001 - Welcome to SST Convos - My Intentions & Life Story

In This Episode

• Introduction to Stylist Soul Tribe Conversations
• Lisa Huff's personal journey from high school to becoming an industry leader
• The creation and evolution of Stylist Soul Tribe
• The power of community and masterminding
• The significance of personal growth and transformation
• Announcements: Massive Giveaway and what to expect in future episodes

Episode Highlights

• Welcome and Intentions (00:00): Lisa Huff introduces the first episode of Stylist Soul Tribe Conversations, discussing her intentions and goals for the podcast.
• Personal Journey (03:20): Lisa takes us through her personal life, from her high school years, the challenges she faced, meeting her now-husband Ryan, and becoming a mother at a young age.
• Finding a Calling in the Beauty Industry (10:40): Lisa talks about how she fell into the beauty industry not out of passion but as a means to escape traditional schooling.
• Turning Points and Transformation (15:25): Lisa discusses significant life events, including her husband's sobriety and her daughter Skylar, which became catalysts for profound personal growth.
• Birth of Stylist Soul Tribe (22:12): The inception of Stylist Soul Tribe, how the idea came to Lisa, and its growth and evolution over the years.
• Importance of Community (27:30): Lisa highlights the incredible power of community, masterminding, and surrounding yourself with high-vibration people.
• What to Expect & Massive Giveaway (30:50): Lisa discusses what listeners can expect in future episodes and announces a massive giveaway for the podcast launch.

Links Mentioned

• Massive Giveaway
• Stylist Soul Tribe Website
• A Tribe Called Bliss by Lori Harder
• Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

Sign up for Mindset to Magic: https://stylistsoultribe.mykajabi.com/mindset-to-magic-sales-page

Connect with Lisa Huff

• Instagram
• Facebook
• YouTube

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to Stylist Soul Tribe Conversations. I'm your host, Lisa Huff. Over the last five years, I've coached hundreds of hairstylists and beauty industry professionals, helping them work their dream schedules exclusively with their dream clientele, and earn their dream income. income, all while fostering genuine connections and lifelong friendships inside the beauty industry. And this podcast, we dive deep into abundance, manifestation, business building strategies, and creating a life that you are truly proud of both behind the chair and at home. Are you ready to embark on a journey of personal growth, success, and sisterhood then hit that subscribe button now and get ready to experience the pure magic of Silas Old Tribe conversations. Holy shit, we're really doing this? Oh, man, this is a surreal moment. Welcome to the first ever podcast episode of Stylish Soul Tribe Conversations. I am your host, Lisa Huff. I am a hairstylist by trade, and over the last five years, I have been full time running my online membership called Stylist Old Tribe, hence the name of this podcast. I've wanted to create a podcast for as long as I can remember. Way, way, way, way, way back in the day when podcasts first came out, I have always had this in the back of my head that one day I wanted to have enough wisdom, enough experience the guts, the audacity to have my own space and place in this podcasting world and wrapping up 2023 and stepping into 2024. It just felt like it was time. So because of this position I'm in and because I have this online community of hairstylists and beauty industry professionals, I facilitate and take part in such meaningful, impactful, truly life changing conversations on a daily basis that it really just felt only appropriate to bring some of the rest of the industry. So my intention with this podcast is to do exactly that. I plan to have a mixture of solo episodes when I have, you know, long form thoughts on any topics. I want to show up and serve the industry as a whole in this capacity. I'm really excited to do that. I'm also really excited to bring some of the incredible people that I've connected with To the spotlight, like I would love to use my platform to highlight some of the incredible people that are in my inner circle and that are doing huge things in this industry. And like I said, just bring some of these. beautiful, rich, abundant, life changing, meaningful people in conversations to the rest of the world in any capacity that I can do that. And then I also plan to get to know a lot of people through this podcast. It's really cool to have this be a new format where I can get to know other industry educators, other industry trailblazers, other people who are doing something similar or very different to me, but in the same industry. I just am so obsessed with personal growth, with business building, with bettering myself and those around me, that I just thought this would be a really cool format to really let me run wild. So I'm a true believer that we all have superpowers. We all are innately, naturally talented at different things in different ways and it is so crystal clear to me that my superpower is creating connections. Like, I am a connection creator. That's what I do. It's what I've always