Why Going Virtual Could Save Your Life: Ryan Weeden Gives A Virtual Kick In Your Butt

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that going virtual can save your life. Hairdressers – and really, almost everyone else – learned this the hard way when salons shut down during the height of COVID-19. Many were quick to pivot online while others stayed stuck in the brick-and-mortar mentality and lost their primary revenue source as a result. Those who already had an online business even before the pandemic found themselves in a highly favorable position. Ryan Weeden is one of those fortunate few, but for those of you who haven’t gone virtual yet, he truly believes that it is never too late to start now. The question is – can you do it? Of course you can. Listen in as Ryan gives you a virtual kick in the butt to get you started.

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Why Going Virtual Could Save Your Life: Ryan Weeden Gives A Virtual Kick In Your Butt

I was looking at my schedule and I realized I didn't have anything scheduled for a show to come out. I'm thinking, "I could either do something or I could push it off a little bit and procrastinate." I've been on a good run and I don't want to break that run. I figured that I am going to wait for the kids to go to bed, suck it up, show up and make this happen. It's going to be a quick one but it's going to be hopefully important for you to hear. It's about pivoting. With the pandemic in our rear-view mirror, we're still looking at it. We're still in the midst of it but we see the end of it. We see the light ahead. The bulk of it I'd like to think is in our rear-view mirror. What it's taught us is that for us hairstylists that had a salon business or you worked in a salon, you worked in a brick-and-mortar type of a situation, a salon type of atmosphere, especially those of us in California, we realized if that was our sole form of income, if clients were coming in and sitting in our chair for us to make money and to earn a living and we depend on that, what happens if our salons shut down?

It's something that we never ever considered sure. There are things that happen in a salon, maybe a leak, maybe something that might potentially shut the salon down for a few days, a week tops. It's not something that's going to completely derail us. We never thought that we would be closed for a long time. For anybody that that was your sole form of income, and I know a lot of hairstylists, that is it. That's how you get your paycheck, that's how you pay your bills. You need butts in your chair. If you don't have that, then you don't have any money coming in. What I'm going to talk to you about is I'm going to give you a little kick in the ass. This is a kick in the ass to get online, to start finding your personality online. I know you are you, your personality is awesome, that's why clients come to you and that's why they love you.

I'm talking about when you put a camera on, you turn it on, you click Record or you click that Live Button, Go Live button, whether it's Instagram or Facebook, you change. Most people change and they turn into like a deer in headlights. They don't know how to come across on a camera. I’ve got to tell you, the same thing with any new platform or any form of media that is not second nature, something that you have to think about and show up for, podcasting being one of those. I was better at jumping in front of a camera and coming live that way than sitting alone in a room with a microphone to my mouth and talking. The first time for several times I recorded a show, I couldn't say I was terrible but I was monotone. I was uncomfortable that it came across in what I was doing. I made many mistakes. I was even reading word for word from a book. This used to be my thing. When I was younger in school, I would be the guy raising his hand in class saying, "Can I read the next chapter?" I loved it.

Something happened after that years later where I can't even open a book and read out loud anymore. I can read my kids children's books and have a lot of fun with that. What I'm getting at is I stumbled and fumbled through so many words. Doing that, I didn't have a personality coming across. It was a book that I wrote called How to Make Six-Figures in a Salon Suite. These were my words that I wrote. The way I was reading, I wasn't trying to read it like you're reading a definition in a dictionary or that you're reading something matter of fact. I wanted to have emotion in it. I wanted to sound like me, just like I wanted to sound like me on this show. I wanted to sound and look like me on a movie, behind a camera or in front of a camera.

In order to do that, you think like, "I'm going to be myself and see what happens." We get so self-conscious when you turn on that record button or you hit that Go Live button. Suddenly, we're not ourselves anymore. It's hard to show up and be authentic. It's freaking weird. Going back to the whole pandemic thing, we realized, "If my only form of income and life stability comes from working at a brick and mortar in a salon, and suddenly that funnel of funds is cut off and I don't have that income anymore, what am I going to do? I’ve got to go virtual." Many companies went virtual. Thankfully, I was already virtual. I've been virtual with an online membership site, BalayageOnline.com. You should check it out if you haven't seen it yet. I had started that in 2017. I saw Brendon Burchard and a lot of these other internet marketers that had gotten to that game a long time ago. They're multimillionaires from online courses. I'm like, "Why can't I have a piece of that?"

Whatever it takes, you need to get things done. Stop complaining and show up. That is the key to success.

I decided to get into that. It was a little bit of a struggle getting used to that and learning a completely new skillset. It is worth it. What I am here to tell you is you’ve got to get online. You have to find out how to go virtual, get comfortable with it and make money online. It's the future. It's recurring monthly revenue while you sleep. It's like investing in stocks. You're investing in people and your own talent because you're putting what you know on the membership platform. We use something called Kajabi. You can go to Kajabi.com. Check it out, it's incredible. I've been using it since 2017. It has created an incredible revenue stream.

It's been hard work but once you get a site set up, it works with little effort. It's like getting that momentum going. It's hard to start pushing that boulder up the hill, but the closer you get to the top of the hill, the easier it gets. You're pushing something, it gains momentum and then it's easier to keep it going. I don't know how I got into the whole boulder pushing thing. I'm like, "That's not going to get easier pushing it up the hill. It's going to get harder." By the way, I don't have a guest. I'm just like, "I’ve got to do something and get it done." Rob Smith, who is my best friend, we created this phrase we call GSD, Get Shit Done. It's our GSD principle. Whatever it takes, we get shit done. That's a key to success. That's a little interjection there. If you want to be successful, you’ve got to figure out how to GSD, get shit done. Get it done. Stop complaining, shut up and show up.

