Having Perspective During Difficult Times

Today's podcast I wanted to go over more of the highs and obviously the lows of being a nail tech. I'm a member of a lot of Facebook groups and I try to stay as involved in the nail industry as possible and a lot of the stuff I heard about from people is they need to vent. I see ladies on Facebook posting "Hey I just need to vent to someone today. I had a client that really got me down", and I have a few friends that are also beauty salon owners as well and one of the common themes that I hear about is a lot of the negativity we can dwell on and sometimes it really crushes our spirit when it comes to staying motivated in what we really love to do. So today I wanted to talk about things that get me down that I think you guys can all relate to and also give you guys some ideas as to how to work through these problems and some possible solutions for you. So what I wanted start with is just kind of list off a few things and I hope that this is something that you guys can relate to and is what you go through as well.

One of the biggest things that gets me down really is negative Yelp reviews, Yelp is one of those things where I don't know of any person who really loves Yelp. If you’re a business owner or if you’re a nail tech that has your own reviews for your business on Yelp it is literally the bane of your existence if you let it get you down. It is something that is very personal because people are passive aggressively reviewing you and a lot of the time what happens is you've got a client who you thought was happy, who never mentioned anything while they were with you and then they go on yelp and write you a one star review with a scathing review. They write comments about you know their experience and how crappy a nail tech you are or how horrible your place is and I've had everything from Yelp reviews that complain that I had too many magazines or too many colors to choose from, to people blatantly telling me that they think I talk too much or that I'm a horrible person, so when you really take those things to heart I mean it can really get you down. I've had many nights, sleepless nights where I cried because I was just so upset about the fact that people were judging me without giving me a chance to fix the situation and I think that's one of the most frustrating things about Yelp, is the fact that since it's definitely one sided the person gets to rate you only one, three or five stars which I feel like is very hard for us as emotional human beings to take that because it's just so black and white. Also Yelp is obviously very extreme so not many people are going to give you a three, right? They're going to give you either a one or a five. So when you get those one star reviews it can be very hard.

You can respond to Yelp reviews for those of you that don't know about that. If you have your own Yelp page you can respond to Yelp reviews to at least share your side of the story. And I'll caution you about that in a little bit but it is something that you know is very one sided and sometimes it feels like people are basically going behind your back because that person was there face to face with you and you did your best work, hopefully, and then you look on your Yelp page or that little evil e-mail pops up saying you got a new Yelp review today and you check it and it's ultimately negative. And so that can be something that I know has gotten me down in the past but you know it's just something, it's kind of you know the nature of the beast so that's one of the things that really bothers me.

One of the other things that really bothers me (that kind of goes hand in hand) are bitchy clients right, and excuse my French for those of you that don't like that word, but there are some clients out there that are just really negative people. They are complaining all the time, then if you've given out your personal number they text you at all hours saying "hey this nail popped off" or "this nail chipped" or you know "I'm unhappy with my service" or threatening you that they’re going to go to another nail tech because they don't like the quality that you're providing or just all kinds of stuff, right? And sometimes it can be legitimate, but a lot of the times, sometimes we get frustrated because we know that we have our own gel polish stay on for two plus weeks and we're nail techs who handle acetone, alcohol all kinds of things and when a client says "oh my nail fell off" right I love when people say that. It's just very annoying because the chances of a nail falling off are slim to none and they don't really give you an explanation and they blame everything on you and you don't really get to give them the insight as to why that may or may not happen and when you try to tell them that possibly it could be something that they have done themselves they just completely blow up and that can also lead into a negative Yelp review. So again that's something that I know you guys can probably all relate to and it's something that's very difficult to handle.

