Hair Hero
Welcome to "Hair Hero," the ultimate podcast for hairstylists seeking inspiration, knowledge, and growth.
Join your host, Ryan Weeden, founder of the 8-figure brand Masters of Balayage, as he shares his journey from being flat broke to becoming massively successful, all through the power of hair.
Each week, Ryan engages in intimate conversations with industry leaders, icons, and trendsetters, uncovering their secrets to success and sharing actionable insights.
Tune in to elevate your craft, fuel your passion, and become the hero of your own hair journey. New episodes drop every week—don't miss out!
Hair Hero
Why You Should Always Come First (w/ Elizabeth Faye)
Discover the transformative world of the Hair Love Retreat with our extraordinary guest, Elizabeth Faye, founder of Hair Love University and the Hair Love and Vitality Project. From soul-nourishing wellness activities like cold plunging and hiking to insightful business education through masterminding and panels, Elizabeth reveals the magic behind her retreats. Experience how these events foster deep community connections, personal growth, and an immersive learning environment that includes signature rituals, ceremonies, and even dance parties under the stars.
Elizabeth's own journey is a testament to the boundless opportunities within the hair industry. Growing up amidst challenges, she found her calling and flourished, moving from a salon owner to a full-time educator and founder of an education company. Through her story, we explore the myriad career paths available, highlighting a life-changing moment that set her on a path of growth and fulfillment. This narrative underscores the transformative power of the industry and its potential to change lives.
Health and well-being are cornerstones of Elizabeth's success, and she shares how prioritizing self-care and stepping away from the relentless hustle culture can lead to sustained personal and professional success. Learn about the creation of the Vitality Project and the profound role of breathwork in maintaining balance. Elizabeth offers practical tips on using breathwork to manage stress, improve sleep, and enhance creativity. Join us in this heartfelt celebration of mutual appreciation and support within the cosmetology industry, and discover how embracing wellness can lead to a more harmonious and successful life.
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Go to www.mobmastersacademy.com and use code MYLIFE at checkout.
Be Bold, be Brave, be You.
Thanks for you listening.
-Ryan
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Hey everybody, welcome back. I have got an incredible guest here today, which you probably know who it is if you're reading the title of this episode before you listen to me, but if you don't, she is someone that has a podcast, a very popular podcast in our hair industry that I've had the pleasure of being on twice, which, for those of you that have been on a podcast, you know how nice it is to be invited to a podcast. But I was actually invited back because we just had more to talk about, and then I was invited also to be an educator at her retreat. This is none other than the amazing Elizabeth Fay, who is the founder of the Hair Love and Vitality Project, founder and CEO of Hair Love University, fellow podcaster and industry thought leader, speaker and coach. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:I'm so excited to be here, yay, and I get to be at your retreat.
Speaker 1:I know, isn't it nice to actually be on the other side of the microphone? I mean, you have a microphone, but you're not that one that's responsible for asking the great questions. Yes, no it is nice to be on the just the easy side of the podcast.
Speaker 1:Right, Right and yeah, you're right. We've got two events, yours and mine, the hair love retreat, and then a mob hero event in San Diego, which are one uh, they're not even a weekend apart, they're. They're consecutive weekends. So I'm going to, I'm going to be at yours and then you're going to be coming to mine just several days later, not even less than a week later. Uh, and I'm so excited. Well, first of all, I've never even um been to St George, right? That's where I'm going, that's where you're Southern Utah, yep.
Speaker 1:I've I've heard about it. I've seen posts and videos and shots of it. It looks absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 2:It's so pretty and it looks like we're near Zion National Park. So it's like those big red rocks and if you've ever seen photos of, like you know, Southern Arizona or Utah, it looks like that. So we're near Zion National Park and so it's so, so, so pretty.
Speaker 1:It kind of looks like Star Wars land, like it's just cool. That's amazing. And what should I expect there? I mean, I know it's. I see a lot of yoga. I see a lot of it's health and wellness driven. Um, I know we're going to. There's going to be some, some technical education as well, some business education. Um, it seems like a very Zen, peaceful experience. Is that? Am I on the right track?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a life changing experience. We have signature things we've done every year, every time, that are kind of like signature hair love experiences. We were founded in 2017. So we've done a lot of events in this way, and hair love has always been broken into our three pillars wellness, beauty and business and so we have a day for each of them, and everything's community-driven.
Speaker 2:Our learning environments are different than other learning environments. That's something like we really pride ourselves in is like really cultivating rooms where transformation can happen. That's why we choose our certain venues or the way that we do things and structure things. We have something called escape to learn as one of our learning concepts. So we really want to take you out of your element, put you in different types of situations and cultivate like the safe playground for learning, for asking questions, for growing, for masterminding. So you know, our first day is all about community connection. It's all about intention coming together. That's like our evening. Our next day is all the wellness stuff. So that's like hiking Zion. We're going to cold plunge. We'll do like a fireside night. It's like I was telling my event planner today.
Speaker 2:I'm like it's like camp for adults, but like you know a lot of us are like 40 years old and want to be comfortable. So it's like kind of the mixture of like I want to camp but like not like in a sleeping bag, like I want like a proper cabin and a bed, but I also like want to connect with people and have bougie food, and so it's kind of like glamping, like everything has at least this year AC. We've had some years where it's like more Burning man style, but it's a little bit more like a festival. It's like more like a proper retreat or a festival, like something you'd go. You're off grid, you're out in a different place, you're really immersed fully in the experience. There's no driving to Starbucks Like. It's really is a retreat in that aspect.
