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 it
• The 5% method: a simple daily practice for rebuilding self-trust
• How the hedonic treadmill keeps us chasing pleasure instead of growth
• Reverse-engineering your “if I just had ___” thinking
• Letting go of control, curiosity over judgment, and why community gets smaller (and deeper) as you do this work

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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 phones
• What happened when I swapped my phone for a Camp Snap camera for a day
• The moment I realized picking up my phone was like going to a mental gym I didn't know I'd stopped attending
• Why being present felt more restorative than a full night of scrolling to decompress
• How this one 10-hour experiment became the entire foundation for the Industry Unplugged retreat

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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 yourself
• The difference between the hamster wheel and working hard from a grounded place
• How overconsuming content kills your creativity (and what silence unlocks instead)
• Why confidence comes from doing the thing, not from one more course
• The power of getting out of your comfort zone — and the white space that changes everything

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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 yourself
• Rebuilding your career with everything you already know instead of starting from zero
• The difference between consuming information and actually implementing it
• Self-sabotage — how to start catching it in the moment instead of years later
• Why focusing on what you’re best at (not what’s most broken) can pull your whole life up
• Worthiness vs. capability, and the money stories we don’t realize we’re carrying
• How hairstylists create real change in the world, one client at a time

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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 is
• The gap between the “should” and the “want” that quietly drains you
• Why it was never about the hair — it was always about the conversations
• What it means to be in a room you’re not leading or performing in
• What 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

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 stuck
• The gap between how your life looks and how it feels
• Why your body panics when your schedule finally has breathing room
• How money stories get installed in us before we ever have a say
• The quiet loneliness of outgrowing rooms you used to fit in
• Becoming 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.

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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 retreat
• What it actually feels like to walk into a room full of strangers who get it — finally
• How retreats build the kind of self-trust that solo travel, scary hikes, and 'everybody poops' can also build
• The difference between a healing retreat and what Misty is creating in Costa Rica for ambitious hairstylists
• Why investing in a retreat can feel terrifying — and why Spencer (and her husband) think it's worth it every time
• What 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.

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Let's work together! www.Mistyjayne.com

In this solo episode, Misty gets real about the exhausting cycle that keeps hairstylists and salon owners stuck — chasing the next goal in hopes it delivers the peace they’re craving — and why that strategy keeps backfiring. Then she breaks down the exact practices she uses to give her overworked brain a genuine break — no crystals required.

This one’s for the logistical thinkers, the overachievers, the stylists who are so used to being “on” that the idea of sitting still sounds more stressful than the chaos itself. Misty shares five surprisingly simple mindfulness practices that actually work for people who hate the word “mindfulness.”

🌿 What you’ll take away from this episode:

• Why hitting your next goal won’t give you the peace you’re chasing
• Five approachable mindfulness practices for the stylist who can’t turn her brain off
• The reason white space is more productive than scrolling for creativity
• How to stop overcomplicating mental rest (and start actually resting)
• Why discomfort at first is a sign you’re doing it right — not wrong

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