As a salon owner the other thing that is really hard for me to deal with is I love doing nails and I wish I could just sit in a room and do nails and tinker with the latest gel polish and nail art pieces, and all kinds of that stuff but as a nail salon owner I also have eight employees and I've had as many as eleven who have looked up to me for advice. And a lot of times you know sometimes your co-workers or your employees can really get you down as well because they look to you almost like a parent or a mother figure and whenever something is going wrong in their life, they make sure that you know about it too. And it's one of those things where sometimes it's just (unclear) sometimes it's not and you know maybe some days you can take it and other days your like why are you throwing all your garbage on me, I don't need to deal with every little thing that happens in your life, and that's something that can be really hard as well is making sure that you keep a level head and making sure that you’re the bigger person and making sure that your also a leader and a role model for those employees or co-workers and that your handling the situations professionally. I've had a lot you know employees that I would tag as ungrateful or who work you know hard for me and I work hard for them and at the end of it they kind of end up burning bridges with me you know and kind of cursing me out or sending me really rude e-mails and like I said you know there's different reasons as to why those things may happen, but at the end of the day it doesn't feel good to have someone tell you that you’re a horrible boss or that you’re the worst person they've ever met or that they hate working for you or all of those things. And then the other thing that can really get you down is slow business right I mean when things are on the up and up and things are running smoothly and your busy and your fully booked and clients are tipping you well and you’re making a ton of money your more often (unclear) to not feel very motivated about what you’re doing and you’re going to feel happy about coming to work. When things are completely dead and right now is definitely a season that, that stuff can happen and January is probably one of the worst months for beauty because you know people spend all their money for Christmas and then have nothing left to spend.

Those slow business days or weeks or months can be really hard and they can eat away at you because you often times relate slow business to the fact that hey am I still you know successful, am I still a great nail tech, am I still a great beauty professional, what am I doing wrong, how comes people aren't coming to me anymore. So these are just you know a list of things that I really struggle with so you know I talked about negative yelps, bitchy clients, co-workers, angry ungrateful employees or negative employees who drag you down and slow business, those are all things that I would say are my top five that are really hard for me to deal with as a person and as a human being who's struggling to make sure that I'm on top of my game. So now that I've vented about the things that bother me one of the biggest steps about complaining about something is to come up with a possible solution okay and I tell this to my employees a lot and my husband who is a great manager has taught me about management as well and one of the biggest things that will change the way that you look at these negative situations is coming up with proposed solutions, if you just sit there and you cry about it all night and you complain to everybody that you know and you dwell on it and you, you know hang out in your car thinking "oh (unclear) me" you know the world sucks and, you know I'm upset about how my day went. Obviously it's very hard to dig yourself out of that hole, so one of the biggest things that helps is having some perspective okay. What does that mean alright to me perspective is picking your battles, weighing things and you know taking accountability for the situations, finding a solution, moving forward okay. So perspective right, when someone writes me a negative yelp review my first reaction is I want to reach through the computer and strangle that person because I'm so angry that they're bashing me on the internet right and I'm sure you guys can all agree. Having perspective means putting yourself in the situation where you question okay, legitimately why would that person write the review that they wrote okay, things don't happen for no reason so yeah you can have a client where they completely blow things out of proportion and they're exaggerating but out of that entire negative experience whether it be a yelp review, a confrontation with a client, a confrontation with a co-worker out of that entire negative experience there is some sliver of truth alright, and what's important is to actually take accountability for your part that you played in this whole situation playing out, and I know that’s something that’s really hard for us to do, because we want to feel like victims, we want to feel like you know we want to crawl up into a ball and drink hot cocoa and eat a whole tub of ice-cream and hopefully our problems are going to go away.

