The Starting Messy Podcast

Misty Jayne

The Starting Messy Podcast is hosted by Misty Jayne, life coach for hairstylists and salon owners, and it is the only podcast in the beauty industry that goes deeper than tips, trends, and tactics. This is where we get real... about the self-doubt that keeps you from raising your prices, the people pleasing that's running your schedule, the money mindset blocks that have nothing to do with how talented you are, and the version of your life that you know is possible but can't quite figure out how to reach. This is personal development, filtered through the lens of the beauty industry. And it will change the way you see yourself, your business, and what you're actually capable of. Every week Misty shows up with honest, unfiltered conversations: Sometimes solo, sometimes with some of the most real and inspiring voices in the beauty industry, and every single episode is designed to meet you exactly where you are. No B******t. No pretending the hard stuff isn't hard. Just each person's truth and the kind of conversation that makes you feel like someone finally gets it. Because you're NOT just a hairstylist: the business strategy only works when the inner work comes first. When you learn to trust yourself, set boundaries without guilt, make decisions without needing everyone's approval, and stop measuring your worth by how full your books are. Whether you are a stylist in a suite trying to figure out your next move, a salon owner who is holding everything together for everyone else, or a beauty professional who is ready to stop surviving the week and start actually living... you are in the right place. Topics covered include hairstylist burnout, money mindset, self-trust and confidence, emotional intelligence, boundaries, work life balance, personal development, and building a life and business that actually feels like yours. Hit follow. Start wherever you are. And welcome to the messy middle — because this is exactly where the good stuff happens. New episodes drop weekly. Hosted by Misty Jayne — life coach, hairstylist, community builder and your new favorite podcast friend.

  1. 1d ago

    Survival Mode Isn't Safety... It's a Trap

    This week, Misty gets more personal than usual. She's told you about getting out of debt. She's told you about leaving the chair to become a coach. But she hasn't told you the full story of going from a hyper-independent, angry teenager to the personal development junkie she is today — and the patterns she had to let go of to get there. This episode is about the protective patterns that used to keep you safe and now keep you blocked. It's about survival mode — why it feels comfortable, and why comfortable isn't the same as forward. It's about the quiet stress that never fully goes away, and why the goal was never to eliminate it, but to change how you respond to it. If you grew up believing that hustle and hardship are just what you owe before you're allowed to feel good, this episode is your permission slip to stop waiting. You don't have to earn peace through fifty more years behind the chair. You can practice it now — and yes, it's uncomfortable. But that discomfort is nothing compared to the discomfort of staying stuck in survival mode. hairstylist personal development podcast, salon owner burnout, hairstylist mindset coaching, survival mode healing, hustle culture recovery, self-worth for hairstylists, breaking limiting patterns Mentioned in this episode: Industry: UNPLUGGED Retreat Join me and a small group of ambitious, seasoned women in the hair industry for a week in Costa Rica, April 2027! ONLY 2 SPOTS LEFT!! Industry: UNPLUGGED Retreat

  2. Jul 13

    Stop Chasing Confidence, Start Building Certainty w/ Ambrosia Carey

    This week on The Starting Messy Podcast, I'm sitting down with Ambrosia Carey — salon owner, business consultant, and host of the Successful Stylist Academy podcast — for a conversation that started with a single word swap that changed everything for me. I've been talking about confidence on this show for a long time. Ambrosia showed me it was never confidence I was chasing. It was certainty. We get into her “5% method” — the practice of doing the one most painful task of your day, in just over an hour, as a way of proving to yourself you can be trusted. Because here's the thing: self-trust isn't built by getting it all right the first time. It's built by keeping small promises to yourself, over and over, until you have evidence you can't argue with. We talk about the hedonic treadmill, why our brains chase artificial pleasure instead of leaning into discomfort, and why so many of us — stylists, salon owners, high performers of every kind — are running from the very thing that would actually move us forward. Ambrosia also gets honest about the ego, the not-enoughness she inherited from her parents, and the moment she realized people genuinely don't care what you're doing nearly as much as you think they do. That's it, that's the whole thing, and it's more freeing than it sounds. In this episode, we cover: Why “certainty” is a more honest word than “confidence” — and how to build itThe 5% method: a simple daily practice for rebuilding self-trustHow the hedonic treadmill keeps us chasing pleasure instead of growthReverse-engineering your “if I just had ___” thinkingLetting go of control, curiosity over judgment, and why community gets smaller (and deeper) as you do this work personal development podcast for hairstylists, confidence vs certainty, self-trust for hairstylists, salon owner mindset podcast

