PODCAST SHOWNOTES

Welcome to the Six Figure Personal Stylist Podcast, the ultimate no-BS business podcast for ambitious personal stylists ready to build a six-figure and beyond personal styling business.

You won't hear the typical snoozefest business advice that most personal stylists get told all of the time. Nope. Instead, I'll be sharing business-building strategies that will help you create a killer personal brand, a cult following of loyal personal styling clients, and make a ton of cash while creating lasting style transformations for your clients.

I'm Nicole Otchy, 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. And now I'm here to tell you how to do exactly the same. Let's get into it.

This is a really fun episode. I'm so excited to dive in. We're going to talk about why you do not have to worry about your personal styling career as there is a rise in styling apps and AI.

Why do we fundamentally misunderstand what other human beings want from a personal stylist, probably because we're a little bit too close to the topic when we let ourselves be consumed in fear or use the excuse that our businesses aren't doing well because of styling apps and AI.

This episode will be a little different and then I have a lot of stats and some data for you. Regardless of whether or not this is a fear you have, I want you to stick around because this episode is going to really reveal to you through the data, the place, and the possibility that personal styling has in people's lives and will continue to have in their lives.

How the market demand has not slowed down even with an increase in the saturation of more and more stylists in the field and why it is not the case that you are in any way at all financially competing with these apps or AI?

Because if that is a place you let yourself go, you are spending a lot of time on things that are not accurate reflections of reality, which is something we can all do. I'm going to pull you right out of there.

I want to just share that because this is a conversation that actually happened in my DMs on Instagram. I replied to that stylist and then screenshot our conversation with her permission and shared it, and many, many stylists then responded like, “So interested to hear your perspective because I have been having this fear, but I don't know how accurate it is or I go down thought spirals and get into anxious periods about my business because of this topic.”

Once I heard that, I knew it was something we had to address, I did some online research and I really haven't seen anyone talk about this, which is fascinating because this is a topic that very much impacts the industry.

It's wild to me that nobody who considers himself a leader in the space is talking about it so we're going to talk about today and I think that this is an opportunity for you regardless of where you sit on the AI styling app conversation to really have a great insight into what happens when you understand the facts of an industry, when you understand the culture of industry like personal styling, which is my goal for you and what I have devoted years and years to.

Yeah, sure, it's about the business plan, it's about being a better stylist and all those things. But now the business and the field have been around so long that there is a culture, there are trends, there are different ways that people think, there are different ways that the industry is clearly behind, and it is in having conversations about what is cutting edge, what is actually happening in technology because there again has been such a fear of looking at ourselves as businessmen and women that we have not made those demands from styling apps, from other aspects of support industries that support personal stylists.

There are instances where there are certain software for stylists that don't let stylists get their intellectual property out or don't let them get their data out of the app when they leave.

There are a lot of different demands that are normal in other industries that stylists shy away from. I want you to be fully armed with the information you need because the truth is, especially after you hear the stats, you're going to see that the styling industry really truly is poised to be a serious financial contender on the world market and the luxury global stage.

But it won't be if we do not become business savvy if we do not look at things like statistics and reality, and every stylist that's in my DMs worried about their business and what's going on.

It is often the result of us making up stories in our head that these things are a problem for us or are the reason why our business isn't doing well when we are not taking full responsibility for the fact that we are not marketing with a strategy.

We do not have a pricing plan that makes sense. We stole our services from somebody else. These are the things we should be focused on. But in case you've gone on that road, let's dive into this topic today.

The first reason why you have literally nothing to worry about if you are not marketing your business in a way that basically makes you competition for a styling app is that the human touch and the human experience and that relationship that you have with your clients is absolutely irreplaceable.

In 2022 there was a survey by the International Associates of Image Consultants that 78% of clients that hire a stylist value the emotional connection and the trust that they have built with their personal stylist.

That's a fine enough stat, but I want to actually bring this to another level. If you're familiar with Alex Hormozi, he's a business leader and a business guru. He went in and rebuilt gyms and dealt with the business side of in-person gyms.

He has talked a lot about how, similarly to personal styling, especially during the pandemic, a lot of apps have been developed for people to work out at home. There was a huge explosion of this.

