable strategies to create a beautiful career for yourself behind the chair. So, if you're ready to get into it, welcome to the Modern Hairstylist Podcast. All right, my friends.

So, like I said, we're gonna be going over the three different types of hairstylist people pleasers today. I want you, after this episode is over, to DM me and tell me which one of these you are. Now, I don't think that necessarily you have to only be one. I think some of us could be all three of these, or two.

Um, however, I definitely believe that one of these is going to be the most prominent for you at least. So, I want you to DM me on Instagram @hairbyhunty, and let me know which one you believe you fit into, and if I hit the nail on the head or not. So, we're gonna start off with the defining first the three different types of people pleasing hairstylists. So, these three different types come from, number one, fear of losing business; number two, fear of confrontation; or number three, fear of letting someone down, or really wanting to take care of other people.

So, if you are number one, which is fear of losing business, I call you the client clinger, somebody who has a little bit of scarcity and insecurity, and really nervous about losing business or losing money or losing success. Then, we have number two, which is fear of confrontation, so I call you the peacekeeper. This is somebody who really wants to avoid conflict at all costs, and really has a difficult time having hard conversations. And then, number three is fear of letting someone down, or really, uh, enjoying taking care of other people, and that I'm going to be calling you the approval seeker, because a lot of the times when we are caring, super caring people and we go out of our way to take care of somebody else and we have a fear of letting someone down, it's actually a selfish thing that we are primally taking action upon to seek love and approval from others, right?

And so, it's really interesting how we think as people pleasers, like, we're doing it to take care of other people, but in actuality, at the end of the day, we're really are- our primal instinctual drive behind that is to take care of ourselves and to sh- and to get people to love us and give us validation that we're seeking for. So, we have, number one, the client clinger, fear of losing business; number two, fear of confrontation, so you're the peacekeeper; or three, fear of letting somebody down, you are the approval seeker. Now, I'm gonna be going through, first, the mindset behind each of these, all right? I'm gonna be going through the reason why you may have these qualities, you may be showing up with these types of fears when it comes to people pleasing, and then I'm also gonna be going over the mindset work that you could do, or the things that I would like to share with you that have helped me in all of these categories, and helped my students as well, too.

So, the client clinger. You, my friend, are very nervous about losing business. Now, this is where I feel like I show up as far as my people pleasing goes. I feel like if I'm not, you know, breaking my own boundaries and going the extra mile and sacrificing some of my own life to be able to show up for my business, then I feel super guilty about it, or I feel like everything is going to shatter and fail on me tomorrow, right?

Like, my business is gonna completely fall apart, even though I've reached a great level of success. This shows up for me on a very consistent basis, and I think what's important to consider when it comes to being nervous about, um, uh, uh, losing business when it comes to s- setting boundaries into place, is understanding that there- i- i- it is absolutely essential for you to set up boundaries in your business in order for your business to be successful. We think that if we're gonna set boundaries, then it's inevitably going to jeopardize our success, but I promise you, from teaching specifically this stuff and going through this experience myself, the more boundary that you set up, as long as you're doing it in a beautiful way that makes your client experience better, the better...... business owner you will be, the better service provider you will be, the better leader you will show up as, because you're able to take care of yourself so much more.

And therefore, you're able to take care of others better, including your business and your clients, and also the people that matter the most to you, right? There are plenty of clients to go around, right? And so let's say a boundary that you wanna set is you wanna fire a client because they really drain your energy, they just seem to be people who just does not ever be happy with whatever you do. However, you know, you need to take care of your own mental health, and you have a bunch of other clients who freaking love you, who, like, love you no matter what you do.

You could shit on their head and they would freaking leave you a huge tip and a great five-star Google review, right? But then you have this one person on your schedule who is just completely giving you anxiety and making you so nervous about coming into the chair that day. And then what you're doing is, is you're bringing in all that negative energy and anxiety, and you're subconsciously putting it into your other clients and your other experiences throughout the day or that week, right? And that is not a good thing.

It's not a good thing for business. It's not a good thing for you. It's not a good thing for when you go home and you have that type of anxious energy, and it's, like, lingering around you. That is not what you deserve, right?

And at the end of the day, once you remove that negative piece that is really draining you and harming you and your mental health, you're able to see such a clearer road and path forward. You're able to show up with more focus, clarity, and passion for what you do. Therefore, you're able to make more money, right? Because the more focused you are, the happier you are, the more energy you have, the more passion that you're putting into what you're doing, the better you are going to perform as a service provider and a leader.