Speaker 2:So that day will all be wellness. The next day is business. We'll do some breath work, but then we have business classes all day, masterminding sessions, panels. We have some signature hair love experiences that we do in the evening that are like kind of rituals or ceremonies of intention building. We have some personal development things we do every year that are kind of like people expect and come to know. And then our last day is craft focus. So it's like actual technique education and so we will have you and we'll have a few other amazing artists coming in, and then every year we have like a proper DJ festival dance party where we like just dance under the stars. You know all the things, but we we know how to throw a really good party.
Speaker 2:Um, our retreats more holistic, in the sense of like it's a pretty dry retreat, there's not like a lot of alcohol. I think we have one or two nights where we drink light, if you want to, optional, but it's like a little more health focused. Um, it's more about like being present and connecting and building relationships, going to bed at a decent hour, um, so it's, yeah, it's got like a little bit more of that vibe. It's life changing. It's a life changing experience. You get people like you coming influencers, educators, people out of school, salon owners, like just different parts of the industry come together to really support each other and grow.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. Yeah, hero, hero is. It's fun. You know, it's another very cool event, um, life-changing in its own, in its own right, um, but we have got our after party on Sunday night, after the whole thing's over, and yeah, there's, it will get bombed to open bar. That's fine. No, it's fine. No, and it's, we're just in the middle of nowhere. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2:like it wouldn't even be safe, like. So I think it's just different. We actually have some people coming to both, which is so I keep telling people I'm like come here with us and then come here with us, because they'll be totally different education charted a bus or something.
Speaker 1:You jump on the bus and go that would have been fun like a party bus right, yeah right, just get the big volkswagen vans from yours to ours that would be so fun yeah, so really important question. You said there's no starbucks, so how do we caffeinate ourselves in the morning? We have a private chef who is actually.
Speaker 2:He's a celebrity chef, so literally our event planner and our chef are celebrity planners. Like our event planner does, like Brenda Burchard, events like huge biohacking and wellness events Like she's.
Speaker 2:We're small fries like compared to her clients. She just loves us and what we're doing and our chef is the same thing he cooks for like frigging, like BMW events and like Patagonia, like huge corporate events, and he actually specializes in a lot of them. They have to like cook outside, Like he had to like hike in for like Nike or these different events, like their cookers and their stuff. So he's like he owns like four huge famous restaurants down here through Zion and like Bryce and like some of the big national parks. So he's cooked for us totally off grid before he's had to build his own kitchens before and this year he's gonna love us.
Speaker 2:We have a real kitchen, but he, he does all the coffee, all the mocktails, all the cocktails, all the food like he's insane. The food is like incredible people are like I come for the food, like the food is like ridiculously good that's incredible.
Speaker 1:I can't wait to taste it so there's coffee, there's plenty of coffee, right I'm. I like the, the cocktails, the mocktails. I mean, this guy sounds legit.
Speaker 1:I can't wait great to get your love, chef sean um, I gotta ask the the most cliche question, um, that we ask pretty much any hairstylist on this show. We we've got to start there because it's about getting to know who we're talking to. It's about finding that relatability, because we're all in the journey of trying to achieve a higher level I think anybody that's listening to this show anyway, we're all trying to be the best that we can, and it's hard sometimes to look on social media and see people doing things that you wish you were doing or on stages that you wish you were on, reaching accomplishments that you maybe don't think is even possible for you. Of course, that's just the tip of the iceberg. We don't see what happens in everyday life. And are they really happy? Are they really doing these things? What did it take to?
Speaker 2:get there.
Speaker 1:So I'd like to just open up the question like how did you get started with hair? Because some people were born into it as a, as a child, you know, straight out of the womb, and and some people like me just fell into it for lack of anything else to do and I'm just and then fell in love with it that way. So I would love to hear your story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I love that when, before I share my story, I think, wherever your journey is taking you in this industry and in your life, like you said, there's so many ups and downs and curves and redirections in everybody's lives and I think that we, just when we start to really embrace those and see that it's life is the journey, and nobody's gotten where they've gotten overnight, like I've been doing what I've been doing since, oh, nine, like you know, like it's been a compounding effect and sometimes the little um efforts we put in, or the risk we take, or the failures, the wins, they add up over time and so, um, you know, I think, just trust it. Like I never thought the things I'd be doing, like I didn't even desire to do these things, nor did I even think they were options and some of them weren't. I made them options and it's just like you only have the vision for what you can see. So I always think, like just do the next right thing, the thing that's calling you. Like take those steps forwards, go to the events, meet the people, take care of that client. Like show up for your family and like it all adds up and it's it's gonna be beautiful. But you know, for me the hair industry has been such a saving grace, honestly, and it has afforded me opportunities that someone like me would have never have had, and I think our industry is one of the most abundant industries in the world. I think it's one of the best industries in the world.