done since I was a kid. I've always been like this. I think the connections that we have in the company that we keep are so pivotal to who we are as humans that when you put yourself around people, I've seen it. I've seen it firsthand. People who have gone from having really negative people in their life, nobody around them that's doing bigger things than them, nobody around them that they find inspiring, nobody that's pushing them to level up, to plopping them into a world of high vibration people that are truly wanting the best for everyone around them, that are pushing themselves to limits that these other people didn't even know was possible. I have watched that firsthand. truly transform lives. It's transformed my life. That's definitely my own story. So yeah, I will say it loud and proud. I am a connection creator. That is my superpower. And I really hope that through this podcast and through me being in your ear on a weekly basis I can connect you with some people that you're meant to cross paths with and I can also be that, maybe that first glimpse of that person who, thinks you're destined for something so much bigger and greater than what you can even conceptualize at this very moment. So yeah, hello friend. This should be a fun journey together and I'm so happy that you're here. Let's go back. Let's rewind. Let me tell my story a little bit. Who I am, where I'm from, getting into this industry, getting into education, to where I am today. Okay, so I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. I am 30 years old right now. I'm about to turn 31 on November 5th. So just a few days after this podcast releases. I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, graduated high school in 2011. So I'm sure in podcast episodes later, I will tell my whole life story and, and talk on like, childhood and the lessons that I've learned and things like that. But let's, let's kick off from like when my journey in this industry started. And in 2010 it's actually when I met my now husband, Ryan. I was dating him. I started a cosmetology program through my high school back in 2010. So I graduated high school in 2011. So it was the summer between 2012 My junior and my senior year, I started this like hybrid program that they had, they called it Wilco at the time, and there was an option where instead of all your, like what is that word elective classes, you could just do, like, a few main credits that you need and then for half the day, you could go to Wilco, and for me, I chose to do cosmetology. There was, like, firefighters and woodworking and all sorts of different like programs. And my story is not like some people in our industry were like, Oh, as a little girl, I always knew I wanted to do hair. Like I was always so interested in the beauty industry. Like that is not my story. I was a tomboy growing up. I thought I wanted to be a firefighter when I was really young. Mostly because I just wanted a pet Dalmatian so bad. And I didn't realize that you could Just get a pet Dalmatian without being a firefighter. But I went to cosmetology school because, to be honest, I was so over high school at the time. I was so over sitting in classes and doing homework and taking tests and it probably didn't help that my boyfriend at the time was three years older than me, so he was 20. Just turned 21. My priority, I was a wild child, you guys. Like, my priority was not school and when I heard, you know, it came time to like, okay, should we start applying to colleges? You're taking the SATs? Like, I was so fucking done with that and I look back and I'm like, Lisa, your life was so easy. Like, what was the rush? But in my soul, like, I was just so done with that, like, traditional school system. And a couple friends I knew were doing this cosmetology program that I was just like, fuck it, why not? If that means that I can go to, these are my classes, my senior year of high school, foods, English, and PE. If I can wake up at seven in the morning, go to foods, English, and PE, dip out of high school, and then head to cosmetology school for the second half of the day, like, sign me up. I'm done. Get me out of this as soon as possible. So now being, like, the psychoanalyzer that I am and how deep I dive into personal growth, like, I could unpack a lot of that and say, like, what was the rush? What was my issue? What was all that? But anyway, for the sake of keeping the story moving forward I went to cosmetology school in between the summer of my junior year and my senior year. I went full time in the summer, part time during the school year, and then wrapped up full time in the summer. So I had my cosmetology license the summer after I graduated my senior year. I was 18 years old, and even then, even through cosmetology school I still was not obsessed with this industry in the way that I am. Like, I honestly have, like, weird feelings sharing these things, because I always wonder, like, do my cosmetology school, like, teachers ever listen to the things or read the things that I post? Like, I am such a different human. I have had It was such a, like, transformative experience that, like, I am not who I was back then. So even after I graduated cosmetology school, it was, like, fine. I liked