For me, personally, I w- am willing to spend a lot of money on a service provider who is really passionate and happy with what they're doing. But if they're burnt out because they have a bunch of other clients who are draining their energy, then they're not gonna be able to show up 100% for me. But I'm willing to spend a shit ton of money on somebody who is getting rid of everybody else who is draining that energy, because I deserve that energy. Your clients who don't drain your energy, your clients who absolutely love you and are willing to spend a shit ton of money with you, deserve you getting rid of the ones who aren't, right?

Who are taking away from that, right? So, there are plenty of clients to go around. You remove one, you replace one with a brand new one who is so much better, who deserves your time and energy. But this becomes really difficult for us, because maybe we had a childhood in which we had, we were living out of lack, right?

We were really nervous about money, or our parents had a poor, you know, uh, uh, story around money, right? And that transferred over to us. Or maybe we've dealt with financial insecurity before. Whatever it may be, that can really be hard for you and show up in a lot of different ways.

And so I'll be sharing with you solutions for how you can show up more confidently if you are a client clinger, when it comes to you setting boundaries, in just a moment. Then we have the peacekeeper. So, the peacekeeper is somebody who really hates conflict, really hates confrontation, and is terrified of having to have these difficult conversations with people. This is normally because in childhood, maybe we've had really difficult times with confrontation.

Maybe we had parents or family members or, you know, young experiences in which people were screaming at us and yelling at us all the time, or we saw our parents fighting all the time. And confrontation has just become a tr- really traumatic thing for us. And that is very, very, very real, and shows up in so many different aspects of our business. But at the end of the day, you signed up to be a business owner.

Even if you aren't the owner of your business, maybe you are an employee s-, uh, uh, an employee of a salon, you still are in a business in which you are communicating with a on- a one-to-one circumstance, and you're building deep relationships with people. But at the end of the day, that relationship is transactional, right? Because I don't pay my friends to be friends with me, right? And so we have to make a bunch of decisions and have a bunch of difficult conversations throughout the course of our business in order to make shifts and moves forward, right?

Like, we have to raise our prices eventually. We may have to change our schedule eventually. We may have to change the procedures that we have in our business in order to match the lifestyle that we're looking to live, and the one that we deserve, right? And so therefore, we have to somehow, someway navigate the trauma response that comes up for us, or the hesitation that we have when it comes to confrontation, even if it's uncomfortable.

We have to feel that fear and do it anyway, right? There's going to be so many challenging things that you have to do. There's gonna be endless difficult conversations you're gonna have, no matter what part of business that you're in. So, my solu- my, my mindset to work for you, my friend, my, my suggestion for you to th- when you're thinking about this is to think about the fact that you can either live in the uncomfortability and avoidance of the hard conversation permanently, or you can have the short-term fear and uncomfortability and rip off the Band-Aid, have that hard conversation or set that boundary or have that confrontation, and then get to the other side of it, and then the uncomfortability and the fear is gone, right?

So, you get to choose your hard. It's hard to not have the difficult conversation. It's hard to avoid the confrontation. It's a lot of anxiety.

It's a lot of holding yourself back from what you deserve. It's going to be uncomfortable permanently, because you're not going to do anything about it. So, you, uh, that's really hard, right? What's also hard is going through the fear, feeling it anyway, and then having the difficult conversation.

That is also very hard. But it's temporary. You get to choose your hard, right? Which hard do you want, the one that's permanent or the one that's temporary?

It's up to you, my friend. I also have tangible strategy and solutions for you if you are a peacekeeper, so stick around for that. Next, we have the approval seeker. So, the approval seeker is somebody who has a big fear of letting someone else down.

This comes from our low self-esteem and need for external validation, possibly because in childhood, love and approval were conditional, right? So, like, your parents maybe would only show you love and affection and approval when you did X, right? When you did something that was something that they wanted to do, or something that they wanted to praise you for, instead of, like, giving you that love that you deserved all of the time, right? And so that's going to manifest in the way in which we show up for others, because we are looking for certain behaviors or validation from other people, instead of trying to love ourselves and find internal validation from ourselves, right?

This one hits home for me as well pretty hard. And so my mindset work, or something that I would like you to think about, is...You know, you're showing up for these people and you want them to love you, and you want to do a good job because that makes you feel like you have purpose, that makes you feel like you're showing up in the world in the way that you're supposed to, in the way that makes you feel validated, right? But here's the thing.

What about you, right? We love Suzy because Suzy is a great client and we wanna do all the things in the world for her to make her feel good so that way she loves us back, right? But at the end of the day, Suzy would fricking drop you, like, li- a- as soon as possible if you raised your price to another thing that, that you needed to take care of yourself, or if you stopped working those Saturdays, right? Because again, these relationships are transactional from both ends, right?

You would be so shocked for the people that you love that, that the clients that you would think are so loyal, that you've been seeing for so long, when you show up as the person that you need to be to take care of yourself, how they do not show up with that same energy, because again, they are coming to you for a service. They are expecting something out of you in exchange for money, right? So, at the end of the day, you need to be the only person you rely on for that validation in your business. Your business and the way that it performs is what should be giving you that validation.

