Reviving the Stylist

That one myth that will fake you out so fast it will leave you feeling completely down in the dumps.

This is a technical episode that will focus on struggles as a colorist. At the end, you will feel much lighter!

Show Notes

That one myth that will fake you out so fast it will leave you feeling completely down in the dumps. 


This is a technical episode that will focus on struggles as a colorist. At the end, you will feel much lighter!

Visit my website: www.kristenlumiere.com
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Join the Lumiere Inner Circle Facebook Community

What is Reviving the Stylist?

You're tuned into Reviving the Stylist, a business podcast for hairstylists looking to build a dream career that creates financial freedom and flexibility. I'm your host, Kristen Lumiere and as a stylist I've had my share of successes. Building a successful six plus figure business working only three days a week while being able to prioritize my family, travel and buy my dream home. I know it doesn't sound easy, but if you put in the work, I guarantee you'll see results. No matter what your goals are. I'm super stoked that you're here so I can help you crush them. Let's start today's episode.

Kristen Lumiere 0:03
You're tuned into Reviving the Stylist, a business podcast for hair stylists looking to build a dream career that creates financial freedom and flexibility. I'm your host, Kristen Lumiere. And as a stylist, I've had my share of successes. Building a successful six plus figure business working only three days a week while being able to prioritize my family, travel and buy my dream home. I know it doesn't sound easy, but if you put in the work, I guarantee you'll see results. No matter what your goals are. I'm super stoked that you're here so I can help you crush them. Let's start today's episode.