  3. Jul 6

    What happens when a stylist goes unplugged

    Industry: UNPLUGGED Retreat Get Details HERE I did an experiment: leave my phone at home for a 10-hour music festival and see what happens. Here's the thing — I wasn't scared of getting lost. I was scared of who I'd be without something to check, capture, or Google. So today I'm telling you exactly what happened when I unplugged — and why it's the whole reason Industry Unplugged exists. As hairstylists and salon owners, we are constantly absorbing other people's energy while running on decision fatigue — and most of us don't even clock it until we're depleted. This episode is my real-time experiment in pulling my mind out of "what do I need to capture" and back into "what am I actually experiencing." Right? In this episode, we cover: Why every single person I told about this experiment called it "dangerous" — and what that reveals about our relationship with our phonesWhat happened when I swapped my phone for a Camp Snap camera for a dayThe moment I realized picking up my phone was like going to a mental gym I didn't know I'd stopped attendingWhy being present felt more restorative than a full night of scrolling to decompressHow this one 10-hour experiment became the entire foundation for the Industry Unplugged retreat hairstylist podcast, personal development podcast for hairstylists, salon owner burnout, hairstylist mental health, digital detox for hairstylists, decision fatigue salon owners, being present as a hairstylist, unplugged retreat for hairstylists Mentioned in this episode: Industry: UNPLUGGED Retreat Join me and a small group of ambitious, seasoned women in the hair industry for a week in Costa Rica, April 2027! ONLY 2 SPOTS LEFT!! Industry: UNPLUGGED Retreat

  4. Jun 29

    The Most Important Salon Asset Is You (And Why You’re Struggling To Find It) w/ Kelly Cahen

    Industry: UNPLUGGED Retreat click here for details You give your clients calm, presence, and a space where they feel safe enough to take their masks off. But who’s building that space for you? In this episode/ Instagram LIVE replay, Misty sits down with salon owner and identity coach Kelly Cahen for a friend-to-friend conversation about the most important asset in your business — you. Not your skills, not your strategy, not the next course in your cart. You. Here’s the thing: so many of us are growth-minded, we’ve built the businesses we love, and we’re still exhausted. We keep looking outward for the answer — the next guru, the next certification, the next balayage class — when the confidence we’re chasing was only ever going to come from doing the thing and getting quiet enough to hear ourselves think. Misty and Kelly get honest about course-junkie recovery, education as procrastination, the trap of comparison, and why the answers you’re looking for actually live in the discomfort and the white space you keep avoiding. This is the conversation behind why Misty created the Industry Unplugged Retreat — a space for seasoned stylists and salon owners to unplug, drop the performance, and reconnect with themselves and their people. In this episode: Why self-abandonment for the sake of success quietly breaks your trust in yourselfThe difference between the hamster wheel and working hard from a grounded placeHow overconsuming content kills your creativity (and what silence unlocks instead)Why confidence comes from doing the thing, not from one more courseThe power of getting out of your comfort zone — and the white space that changes everything personal development for hairstylists, mindset coaching for salon owners, self-trust, burnout in the beauty industry, hairstylist confidence, salon owner exhaustion, course junkie recovery Mentioned in this episode: Industry: UNPLUGGED Retreat Join me and a small group of ambitious, seasoned women in the hair industry for a week in Costa Rica, April 2027! ONLY 2 SPOTS LEFT!! Industry: UNPLUGGED Retreat

