PODCAST SHOWNOTES

Welcome to the secrets of a Six Figure Personal Stylist Podcast, the ultimate no-BS business podcast for ambitious personal stylists ready to build a six-figure personal styling business and step into their creative CEO era.

We'll go beyond the typical snoozefest, cookie-cutter, business advice out there to share business-building strategies that will help you create a killer personal brand, a cult following of loyal personal styling clients, and make an unapologetic fuck ton of money.

I'm Nicole, your host and a former personal stylist of 14 years who built a lucrative styling business in three major cities, but only after spending years trying to crack the six-figure styling business code without burning out. Now I'm here to tell you how to do exactly the same. Well, let's get into it.

Welcome to episode three. I'm very excited to dive into a topic that I feel very passionately about, which is why I talk about stylists hitting six figures so often. I want you to know that even if you have no desire or like hitting six figures just feels very far away or you've surpassed your first six figures or multiple six figures, this conversation is still for you.

But the reason why I am so focused on the six-figure mark is because whether you get there strategically or you get there by accident, you are going to learn a lot about yourself and your clients along the way.

What I find, both in my own journey as a personal stylist for 14 years and in the experiences of my clients, it is usually getting to six figures that is the hardest part. But once you're there, it's actually not that hard if and only if you have not built a business that burns you out to get to the next level, to get to multiple six figures if that's what you're wanting.

I think that on the flip side of that, there are a lot of stylists that shy away from going all in on earning as much as they can because they have a fear that if they do that, it will take over their life in a way that is just all-consuming and that they will get burnt out and they'll have no work-life balance and they will be basically a slave to their business.

It's really at the six-figure mark, whether you are just thinking about it, whether you've gotten there, whether you've surpassed it, that I think a lot of really important things happen both to our identity, to our business model, and to the way we should be reflecting as business women who are personal stylists.

What I see is that stylists get to six figures and they often think, “Oh, my gosh, I don't think I can keep going at this rate,” or they're on their way to six figures and they think, “Ah, I don't know. I think this is going to be too hard. Maybe I'll just play small. Maybe I'll stop showing up as frequently. Maybe, maybe, maybe,” a lot of doubt starts to creep in.

What I want you to know is that it doesn't have to look the way that you might think it does to get there, whether that be whatever your financial goals are as a stylist, especially if you're someone that is trying to replace a full-time income in a “normal job” as I call it or corporate space or you've worked for somebody else, you know what I mean.

As a not a stylist, if you're trying to replace that income and you're thinking, “Well, from what I've experienced in this industry so far, I don't know how I'm going to do this upbringing out,” it's really just a matter of not having the tools that you need. If you surpass six figures and you're thinking to yourself, “Yeah, I don't know that that was that important of a milestone,” I want you to really spend some time looking back at where you came from once you've hit that.

I think for all of us as ambitious women and men in the industry, you can just keep going. What's the next client? What's the next win? You barely let yourself sit with it long enough for it to fully register.

So if you take some time to look back, not only to just acknowledge yourself for the fact that you've stuck with something that most people never will, but because it can really show you a lot about ways you might have been iterating in your business and not been fully aware, so every time that you tweaked a service or you started to reposition yourself a little bit differently to call in more clients or you accidentally stumbled upon a great avenue for getting great clients and that you didn't expect, whether that be a business connection, a podcast episode you were on, or whatever, whenever those things happen, if you don't stop and think, “Okay, can I go even deeper with this thing? Can I make this service even better? Could I position myself even better? What did I do before that didn't work?” If you're not taking the time to look back and analyze where you came from, it's very hard to know where you're going to be going with any sense of accuracy.

So often, and I can say this for myself, we become successful by accident almost. It's not an accident. We keep showing up. We keep white-knuckling it through and thinking, "I'm going to find the solution. I'm going to find the solution." But sometimes that leads us to doing the same thing over and over that's not effective for a very long time. In my case, seven years. Really, that's way too long. I want to save all of you the heartache and the money that I spent trying to get to six figures.

Once I got to six figures, it was pretty easy. I will say that the pandemic hit at one point and I could not maintain six figures nor could most people. But because I knew all of the things that I needed to do to get the business back, once COVID was mostly behind us, it was easy to do that for me.