being there, but it still wasn't, like, what it is today. But nothing excited me back then, like, how I get excited now, if that makes sense. So, I was 18. Again, we will do another podcast deep dive, but I was with my husband back then. This was, these were very transformative years in my life. My husband struggled with addiction back then. Those of you that grew up in the Chicago suburbs, you know, in 20, 2010, 2011, you know exactly what I'm talking about. There was a heroin epidemic where I grew up back then and that was like a big, big, big part of our journey. So there was a couple years of like dark times, heavy times, really times that really have impacted me as a human more than I can even begin to put into words. And anyone who has either struggled with addiction themselves or been, had someone close in their life struggle with addiction, like, you know how all encompassing that is of your world. And that was my world for a couple of years. And then again, for the sake of fast forwarding, As you can imagine from the picture that I just painted for you, like this wild child kid, hates going to school, cosmetology school just to scrape by, addict boyfriend, like our life was not what it is today. It really is like a started from the bottom story. So in 2012, after many years of struggling Ryan. got clean. And it is kind of weird sharing the story, cause it's such a big part of my life. But it really is like his story to tell. So maybe one day, I doubt he'll ever want to come on and talk about that. But February 10th, 2012, Ryan that's a sobriety date. So after many tries it, it He, that was the time he never went back and escaped, really, the claws of addiction. Not to say it was easy for, for a long time, but that's the date that I will forever celebrate and look back on with pride now. So February of 2012, so we decided to move. We were young. We were starting our lives. trying to start careers, trying to, you know, better ourselves and build a future together. And we decided to move away from the city just because that was hard as a recovering addict being that close to the city and the means and things like that. And Ryan decided to go to trade school down south in Springfield, Illinois. He went to a trade school in Springfield. And his mom, actually my mother in law, was living 30 minutes outside of Springfield. So we decided to move to this tiny little town called Lincoln, Illinois because rent was cheap and we could afford it and we just had to get away from where we were living. Ryan was gonna start welding school and we were gonna try to figure out this life together. We were young, our life was a mess, and we were madly in puppy love with each other. So we moved to Lincoln in hopes of a better future. 19 year old me at the time and the day we moved to Lincoln in, so this would have been February, March, April, May of 2012, the day we moved to that house. I found out I was pregnant. So Ryan was sober for three months. It was a rocky time. We were madly in love with each other. We were, we wanted to make this life work, but to say the odds were stacked against us is the understatement of the century. It was fucking scary. And somehow that life altering, devastating at the time news, sobbing on the floor of this tiny one bedroom house that we just moved into that has nothing in it but a mattress and a TV because we were moving the next day, looking at a positive pregnancy test, 19 years old, I was like, What the fuck are we going to do? Ended up being the biggest blessing of my entire life. God, it's weird talking about this. I don't know if my daughter's gonna listen to this podcast one day. It's so meta to share this, but it's my story. I don't know how else to tell who I am today without sharing these really key parts of it. So this is my story. Ryan finished welding school. Through my pregnancy, I had Skylar and that is the moment that I really changed a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot as a, as a human. Like, I was lost and angry and it was dark. It was, it's like my memory looks back and the, before Skylar was born. Everything has like a dark filter on it. Shit was, I don't know, hard. And I had my daughter a month after I turned 20. And you guys know, those of you that are moms know, especially young moms know, like your whole brain gets rewired in that moment. Like, one, she was the most incredible thing that had ever happened to me. I'd never felt such purpose. I've never felt such belonging. I never felt such love, genuine love in my life. That, yeah, I really changed in 2012. And then from 2012, a lot of things happened. We moved, we bounced around a lot. Ryan finished welding school. We moved to Louisiana for him to get a job at a shipyard. That job didn't work out. We moved to Panama City, Florida. He worked at a shipyard. We missed home. We came back home. We were back in Illinois. He got a new job. We traveled to Corpus Christi, Texas to work in, I don't think that was a shipyard. I don't know what that was, but my husband was traveling for work for many, many years. He actually just stopped traveling for work this last year. My husband's an iron worker. He went to school for welding, like I said, back then, and he has found