That bottom line, that number, that number, in order for you to be able to live the life that you're looking for, that is what you should be searching for, and that only comes from you and your own performance and how you feel about your business, and what you define as success, right? The only person you're in competition with is yourself. And so therefore, I want you to start thinking about what you deserve, how you wanna feel when you leave Behind the Chair and go back home to your family at the end of a work day, right? What about the people that matter most to you?

I think for me, I'd rather sacrifice my business and maybe the uncomfortability of letting somebody go and people not liking me, to be able to show up bigger and better for the people who deserve my love, the people who love me unconditionally, like my family and my close friends, right? But I can't do that, I can't show up huge for them if I'm showing up so huge for these clients in my business because I'm too scared to raise my prices and I'm scared that they're gonna hate me if I raise my prices, right? You don't freaking know these people. Like, yeah, you do know these people and sometimes you know them on a deep ass level, but at the end of the day, they are not in your life, right?

They aren't these close people who at the end of the day will be there for you unconditionally. So, stop showing up so big for them and start showing up so big for yourself. And to show up big for yourself, you have to let go of sacrificing so much for these freaking clients, okay? We can totally take beautiful care of our clients.

Absolutely, you can show up and take beautiful care of your clients, but you can't do that unless you're first taking care of yourself, right? So, you can still show up and show them th- your love by showing up and giving them a massively beautiful service in exchange for the value of money that they're giving you, right? But there should be no more than that, because if the dollar ain't matching the amount that you're pouring into them, then it's not fair for you, and it's not gonna be even fair for them at the end of the day because you're not gonna be able to show up with your big, bad, beautiful energy that they deserve in exchange for that money, right? Okay, so now that I've given you a pep talk and I've defined each of these archetypes and these types of people pleasing hairstylists, I want to share with you tangible solutions for each of these.

So, like, whether you're a client clinger, whether you're the peacekeeper, or the approval seeker, I'm gonna be sharing with you tangible solutions, and these are a lot of the things that I teach within my programs. So, for the client clinger, somebody who has a little bit of scarcity mindset, who's nervous about jeopardizing the professionalism or success of their business, and therefore not setting boundaries, my suggestion to you is, is to make sure the boundaries that you're setting are set in a very professional, beautiful way that makes the client experience actually better. And when you roll it out, using client-centric language and understanding the benefits for the client. So for example, online booking, right?

Let's say that you wanna make your business an online booking only business. Like, you wanna stop pre-booking, you wanna stop te- uh, doing texts and DMs and phone calls in between the appointments, and you want everybody to book appointments online, which is a beautiful boundary to have in place. If you were to do that, and if it wasn't to make the ex- client experience better, it'd be redundant and you would lose success. Like, it would not work out well for you.

It'd piss your clients off and it wouldn't work for you either. But if you do the work that my students do in Pre-Visit Pathway to make online booking an absolutely amazing client experience, that it's easy and convenient and exciting for them to do it, then therefore you are setting a boundary that takes care of you but also takes care of the client as well, right? So, for my client clingers out there, just remember whenever you're setting a boundary, set it in a way in which you're making things more convenient for the client, because you genuinely can have the best of both worlds. And if you have to set a boundary where it's inevitably going to be more inconvenient, like for example, if you are going to stop working weekends and nights and you're gonna start working mornings and no weekends anymore, whatever it may be, then make sure you have some sort of wait list system so that way somebody can have the opportunity to get the most convenient available appointment for them.

And also be very clear in your communication as to what your hours and availability may be. Just try your best to be open and honest and show your client that you really care about them, and build systems around whatever boundary that you're creating to make it as easy and communicative, and take care of them as much as possible through that transitionOkay. If you are a peacekeeper, if you have a difficult time with confrontation and you wanna avoid it at all costs, here's my thing, and I know a lot of other educators may not agree with me, but I think that there is nothing wrong with non-confrontational communication. What I mean by that is, is, like, email or texts, all right?

Now, here's my tea. You will inevitably have to have an in-person conflict or communication situation, right? Like, inevitably, you are going to have to have difficult conversations in-person. It is what it is.

However, I believe when you are rolling out boundaries, or if you do have to have a difficult conversation one-to-one with somebody, or you, if you do have to fire a client, I don't think there's anything wrong with sending an email or a text. And here's the reason why. Although it may be, quote-unquote, "the more mature thing to do" or emotionally intelligent thing to do to have the, uh, conversation in-person, this is your fucking business, okay? I have enough emotionally maturity, you know, shit that I have to deal with in my personal life, right?

