AKA the Top 20 Fast Track Playbook

Meet the brand-new “Top 20 Jumbo Journal,” the companion tool for your new Over The Top text. The Top 20 Jumbo Journal is a real-world, hands-on workbook that helps you take action on all the ideas presented in Over the Top.

Remember the Jump Journal? After a twenty-year evolution, its new incarnation is more simplified, less intimidating and best of all – more fun!

What makes the Top 20 Jumbo Journal more fun and how can it launch a stylist to a greater income in a shorter time?

For one thing, the focus is now on client planning rather than tracking. The Top 20 Jumbo Journal embraces each day as an opportunity to get client smart and money smart!

The weekly, monthly, and yearly tracking sheets in the back of the Top 20 Jumbo Journal help “measure what you treasure,” providing an easy way to gauge the success of a stylist’s efforts at planning and making offerings.

Client Assessment worksheets give stylists a keener awareness and better appreciation of their clientele. A client’s ticket history reveals their level of commitment, and as a consequence, how a stylist might serve them in the salon.

The Top 20 Jumbo Journal embodies the principles of the best client practice of Top 20 Stylists with straightforward, convenient action.

Whether you’re a STYLIST, NAIL TECH, ESTHETICIAN or MASSAGE THERAPIST there’s a custom Fast Track Planner to help your day go boom!

Planning “The Great Crossover”

One of the major milestones in a stylist’s life is the day they make “The Great Crossover” from being a single-tasking one-client-at-time booker to a multitasking double-client Boomer Booker!

This crossover is such a huge step that many Level 3 stylists refuse to make it. Some will even quit the salon they work in and go rent a chair or work somewhere else if anyone tries to force them to make the change. They figure that the pressure to perform isn’t worth the payoff.

It’s easy for a stylist to rationalize avoiding the crossover. They might say: “I don’t want to rush my clients. I don’t want to be a machine. I want to focus on quality.” Of course these things are important, but they do not have to be at the expense of multitasking. There are many doublebooking hairdressers who give clients a great experience. They just had to step up their game in order to do so.

Crossover releases so much fear for good reason. A multitasking stylist must stay focused, keep track of more variables, master better technical skills, pay attention to timing, and retrain their clients who are used to undivided attention. However, the crossover is an absolutely necessary step for a stylist’s career success.

It takes extraordinary courage and skill to “cross over” but for those who do, the financial dynamite goes boom!

1. Salon tornadoes are giant swirls of negative energy created by crazy-makers, drama queens and gossip hounds. Tornadoes have the devastating power to quickly turn a healthy salon into a hellhole of hostility by sucking you into the cyclone. Seeing tornadoes before you walk into them empowers you with the grace to avoid their destructive energy. Avoid the tornado and the dynamite booms.

2. Every time a stylist who serves 100 clients a month increases their average ticket by $10, they automatically give themselves a raise of over $600 a month in new take-home pay. That’s a big cha-ching! Raising your tickets definitely makes your dynamite boom.
3. When your client gets dependent on you for a deal and you get dependent on them for approval, the relationship becomes co-dependent. They pressure you for deals and your need for approval makes you cave in. At the end of the day you feel like crap because you worked your butt off and didn’t make enough money. Cleaning up relationships makes the dynamite boom.

4. Question: How should stylists prioritize making their money life better? Answer: At Step Up! Fast Track to Wealth, we teach a process. 1: Organize your finances 2: Balance your spending with your income 3: Reduce your debt and save $ for emergencies like slow months 4: Explode your income behind the chair and use your new money to clean up 1, 2, and 3 at supersonic speed. Using $ wisely makes your dynamite boom.

5. Stylists have much more control over increasing their pay than most other people. Last week a stylist told me that her husband works for UPS and has to work his butt off and if he’s lucky he gets a 1% – 2% annual pay raise. That same stylist is currently trending a $15,000 lift in her annual income which is a 25% -30% raise in pay. Stylists who wake up clean up and step up to what’s possible always make the dynamite boom.

October’s Top Five “LIKES” from the Step Up Page on Facebook: JOIN HERE!

