You’re Not A Bad Person For Making Money

Hello, my friend. Welcome back to The Modern Hair Stylist podcast. I am really excited to tackle a little bit of, like, a tough and touchy subject today. But I find that comes up very often for myself as an individual and then a lot of my students.

Particularly, I find that, like, people who are very impact-driven, people who really want to make a difference in their community, and people who are just very, like, scared of the world and maybe disappointed in the way that the world is running right now, such as myself, you know? Like, in my personal life, I actually care, like, a fair bit about politics and the economy and things like that, and I am kind of... I'm almost a little bit selective of, like, how much I bring into work with that stuff and how much I don't. Um, but I think when it's an important topic and when I see that it's affecting my communities, like within the business, I think it's important to bring those things up and face them head-on.

As scary as it may be, and as scared as I may be to misspeak or say the wrong thing, I think that it's still important that I consider that I have a platform and that I think that it's addressed, nonetheless. And so what I'm gonna do today is I'm going to try my best to talk to you about where some guilt or hesitation may be showing up for you as a business owner because of the distaste that we may have or the narratives that we may have around money and how money moves and how there's, you know... We could call it ethical capitalism, unethical capitalism, how we see, you know, billionaires and massive corporations, like, doing maybe some unethical things, and how that can kind of jade the way that we feel about ourselves, our worthiness, how we do business, the decisions that we make. And I wanna put those things into perspective because I find that it really can hold some people back.

It's a huge mindset block that can hold some people back from doing what is necessary to take care of themselves and make a business that is actually fueling their life and their wealth as they deserve to. 'Cause you listening to this, you deserve to be comfortable and safe and have the money that you need to support yourself and your family in a reasonable way. You absolutely deserve that. Every single human deserves that.

Every single person deserves to be able to have access to healthcare. They deserve to be able to have food on the table for themselves and their family, no matter what. I will just disclaim, for Jodi's sake, that a lot of, like, what I may say here today, if controversial or not, whatever, are my own beliefs and I just drag Jodi along into everything that I do. And so...

Um, so everything that I say, like, please note that, like, it's, you know, my ideas, my shit, unless Jodi says otherwise or she has her own perspectives to share. But Jodi Brown, thank you so much for being on the podcast today and keeping me on track. I appreciate you. Thank you for having me.

I'm excited. So, I also wanna preface this conversation with that... I think that when we talk about capitalism and your decision to charge people this or that and the third, um, or whatever it may be, I think that it's very important that we also disclaim that, like, I understand and we should, we should all understand that, like, identity and privilege and who you are and who you're serving very much is important, and there's so many nuances that affect everything that I'll probably talk about in this episode. And so please note that, like, I'm trying to speak in general terms, but I also am aware that, like, what I may say would be different if we were talking about particular case scenarios.

But I'm gonna try to generally get my message across without, you know, going down a million different rabbit holes. So, I think what we... Where we should start is, because these are such vastly different things, is talking about the difference between what is unethical capitalism versus ethical capitalism. Because we are all business owners here, we are all, you know, capitalists essentially.

And so what is the, what is the difference and where can we draw those lines and distinctions, in your opinion? Yes. And I hate to disclaim again, guys. I promise I'll actually get into the content.

When I t-... I did, like, my podcast episode about, like, how a Donald Trump presidency will affect the beauty industry, like, my imposter syndrome is showing up so hard. Like, just know, like, I may not be the most educated person about this stuff, right? So, I get it.

Don't come at me and take, take everything I say with a grain of salt. The difference between, you know, unethical capitalism and ethical capitalism is taking into consideration your privilege, I believe, first off, your opportunities that you're granted just because of literally who you are, versus the privileges that other people are granted or not granted because of who they are, right, with so many different factors. And also, like, trying to hoard so much more wealth that is necessary than what you actually need to sustain a wealthy, safe, healthy life, right? Like, there is no reason why any human being on this planet should be hoarding more than, like, a billion dollars, right?

Right. I just think it's like, "What the hell are you doing with this money," right? And especially when it's an amount of money that, like, you can make a huge difference in the world. And we'll talk about that in this episode, where it's like, there's nothing wrong with making that much amount of, m- amount of money if you're using it well and you're going to reinvest it back into the world and make an impact in other people's lives.

Like, that is a beautiful thing for you to be able to do as a business owner, right? Um, but I think where the problem comes in is when somebody gets to that level of wealth by exploiting other human beings, and normally that's required to get to that space, right? Like, you have to hire low-level labor, you have to import certain things from other places in which there is really unethical standards for workplaces, right? Because you're trying to make as much profit as possible, so you try to lower your expenses, which then ends up making it so there are not safe work conditions.