But it isn't until you take accountability for the role that you play and have perspective in the situation, that you can actually implement a solution and get this off of your worry list. So you know as an example someone writes me a bad yelp review about how their jell polish peeled off after three days and how they paid you know gobs of money for it and how they're super upset right and yeah maybe they're exaggerating above and beyond but it's also my job to figure out what went wrong and what role I played in that, so maybe you know the jell wasn't cured properly and maybe I thought it was, maybe I though I did my best work but maybe there was something about that, that I didn't do well and to be honest if something is peeling off within seventy two hours or isn't going right it's probably a technical issue. It's probably something that I didn't do or I didn't see happen that went wrong right, if someone's going ten days with they’re jell polish and then their complaining about it chipping. Ten days is a normal amount of time and that really is more dependent on what the client is doing but, you know if it's seventy two hours or less I mean really there's got to be something that I did wrong and I need to take accountability for that and at least show the person that I care about the quality of my work and let them know hey you know I'm really sorry about that obviously something technical went wrong, and I want to get to the bottom of this and you can turn those situations around a lot of the time. If you can find humility in the situations that you're in with those types of things and you can take accountability often time’s people will turn around and they'll go from super, super negative to realizing that you want to help them and you want to make sure that they're happy and they will show you a completely different side. Sometimes you know when you've got clients or co-workers or employees complaining to you ninety-nine percent of the time they're exaggerating the situation and making your life a living hell not because they hate you and they wake up every morning going "hey I want to screw with Liz today by being a total jerk to her". They actually do it because they want to vent about something that's going wrong in their life, maybe their having a hard time, maybe their moving, maybe their husband or their boyfriend fought with them the night before and obviously none of these things are your fault and you shouldn't be you know having to take that on. But you also need to have perspective that every person on this planet that you come into contact with has their own life, has their own problems, has their own situation and you know they maybe insecure they may be struggling with something and you know if your someone who's on top of their game you’re going to look like someone who's strong and who's capable of almost taking on someone else's burden and that happens to me a lot. I am one of those people where I come across as being very put together just because of the way that I like to present myself but I also have feelings and I think sometimes people forget that and so people often times maybe quote un quote take advantage of that by offloading all of their problems on me because their thinking "hey you know Liz can take this, Liz can handle this situation, I need to lean on her more" and subliminally or subconsciously they end up kind of throwing all of their problems onto my shoulders alright.

And again have perspective, have you know that mind-set that someone else's also going through just as much stuff as you are and we all have problems and if you can approach it with a level head often times you can work through it and you can actually get to the bottom of what the real source of the problem is. So if the real source of the problem is something that went wrong that technically you didn't do well with the work that you did address that concern and get to the bottom of it. Don't brush it off as "oh well she's just being a" you know she's just being you know an angry client or an angry co-worker or she's just you know trying to take advantage of me. There is some sliver of truth to everything and there is some source to every negative situation that happens so again if you take accountability for that small sliver and also try to get the other person to take accountability for their actions as well. The second step would be to propose a solution and whether or not your proposing a solution to a client or a co-worker or an employee or even proposing a solution to yourself right, if you’re having a down day propose to yourself about what you’re going to do going forward to change it and to minimize the chance of that happening again, so if it's a negative yelp review with a specific person I would number one respond to the yelp review be very careful about how much emotions you throw into it you want to make sure it's very factual, that your taking accountability for any part that you may have played in that situation playing out. Propose a solution to that problem so if the client really you know did have a problem within seventy-two hours and you are thinking hey maybe something went wrong with that propose a solution like hey I am so sorry that this happened you know I try to do my best work but sometimes things fall through the cracks and you know I would really like to offer you the chance to come back in and fix that situation and I would love to make sure that you end up with the nails that you want right.