Speaker 2:I think there's so many places to go in it. You could get into. I mean, you could be a salon-centric rep and sell product if you like sells. You could own a distribution. You could own a chain of salons, you could own a spa. You could be a teacher at a school. You could own a school. You could be an artist, you could start a hair podcast, you could do a hair course or five of those things, and you could start a product line. You could specialize in the health and wellness side of hair or be a barber or extensions. I mean, there's so much stuff you can do. It's just an endless possibilities here, and I think that we get to be artists, we get to serve people and you can make it be a side gig. You can make it be an empire and you can make it be a side gig, you can make it be an empire or you can make it be a career. I think it can be flexible with seasons of your life, like when I owned a salon I had girls having babies making what people make, full-time working, and they were making it two and a half days a week. And then I had girls working five days a week making like what doctors make. Like the possibilities are crazy and that's just some of the like traditional possibilities that we think of. So I just want to say that is, I've had the blessing, the opportunity and the honor of being in a lot of sides of our industry and I think they're all great, like I just think they're different and it's cool and I look forward to new sides I get to be in as I grow.
Speaker 2:But, um, but my background, just a little bit of context. I've been a licensed cosmetologist. I am a licensed cosmetologist. I started in the industry in 09. I was a hairdresser behind the chair for 10 years and obviously I'm going to share some timelines. They are overlapping timelines.
Speaker 2:I was a salon owner for seven and I was a beauty school teacher for four. I was a part-time, at night learning leader at the Paul Mitchell schools. Um, that's how I got. My start was in the Paul Mitchell side of things. I was with Redken for six years of that. I've done a lot of independent education, corporate education, been at commission salons, owned a salon, had it be a few different business models. So I've tried out a lot of things you know to just, and I've liked them all. Some I liked better than others.
Speaker 2:That's a little bit of my background. What I do now is I am a full-time educator. I've been in full-time education for five years but I was educating while also doing ownership and being behind the chair for many years. And I run Hair Love. Like you said, hair Love is an education company for the beauty industry and I speak, I coach, I host retreats. So that's what I do now. Long story short. But I am a licensed cosmetologist and so much of my work is dedicated to the betterment of our industry and what we do. But long story short, I got into the industry and, ryan, you haven't heard my founder story.
Speaker 1:No, I haven't.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm excited to tell you it's just kind of a wild story.
Speaker 1:Um. So I got into the industry because I was a troubled kid, I was such a kid, yeah Like the worst of the worst.
Speaker 2:So I had a crazy childhood. Um, I ended up living with different families from 12 years old to 16. And then I was a high school dropout at 16. I was in a different school almost every year Drugs, drinking. I grew up in Vegas Really easy to get in a lot of trouble.
Speaker 2:I was like hurting myself, didn't always want to be here, like I was really trying to like find my way in life. So I had just a really, really rocky childhood and then I had a really rocky teenage years and in that span of that time I had a school I was going to that I was at to hopefully get some help and I hated it so much. I wanted to get kicked out and they had a rule that if you had distracting, like bright colored hair or funky hair, you would get expelled. So I ended up stealing box color from Walmart and making my hair as distracting and like scene cut as I could. Obviously I'm not a hairdresser at 12. Like it does not look good, but it was plenty of distracting and I got expelled and so I was waiting for my parents to pick me up and I had a woman hand me a business card and this was one of those moments. I have so many moments like this in my life and I know everyone listening does too, and I think of these moments like the dots on our star map of our life. If that thing wouldn't have happened, I wouldn't be who I am today, be it good, be it bad, be it you lost a job, you brought your heart broke, or good things. If I wouldn't have met that mentor whatever that was, or gone to that event or said yes to that, taking that risk, I wouldn't be who I am. And this was one of those moments for me. And she tapped me on the shoulder, handed me a business card and it was for a hairdresser and it said the Robert Cromey Salon, mandalay Bay. And for those of you who don't know who Robert Cromings is, he's kind of like a big Sassoon figure in the Paul Mitchell world. He's an iconic platform hairdresser, famous, famous salon. It means nothing to a 12-year-old right. So I'm like Robert Cromings Salon, okay. So I book an appointment and I go to the salon and you will meet my father at Hair Love. He was a blue collar worker, did welding for the city all day.
Speaker 2:During the day leads yoga at the ymca. At night um is part of the mormon church and leads use of youth events. And we live in the hood growing up, so our church was not like a utah mormon church. It was like a, where people go because they don't. They can't buy food and their kids need help. So my dad does a lot, a lot of charity work and he leads nature walks and hikes on the weekends. He's like a proper mountain man. He can tell you how to use anything medicinally to help you. So that's the guy who wears either a blue jumpsuit or overalls. He takes me in his overalls to the Mandalay Bay. We go in. I'm like, yes, queen.
Speaker 1:This is where I belong.
Speaker 2:And my dad's like this is not where my credit card belongs. And so I get my hair done. I love it. My dad is livid about the price of it. He's like you're never coming back. This mandatory color correction was not in the budget and I'm like I will do whatever it takes to pay you back and I'm coming back. So I'll do whatever it takes to pay you back and I'm coming back. So I'll do whatever it takes to earn back the money. So I do that for six months.
Speaker 2:Six months later I come back to the salon with a wad of cash and I put it on the table and I'm like okay, brandon, what can I get for this much? And he's like laughing. He's like where the heck have you been? What is this? And I'm like this is my dad is mad at you and I had to work really hard to pay him back and come back here. And he's like I'm going to go chat with your dad. So he has a talk with my dad and they both come back and they have a deal for me. If I would come back to the salon with better grades on a report card, he would do my hair complimentary moving forward what.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's incredible.