Kristen Lumiere 0:41
Hey, and welcome back to Reviving the Stylist. I hate you took a two week hiatus and I am back we kind of had some craziness happening. I don't know if you know a little bit about you know my living situation that I guess sounds a little bit cryptic like my living situation. I live out in the country. And we actually don't have Wi Fi we do a hotspot because the only cell company that gets any kind of signal here is at&t. So we got 100 gigabyte hotspot from them. And it goes in and outs just based on like if it's too windy or whatever. So the last two weeks, I've had a hellacious time in trying to record and I was actually supposed to record yesterday. But there was a crazy tornado that decided to touch down only two towns away from me. So there was crazy when we actually got hail and all types of stuff. So the power went out. And that was just kind of like, okay, I'm not supposed to do it today. My kids woke up in the middle of the night after we all went to bed and they're all screaming because it's thundering outside. And it seriously was like a torrential downpour like it was in sane. It's beautiful to see like the weather change like that. But at the same time, it's a little bit like holy cow, like Mother Nature is a force to be reckoned with. And we do not want to mess with her right. So now I'm back. And I want to talk about something different, like, you know that this podcast is really about business. And it's about advice and uplifting that side of things for hairstylist. But today I want to do something a little bit different haven't done it yet on the podcast. Of course, this is only episode 10. So who knows I'll probably add something like this in the future. But I want to talk about the biggest myth hairstyles believe and more specifically colourise. Like, if you are a colorist, you work primarily with color, that's your vibe, like that's where you thrive, then you can really relate to this myth. Maybe you even believe it right now. And it's not necessarily a myth that we've been told, it's just something that we all as colorist kind of have ground in us. And that is, if we do more work, if we put more highlights in the hair, if we do more than we're going to get better results, the end result is going to look better. And that is not the case at all. There's so many things and so many factors that come into creating a beautiful hair color. And what I have figured out after 11 plus years of being a stylist and being a colorist and being a color specialist is that less is so much more, you have to focus on those key areas in the hair. And you also have to take into account of course your client's hair, what their goals are, and how to best achieve that by going from point A to point B not necessarily point ABCDEFG all the way out to K and trying to hit all those steps and over complicating your process. It's something that I really, really grind into my students in the Lumiere lab, you can simplify your applications get better results and save time, so you can make more money behind the chair. And the only way that you're really going to be able to do that on the technical side is by simplifying things and focusing on that placement to where you're going to get the biggest impact for your clients. And I'm going to use some lived in color as an example because for me lived in color is like my bread and butter. I love living color. Of course I'd love to change things up and do something different. You know, something chunky and not super blended, but living in color I can literally do in my sleep. And I know that's like super cliche I feel like everyone says I'm so good at this I can do it my sleep, but I've literally spent 12 plus months not doing hair at all and went back into it and it was like I picked up where I left off like it was something that was super simple and easy for me to get back in. too. And this was all while Lumiere house was being built, I didn't have a Salon Suite, I didn't want to drive into Austin anymore, I wanted to be in my own space. So I decided to take that time to build out some of my courses, which would be the Lumia Lab, which teaches you how to save time on your applications, get better results, simplify them, so that way, you can cut your time in half, and you can make more money behind the chair. And then of course, revive which is my business course. And with those things in mind, I really just made sure that I was able to, you know, help my students. So that 12 month period was like, really incredible for me. And it was really eye opening, it showed me that I really wanted to be an educator more than I wanted to be a stylist behind the chair taking clients. Now I still take models, I still take hair models, so that way I can create content, and I can still you know, stay up to date with all of my techniques and be innovative and all that. But I work now with a No Strings Attached basis. So some of my own clients, so come in and get their hair done. But it's not like a stylist client relationship, they just come in, I use their hair for content. And then they leave, they don't have to pre book, they don't have to do anything like that, or we're gonna have to talk about selling retail or anything. I focus fully on the education side now. So let's get back over into something that I call color placement theory. Now this is specifically for lived in color, well, I'm not going to be really going into like blonde hair color, or like platinum cards or color corrections or anything crazy like that. I'm going to specifically speak to lived in color. Now, with lived in color, how many times have you or just any color? In general? How many times have you applied a bunch of highlights or a bunch of color and thought that the more that you did, the better results they were going to be just to finish it and be disappointed in the end with mediocre results. That sucks. And that has happened to me more times than I can even count probably, until I decided that I was going to change the way that I looked at lived in color. And I was really going to focus on lived in color placement and lived in color placement theory, that was going to be the biggest thing that I was going to focus on. And when you think about lived in color, you have to think okay, where is the brightness naturally, like if you go and you look at a 10 year olds hair, and someone like a kid that goes to the beach often, where is that rightness going to be it's going to be around their face, and it's going to be on their ends and through the top of their hair. And then if you pick up and look at the internal areas of their hair, like by the nape, it's going to be dark. And it's going to progressively go down into that brightness. Because the hair really only gets light where it is sun kissed where the sun touches it. So the sun does not touch the hair naturally, in the interior of the hair. Unless someone strangely wears their hair half up and half down for like their entire life, it's not going to be bright on the interior. So that area for me is an area that I almost completely skip. Now I do put gradient blending in that area just to help with the transition. If I'm doing barley hours or something like that, I make sure that I have that transition area, but I don't bring it up to the scalp at all. And if it's a true lived in color, then it's going to have that similar natural effect that you would see in natural hair if you were just outside all the time. So the big impact areas, if you are wanting to focus the color in places that is going to really help create a complete transformation, it would be around the hairline. That's the number one focus for me is the money piece. So that would be all the hair about a quarter to half inch around the hairline. And of course it transitions down into the ends. So the ends would also be the second and then of course, the exterior part of the hair, the exterior part of the hairs, the hair that sees the sun, it's around the part, those are going to be your three priority placement areas. And I really, really like to focus the brightness in the front because that's where my clients like to see that change. So if you focus on brightness there, then you're really able to give that big transformation. And of course, this is if you're wanting to have a bold money piece, but the thing is, is that your money piece can be bold, but still soft in contrast to the rest of the hair. So that all just depends on your placement like for a blonde I can do a really solid money piece, and then all the highlights on the ends and in the exterior part of the hair around the part. They're higher up to help soften that transition. Or if I want a really high contrast Burnett, I'm going to still do a really solid money piece and then all of the highlights that I have around the exterior and on the ends. I'm going to keep dragged out and I'm not going to as much so the focus is on the money piece. And when it comes to creating contrast in the hair and creating softness, you can still have a balance of both. Or you can have a soft money piece, and just an overall Sunkist effect that's really natural. For me, the money piece is the area where I can be like, Okay, this is the unnatural part, I wanted to be really bold, so that way it looks like it's still lived in. But at the same time, it's not supernatural, that it's not noticeable. And that's where I kind of make that differentiation. And that's where I kind of make those changes to where my clients still have a good mix of both, they still have a low maintenance color, but at the same time, they have that boldness and that change that they're wanting. Now, as far as application time goes, I only spend about 30 minutes to maybe an hour on my applications for this type of placement. Now there are times where I have a blonde come in, and they want more of a overall highlighted effect. Now that is the case where sometimes it takes me an hour and a half, maybe even two hours to foil highlight. And that's because I'm needing to do a lot more foils back to back then necessarily going in and focus on those key areas. Now, if you don't necessarily have time to spend two hours on someone, you can still give someone an incredible transformation, but split it up into two sessions. So that way you're not running behind, and you're not overworking yourself on one client. Because I can't tell you how many times I have spent seriously my entire like life in one day on one client. And what it did was burn me out and I was totally like dud, I was a huge dud for the rest of my clients. And I didn't have that creative energy. Well, for me, that's a negative impact on myself and my business. So if I was going to do a large transformation, I actually would block off my entire day to do just that. And if I did that, my client who was seeing me that entire day paid for that entire day. So what I would normally make in that day that claim took care of now in my career, I've had my fair share of that, I've had plenty of people come in and spend $1,600, to get that transformation done in one day and have my full attention. And that's something that you can also do, if you have clients that see that value and are willing to go to those steps because you have to think about it. If someone is willing to get everything done all at once, who might just say no, I would rather focus on that and be able to give them that transformation as quickly as they wanted to instead of drag it out over a year, they're still going to pay the exact same price in the end. So if it's within their budget, I don't have a problem cutting out that entire day and being able to create that transition for them. Now, if someone doesn't necessarily have that budget, and they need to spread it out over a specific period of time, that's not a problem. Either. I can be an expensive stylist or I can be a budget friendly Silas. But it all depends on that client's expectations and goals. Those are two things we need to make sure are aligned is the expectations and the goal. And if their expectations are not realistic, then the goal is not going to be achievable, and your effort is not going to be worth it. Because at the end of the day, you're going to walk away with a sticky situation. And that is not fun to deal with. So the best thing is to make sure that those two things, the expectations and the goals align, especially with your professional opinion. And your client is listening to your professional opinion, and their expectations and their goals align with it. So all those three things have to align in order to create a beautiful color. And if you are a beginning stylist and all this sounds really complicated, Don't stress it like I will tell you right now that I mess up a whole lot of hair before I got to the place where I felt really really confident as a colorist. And there are still times where I feel not as confident as I may seem. And I put on a really great poker face. But my gears are turning and I maybe feel a little bit anxious. For me there's always a little bit of anxiousness, especially during the blow dry because I don't know like what that client is thinking like it looks great to me. But maybe they didn't want to ask right around the hairline. Or maybe they don't know if they will like it on them or you know those questions kind of like come into my brain