his way into the field of ironworking. So our life was a lot through those, through those years, but it was good. It was more than good. It was great. It was magical. It was beautiful. Skylar, it was me, Skylar, and Ryan. We were head to neck, have two frickin dollars to rub together. We were traveling across the country, trying to dig roots down somewhere and try to, like, build a better story and a better future for ourselves. Okay, so from 2016 to 2018, my business was really beautiful. I was obsessed with it. I was working a ton, I was making great money. I was growing a following on social media. I was like sharing a lot of my story on Instagram. I was a blogging, I was doing some YouTube videos. I started creating content and things were going really well and I. I got to a point where I got a little bored. I think that's the best way to say it. So, success is great. You work really, really hard for it. You get to a point where you hit it and you're like, now what? And I got to that point and I, at the time, was reading a couple of books. I was reading A Tribe Called Bliss by Laurie Harder. Life changing book for me. And Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. And if you've ever read, A Tribe Called Bliss is about like, communities, starting, you know, your own tribe, getting together with people, having like, right. It's not, it's not in our industry, but it's just like women almost kind of masterminding with other women. So that was fresh in my head. And then I read big magic and if you have never read big magic. The one key part, it's an incredible book and everybody who reads it has different takeaways. But my big takeaway from that book is the way that Elizabeth Gilbert, she's the author of Big Magic, talks about ideas and she thinks, she says that ideas are energy and ideas float around the ether and every once in a while you will get a drop in, a download, a big magic idea. You'll get these ideas that pop in and They, like, send shivers down your spine, you get so excited, you wake up, you, like, write it all out, you have all these big ideas all of a sudden and if you don't take action on those ideas after a while, they will decide. to leave you and go to someone else. And I remember when I was reading that part of the book, like I instantly could think of like, yeah, I had an idea to do this or like I wanted to open a salon that would do this, or I've thought about this. And there was something about when I was reading that book and the perspective that Elizabeth Gilbert gave me on ideas and how they work. I then got the drop in, the download, of Style Assault Tribe. I don't remember it to a T, but I know it was like a drop in, a download. I was seeking mind of what's next. I was bored. I was seeing great success behind the chair, but I needed something new. I needed to like liven up my life a little bit and have something that was pushing me beyond a very successful studio suite in central Illinois. Like I needed something more. I was intrigued by the internet and how it was growing during that time. And I got this idea for. Stylist Soul Tribe, a Mastermind membership for hairstylists, and I just remember it was such divine timing when I read the book to when I got that idea. Like, I was just like, I need to make this happen. I need to take fast, messy action, and I need to start to bring this idea to life. So SoulTribe was really created out of what I was craving in my life. I had found a community of other hairstylists through the internet. Like I said, I was growing a following at that time of other hairstylists. And I found that those conversations, conversations about building your business, conversations about raising your prices, conversations about what's next, conversations about how to better yourself and take your life to the next level, those. Or where what I was drawn to like those were the conversations I loved having and I wanted to keep having more of them And so I was reading all these every personal growth book under the sun. I was reading all of these books at the time, listening to all these podcasts, consuming all this content and everybody at the time was talking like all these like big name authors, speakers, people like that were talking about masterminds and how they're in these like high level masterminds and think and grow rich by Napoleon Hill was written. I'm not even going to try to say a date cause I know it's going to be wrong. Long, long, long, long, long time ago. And I believe that's the like, invention of the word mastermind and the way that we use it now. And in Think and Grow Rich, he talks about just like power of who you surround yourself with. Like you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. And I was like, I want to talk with people. I want to put myself in that room, but like, I'm just a hairstylist. I hate to even say that out loud, but like these don't exist for me. I can't go into this like big name author coaches mastermind. One, I can't afford to. And two, I wouldn't know what the hell I was talking about. And I'm like, Why can't we have that ourselves? Why can't we have that in our industry? Why can't we talk about the struggles of being a hairstylist, dealing with draining clients, having