  5. Jun 22

    From Lowest Point to Rebuilt: A Hairstylist’s Healing Story w/ Janean Cook

    Join us in Costa Rica for the Industry: UNPLUGGED Retreat April 2027 In this episode I’m sitting down with Janean, The Healing Therapist — a hairstylist of 22 years, a yoga teacher of 10, and the woman I asked to lead all the movement at our Costa Rica Industry Unplugged Retreat. This one is full circle in the best way, because Janean first found this podcast when money was her whole story, and now she’s sitting across from me as a friend, a peer, and someone I get to build something beautiful with. We get into the stuff that doesn’t get talked about enough behind the chair. Janean shares how she quit doing hair three times and rebuilt her clientele a fourth — this time through grief, a neck injury she didn’t think she’d recover from, and major debt. We talk about the difference between hearing the information and actually implementing it, why being in the room changed everything for her, and how she dug out of her lowest point not by fixing what was most broken, but by leaning into what she was already good at. This is a conversation about the mind-body connection, self-sabotage, worthiness versus capability, and why hairstylists are quietly some of the most powerful people in their communities. We laugh, we almost cry (more than once), and we land on something I believe with my whole chest: you don’t have to do the big scary version of healing. Sometimes it’s just staying curious and not overthinking it. In this episode we cover: Why yoga is less about flexibility and more about building a relationship with yourselfRebuilding your career with everything you already know instead of starting from zeroThe difference between consuming information and actually implementing itSelf-sabotage — how to start catching it in the moment instead of years laterWhy focusing on what you’re best at (not what’s most broken) can pull your whole life upWorthiness vs. capability, and the money stories we don’t realize we’re carryingHow hairstylists create real change in the world, one client at a time personal development for hairstylists, hairstylist mindset podcast, self-worth for salon professionals, yoga for hairstylists, retreat for hairstylists

  6. Jun 15

    What 23 years behind the chair has taught me, The Gap Between the "Shoulds" and the Wants

    Industry: UNPLUGGED Retreat Learn more here You built the thing. The salon, the clientele, the reputation. From the outside, you made it — and somewhere in the last few years, something got quiet. Not falling apart. Just… missing. You can’t quite hear yourself anymore. Here’s the thing nobody tells you about being the person everyone trusts to have it together: you hold so much. All day, every day. You stand behind the chair holding your clients’ stories, their grief, their excitement, and you regulate the whole room. You’re the calm one. The safe one. And then you go home so full of everyone else that you can’t find yourself in there. That’s not burnout from working too hard. That’s exhaustion from consuming too much and listening to yourself too little. In this solo episode, Misty gets straight to the heart of it — the tiny gap between the should and the want that’s been quietly wearing you down, and why the thing that helped you grow can become the thing that keeps you stuck. She also opens the doors to something she built because she couldn’t find it anywhere else: the Industry Unplugged Retreat. A week in the jungles of Costa Rica with ten women in the hair industry who’ve been in the game for 10, 15, 20, 30+ years and are craving a real reset. Not a business retreat. Not a healing or spiritual retreat. Not a content trip. Think pre-internet vibes — space to take off the brand face, drop the self-induced pressure, and get quiet enough to hear yourself for the first time in who knows how long. In this episode: Why this kind of tired isn’t burnout — and what it actually isThe gap between the “should” and the “want” that quietly drains youWhy it was never about the hair — it was always about the conversationsWhat it means to be in a room you’re not leading or performing inWhat Industry Unplugged is (and very clearly, what it’s not)How to tell if that voice in your gut saying “I need this” is worth listening to hairstylist burnout, personal development for hairstylists, hairstylist retreat, salon owner burnout, hairstylist mindset podcast, behind the chair mental health, Costa Rica retreat for hairstylists, hair industry community Mentioned in this episode: Industry: UNPLUGGED Retreat Join me and a small group of ambitious, seasoned women in the hair industry for a week in Costa Rica, April 2027! ONLY 2 SPOTS LEFT!! Industry: UNPLUGGED Retreat

  7. Jun 8

    Why Success Feels Scarier Than Failure (and What to Do About It)

    Let's work together: www.mistyjayne.com In this episode, Misty cracks open something that took her a year to understand — the work was never about moving through the bad stuff. It was about learning how to feel safe in the good stuff. So many of the stylists she works with think they need fixing. They’re booked out, they’re great at what they do, they’re hitting every success mark society told them to hit. And underneath it? An outside skin. A mask. A real version of themselves that doesn’t feel like enough. If you grew up in stress, in hustle, in survival mode, then stress becomes your comfort zone — and calm starts to feel like danger. That’s why the freedom you begged for can feel so wrong when it finally arrives. It’s not a flaw. It’s your system doing its job. This episode is about proving those old stories wrong, the loneliness that can come with real growth, and learning to actually like the next version of yourself. What we get into: Why “find the broken thing, fix the broken thing” keeps you stuckThe gap between how your life looks and how it feelsWhy your body panics when your schedule finally has breathing roomHow money stories get installed in us before we ever have a sayThe quiet loneliness of outgrowing rooms you used to fit inBecoming someone new — and learning to love her If you’re a hairstylist or salon owner who looks successful on the outside but doesn’t feel it on the inside, this one’s for you. You don’t need fixing. You need to learn how to feel safe in what’s already working. personal development for hairstylists, hairstylist burnout, mindset coaching for salon owners, self-worth for hairstylists, nervous system and self-sabotage, money mindset for stylists, feeling safe with success, salon owner self-trust