I'm not offering you know a refund I'm not offering you know the farm right but I'm offering them the chance to come back in because if the person truly came into my business and wanted a quality manicure that was going to last two weeks with the colour that they picked, then they’re going to be more than willing to come back in and get that fixed because their ultimate goal is to have pretty nails so if you fail to provide them with that and you offer it again and you make them a priority and say hey I completely understand how frustrated you are. I understand that if I was in that situation I would be really frustrated too you’re going to appeal to their humanity number one and number two you’re going to address their concerns and number three you’re going to try and find a solution and ultimately at the end of all of this you need to tell them what you’re going to do to prevent this from happening again okay. Nobody wants to have their nails peel off every single time that they come in so you need to not only fix the situation but you need to also really analyse what you’re doing wrong to make sure that, that doesn't happen again and that your minimizing the chances of stuff going wrong and that can also be applied to not only the technical side of nails but also your customer service. Are you providing the best customer service for your clients? and customer service doesn't just apply to clients it can apply also to your co-worker right, if you come in with a chip on your shoulder and you come in with negative energy more likely it's going to be the case where that negative energy rubs off on everyone else around you and your going to find that negativity comes back to you. So if you’re coming into work with a chip on your shoulder and you’re coming into work with you know bad attitude you can't expect that positive is going to come your way and I know all of this stuff is really hard because again, when things get us down and I know for sure from you know my husband knows this too because I vent to him all the time, but you can't wallow in it you can't blame the world and say oh you know I'm just a victim and the world you know sucks and you know people are just out to get me or people are just trying to drag me down because they see I'm successful. It’s really not about that people don't wake everyday saying that they're specifically going to mess with one person the chances of that are like almost none existent unless you have someone who's really legitimately phycho, but people don't wake up in the mornings thinking I'm going to go to someone's small business today and completely mess with their head by being a total jerk and you know complaining and writing them (unclear) right. Who does that I know I don't do that but I do know that from personal experience that I have had situations where I go I have a certain set of expectations, a business or a person fails to meet those expectations and you know as a result I may be angry about that and a lot of things can come into play maybe I didn't communicate my expectations properly.

Or maybe the person who's providing the service or the situation didn't communicate to me what they're expectations were and a lot of times it stems from either miscommunication or a failure to meet someone's expectations. Those are probably the two things I would boil down, every negative situation that happens in my business or in my daily life it comes down to miscommunication which can mean I didn't communicate my expectations or it can come down to the fact that someone failed to meet my expectations whether they were communicated or not. So if you can come to every situation with that perspective and realize that there's a sliver of truth to everything that you need to take accountability for whatever part you played in this situation going wrong that you address the concern, you propose a solution and then you prevent it from happening again going forward. Whatever you can do to take control of the situation is going to make you feel like you’re no longer a victim that things are no longer random and that you actually have control over what happens to you nothing feels better and nothing will make you feel more confident in your day to day job than realizing that you have a lot more control than you actually think you do right. If you think that hey every day is just a gamble and I'm rolling the dice this morning and hopefully things work out and hopefully the nails I do last and hopefully you know the jell polish that I use doesn't wrinkle or doesn't peel or my lamp works or whatever, if you really truly believe in your heart that you don't have any control over those situations you’re going to be so nervous every single day you go in to work, you’re going to be so nervous about any obstacle that you take on because you’re going to be thinking it's just a gamble it's just a role of the dice. What you need to realize is that you have so much more control than that if you actually take accountability for your life, take your career by the reins and realize that everything you put into it is going to come back to you. Whether it's negative, positive mediocre once you've realize that you have control over a lot of these situations you’re going to feel more confident about dealing with these situations, number one and also number two you’re going to feel confident just in general and I know it's hard because it is a lot of hard work and especially when you first get into this type of mind set. It is difficult because we, you know I would say in general we like to take the easy road right, nobody likes to put forth the extra effort and taking the high road can be something that is time consuming and exhausting and you may see other people that it looks like their life is super easy and things are just coming to them naturally and so you may say hey you know how come I'm getting short change, how come I have to work so hard to make ends meet. But what you’re not realizing is that it's all about perspective, you’re not seeing it clearly other people struggle just as much as you do and instead of letting things just come at you randomly if you actually take control and realize that you know it does take hard work to do these things, it does take you know conflict resolution to work through problems with yelp reviews or clients or co-workers or employees.