to raise your prices, struggling with emotional discounting, hating your, you know, working weekends and nights. All of these things that we deal with in our business on a regular basis is like, I want to keep having these conversations. Like, this is what lights me up. So I put out a post on Instagram. I want to say it was October 11th of 2018. I scrolled way back. So we're about to celebrate our five year birthday anniversary of Soul Drive. And I just said, like, listen, ladies, hair stylists that are following me I want to form a mastermind. I want to be intentional. I want to find people who are just as obsessed with talking about these things that I am. I want to meet on a regular basis. I want to hold each other accountable. I want to support each other passionately. Like, who's in? I just put this post out to the world and I got a lot of hits. A lot of people were like, hell yeah, sign me up. Like, how do I get in on this? And so, Because of that fast, messy action, I want to say there was maybe like 15 women originally that were like, yep, I'm in. Five of them are still in Soul Tribe, which is really, really cool, but obviously that's, it's been years since then, so honestly, I don't even remember who some of the founding members were. And then there's been some who have came and gone and came back throughout the years. So like I said, that was back in 2018 and truly for the last five years I have been, I want to say, I was going to say knee deep, I have been eyebrow deep in Stylist's Old Tribe. I have been growing and evolving this community, this membership Into what it is today. It started out as just a baby idea with no backbone, with no foundation, and every single day I have shown up and thought, how can I help people? How can I bring people together who are the right fit? How can I hold a safe space to connect? Really? I say this all the time. They're just women. They happen to be hairstylists, but we hardly even talk about hair. How can I connect these women entrepreneurs, these go getters, these high achievers and just create a space for these conversations to take place? A ride. It's been we have done three in person retreats. I have learned so much from hosting in person events and retreats. The first one was in 2019 with all the founding members. There's eight people at that retreat in Chicago, Illinois. We stayed in an Airbnb. We hot seated, we grew such deep and meaningful and powerful connections. Those of you that are listening right now that we're at that first retreat, like, I just want to say, I fucking love you. You are why I am who I am today and why soul tribe has become what it is today. 2020 happened through COVID. I was scared. I didn't know what was happening. I didn't know if this whole online thing was over. I didn't know if my in person thing was over. We doubled down. We showed up. We were on Soul Tribe calls three to four times a week during the shutdowns in 2020, talking about our businesses. How are we communicating with our clients? What creative ways can we bring in some income? How can we prep ourselves to go back to work? It continued to grow, continued to grow. 2022 I had an in person retreat with 30 attendees. We went from eight to 30. That was. Absolutely incredible. Any of you listening that were there at that 2022 retreat, I love you. I am who I am today because of you. We just wrapped up in June our 2023 retreat with 40 stylists in attendance from all over. Every state in the so many states in the U. S. Multiple stylists from Canada, someone from England, someone we have two members, they didn't come to the retreat, but we have two Soltran members from Australia, from Sweden. It truly has been just a whirlwind these last five years of how this business and this space in the industry has grown and evolved, and Even just trying to just, like, wrap it up into a quick, you know, 30 minute chunk of time to explain this to you, it's so... Wild, what has taken place. So when I come back to say, I feel like now is the time for this podcast to be born. I have been deep in coaching, learning, observing, observing, absorbing, how many different words can I say that sound like that? Stylists, our industry, behaviors having the most impactful, incredible, I can't believe this is my job kind of conversations on a regular basis. It just feels like it's time to, to shine a light in and let more people see the beauty of what is happening behind the scenes in Style is Soul Tribe. So not that I want this podcast to be a whole, you know, pitch to what I'm doing. It's just my genuine. True story. I just took you from junior year in high school, lost, angry Lisa, to somehow how I've ended up where I am today. With a membership of, I've coached hundreds of hair stylists at this point, earning multiple six figures a year with the most beautiful, incredible work life balance, building a career that had no blueprint that had nobody doing it before me, just genuinely following my gut and my intuition and serving and trying to help people every step of the way. In growing as a human. every step that I can. I just want to bring that to you guys. So that's why we're here. Holy shit. I didn't know this was going to become truly my life story. I think that's