  8. Jun 1

    The Truth About Hair Industry Retreats w/ Spencer Stout

    Click for more about Industry: UNPLUGGED Retreat Costa Rica 2027 Check out our past episode: More than just customer service ON APPLE and SPOTIFY In this episode, Misty sits down with her friend and returning guest Spencer Stout @spencerlaineartistry— colorist, boundary-setter, and the woman who proves that saying no to the wrong clients is actually a business strategy. But today they're not talking about hair. They're talking about the thing that changed both of their lives: going to a retreat when it scared the hell out of them. Spencer and Misty met in 2019 at their very first retreat. Spencer was newly solo, at the lowest point in her life, and convinced nobody in that room would want to connect with her. Misty was freshly out of a commission salon, hungry for growth, and flying across the country by herself for the first time. Neither of them came for the connection. Both of them left transformed by it. In this conversation, they get into: Why the education is almost never the thing you remember from a retreatWhat it actually feels like to walk into a room full of strangers who get it — finallyHow retreats build the kind of self-trust that solo travel, scary hikes, and 'everybody poops' can also buildThe difference between a healing retreat and what Misty is creating in Costa Rica for ambitious hairstylistsWhy investing in a retreat can feel terrifying — and why Spencer (and her husband) think it's worth it every timeWhat happens when you stop going to rooms full of people who don't understand your drive and start going to ones that do This is also a preview of what's coming: Misty's Costa Rica retreat (spring 2027), designed specifically for ambitious women in the hair industry who are done with content shoots and crystal bowls and ready for something that actually refills the cup rather than cracking them open and sending them home to deal with it alone. If you've been on the fence about going somewhere, investing in yourself, walking into the big scary room — this episode will either push you over the edge or remind you why you already know you need it. hairstylist personal development, salon owner mindset, hairstylist retreat, personal growth for hairstylists, solo travel hairstylist, stylist burnout and boundaries, building confidence as a hairstylist, hairstylist community and connection, self-trust for salon owners

5
out of 5
42 Ratings

About

The Starting Messy Podcast is hosted by Misty Jayne, life coach for hairstylists and salon owners, and it is the only podcast in the beauty industry that goes deeper than tips, trends, and tactics. This is where we get real... about the self-doubt that keeps you from raising your prices, the people pleasing that's running your schedule, the money mindset blocks that have nothing to do with how talented you are, and the version of your life that you know is possible but can't quite figure out how to reach. This is personal development, filtered through the lens of the beauty industry. And it will change the way you see yourself, your business, and what you're actually capable of. Every week Misty shows up with honest, unfiltered conversations: Sometimes solo, sometimes with some of the most real and inspiring voices in the beauty industry, and every single episode is designed to meet you exactly where you are. No B******t. No pretending the hard stuff isn't hard. Just each person's truth and the kind of conversation that makes you feel like someone finally gets it. Because you're NOT just a hairstylist: the business strategy only works when the inner work comes first. When you learn to trust yourself, set boundaries without guilt, make decisions without needing everyone's approval, and stop measuring your worth by how full your books are. Whether you are a stylist in a suite trying to figure out your next move, a salon owner who is holding everything together for everyone else, or a beauty professional who is ready to stop surviving the week and start actually living... you are in the right place. Topics covered include hairstylist burnout, money mindset, self-trust and confidence, emotional intelligence, boundaries, work life balance, personal development, and building a life and business that actually feels like yours. Hit follow. Start wherever you are. And welcome to the messy middle — because this is exactly where the good stuff happens. New episodes drop weekly. Hosted by Misty Jayne — life coach, hairstylist, community builder and your new favorite podcast friend.

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