1. We don’t get upset with unreliable people in our life because they break agreements with us; we get upset because we can’t believe them. After awhile it becomes painfully apparent that their tendency to make excuses and justifications for their behavior is nothing more than thin layers of reason stretched over blatant lies. The only way to break out of such tendencies is to wake up, clean up and step up to keeping agreements that they make. Only then does the dynamite boom.

2. Healthy relationships involve trustworthy people who keep the agreements they make. Broken relationships involve unreliable souls with a history of broken agreements. Every time you enter into agreement to do something good for another, you are giving that person a reason to hope and every time you keep the agreement that you’ve made with them with you are building trust with them as well. When you keep the agreements you make-only then does the dynamite boom.

3. We may not be responsible for harms done to us from past trauma, but one thing we’re responsible for is our recovery. We must not squander away days that might have been worthwhile, telling ourselves and others the ‘I can never be happy again’ story. Drama always keeps us stuck in anger and despair but the moment we stop the drama and clean up the crap the dynamite goes boom.

4. I know that there are a hell of a lot of you who’ve been working your butts off to make the dynamite boom by changing yourself for the better. Don’t forget to be grateful for all the progress you’re making by affirming the following: I’m not yet what I want to be and I’m not yet what I’m going to be but thank God Almighty I’m not what I use to be and so it is Amen!

5. I’m now fully convinced that the only way to truly have better relationships with my family is to work harder on becoming a better mate and parent and give up on working to make my mate and children better. Working harder on me than I do on them has also led me to a remarkable discovery: the more I change, the better they get. Working harder on yourself than you do on others makes the dynamite boom.

Step Up! Fast Track to Wealth inspired salon owner Sue Kolve to do a client assessment on her salon’s client base. Her goal: get a better picture of her clients’ spending and look for growth opportunities.

Kolve looked at a client base of 7,136 and what they spent between January 2010 and April 2011.

Here are her results. Over 16 months:

• 92% (6,492 Clients) spent under $500
• 6% (491 Clients) spent $500-$1000
• 2% (153 Clients) spent $1000- $4000+

The results persuaded Kolve to rethink her entire advertising and marketing budget plan to GROW THE TOP 8%. One key change was a shift from external advertising to internal. In 2010, Kolve budgeted $80,000 for advertising. She did not advertise during the second half of the year and found nothing changed with the salon’s numbers. Kolve is now testing other marketing ideas to just the TOP 8%: customer appreciation, thank you letters, email blasts, social media such as Facebook, and special promotions such as a “Mother’s Day contest.”

Kolve earned a new nickname – Queen Dynamite – because she clearly is working towards making the dynamite boom!

Stylists Sarah Dean and Samantha Glass are each enjoying extraordinary explosions in take home pay resulting from Step Up! Fast Track to Wealth. They are also both single mothers.

The Courage to Jump
Sarah Dean went from under $35,000 in take home pay to over $80,000, and Samantha Glass went from $60,000 to over $100,000!!!! This is what happens when two veteran stylists and single parents demonstrate the courage to jump off  “The Bottom 80 Red Curve” to “The Top 20 Blue Curve.”

Heaven or Hell?

The color symbol for “Bottom 80 Consciousness” i.e.,   unconsciousness is red to denote scarcity and stagnation — or hell on earth! The color symbol for “Top 20 Consciousness” is blue. Blue stands for abundance and wealth or Heaven on Earth.

Wake Up and Jump Time
Both Glass and Dean “woke up and jumped time” – growing more in just twenty-four months than they had in the 10 years prior! Boom baby Boom!

Over The Top Boomer Lindsay Rice shares her story on FB:

I just had our monthly meeting at our house of hair. I had a huge realization. In March 2011 my two associates and I made in service $8,115.80 in service and$1,682 in retail In the month of April we did $11,833.29 in service and hit $3057.24 in retail. This was my best month ever – and I have only been a trainer since January of 2011! I read “Over The Top” with our associates, which was so amazingly inspirational that it skyrocketed our success. This was unprecedented growth for us. I also bought my ticket to spend May 15 and 16 under your wing (at Step Up). I can’t wait to see the booming then!

Congratulations to Lindsay and Associates – they are visions of what’s possible when stylists demonstrate the courage to go Over The Top! Boom baby Boom!

Revolutionizing life for herself and her daughter

Tarah Cude is a 22-year-old stylist and single mother who attended a recent Step Up! Fast Track to Wealth® in Anaheim, CA.