Speaker 2:And I said yes, and he did that for me until I was 16.
Speaker 1:So then, were you, were you able to get back into school? Um, so I went to a different school.
Speaker 2:I still was a troubled kid. It didn't fix everything but, it was a way that I was willing to try a little harder. I was willing to do something a little bit more and I would get my haircut, bring my report card, get my haircut, do the report card for years. And at 16, I ended up dropping out of high school and I said, hey, I don't have a report card today. I can't do school anymore, like I just can't do this. And he said, how about a job? And I became a hair assistant.
Speaker 1:Brandon, this, this, this hero named Brandon. Who is this guy?
Speaker 2:So he's actually not in the industry anymore, but he's just as sweet. He was like an angel in my life and the man who actually managed the Robert Cromey and Salon. His name was Kelly Cardenas and he ended up opening up his own salon and he was my first boss and Kelly Kelly was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, kelly was my boss at 16, so I worked for kelly for three years and he made me tell this story on stages around the world. Um, and that was how I got into the industry. They were like, hey, what I'll tell you what? Less drugs and you have a job.
Speaker 2:And I went and got black clothes, I showed up to work, I started working for free and for tips and it turned into a full career. And, um, that was the start of my career and it really taught me from the beginning the power of mentorship, the power of being in the right rooms, the power that we have to change our own lives and the power of what we do. Because what was it that changed my life? It wasn't the haircut, it was the way I felt in the salon. It was the space that was held for me. So that's been our whole message is hairdressers changed the world, and we know this because the hairdresser changed my world and you are part of the ripple effect and what you do is bigger than what you do. It's how you make people feel. You make people feel heard, seen and loved. And when you are phenomenal at what you do, when you run your business like a business, when you take care of yourself and you're well, you get to do the life-changing thing that no one else can do in the way that you do it, and that's really what we do. At the end of the day, we think we're in beauty, we're in people, your business is people, and so that's been my message for years. It's evolved from me teaching hair to then me being a business coach, to then me being self-care, but it's the same. At the end of the day, it's when I help someone in this industry. I know that I'm a part of a ripple effect because I know how much the impact society and their community is one person at a time, and it's a big deal. And then you work with the salon owner and they impact their own team and their team impacts their entire community and it's just. It's just a beautiful thing. And so that's my founder story. That's. It's kind of a crazy story. It's literally been a threat in my life.
Speaker 2:Um, I've just been like, how can I make people feel heard, seen and loved? And that's what my whole Ted talk I did a Ted talk about it and it's the global idea of you know what beauty professionals do, but like, how can we learn something from that? Like, why do people trust their hairdresser so much? What is that thing? And it's the way they make someone feel. And it ends with the global idea of how can we build organizations and companies where people feel heard, seen and loved. How can we parent and create, you know, a home where people feel heard, seen and loved. How can, whatever you do in the world, can you realize that what you do changes the world one person at a time, and that we all have the power to make an impact by the little things we do? And so that's, you know, that's that's what.
Speaker 2:I do. I just help people change their lives so they can keep changing lives.
Speaker 1:Well, I love how the ripple effect makes all the sense in the world and that your message and your documentary about how haird hairdressers, your ted, talk, how they changed, how hairdressers can change the world, um, because it, well for it, changed your world, right, and then you're helping to change the world so that ripple effect continues to to turn into like a wave, right? Yeah, it's a tidal wave that just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Yeah, it creates ripples along the way, um, and you mentioned that when somebody goes to a hairdresser, there's just that connection, that relatability for the person in the chair versus the person doing your hair, where you don't really get that connection anywhere else.
Speaker 1:There's no real corporate boundaries. You know you're not talking to somebody in a suit across from a desk. It's like you can physically touch and hang out and get to know them. You can't have that same relationship with a doctor or um.
Speaker 2:I don't know somebody that works at a restaurant, because there's just not this, it's not the same therapist like none of the people in your life like it's different it's just like we do something really cool right, that's, that's rad, that's rad.
Speaker 1:And Kelly, did you know? Kelly's going to be a hero.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I did see that. Actually, that's funny yeah.
Speaker 1:I became good friends with Kelly because he's not too far away from me he's just down the street from me and we connected a couple years ago.
Speaker 2:Oh really, that's funny.
Speaker 1:I know, and he said no way that guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did know that and I didn't think of that because I saw it on a graphic a while ago and I was like, oh, that's awesome yeah.
Speaker 1:He's the nicest, just sunniest guy you'll ever meet.
Speaker 2:No, matter what's going on in his life, he always finds the sunshine and I love that.
Speaker 1:And that's just so cool that he was your first mentor.
Speaker 1:And then this journey into health and wellness is I assume it started stemming from your childhood where you weren't taking care of yourself.
Speaker 1:You were going through a really hard dark time and were lost and and and you don't. Obviously it's a tough time to be going through that and a lot of teenagers go through that. I had my own share of darkness at that time and into early college, and we don't ever want somebody to feel that way, because we know how dire it feels, how depressing, how sad of an existence it is when you don't have a mentor or somebody to pick you up when you're down. And that's another reason why I like to give back and help other people grow and guide people toward the light as opposed to, you know, pull them away from from from darkness and negativity. And then you have you just recently launched one of the most you probably say one of the most incredible projects of your life, right, the vitality project and and that's based on putting health and wellness into the spotlight, because we're so focused on skills training in cosmetology school and then beyond.