It makes it so people are not paid a viable living wage for the things that they just absolutely essentially need to live a healthy, fulfilling life. And I think that that's where unethical capitalism comes in, where it's like you could afford to take care of these people, right, with plenty of safe margin.'Cause that's the other thing. It's like, I get, like, wanting to protect your margin.

Like, a business has to be healthy in margin in order to exist, in order to progress. Like, in order to have a platform to be able to help anybody at all, like, you have to protect your margin, you have to have reserves. But, like, if you have a stupid amount of margin in which you could be taking care of the people who are literally building wealth for you, right? Yup.

I think that that's where we can kind of step into unethical, uh, territory. On the flip side, I think, like, ethical capitalism is the opposite of that, right? Like, you are paying the people who are putting the success of your company on their backs. You are serving them and paying them and giving them a beautiful space in order to make a living, right?

And it's viable and it's, like, healthy, and you are listening to your people for what they need. You're treating everybody with what they need to, uh, accommodate them to be able to do their job well. And you aren't just hoarding all the money to yourself, right? In an- in a ridiculous way.

And that's where this conversation kind of takes a turn to, how does this relate to us as a beauty industry? Exactly. I was talking to Jodi before we were getting into this, and, like, I feel like there's no circumstance in which you, my friend, should let these concepts or your distaste for how money moves in our society, there's no circumstance in which you should let that stop you from making the decisions that you need to make to make a better business for yourself, unless you are getting to the point in which you are franchising out multiple locations or you have multiple locations in general, where you're reaching, like, high, high, high revenue numbers because of multiple human beings who work under you, right? Correct.

Um, you're hiring out a ton of different labor. You have a lot of different employees. Like, I think that, at that point, that's when we can start to be like, "Okay, we have to really think about how we are doing this in a very ethical way," right? Correct.

Because you are directly affecting other people's income. Right. And the difference between that and the majority of people listening to this podcast, minus salon owners with maybe one, two employees, whatever it may be, or multiple employees, is that you are the only person who you are directly affecting your income. Right.

You aren't affecting your clients' income by charging them what you need to charge them to be able to run a profitable business and to be able to take care of your business and yourself. You're not affecting their income. You may affect what's in their bank account at the end of the day, but that's none of your damn business. It's none of your damn business.

And this person sitting in your chair is trying to survive, and you probably want them to do what they need to do to survive, work where they need to work to survive. And you, as well, as a human being, especially if you have a fucking family, you have to do what you have to do in the society that we're in, in order for you to thrive and survive and to be healthy and afford the things that you need to afford to keep going. And then furthermore, make an impact and do things ethically and change the fucking world, if you would like to, right? Yeah.

And I think what ends up happening is that we get so scared of raising our prices, we get scared of making our services inaccessible to our community because we start to charge higher prices, we start to be the h- the most expensive person in the area, especially for my niche down stylists out there. Like, when you feel like you are the only person, one of the few people that a lot of people can find a solution within, you feel like you have a lot of responsibility on your back, right? But at the end of the day, and I, and I, I get nervous saying this, and please know, like, I think there's, you know, a flip side to this. At the end of the day, getting your hair done by a beauty professional is a luxury, right?

Yeah. Like, it is a luxury. Like, especially in today's day and age, where we have YouTube, we have TikTok, like, we have... And there's plenty of, like, very cheap and accessible solutions for your clients to be able to do things and figure things out the way that they need to to be able to get the services done that they need to get done, whether that be on themselves or there's plenty of budget salons and things like that that will get the job done in one way or another.

At the end of the day, it's just hair. And on the flip side of that, just my caveat, and this is where I said I get s- nervous to say this, is I get that hair is something that's very sacred and important to a lot of people, and so don't get it twisted, but I do believe visiting a service provider at a certain... Who is at a certain skill set and level, right? Is a luxury, and it's a nonessential luxury, right?

'Cause you can go somewhere for a low price and get the bare minimum for what you need to be presentable in one way or another. Like, that is possible for the majority of individuals. Absolutely. And I think, like, it's really important to underscore that making a good living and being comfortable financially is not the same thing as hoarding profits and having a negative impact on the world.

Like, they're not the same. They do not correlate. And I think there's a lot of that guilt that people feel for making a great living, which I completely understand as well, but I do think it's like, it is... They are not the same thing.

100%. And I think it is uniquely hard for us as beauty professionals to confront these things, because we create these personal relationships with these people. Yes. Like, it's not...

It's really easy for, like, a board of, of directors for a company to say, like, "Let's raise these prices," because they don't see the indiv- they don't speak to the individuals that they're impacting, right? Where with what we do, like, we personally create these relationships. We hear from these people every single day, like, what their realities are. We love them, right?

And I think that it makes d- us doing our damn job, which I've been saying this a lot recently, it, which our job as business owners is first and foremost to protect your business. Yes.Yeah. Like, that is your role as a CEO, is to protect your business, right?