If you are a stay-at-home mom, become a mompreneur. Find a way to get virtual. Find a way to get online and start making money. You could make an extra couple of hundred a month by teaching somebody a skill that they might not possess. You could show them how to make bread and have tutorials on that. Sell a course on how to make the best bread or your signature loaf. You could make tons of money with that. You'd be surprised. You do a video a month, a couple of videos a month or even less than that and have a reasonable monthly recurring fee. You're going to get members that sign up as long as you're delivering value to people, which is the goal. You want to make sure that people are getting and feeling loved, feeling that they’re getting something out of their hard-earned money. They're getting far more value than the cost of it, especially if they're going to keep paying you month-after-month. That's what we continue to try to do with our Balayage Online membership site.

If you're a hairstylist, you’ve got to find out what you're good at. I think a lot of you already know. Some of you might like to do a lot of things. You start to specialize a little bit because the riches are in the niches. What is your niche specialty in the business, in the beauty business, in any business? What is your niche specialty? Once you find that out, that's what you’ve got to teach. You can teach balayage like I can teach balayage like somebody else could teach balayage if that's our niche specialty. There are a lot of balayage artists out there. If every single one of them came out with a course, it might compete with mine a little bit, however, nobody is going to teach it the way I teach it. I'm not going to be able to teach it like any other person that teaches balayage because what people are paying for with online membership sites is content but they're paying for perspective. They're paying for your perspective on how you do this to become successful, “What can I learn from you in particular that has taken you to success? Maybe that will resonate with me.”

There's not a one-size-fits-all. You could take a course from me and from another balayage artist and another balayage artist. I'm using balayage as an example. If it was bread making, I could teach you how to make bread. If I was a chef and that was my thing, I'd made killer loaves of bread or however you would call it. I make the best French loaf round. There's another course that teaches French loaf baking and somebody else that does the same thing. I guarantee you, we're all going to do it a little bit differently. If you are into the bread making world, then maybe you will subscribe to all three because you want to learn how every single person does it and then eventually make it your own.

There is so much considerable income, whether you're doing virtual events that could be once a month or paid events. It could be a membership site, an online course. That's something you pay for and you get it all at once. There are many different ways to take what you know, monetize it and sell the information in your head, if it's a skill in your hands to show them how to become better themselves. That is what is going to inspire others the way that whatever skill you're doing inspired you. You're taking your soul. You're putting it out there for other people. You're taking your perspective and talking about, “This is what works for me. Maybe it will work for you. I hope it will work for you. Let me show you everything that I know.” Hopefully then you can have some success in your life and hopefully have huge success. If you have huge success, hopefully you'll tell people that, "Ryan was the guy that started to take me there." That would be pretty cool.

You’ve got to get online. If you still work in a salon, fantastic, but you need to start adding more streams of income. What happens if COVID-20 comes around the corner? I don't know how naming viruses happens but the next big virus. We haven't seen anything like this maybe 100 years ago when many of us weren't alive, another huge pandemic that many of us didn't witness and experience. Regardless, it could happen again. The world could shut down again. It has shown us that can happen. That the complete unspeakable that we never thought could happen could actually happen. What we need to do is start to plan ahead and think, "What am I going to do if something else happens that is going to shut down my salon business, my brick-and-mortar business? I need other forms of income."

Go virtual. Start monetizing your passion, your skills, your expertise, your niche. You can do it!

I’ve got to tell you one of the most profitable ways that I know of, which is why I'm telling you from my perspective, is online education. What is your skill? What is a passion that you have that you think other people want to know about? You’ve got to get started. It's going to take a lot to get used to learning a new skillset, learning about online, learning about how to even use a camera correctly to blur the background, to get the right focus, aperture and shutter speed, what type of film you use. There's so much to learn. It is so much fun when you have all this incredible tech stuff around. You've got these awesome cameras. I’ve got all this fun stuff. I like all the techie stuff, all the flashing buttons and everything. That makes me feel special, "I got all this expensive stuff."

You need to start learning. You need to start putting yourself out there in uncomfortable territory like learning a new skill. That's what's going to save you in the end or if something like this happens again. Worst case scenario, you're making more money in a different way. You could potentially double what you're making in the salon. You could make triple, quadruple. You could become a multimillionaire doing these online courses and everything. It's incredible what the future is holding. More and more people are going virtual. More and more people are accepting about pulling out their credit card and jumping on a website that they pay for or an online subscription course. You’ve got to figure it out. Here is my virtual kick in your butt to start monetizing your passions, your skills, your expertise, your niches. Do it now.

If you have any questions about this, I'm doing a little coaching on it on the side. I fell into coaching, helping people, hairstylists, salon owners and educators on how to set up their own online courses. It's something I'm passionate about. It's a lot of fun, so I fell into that. If you're interested in being coached, send me a DM on Instagram. This isn't about an ad or anything like that. I'm not trying to get tons of clients because I don't have that much time. If you are serious about it, send me a DM. Otherwise, get going, learn something, put it out there, share everything you know and get paid for it. Ryan Weeden out.

 Important Links:

• BalayageOnline.com
• Kajabi.com
• Instagram – Ryan Weeden