Speaker 1:You need to get better at cutting, need to get better at coloring, and that's where the focus has been, not on the actual health and wellness of ourselves. So a lot of us are burnt out and we're pouring out from an empty glass and we have nothing left, and so I would love to hear more about how that stemmed, how that idea came about and where it's going right now and in the future.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great questions. Well, you know we've been doing a lot of stuff with Hair Love and Hair Love has its own crazy cool founder story for another day. But it also started as a passion project Fun fact, fun fact. But with Hair Love, we've been coaching and helping and working with amazing people like you and big brands and just to give back to the industry and hosting retreats and all the things.
Speaker 2:But really what created Vitality was I hit a point in my life where I got really sick and I worked really hard my whole life. I hustled, I burned myself out, I pushed myself past my limits for years and years and years and I just kept going and I did not put self-care at the center of anything. I was like very much like that wounded leadership of like leaders eat last kind of mentality, when like leaders need to eat first, because leaders are the ones holding up the vision and working with their team. Like you know, just a whole different approach to business I take now, but I really like for lack of a better word I coached thousands of people to hustle their faces off. Like I had, like I had girl boss stickers, like we were like the epitome of like go, go, go, never quit, never stop, never, you know. And that energy was really hard behind the chair, it was hard as a salon owner, but I just thought it was the way it was. And you know we joke and laugh about a lot of these things in our industry and have memes, and I just think, collectively, our relationship with hustle needs to change.
Speaker 2:Hustle is a tool, not a lifestyle. Hustle is a season, not a lifestyle. Hustle is a season, not a lifestyle. When it is a lifestyle, it is going to be the reason that you have a health crisis. It's like you can have 99 problems. The second, your health goes. You got one freaking problem and your health is like the lifeline. Your vitality is the lifeline of your company. If you're not well, if you can't think clear, if you can't lead, if you can't, nothing works, nothing works. And so I really was living a hustle lifestyle. I wasn't using it as a tool to start a salon. It was like I used it to start the salon, then I used it to scale the salon, then I used it to maintain the salon.
Speaker 2:When, when is the arrival point? At what point have you arrived and said I must integrate peace into how I be in the world. I must integrate flow and ease into my life and stop. I was waiting. I was waiting to get to some arrival point that I then get ease, I then get rest, I then get what I was working for.
Speaker 2:And here's the deal is success is not linear. There's ups and downs in everybody's businesses. There's years you make less money. There's years you make more money. Still in my career, this is part of being an entrepreneur, this is part of being in business, and so if you're an employee of a company, know that they go through ups and flows. So if the company is like tightening up budget or this or that, it's normal. It's part of a company. There's turnover, there's changes. Clients leave, they come, staff leaves. So Instagram changes, social media, marketing it's just life. Things ebb and flow, things are seasonal, and so I really was building and growing and then I got into coaching and teaching and owning a business and mentoring people, which is like even a deeper level of holding space, and so it really started to catch up with me.
Speaker 2:I ended up having a very serious health crisis and having to talk about it on my Instagram and ask for help, and I got so sick I couldn't even scroll on my phone and I was bedridden and I was like I'm a mom, I'm young, I can't. I run a company. This is a problem. And at the same time, my life partner, who is now my husband, has struggled with serious depression. I've had a lot of people close to me have very serious mental health challenges. He hit a rock bottom and you know a suicidal ideation and some really, really serious things and his SSRI stopped working. So if you don't know what that is, it's the medicine that it can be, a medicine you take when you're feeling depressed. That keeps you here on earth. Ideally is the plan, and so it helps. You want to be here, manage those feelings, those thoughts, those emotions. And he was diagnosed as medicine resistant. That means your DNA no longer works with any of the medicine. So they put him on a few other things. He had some psychotic breaks and it was really scary.
Speaker 2:It was one of the darkest times of our entire life and it was just a moment of like. If we're not good, what's the point? If we're not happy, what's the point If our family's not okay? Why are we doing any of this? It's great and cool that I've changed thousands of lives, but if I'm not good. I don't want to do this anymore. There's no point to this.
Speaker 2:And that really was a breaking point for us, because both of us had to figure out what to do. The doctors were like you have to find an alternative route to managing your depression, because this won't work. And then I was really sick and that's really when we took our health and our healing serious. And our health is more than what we eat. It's our mental health, our emotional health, what trauma we've been carrying our whole life, the limiting beliefs we carry all of it. And I got to go on a wild journey that I'm sure I'll be on the rest of my life. But the beginning of a healing journey is kind of like insane a little bit. It can be beautiful, but, like you're seeing things, you're like, oh, this is why I do this or oh, I didn't realize that.