And so, because we have these personal relationships, and because also we're just in an industry in which we are not seen as people who normally have to think this hard and do these, this hard work, we are so underestimated, and we're, we're almost put into a box in which we feel, we're made to feel as if we don't deserve more, right? We have these unique factors that are up against us as far as making the things that we need to do that are already hard outside of our industry 10 times harder because of what we do behind the chair. Right. And I don't want, maybe, 'cause, and by the way, I'm speaking from very, this is a very personal perspective.

Like, I s- I battle this all the time, which is why I wanted to bring it up today. Yeah. I battle my own feelings about this, especially becoming, like, an employer, right? Like, I've had to go from, like, just being by myself to employing individuals, right?

Mm-hmm. I have the personal battle of, like, of, like, am, am I an ethical employer? Am I paying this person enough? Am I putting too much on this person, right?

Am I giving them what they need to, to be able to do this sustainably? And I am overthinking with that stuff all the time, and it makes my job making decisions as a CEO really hard, right? Yeah. And I have to do a lot of mindset work, and also just reality checking that I am not Jeff Bezos, right?

And I'll never be Jeff Bezos, maybe, possibly. And if I did become Jeff Bezos, then I would be fucking curing world hunger. Like, I would be- So. Go ahead.

I think that's like, let's speak on that for a second, like, because the fact that you're listening to this, and you're even thinking about this conversation, the fact that you, Hunter, are, like, bringing forth these ideas and these thoughts, like, what would the world look like if more money were in the hands of people who thought in this way? Exactly. Like, it would look like a much better place. I mean, particularly even for our industry as well, too, because you need to have money in order to do extracurricular things that then make an impact.

Of course. Not even, let's, actually, let's not even get to the extracurricular again. Yeah. You just need to have money to fucking open a business to be able to make impact at all.

Absolutely. Like, if you wanna serve people in the way that you uniquely, as, uh, as, as we uniquely do as an industry, which, uh, what we do is so powerful, right? If you want to even have a business that can even do that, you have to be profitable. Like, you have to be able to afford your business so that you can afford your life, so that you can exist safely and healthfully as a human being.

Right. And so you need to do what you have to do if you ever want to make an impact in the world, continuously make an impact on your clients in any way, shape, or form. You have to do hard, scary things that may not feel great all the time, right? There's so many extracurricular things that maybe we would love to do, such as discounting in one way or another, to be able to, uh, make a service more accessible, maybe to a particular demographic, um, maybe just to a general income level, whatever it may be, right?

You need to be able to have margin in order to make those impact-driven sacrifices and decisions. Yes. Yes. You need to have a platform for you to be able to do that, right?

And that requires you raising your prices, having clients who are willing to pay you high prices to be able to have the money and the resources, and even the time- Yeah. to be able to do those extra really beautiful, impactful things. Yes. And I think it's so important to underscore here, like, in this part of the conversation that, like, when it comes to smaller business owners, right?

When you are before that stage where you have multiple locations and a ton of staff and all of those things, is that your buying power and your labor resources are gonna be vastly different. And so therefore, your prices will need to compensate for that in order for you to be able to facilitate the things that Hunter is talking about, which I think we should get into some of those tangible things and speak to, like, how, you know, we talked about a little bit before we hit record, if you are serving certain communities where you want to create more accessible opportunities, what can that look like once you have dialed in your business and you are profitable and you want to create that space for people? 100%. Like, so, um, maybe you guys have seen, like, a sliding scale haircut day or a sliding scale services day, right?

So this is something that you can maybe do on a regular basis. Maybe it's not weekly, maybe it is weekly, whatever you want to do, right? But again, you need to be able to have, like, a steady foundation of other normal days of work to be able- Right. to support you doing this other thing, right?

Regardless, you could have a sliding scale day, where maybe for particular demographics, or maybe the demographic doesn't even matter to you. Maybe it's just, like, anybody who can get in here. I think, you know, depending on, depending on who you are, what privilege you have, I think maybe taking identity into consideration is important. For example, like, one time, I volunteered my time for, like, um, uh, like, a one-to-one coaching mentorship situation program, and I got into it with the assumption that these people would be people who didn't, who wouldn't be able to pay for coaching, right?

Right. And I got paired up with somebody who was, like, absolutely had the same privilege, maybe even more privilege than I even had, right? Who was in a space in which they were able to pay me for normal coaching. Right.

So then, in that case, you are taking away a spot, right? From somebody else who would otherwise not be able to, who I would- Mm-hmm. be much more willing to volunteer my time to- Right. mentor for free, right?

And so, you know, adding those parameters I think is a good idea, you know, taking into consideration your privilege and who you may w-, uh, who may need those opportunities who would otherwise not have access to them. Right. Um, and, uh, you know, being, making it like a minimum you have to pay this, possibly, and you get to choose what you pay, right? Right.