It was really easy to get this business, the styling and consultancy up to the six-figure mark really, really quickly. Because it's just knowing the rules of the game. That's what I want stylists to know, what the rules of the game are, so that they don't wake up every day and wonder to themselves, "When am I supposed to be doing to move this forward?"

I think you can feel that way regardless of how much income you're bringing in, because I see stylists making $80,000, $90,000, $140,000, I just had a conversation with this stylist last week, who's making around $140,000, doing really well. It was like, “I never see my kids. I'm always grouchy at my husband. I'm always waiting for a client to cancel and I don't know what I'm going to do,” always on edge.

Know that the way you handle things that are going badly in your business is often the same way that you handle things going really well in your business and we don't even see ourselves doing it, which is why becoming reflective on how you're behaving, how you're showing up, what's working, what's not, how many times you've tried something that's working or not working, all of that is really, really critical, and that's why I'm so obsessed with strategy.

Because the better you get at that, the more clients you can actually style, which is what I know each of you got into this game for. Really, really critical to be looking at your numbers, looking at how much money you're making. I know that's something that a lot of stylists tell me they avoid.

As a matter of fact, that stylist I just told you about who's making around $140,000 a year for the past two years, didn't even realize that until she went to fill out my new client form and had to actually sit down with the numbers.

I used to be like this too, I was the worst. I'll tell you that getting an accountant was super helpful for me because I had to become accountable and someone else was doing the thing that I was pretty bad at, which was actually keeping my QuickBooks up to date so she has changed my life.

She's also made me a much better businesswoman, has taught me so, so much about what your overhead should look like in a business and just like what my profit margins were and just all of those things that I can now pass on to my clients.

She's a true gift. Her name is Yahi. She runs a business called AccountHer. Check her out. She's amazing. Many of my clients use her and she's just really such a wealth of knowledge and so helpful.

If you're someone that struggles to look at your numbers and you're thinking, "Oh, I don't know," you won't keep getting better in earning more if you're not looking at your numbers. Even if you're earning a lot, you could be doing a lot better if you understood these things. So, non-negotiable.

If you can't do it yourself, have somebody else do it. Totally worth outsourcing. It was one of the first things I ever outsourced in my business and the best money I ever spent.

What is really something I want you to take home in this conversation is that it's really the act of getting to six figures because it's usually the period in our business where we don't have a lot of help, when we are not so comfortable with the slow periods, not that anybody loves the slow period in their business, but as we'll talk about on another episode, they are part of being a business owner, nothing has gone wrong as long as you know how to use those to your advantage and both close the gaps between your slow seasons in terms of their length, but also use them when they show up to get better, to make your client experience amazing, and to grow and develop yourself as a person, or just to use them in a way where you don't panic and you decide, “You know what, I'm going to go on a vacation because I can, because I make enough money the other parts of the year that this slow period isn't a problem.”

But until you get to experience a few of those, you're not always so confident that people are going to come back, or that the clients are going to show up and so you are on pins and needles until that happens.

I know you can be at six figures and above and still have that anxiety. What it really is I think about the six-figure mark is that that is the practice. If you can get yourself in that period to really enjoy the journey and not be constantly rushing to the destination, whether that be six figures or $50,000 or $250,000, or whatever, if you can look either back at the time when you were trying to build to six figures or if you're in that now, really become someone that enjoys the work of it, of getting to where you want to be and not just rushing there, you will get there faster because you will be more present and you'll be more aware of the behaviors and the actions you're taking and what's working and what's not.

Both internally, emotionally, but just also statistically and fact-based in your business. Because it's so easy when you are hustling to do things based on how you feel and not on what is actually true or what the market is saying.

That's something I really want you to try to develop in yourself, to not be afraid to ask questions of your clients, to not be afraid to ask people for feedback, to not be afraid to invest in yourself and your business because you know you're someone that always makes it back.

It is the road to six figures and usually the road to half a million and then a million from people that I've spoken to over the years that are just killing it in business, those are the periods that, depending on how you use them, make or break your business or make or break how quickly you get there.

I can absolutely tell you, as I've said before, as someone that took forever to get there, I made it way more complicated than it had to be. Then when I opened this business, I could just see it's really quite simple. It's not always the sexiest. You have to stick with things long enough and you have to be okay with “failing.”

I don't actually think anybody fails if they don't give up. That's just what I've seen over and over again in my own life and in other people's lives. Now, that doesn't mean you do something in a torturous, horrible way until you cannot take it anymore. That's not what I'm saying in terms of sticking with it.