Speaker 2:And it ended up changing my perspective and my life so much that I started in 2020 enrolling in certifications, training, schooling, to do this work for a living. I just knew, after everything I'd seen, that I had to remodel my life. I had to remodel my business systems and structures because they were set up to have me hustling the rest of my life and that wasn't going to work being a mom, being a wife, being a human being of service to anyone for my clients, my team and that required remodeling the way that I see the world and the way that I take care of myself, and so I became a trauma-informed coach. I started learning about the nervous system and somatics and that's how we found Breathwork. Breathwork was what saved my husband's life. It's what healed so much of my physical ailments, and I just was amazed at the power of our own bodies and our nervous systems, and that's why, if you're in my world now, everything is breathwork. And if I do a keynote speech, if I talk, I have a certification company called Glow. It took over my world because I was like I can't teach the same anymore Now that I know what I know. Everything comes from a lens of understanding, transformation and our own healing and our capabilities to do that, and so it really pushed all.
Speaker 2:I was already speaking, I was already coaching, but I ended up retiring a lot of my old talks and a lot of my old programs and rebirthing through the framework of what I knew now, and we started getting insane results Like people's lives were changed before. But they're like being transformed, like on every level, and we started getting amazing results. And you know, my corporate gigs turned into corporate wellness gigs and my keynote gigs turned only motivational or leadership-based and heart-centered, leadership-based and I really started building wellness programs, not only for our community. But other people were like could you come in and help? In Premiere we started a whole wellness initiative and it's just doing so well and so it just started to bleed into other things and organizations and I started having people be like this has changed my life so much I want it in my salon.
Speaker 2:I wish I would have had these tools 20 years ago, 10 years ago, five years ago, 30 years ago. This would have changed my career. I want my whole staff to feel this, to know this and to have these tools for self-care, where we're literally in the position of being a free therapist all day and we don't realize the toll it can take on us and it really is a problem of career longevity and sustainability. And that was the biggest fear people would say in safe spaces is I'm worried, what I'm doing isn't sustainable. I love it, but it doesn't feel sustainable and I'm like well, it really can be with having self-care tools and a few simple business practices like automation, building a team assistance, right All those things that someone like you or other coaches are all speaking to.
Speaker 2:But I really was like my space to be in is wellness, like that's, like I can help in all these other areas, but like this is where my heart is, and so we we we've impacted so many people since 2020 in this specific way, where we were already impacting our community and seeing such amazing results, that we started being like, well, you know what this needs a proper curriculum. It needs a proper wellness tool and system to be integrated. Just like you would train your team and staff on how to do pricing or how to do customer service or how to do a haircut, we need to have tools on how to take care of yourself, on how to have emotional intelligence, how to communicate well, how to regulate your own nervous system so you can have longevity, so we can be in relationship with each other in this salon in a way that is useful for everyone, that's healthy, that has vitality, and so we created this program. It's taken us last January, so January 2023, we started this pivot point came to me and said we're having schools have challenges with what you do for a living. Could you help? And I said I'm having schools come to me too and what's great about they're like oh, come, speak. That only lasts for a moment. Even even I'm going to throw my own stuff under the bus here. Even if you come to Hair Love, it doesn't change all 30 people in your salon's lives. It changes you as a leader. So you bring back what you can remember and what you know, but how can you share it? How can you share that energy and that feeling? And that's what we were like trying to help people with and it needed vitality projects.
Speaker 2:So that's what we created is it's a proper wellness program, which our industry has never had before, which will be like a yearly wellness membership for a company and it gives employee tools, staff tools, management tools all for their wellbeing and self-care. That integrates into the culture of your company. And we created it for schools as well. And we're partnered with Pivot Point, which is a really big deal. I mean that's going to help us distribute this at the highest quality worldwide. We have some of the biggest organizations bringing this on. This literally is going to change the industry. It's kind of crazy and it is very humbling and it has been lots of learning curves on being the CEO of've. I know wellness, but I've learning a whole other side of business and so it took my life falling apart, honestly, and I think sometimes you know there's beautiful rebirth after our you know, personal development deaths and it's, it's okay, like I'm so grateful, like how divine that me and Derek came together and like all of this has like it's just, it's perfect, it's exactly how it needs to be.
Speaker 1:I love, I mean everything you said. I'm really curious about the breath work because you, I love the journey that you're on. I love your focus on the health and wellness and changing the world. I know it's going to happen. I've seen the passion that you have with everything that you do and it's contagious, it's very contagious and and it just the way you talk about breath work. I mean, when you say breath work, to me it's just some, you know it's like. Is it like yoga or what does that mean exactly? And then how would I get involved and add it to my life if I don't have access to hair, love or you directly?
Speaker 2:Yeah, perfect, that's a great question. So breathwork just like, like you said, like yoga it's not yoga, but like yoga is a practice. Right, breathwork would be a practice. So we all breathe all the time. Obviously, when you do breathwork it's to do it on purpose, and so there's different breaths that have different um functions that will impact you. Like an upregulating breath would give you energy. I call it like an energizing breath, or like it's like drinking a cup of coffee. It would bring your nervous system into an elated state and excited, energized state where, if you were feeling anxious or overwhelmed, you wouldn't use that breath. You'd use something that's downregulating or balancing for the nervous system.
Speaker 2:So why I love breathwork and I think every single human on the earth should do breathwork is it's free. It's your natural intelligence inside of your body. It's the first thing we do when we're born. It's the last thing we do when we die. Literally, the breath is life. It's our bridge to higher consciousness within. It is like your breath is so important. You look at religions, you look at healing modalities, you look at spiritual practices. They all incorporate breath in some way, like the breath is like divine and so understanding how to use it in your car to breathe properly throughout the day, and so I mean I'm happy to send anyone free resources. There's so much stuff online. Even if it's not our stuff, we have free stuff as well. But even like YouTube, like just starting to use Spotify, I'll send you a few things like you can just really start to breathe throughout the day throughout your nose instead of your mouth.