It does take a level head but if you get all fired up and you curse back or you start you know throwing back negative at other people or you know you kind of do take the low road more than likely, it's not going to turn out the way that your hoping. So my suggestion to you would be when you do get down about things, when you have something that comes your way where you know a client isn't happy with you or whatever the situation may be number one find the sliver of truth okay find that sliver of truth and what the situation is analyse the situation and if it takes you, you know a day or two or you need to sleep on it and calm down before you respond to these situations by all means do it because I know I'm a hot head and if I respond to this situation right away I'm probably going to throw in a lot more emotion and a lot more negativity than I should, so at times I'll take, sometime I'll take a breather you know maybe I'll go exercise or I'll go read or I'll go do something to kind of get my head out of it and I'll come back to it with a clear head, I'll try and find that sliver of truth, I'll take accountability for whatever role I played in this situation okay. I will come to the person or I will come to that situation with a proposed solution so whether or not I'm talking to myself and trying to figure out why things went wrong or whether it's a client or whatever come to the table with a proposed solution, don't just complain don't just say "oh well it's not my fault or whatever", come to the table with a proposed solution address the situation by fixing it okay. So once you figured out what went wrong fix it and at the very end make sure that you put something in place to prevent that situation from happening again alright.

So whether it's changing the bulbs in your lamp just you know (unclear) safety precaution or you know researching more about the products that your using or googling you know great customer service ideas or you know whatever. Find something and implement something into your personal processes that are going to minimize the chance of that situation coming up again okay and the more that you check these negative situations off of your list and the more you find proposed solutions and the more you implement better processes into your daily life to address these types of situations the less you’re going to have these things pop up. You’re going to end up narrowing it down so that when things really do go wrong it is like once in a very blue moon and that it's actually a legit thing that goes wrong right, if your just willingly knowingly letting things happen as they go yeah you’re probably going to be bombarded with a lot more negative things that you weren't planning on because you weren't actually looking for them. But if you actually plan ahead and you implement you know these fixes into your career you’re going to be able to eliminate a lot of those, that randomness and a lot of that possible negativity that can just come kind of slap you in the face one day right, and again by feeling prepare and by feeling like you’re on top you know you’re on your toes and you know what's coming and you've been in, been there and done that and you know how to fix the problem quickly and efficiently and the more you practice these situations conflict resolution. You know addressing yelp concerns, learning more about how to provide best, better customer service, learning more about the products you’re using so that you feel confident in all of those things. The more you’re going to feel like "hey it's no big deal I'm invincible" and any little issue that comes my way I either know how to fix already because I've been there and done that or I have confidence from past situations and I'm not afraid to take on these obstacles, and that is something that has really changed the way that I address my daily life whether I'm you know here at the salon doing appointments or I'm trying to manage my team or I'm trying to you know take on my next goal of you know whether It's becoming an educator or it's becoming you know working at a trade show or whatever the case maybe. That really is something that has helped me gain a lot of confidence and I think that if you guys really you know take a look at the situations that are happening for you and trying to find you know those pieces, I really think you guys will be able to build a lot more confidence and really feel much more secure in knowing that you can take on these obstacles, fix them and that you can prevent them from happening again alright. So that's my recommendation for today. I just wanted to share that little bit of advice because you know over the last couple of days I've been dealing with a lot of these things and it is hard, it is. I am not going to you know to lie to you it is very hard to do this, no-one ever said that this type of stuff is easy but I do know from personal experience that it does pay off to have this type of perspective and to have this type of you know accountability and confident attitude.

It really will pay back tenfold so I hope all of you is well all you guys I would love to hear your personal experiences please e-mail me at The Nail Hub at mail.com. I would love to help you guys with any specific situations that you guys are dealing with you can also post stuff on my Facebook page at The Nail Hub and also if you’re not already, follow me on Instagram at The Nail Hub. I will be posting all the updates for this podcast on that page and you guys can also any questions on there as well, but I hope you guys are all having a great day, you like my dad always tells me stiff up your lip keep things going, keep moving forward and you will be able to overcome any situation that comes your way.