I think some people use that as permission to torture themselves. What I mean when I say sticking with your business and not giving up will pretty much ensure that you get to six figures, I mean that you are willing to do the things that are uncomfortable repeatedly until they become comfortable, and that you become someone that's just totally okay with knowing that things are not going to be perfect.

If you're here and you're struggling with perfectionism and you have not hit six figures, what a great practice this is for you, what an amazing opportunity to just decide that perfectionism isn't useful, and to be onto yourself.

Because what I see pretty much every week from stylists who are having a panic attack in my Voxer or my DMs is that they have made up a story in their head that they're not going to get what they want to know financially because they've decided that the post they put out isn't perfect, the newsletter they put out had a typo, they said something that they think was dumb on a podcast, whatever.

You don't break your business with mistakes. As a matter of fact, one week in this particular business, I had like $ 28,000 week and I made so many mistakes that it just boggles my mind that you can make that many mistakes and make that much money, like $28,000 week. I still look back at that and I'm just like, “That's crazy.”

The reason why I was making so many mistakes is because I was in action that week. I didn't expect to make that much money, but I was just out there. I was in conversation, I was serving my people, I was providing value in terms of content, and I was supporting my clients who were referring me.

It was really in the relationships that that happened, and because I was so excited to get my emails out for, say, my roundtable call or my newsletter to give my clients some ways of information that I had just learned that I thought would just really be of a huge value to them, I made mistakes because I was going quickly.

Is that something I should look at? Absolutely. Should I try to not do that in the future? Uh-huh. But you can make mistakes and have incredible outcome. In fact, I want you to be so excited about the value that you are giving your clients, the mindset shifts, and the opportunity to think about what's possible for them that you are so excited to get things out that when you do make a mistake, you think to yourself, “It was more important for me to get it out there than it was for me to sit here worrying about making a mistake.”

Now again, I'm not saying there's not a place to get better, but getting to six figures or getting to multiple six figures and beyond is about taking action. That's why I focus so much on this particular income amount is that it is in the getting to six figures phase or getting to your next big, big income goal that you need to develop into someone that just takes the action.

Too many stylists are sabotaging them with what they think is some type of badge of honor of perfectionism. I get it. I was a personal stylist who used to tell people that there was no way that I was a perfectionist because nothing I did was perfect, there was no area of my life that I could show evidence of me having that identity.

Talk about in it. Talk about so unself-aware. Because being a perfectionist isn't about you producing perfection. Because when you are a perfectionist, you don't think anything you do is good enough. Also, you forget and are just totally have no frame of reference for this fact, which is especially when you're running a personal styling business, nobody knows what the rules of the game are for you to be living up to.

We're making this up, guys. We're not doctors. There's not like a special way that you have to go about it. There's not one way to be a stylist. It's not like being a surgeon. When you're a surgeon, there are things you have to be educated on and know and do.

There's a million ways to be a stylist. There are a million ways to build a six, multi-six-figure personal styling business. This idea that there's one right way is just a way for you to stay small and a way for you to protect yourself from being judged and I get it. We're human. That's what our brain does.

But as soon as you can get used to being okay with things going wrong or being uncomfortable and instead focus your attention on “Am I taking action, am I showing up, am I doing the thing that I'm excited to do but maybe feel a little bit like I'm going to puke in my mouth if I do it?” That's what we're looking for.

There are going to be points in your business where things just feel monotonous and boring. If you can make even those enjoyable or you can know that those are developing you, and as my coaches say, “Everything's working. Everything you do is working. It's either working on you or it's working for you,” that is the best quote I have ever heard.

I think they might have gotten it from their coach, Myron Golden, but either way, just let that wisdom soak in for a second. Everything you do is working. It is either working for you or it's working on you.

When I heard that I was just like, “All right, gotta get back to work.” It's this idea that we have to do something and then the result has to be right there in order for it to be successful. That's not how it works.

The more you do things, the more you style people, the more you get good at having conversations in the styling session, the more that you build your relationships, the more you build your network, all of those things take practice and you'll always look back and think, “Oh, what I did a few years ago or six months ago is trash.”