Speaker 2:That's a simple one to start oxygenating, like your entire system, in a healthy way. Starting, I'll give two easy breaths that you can use just whenever. However, the energizing breath is in through the nose and it's a forceful exhale and it kind of looks crazy. It's upregulating. So if you feel anxious not the vibe If you're tired or you have to show up for people, teach, speak, and you're like I need coffee, energy it's and it like really wakes you up and you would do it with intention. So you know intention is what you mean when you do a thing and that will always determine an outcome. And so your intention, how you're being intentional I want to be alive, awake in my purpose, whatever that is. You could use music to bring that vibe up where you're, where, if you're anxious, overwhelmed, stressed, just need to chill. I do this. Transitioning from work to mom is I want a down-regulating breath or a balancing breath, and the simplest tool is in through the nose and then the exhale is nice, long and slow, like you're breathing through a straw. So you would keep that circular, melting the body, slowly melting the body slowly relaxing the nervous system, allowing that exhale to be nice, long and slow, using intentionality to I am safe, I am present, I am loved. So you can shift your own energy. I want people to think you're the energy DJ of your life. Emotions are energy in motion, they move through, they're visitors and you can shift them, move them literally, alchemize them. And so when we understand that life isn't happening to us but for us, we realize we are literally the creators of our life and our realities. And our breath allows us to get our body on board with what mind knows we can have. Mind be like I'm so great, I'm so wonderful, and our nervous system is like I'm so afraid and I'm so anxious and I'm resistant. And when you can open and melt that nervous system in that body, that supports the body and receiving, regenerating, being healthy, not getting burned out because you're not in a stress state constantly. So it's actually very important for our health.
Speaker 2:Learning how to regulate your nervous system isn't like a one-time thing, it's like working out. It's something you do to maintain health and wellbeing all the time and it helps how you manage stress, how you sleep, how you digest the clarity like you have your access to your own creativity Like I am very creative, but I'm like on fire since I've started doing breath work, like your girls, like a channel. Own creativity Like I am very creative, but I'm like on fire since I've started doing breathwork, like your girls, like a channel for creativity. Everyone has access to that type of creativity, and so, when we're so in our head, though, we live in such a heady world, and so it's all about learning to drop into the body, and that's heart centered leadership.
Speaker 2:What do I know? What do I feel? You know, tapping into those other superpowers that aren't just logic and reason and force and push, but what about flow and ease and magnetism and creativity and community? These are these more like body led tools that, when we bring them into our value system, our ways of being, our ways of leadership, we A can impact more, but we also can do it in a healthier, more vital way. So breathwork is the best Everyone should breathe.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it. Yeah, I'm already more relaxed just from focusing on it and taking those deeper breaths. One thing I took away from that was that I think a misconception with breathwork is that it's just to calm down, it's just to get more focused when it can act absolutely the opposite with the short, quick, snappy breaths. That will get you fired up. And it reminds me I was. I'm a certified high performance coach through Brendan. Burchard and you mentioned him earlier, and he's got his own way of of like breath of fire.
Speaker 2:Yeah, breath of fire is a yoga breath that one will do the same.
Speaker 1:I'm like so that makes sense, now you know. And he's like gotta be goofy all about it. And to get you excited before you get, on a call or to get that energy pumping and too many of us rely on. Let's just go grab another coffee, yep Full of sugar, and it's $7,. You know, probably wasting our energy, but wasting our money. It crashes your hormones.
Speaker 2:That's when I learned about my health and like what happened was, literally, I had been in a stress state. Like a burned out state is when you are in a stress state for too long, which means fight, flight, freeze or fawn, and what happens is your body, your autonomic system, is using all of its vital resources to keep you alive in a survival mode. So A you don't have access to logic, reason, intuition, personal power, you get a little bit of it, you don't get your full capacity of it, but you also are stressing out the body, so it's functions for regeneration, sleep, all of those things that we need to be vital, are being spent constantly. And then we start seeing things like adrenal fatigue, autoimmune disease, that manifest after doing it for too long, because the body literally goes. Now you have insulin issues, now you have this, now you have that because it's been on overdrive too long, and so we're supposed to be in a stress state and come back to homeostasis. That's what we call balance. Balance doesn't mean 50-50. Balance means like centered, I'm okay, I'm safe, there's harmony in my ecosystem, within, in my business, and so we need to learn how to have a better recovery rate.
Speaker 2:I go through something hard, I hustle hard, I come back to center and I recover. That's when we see toxic hustle and things being misused, which I did my whole career, like I'm. I literally taught people to do it and I had programs on how to be what would crash your system, and so I'm like calling myself out Like I didn't know any better. It's literally what every boss taught me, what every company I've worked with taught me, what every guru taught me, what every book I read taught me. It was the way to build a business.