The Personal Finance Exercise

Day One of Step Up! puts personal finance under the microscope. One of the activities includes making a “debt attack list.” This shows you how to reconfigure your debt payments with greater intelligence and start making payments to decrease – and eradicate – debt over time. The greater goal is to become mindful of who you are paying and what you are paying – including interest rates.

Tarah brought in her bills and listed her debts, including her credit card payments.

Tarah had five different credit cards, and her ongoing debt was simply too much for her to shoulder – especially as a single Mom. It had never occurred to her to look at the interest rates she was paying.

Get Interested in Interest

Tarah checked her interest rates and discovered that all of her credit cards had very high interest rates of 25%! For example, three years ago she’d bought a computer for $1,200. Because of her high interest payments, she still owed $1,100 on that computer. Her debt was barely moving, even though she paid more than the minimum payment each month.

It Doesn’t Hurt to Ask

This was a major AHA for Tarah. Step Up gave her the idea to call the credit card companies and ask for lower rates and to search for alternatives. That evening, she started calling credit card companies. Soon she found one that offered to consolidate her other cards with 0% for 21 months! In the meantime she figured out that if she sends in $180 per month, and will make her longtime debts vanish within a year. In addition, she reports,  “I would be saving $120 a month. That’s big when you have a two-year old daughter to support!”

A Vision of What’s Possible

Tarah is now empowered to create a greater life for herself and her daughter despite the challenges she’d been walking through before coming to Step Up.  Tarah is a vision of what’s possible when you WAKE UP and get a little more conscious about money. According to Tarah, “Step Up made me conscious of what I was unaware of, and now that I’m aware, I can control it.” BGTD!

No more friendly discounts & freebies SAMPLE letter!

Dear __X___,

I’ve stopped taking new clients because there’s no more room on my appointment book, which has limited my income. This has also forced me to rethink my scheduling with more detail. As a result, I will no longer be able to do my friends and families hair at a discount or no charge. When I look back at the past 22 years at all the services that I have given away, it amounts to tens of thousands of dollars in income. It makes no sense to continue to do this.

I hope you understand why I can no longer discount or give away my services. I need to open my appointments up for people who are willing to pay full price. I will be available during my regular hours only and will not squeeze any one in during breaks or lunch. All my prices are on my web site. If your have appointments pre-scheduled, please cancel if you do not want to pay for my services, although I welcome everyone to keep their future appointments.

I know a few of you are thinking, “she will do it for me.”

Please do not ask, I will feel awkward saying no.

Lots of love,

Finally, the book that was five years in the making!

Questions for Michael Cole on the occasion of the release of “Over the Top.”

1. Your first two books are “A Little Off the Top” and “A Little More Off the Top.” What inspired you to make the third edition— “Over the Top”?

The inspiration came after we realized how the second edition was received in schools. They loved it but struggled with the fact that it was more of a story than a text. So we wanted to do a textbook version – an untraditional textbook version -  that would live beyond the story of Michael Cole.

2. What’s your overall vision for “Over the Top?”

We’re calling it “the bible of personal and professional development for hairdressers.” The acknowledgement page of OTT reads: “We value Stylists and believe they are not problems to be solved but potential to be developed. The sole purpose of this book is to help stylists to discover and reveal that potential.” We were also especially educator-sensitive: our intention was for it to be both the best friend of the student and even more importantly, the best friend of the educator. The book will be not only a curriculum for faculty and students but also a culture-builder.

3. How is “Over the Top” different from the previous two editions?

In our new approach, we introduce the lesson at the beginning of each chapter by asking a question and providing an illustration. Unlike the second version, the book carries the load for the educator; everything they need to teach is in this book. It’s an “out of the box” text book/workbook that is highly interactive. In the 250+ pages of the book, there are never more than three paragraphs before a pause for an action plan or discussion. Most importantly, OTT was created for visual learners. Every page has color illustrations to support the reading. The strong graphic elements emphasize key points, and provide cues for important facts.