I have a lot of shit going on in my personal life in which I have to do work all the fucking time. I have to exhaust myself emotionally in my personal life. I don't believe your business is a place where you should have to do that, right? So number one, this is a fucking business.

This is not your spouse or your loved ones. This is a business, and these are clients who are spending money with you. So there's no reason why you have to have or they deserve an in-person f- conversation with you, right? Number one.

Number two, a lot of the times with my social anxiety and just with my anxiety around confrontation, a lot of the times, I will completely miss out on the things that I really wanted to say, or I will back down in the boundary that I wanted to set in, or the intention that I had because of the anxiety around it, right, or the circumstances, uh, changing as the conversation flows. So in non-confrontational communication such as email or text, I am guaranteed I can think about everything that I wanna say. I can say it the exact way I wanna say it, and not to mention, it's also recorded in writing for legal purposes, for screenshot purposes, whatever it may be, right? So there's a lot of benefits for you to do non-confrontational communication.

I don't think there's anything wrong with it as long as you actually understand how to get those things across through words in a way that will come off in the right tone, right? I have tons of templates in my education that give you great verbiage scripts and email scripts for having difficult conversations such as these, you can go to my website to check them out or DM me for more information about that, in which you can come off in the most kind way possible. Make sure that those things are client-centric. If you take the focus off of you and make the focus about the client in the way that you use words, you will il- most likely elicit a much more positive response.

Showing somebody that you care about them as you're going through and you're setting this boundary or having that difficult conversation is the best way to do it. And if you're nervous about that in-person conf-, uh, confrontation and you don't feel like you'll be able to get your words out the way that you want to, there's nothing wrong with an email or a text. Okay. And lastly, solutions for the approval seeker.

You, my friend, it's very hard for you to hold yourself accountable to following through with your boundaries, because you want people to love you, right? You will maybe have the intention of setting a boundary and not doing and not answering texts at midnight anymore. But you're in the situation and you feel guilty about it and you will end up doing it anyway. So what's really important for you to do is make sure that you're setting up systems that hold you accountable to your boundaries, something that I very much focus on and have been teaching for years in my programs.

So creating systems that hold you accountable means making it so the procedures that you have in your business are, aren't allowing you to step outside of your boundaries, right? There are things in which it makes it very easy for you to uphold your boundaries or even force you to not screw yourself over. So for example, going back to online booking only. If I set up the procedure that I am only going to book appointments online, then therefore my online booking is going to do all the work for me as far as making sure that I do not book myself outside of my working hours, right?

And I'm also not gonna be communicating with my client back and forth because the online booking is the only way that somebody can get an appointment with me. That holds me accountable to my boundaries and makes it easy for me to not screw myself over because the online booking is very easy. I know that it's set up properly, that my clients will be able to use it and book the right thing. I just send them a link and it's done, right?

The more that you can create systems that holds you accountable, the better, because it's really hard for you as a human being to stay strong in these things as an approval seeker, and having those types of systems set up will be really helpful for you. Other systems could be your client-only app that I teach you how to create within my programs in which your client can go and get all the resources that they need without having to work through you or with you so you can reduce that communication and not go out of your way for clients all the time. Another system is having a wait list. So instead of squeezing somebody in or rescheduling people or whatever it may be, or working outside of your working hours, you can have a wait list that then holds you accountable and avoi- it still takes care of your client, but avoids you having to squeeze somebody in because you feel guilty about it, because you still have a solution to offer, right?

So, for the client clinger, I want you to make sure that whatever boundary you're setting is a gr- has a great client experience tied to it, the best that you possibly can. For the peacekeeper, don't be afraid to lean into non-confrontational professional communication through email or text and make sure that it's very client-centric when you are delivering that. For the approval seeker, I want you to create systems that hold you accountable to your boundaries. All of these things are the things that I teach in Pre-Vista Pathway.

I have templates for step-by-step tutorials, et cetera, et cetera. And I will hold your hand and hold you accountable to following through with them. I have seen people absolutely transform themselves in the way that they're showing up for their business throughout our program, and it's made me very proud as an ex-people pleaser to be able to share the same experiences that I've had and the solutions that I've created with you, because we are in a very unique, intense industry when it comes to the relationships we, we create with people. But at the end of the day, you have worked so fucking hard to build this damn business.

You work so hard every single day to provide for yourself and your family. And it is a blessing that we get to do what we love and create the relationships that we get to create with our clients. But you need to take care of yourself at the end of the day, because if you don't, then what the fuck is all this for, right? Take fucking care of yourself, 'cause if you can't take care of yourself, you can't take care of anybody else.

You deserve that. So much love to you, my friend. I hope that this was a helpful episode for you. Peace out, girl scout.

Bye-bye.

End of transcript. © 2024 Hunter Donia LLC.