Kristen Lumiere 14:50
and I think about them more often than I not necessarily care to admit because I'm admitting it right now. There's definitely times where I feel self conscious. And it's one of those things that you kind of have to take it in stride. And you have to continue to tell yourself like, I am really good at what I do. And I'm just going to turn this client away from the mirror, finish my blow dry, and then I'm going to show them the results. That's I honestly do that all the time, like where I will start the blow dry. And I will just like turn the client. So the chair is just so it's like their side profile. And they actually have to turn their head to see anything. Yeah, I do that all the time. So that's a little confession for you. I'm very guilty of that. In fact, when I was going to open up a hair salon, I wanted to have no mirrors in it with the exception of like a styling stations. So I wanted to have like an A color bar. That was literally a bar where stylists could do their client's hair. And there were no mirrors, but there was like, you know, entire like, bar, you could get like, hors d'oeuvres, or you could get you know, drinks and all types of stuff. And then when the clients were actually finished, they would go to a area where apprentices or assistants would go and style their hair, and then their sales would come back to them. They would take pictures and all that kind of stuff, and finish the service with of course a credible recommendation for retail to maintain their goals at home and all that fun stuff. But yeah, the the decision for no mirrors when I decided that I wanted to have a hair salon, which I don't have, I have Lumiere house, which is an education space, and it is my corporate headquarters. But that whole hair salon thing was just not in my cards at the time. Who knows, maybe I will open up a hair salon in the future. But right now, it's definitely not the time. But that definitely was one of the things I was like, I'm going to make sure I do not have any mirrors anywhere except the styling stations that we clients can like relax and have a grand old time. And I just really wanted to make sure that I helped with my anxiousness. And at the same time, like I was able to give a little bit of a different vibe by definitely the anxiousness was number one priority for that. Anyway, I hope that you really learned something in this episode. I know that color placement can be really frustrating and going in and doing a whole bunch of work and not getting results that you're wanting or going in and not knowing exactly how to place things in the hair to get those Instagram where the results can be really, really frustrating. And I just want to talk a little bit about the Lumiere lab. It is a eight week online technical course it has four of my signature techniques. It has internal diamond Bolyard, split frame, money foil, large blonde, internal diamond foil Lodge, and the very, very favorite, the most famous of the entire classes, which is the very first class and that is Cynthia Lowe's and split frame money. That is a combo technique. It is an incredible combo technique. And I also have a bonus photography class in the Lumiere lab. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to link the waitlist. So if you'd like to get on the waitlist for alumier lab, if you'd like to get more information, I will send more emails out that has more details about what exactly is inside the lab. But it has helped over 3000 Students see huge changes. And the big promises that I make within the lab is that you're going to save time on your applications, you're going to simplify them also. And you're going to get better results, the results that you've always wanted to see. And you're going to be able to take incredible pictures of those results. So that way you can promote yourself and build your clientele. And of course, if you save time on your applications, you're going to be making more money. Just because you save time doesn't mean that you're not charging for that value that you're giving. So I do just want to say like if you would like more information, make sure you go into the show notes. Click the link, get on the waitlist, I'll send you more information about the Lumiere lab. But that is it for today's episode. Anyway, thank you so much for joining me I really enjoyed going on and talking about something a little bit different. I hope you see a lot of value in this lesson. And I'll see you next week. Thank you so much for joining me today on Reviving the Stylist. If something really resonated with you during this episode, take a screenshot share it to your Instagram story and let me know what you love most don't forget to also send it to a friend so that way they can reap the incredible things from this episode too and leave me a rating and review. I'd also absolutely just love to connect with you outside of the show

Kristen Lumiere 19:48
too. So you can find me on Instagram at Kristin dot Lumiere that's L u m ay er E or my website, Kristen Lumiere calm, and before I go, I just want to leave you with One reminder it isn't about living to work it's about working to live and that is my goal for you friend because you deserve it I'll see you on the next one

Transcribed by https://otter.ai