4. How does “Over The Top” support the work you’re doing in Step Up! Fast Track to Wealth?

Our hope is that “Over The Top” will become a movement that’ll be every bit—and more—than Step Up is. Unlike Step Up, OTT doesn’t require a seminar site. It can be brought straight to the salon. We wanted to create something flexible enough so that you don’t need Step Up to benefit from OTT. However, a salon can use OTT as an on-ramp to Step Up, or vice-versa – there is no “either/ or.” And when stylists are armed with both Step Up and OTT, there’s an exponential impact… Boom Goes The Dynamite!

5. Will there be any special events, seminars, or training relating to the publication and implementation of “Over the Top?”

Indeed! We’re already doing “Over the Top” educator trainings for Redken Schools to provide them with a better curriculum to teach the students. Our intention is to host Skype and gotomeeting.com webinar sessions on a regular basis as well. We also aim to build an army of OTT salon trainers to facilitate support groups and discussion meetings in salons. God Speed to our Purpose Vision and Intentions for “Over the Top” becoming a reality.

The Step Up! Fast Track to Wealth page on Facebook offers a daily post to keep people on the fast track.

Certain posts strike a chord and collect more “Likes” and comments than others. Whether you are reading them for the first time or revisiting them, the response to the following ten posts was off the charts! BGTD!

1. What is detachment? Breaking the attachment/need to rescue & fix those who have become overly dependent on U. To let them fail & not be guilted into to feeling responsible when they do. And to no longer be spell-bounded by those you’ve become overly dependent on who U have previously given a lot of power to affect your emotional wellbeing. BGTD!
2. Only when you know the difference between sympathy and compassion does the dynamite go boom. Compassion says I’m aware of your suffering, my heart goes out to you & I’m willing to help you clean up your mess without bailing you out of it. For to do so would enable you to stay stuck in it & make bigger messes for you & me! Sympathy says something completely different. BGTD!
3. Conflicts are part of relationships. The skill to resolve them ignites wealth & happiness. Unresolved conflicts never go away – they get buried alive & come out later in uglier ways as unresolved anger, pay backs & break ups. To not face & resolve a conflict traps U in a downward spiral until U do. Knowing how to resolve conflicts makes the dynamite go boom. BGTD!
4. To resolve conflicts & improve relationships requires the skill to talk about the problem you want solved without blaming the other person for it. Blaming others for your problems sets them up to give you more problems. You don’t have to make anyone wrong before making something right. Only when you can name the problem without blaming the person does the dynamite boom.
5. The major skill to resolving conflicts & misunderstandings is to listen with the intention to understand. Understanding is to the emotions what air is to the lungs. Without understanding, we get sick emotionally & eventually our relationships perish of suffocation. Understanding never comes from talking – it only comes from listening. Listen to understand & the dynamite booms.
6. Ever had someone listen to you try tell them something important that you really wanted them to understand? And when you were done talking & after they listened-they told you back what they heard you say in a way that you thought: OMG, not only do they understand what I said – they understand me more than I do. THAT’S LISTENING TO UNDERSTAND! Listening ends conflicts & makes the dynamite boom.
7. Got this script from a stylist who is down sizing family & friendly discounts. Let me know if you ‘Like’ this: “Since I’ve become certified in design & color the demand for my time from clients who pay full price has required me to re-think when I’m able to schedule family & friends. From now on I’m only going to be available on ___ during these hours ___. Let me know if that’ll work for you.” BGTD!
8. First page of Over the Top says: says. ‘We know that a vast potential exists in the hearts & minds of each stylists. We value them & believe they are not problems to be solved but potentials to be discovered & developed. The sole purpose of OTT is to help stylists to discover & reveal that potential to make the dynamite go boom.
9. Page 74 in Over the Top says: Storm Starters are drama hounds who hide out in the back room starting emotional tornadoes by spreading negative energy (gossip). Storm Chasers never start tornados but can’t resist the lure to participate in the drama & chaos of tornados. Detach from both lest you get sucked into the swirl & end up sick. Staying clear of Starters & Chasers keeps the dynamite booming.
10. Page 89 in Over the Top says: Credibility with clients dies the moment U slap hateful judgments on them because of how they look. OH NO! Look at her, what a mess! What am I going to do with that? Look at that old bat. She’s older than dirt. I hate old people! A coupon clipper I hate bargain hunters! Look at that guy what a freak! Clients’ judgments of U is governed by your judgments of them. Judge less & go boom.