Or something like that. Um, another thing that I've done personally, I think which is so cool when you have a platform, which again, like, you have to do what you have to do as a business owner. You may have to do things that may not feel great, or you love all the time, such as marketing yourself and selling yourself, and selling things in order for you to have a platform, right? Of people who you can lean into, who, that can then support you in your mission, that they may be aligned with.

So for example, like, I did a raffle basket, and I've talked about this before, I believe, on the podcast, but I've done a raffle basket where, like, every single one of my clients, they all, like, paid into a ticket, right? And it was a basket full of products and, like, a free whatever else, or ... And they, I chose, like, a random winner, right? For whoever got this basket.

But 100% of the proceeds went to a organization that I cared about. Mm-hmm. And this particular organization was for trans people basically to get transportation to doctors' appointments for gender affirming care. So that's something that I really gave a fuck about, right?

And it's something, and I didn't even necessarily have to, like...... exchange my labor in order to, like- Oh. do something. I'm, like, not doing anybody's hair for free, right?

Right. I'm not, I'm not doing free labor per se, but I am collecting my community of these people who are privileged- Mm-hmm. who can pay a lot of money, who believe in the same things that I do, and I'm helping them make an impact, and I'm helping my business make an impact, uh, with the platform that I've created. Right?

And I think that's really fucking badass and really cool, and a super easy, simple way that you can raise some money to put towards something that you care about. Absolutely. And like you said before, like, these are the things that are possible because you put aside that discomfort, and you were able to build a profitable business, and I think that's, like, again, it underscores the importance of people who care about our world and about other people, like, building these platforms and building sustainability for themselves. Totally.

And the last thing I'll say, like, kind of similarly, but on the flip side as far as, like, what you can do, is taking into consideration, like, your privilege, your experience, versus the other person who you may be serving, and maybe you don't charge this person the extra bowl of color, or the extra thing that you would do for them, or maybe you do discount it, whatever it may be, but, like, there's many... And again, this is where, like, the specific identities and how this conversation is very nuanced comes into play, but it's, like, taking into consideration, like, what you have access to versus what this person has access to, and, like, also how this person's identity is just going to make them penalized for who they are if you do charge them more, then I just don't think that that's very cool, and I think it's not worth the, quote unquote, like, "charging your worth" or charging for every single s- case scenario, you know? Right. Like, I- I say this all- and I say this open and honestly with, like, the pricing conversation, which we're gonna be talking to you a lot about pricing in these upcoming episodes.

Like, sometimes I just don't think it's worth it to charge for extra hair, or, like- Mm-hmm. extra product, whatever it may be. Like, if it's truly, like, a massive margin, and this person has similar privilege to you, right? Then, like, okay, yeah, charge them for it.

But in certain circumstances, like, is it super necessary? Like, are you actually in a space in which, like, you are so unprofitable that this little bit of margin of difference actually matters that much to you, right? Where it may, like, affect how you feel about it, and then how the client may perceive it, and how that's fair to everybody else who's coming to see you, right? Like, it's just, like, a, again, very nuanced conversation, and I am also just going to caveat every single thing that I said.

There's probably, like, no right or wrong, and there's so many different things to take into consideration if you want to put into this place any of those strategies or make those decisions. But at the end of the day, like, the beauty of being a business owner is that you get to make those decisions. Exactly. Like, that's really freaking cool.

Yeah. But you can't make any decisions if you don't have resources, right? Yes. If you don't have, like, the leverage to be able to do those things with full control and- Mm-hmm.

with being able to take on risk or being able to take on more expenses or whatever it may be. Yeah, no, I completely, I completely agree, and I think that, like, for me, I think one of the things, my two cents on this is that having a business in which you are struggling, in which you are stressed out, in which you are, you know, um, you know, struggling to make ends meet does not inherently make you, like... M- it's- it's not unethical to be profitable. Like, that guilt for the way that money moves in the world and the way that things are, like, it is not on you.

Period. Don't put that on yourself, I guess- Yeah. is the message. Yeah.

And do good where you can Uh, don't put the same, you know, distaste that you have for some fucking asshole billionaire, uh- Yeah. don't put that on yourself, because you're not that person. You're not affecting people in that same way, and you're not hoarding wealth in that same way. Right.

And so you deserve, just like anybody else, to do the things that are necessary in order for you to live a healthy, happy life and to continuously make a big impact in your community and make a difference in the world. So- Got it. that is the overall message here in today's podcast episode. Thank you so much for tuning in to Modern Hairstyles podcast.

If you have any thoughts about today's episode, I'd really love for you to DM me @hairbyhunty on Instagram. Um, I would be open to hearing whatever you have to share with me, and I hope this was helpful for you. So much love. Peace out, grills out.

Bye-bye.

End of transcript. © 2025 Hunter Donia LLC.