Speaker 2:And I started being like wait, they're not talking about family, they're not talking about health, they're not talking about sleep, they're not talking about recovery. I need a different mentor, I need someone who looks up everything, and so it wasn't until I was sick that I was like we can't live in that state long term. It's not good for our health, and so how can we build businesses that have more harmony, that support us in these like, let the pressure out and how can I build practices and self-care? Breathwork does that. It's like the boiling pot of water and it lets the steam out of the body, of the nervous system, of all the stress we're carrying, as you know space holders, artists, entrepreneurs, people who are taking care of people for a living, so we can return back to a more regulated state and our body can actually recover and not be sick or not be burned out or not be tired or not have brain fog.
Speaker 2:And that's when I was like, wow, once I heal, I need to create a company that can maintain this sort of vitality where I'm still going to work hard, I'm still going to show up and serve, but not where it costs me my health. That's not actually required to be successful and I think that I didn't know that that wasn't required. Actually, I thought it was required, I thought it was awesome and honorable and I no longer am willing to pay that cost and I no longer teach people starting at the bottom to pay that cost. I'm like let's find a better way.
Speaker 2:We're definitely a better way, and so that's why I love breathwork. I mean, if I would have had breathwork as an entrepreneur like 10 years ago, I probably would have had a lot less challenges, issues, been less of a scary CEO or been frustrated or lost sleep or fights with my partner or snapped on my kids, wouldn't have had the autoimmune, like a lot of things.
Speaker 1:But then you would just be too peaceful and you wouldn't have any great stories.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Isn't it all the fuckery that makes for the great book? I'm no longer doing it for the plot, though, ryan'm like I've been. I've been at peace for 20 years and every day is glorious like okay, but here's here's the thing.
Speaker 2:It's not like that, though. Let's talk about this like it's. My life isn't perfect now I just have tools to deal with it I love it that's the difference.
Speaker 2:Like I have had family issues this year, my son's going through being teenager shit. Like there's just stuff that happens. Like it's a buddha quote the pain is inevitable, right, the struggle is optional painful. Stuff's gonna happen. The economy's gonna change, covid's gonna happen, someone's gonna die, someone's gonna get sick, you're gonna lose your sense of self or identity. Your partner goes through something, but when you have tools to get through it, you can learn the lesson and overcome and grow faster, versus letting it take you out or make you go through more struggle than necessary. So my life's not perfect, but I have tools and I know what alignment is, I know what recovery is and I know how to get the help I need instead of muddling through, and I think that's that's the superpower.
Speaker 1:And I think that that's where a lot of stylists are struggling and lost because they, even if they know that they're, they're overworked, they're stressed out, they're in a toxic environment, maybe they, they, they just they might know that's bad, but they don't know what to do, to what the solution is. They don't have those tools. But then, once your eyes open to the tools, you're like I wish.
Speaker 1:I knew this 10 years ago, same with me. I was all about the hustle culture and how you do anything is how you do everything. Let's just go, I'll sleep when I'm dead. That kind of attitude right, double book, I'll triple book. Let's just go, and then you know your whole body's falling apart. You have no time, you're dehydrated and you drink and whatever you can to get past the time, and you just, you don't really, you just don't know any different yeah, so you're like, I wish I had done that a differently, a different way, uh and recently I even just I.
Speaker 1:I don't wear my apple watch anymore because it was. It was not good for my mental state. It was just going off all the time and and I'm like I'm too connected. I got to like free myself a little bit, so now I just wear my beads. I love that. What a cool, simple switch, and I think that's the simple stuff.
Speaker 2:For the stylist, listening is like take a moment every morning, take a moment on the way home, drink, eat your food, do some breath, work, have some boundaries, say no and no every time. Tell yourself I am safe, I'm safe to do this, I'm so safe to charge my worth, I'm so safe to say no, I'm so safe to enjoy my weekends and savor my life and like, really, when you build your prices, when you do your things, how does it serve your life instead of you serving it? And then you get to just make art and change lives, like that's that's. I think these simple little things are what's life changing and knowing we have permission to do it and that you can actually still make a lot of money, you can still take care of your family, cause that's what we're afraid of. We're like am I still going to get the thing I want If I do this?
Speaker 2:That was my biggest shadow was is everything I built going to crumble? Am I still going to have as much impact? I even like my keynotes were all about the struggle and overcoming and I was like, if I don't have these stories, am I even going to be inspirational? And it really took me in deep, like lots of processing to be like. What's more inspirational than ease? What is more inspirational than a life well lived? What's more inspirational than someone brave enough to love their life and believe that the better it gets, the better it gets Like? That to me, is more motivating than than me having to keep going through hard shit all the time to like get what I want, like life will take care of that.
Speaker 2:Life will give me plenty of opportunities on its own. I don't need to create extra hard, you know right?
Speaker 1:well, as you said, the shit's still gonna hit the fan all on its own all on its own. You're still gonna have the struggles. You're just gonna be a different person, uh, with a different, with better tools to handle those situations. So it's not always to knock you on your butt right.
Speaker 2:It doesn't need to be harder than it needs to be. There will be plenty of stuff that will be challenging on its own.
Speaker 1:Well, elizabeth, it's been an absolute pleasure. I commend you for your openness and honesty and everything that you've done in your life, in your career, and the impact that you've had on everybody else that you've touched, including me, so I can't wait to be at your event very soon and you at mine. So thank you for being here today.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. We'll see you soon.
Speaker 1:See you.
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