You'll always look back at your social media posts and think, “Cringe.” You just will. If you don't think that when you look back, you are not getting better. You are not playing the game right. That is the only rule of the game, to keep going and to make the process of continuing to show up and be visible and consistent and there for your clients as easy as possible because that's how you win the game. That's how everybody wins the game.

There is not one other thing that has to be a specific way except for consistency when you're hitting your goals as a business owner and as a businesswoman. To bring it back to the topic of this podcast and why six figures are important, I don't want you to get hung up on the number and I also don't want you to shy away from the number.

When I say to some stylist, “What do you want to earn in this business?” they give me a number and they say, “But I know you're all about people making six figures and it doesn't seem possible for me.” Here's the thing. I get it. I couldn't imagine, I mean, it took me seven years, but at some point, I just thought, “Well, this is evidence it's never going to work.”

I took the time that I floundered and struggled to be evidence that it wasn't possible for me. Did I know other stylists who were there? Yeah. I also knew a lot of stylists that were there and they were miserable so maybe that was a block. Maybe I was also thinking like, “Well, how am I going to do that and have a life?”

I mean, it's possible that I was thinking that. It was so long ago. I don't even recognize that person, but I have a lot of compassion for her because she was so afraid of visibility.

Let me tell you, that's another part of this that I feel passionate about. You cannot get to six figures and beyond, especially if you have bigger financial goals for yourself if you are hiding in any way. I get that visibility is so uncomfortable.

I used to say, “Oh no, I'm the stylist that's supposed to be behind the people that are visible,” then someone pointed out that nobody can find you if you’re the world's best-kept secret, that's not how businesses run.

When I had a business coach say that to me, it slapped me right outside the head and got me right out of it. She said, “You have way too many people to help to be hiding the way you're hiding. You have no right to say that you're a stylist, helping other people to show up and then to hide. You need to be brave too.” And that's so true.

We want other people to be brave and to show up in the world and we want to style them to get ready for these things, whether they're just like a mom on the playground who wants to make more friends or they're a woman running her first board meeting or somebody that is running for political office or someone that just hoping to not get passed over for a promotion in their job so they want to show up like their next-level self or a leader, we want all of those people to be brave.

Then we want to often not have to also show up. We want to be the enabler of other people's visibility. You cannot fully understand your client who's seeking to be seen authentically and to be visible in the world if you are not willing to do what it takes to get comfortable with that as well.

That is a badge of honor that people earn through doing. As soon as I got that really big wake-up call, it changed everything for me in terms of the type of clients I got. I launched a podcast because that was a way of being visible that I could handle at that point in my life. You would never see me on stories.

I still struggle with some of these things on certain mediums. I'm not on TikTok, but that's not an excuse for me to not be visible. I do it in the ways that I can A, be consistent with, and B, push me, but don't push me so far out of my level of comfort that I won't continue to show up.

You are always looking for that balance. Again, you need to be visible to hit six figures. Other people need to know where to find you. You need to be creating spheres of influence around your business.

Again, if you haven't hit six figures yet, instead of focusing on the number in the bank account, I want you to focus on being consistent, letting yourself be visible even if it's terrifying.

What is the way you can be visible that will get you out there? What is the way of looking at how you do the things every day in your business that are not super sexy or super fun? What are the ways you can make that more enjoyable?

Are there things that you can outsource like I've said at the top of this episode with my accountant in order to be able to really get more impact from your own time and give the things that you're not maybe as great at to other people?

These are the things I want you to be thinking about no matter where you are in your business, especially if you haven't hit six figures because hitting six figures, in getting to whatever that next half a million dollar or a million dollar mark is in your business is truly about who you become on the way. The money is just a byproduct.

Those are the things you have to master in order to do the thing that I know each of you really wants to do, which is to style more people, make a deeper impact, and help people look at themselves differently in the mirror every day. That is why I talk about making six figures in your personal styling business. Thank you for being here. I will talk to you on the next episode.

Thank you so much for hanging out with me. It turns out that social proof is actually pretty important. So if you could help me out, I'd so appreciate it. If you just had a quick free moment and could leave me a rating or review on the podcast app, that would be killer. And even better, if you wanted to share this episode on Instagram and tag me, that would totally make my day and it would bring so much more awareness to the podcast and would help other stylists just like you who are looking to build lucrative styling business because the better each of us does, the better all of us do. Thanks for hanging out with me and I'll chat with you next time.