probably what we're going to have to title this episode is my actual life story. But regardless, I'm really, really, really happy that you're here. So like I said, my intention with this podcast is just a long form audio video diary, a place to put Longer thoughts, bigger conversations, something that a, you know, four by four Instagram square and 2, 200 characters, how many characters do they let you have, like, just doesn't do it. I'm just really excited to have this space to highlight the incredible humans that I know. To. Capture people who are doing things that are working really, really well for them and share it with the industry to celebrate the amazing humans that I know to meet new people and have deeper conversations and just to share a little bit more about me, it just feels really good to be here. So today is November 1st podcast launch today. We are doing a. Massive giveaway for this podcast launch and when I say massive you guys I mean, massive. I've got quite a few episodes batch recorded. I had to bring some of my very, very, very favorite people on these first few guest episodes. Just people that I, like, I knew I had to shout from the rooftop. My very best friends. People who are so huge in this industry and have been so huge in my life. And a lot of them are partnering with me for this giveaway, have generously donated so much. A lot of my trainings and my coaching is going to be included in this giveaway, as well as like physical goodies, merch some of my favorite things, some of my favorite books. There is so much to this beefy ass giveaway. I'm not even going to try to read it all on here because you guys will literally be overwhelmed. So in the show notes and also in all of my social media everything, I'm going to be shouting it from the rooftop for the entire month of November. If you click the link in the show notes on my Instagram, all of the things, there will be how you can enter this giveaway. Bare minimum, I just need your name and email so I can let you know if you win. There will be three winners of incredible prizes. The prizes all together are valuing over 5, 000. So like, I did not skimp on you guys for this giveaway. There are opportunities for bonus entries for sharing this podcast with the world, with the industry. It would mean the world to me, you guys. Like I said, I've, I've really waited to, to put this out. I don't take my voice here and I don't take, what are we at right now? 32 minutes lightly of being in your ear. I really want to make this podcast something special. And I'd really like for you guys to help me with that. So if you could shout it from the rooftops with your people, if you could share it on Instagram, share with the stylists that you know, honestly, if there's an episode, a lot of our episodes, it's not even going to matter. If you're a stylist, if you're sure with your favorite humans, it would mean the world to me if you guys would subscribe to the podcast. This is a audio and video podcast, so I don't know what format you're watching this right now. There will be video on YouTube every single week, audio through all the places that you get your podcasts. If you guys could subscribe on all the things, Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcast, subscribe to the YouTube channel. Leaving me a rating or a review, I'm learning in this way. podcast space. Like, those are so very, very important. It would mean the world to me if you would drop down into the ratings and reviews, leave me a five star review. If you feel excited about this podcast, please feel free to write in the review what kind of things you'd like me to touch on on this podcast. I really want this to be a collaborative experience like everything else that I do. that I do. I want your guys input. I want to show up and provide value for you. So all of that information will be in the show notes wherever you're listening to this or the description on YouTube if that's where you're finding me. But like I said, this podcast is gonna, er, sorry, this giveaway is going to run from November 1st to November 3rd. 30th. There's so many different ways you can enter with bonus entries but bare minimum, all I need is your name and your email, but it will mean the world to me. If you guys would share this with your friends, share it with somebody in the industry shoot me a DM. If the story, if to share some of these things sometimes cause I, understand the impact of my digital footprint. And I know once I put things out there, it's always out there, but I know so many more people are impacted from the things that I've been impacted by than I realize. And I've already learned that in sharing my story, how many people have similar situations to me. So yeah, I'm just. Just so freaking excited. I will be here every week showing up for you the best that I can. If you guys have requests, if you are somebody who would love to come on and have a meaningful conversation with me, hit me up, let me know. I am so freaking excited for this venture together and I think that's everything. Thank you so much for listening, friend, and for being here. I am grateful as fuck for you and your time and your attention, and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Bye!