Gym owners, obviously were closed like a lot of stylists were a little bit, there was a huge dip in business at that point, they were really worried that AI and online training platforms and these things were going to take away from people ever going back to trainers into the gym.

What he said about it is that people don't hire personal trainers or go to the gym because they're getting something from them that they can't get in other places. They're doing it for the personal accountability that happens when you have to show up and see the person to train you.

They're doing it because they don't want to be alone in their house doing this activity because people crave human connection or they're doing it because they are so stuck in where they are with their fitness routine that they absolutely need to have that one-on-one relationship to feel the sense of accountability and to have the trainer to helping them troubleshoot through the problem that they are perceiving that's getting in the way from their fitness goals so that they can get to the other side.

Every single thing that he said in that YouTube video that I watched a couple of months ago just struck me. It stopped me in my tracks and I was on my phone taking notes because all of that is true with personal styling.

Will there be people that go to styling apps? Yes, but those are not people who were either for a personal stylist at the moment or may never be ready because that's not really what they were looking for.

When I hear people worry about this competition, what I hear is they're not very clear on their value as a stylist. They may not be that experienced, they're going through an emotional rough patch, whatever it is. But instead of saying that it's an issue with, “This is going to take away my business,” and you're getting all activated about it, think about it if you were on the other side and you were looking at it for the gym industry.

People do not hire personal trainers because they don't understand that they can go on YouTube and work out. People don't hire personal stylists because they don't know there's an entire app called Pinterest that has literally every styling piece of advice like in the world or TikTok or whatever.

That's why I say that people don't hire you because you give great styling advice. If that was the case at this point in time—again, wasn't the case 15 years ago—but right now there's so much of it that what people actually are hiring you for is to help them cut through the noise and get them the result that they want.

They don't want more information, they want results and you get them results. Oftentimes apps give people some of the solutions, they give them mismatched solutions, but they're not personalized.

Nothing will ever be able to replace that personalization, that back and forth, that understanding you have of them and the fact that they don't like ruffles and they don't like pink, even though you find that out after you've done two pulls or whatever, you get my point. There's never going to be something that's going to change that.

A 2022 study showed that personalized styling recommendations from human stylists had a 35% higher satisfaction rate compared to AI-generated suggestions. 35% is significant, enough that actually one of the ways you could look at AI and these other platforms is that they can be giving a poor experience to people and actually generating demand for in-person or virtual one-to-one personal styling services.

Especially for one-to-one, this is less of an issue for you because there will always be people who really want that one-to-one touch. If you are virtual, there will still be a need because there's still a one-to-one experience, but you will need to make it clear why you are different. You will need to make sure that your marketing is amazing.

I mean, everyone's marketing should be amazing because I want you to have an amazing business. But it's just a different way of looking at things. You're more likely to be price-shopped with an app or with an app that has a couple of very minimal one-to-one styling services in it. They'll do a closet edit for you or something like that.

But if these people are not super understanding the details of that client, which is what these apps never allow, sure, they may have a one-time meeting with a stylist, but there's just no way they can compete with a holistic, full-on, high-touch, virtual, or in-person styling service because you just cannot get that much information in a one-hour virtual consult.

You can't change anyone's life that way, nor does anybody feel comfortable enough opening up truly to get them what they want, which is more of a transformation. What you need to understand is that 35% of people not feeling satisfied by AI-generated suggestions or styling apps with very, very minimal one-to-one touch is actually creating more clients for you.

That's how I used to feel about Stitch Fix. I used to get interviewed all the time and they'd be like, "What about Stitch Fix? How do you feel about Stitch Fix?” I loved Stitch Fix. I have so many clients that actually came from Stitch Fix, so many stylists, by the way so I have a lot to say about Stitch Fix, but it was the best generator of clients.

It was better than anything else I ever created, especially when I started speaking to it, especially when I started saying like, "Oh, I bet you've tried Stitch Fix. Here's why that didn't work for you."

It was like shooting fish in a barrel getting clients when I started in that kind of marketing because they thought that I got them and I understood them, which quite frankly I did. It wasn't that hard to understand why Stitch Fix wasn't scratching the edge that they had.

The same is true of you and your messaging if you get yourself out of the view of “This as a competitor,” what if you viewed these types of apps as like creating your next best client?

Because now that person has tried something and it didn't work for them, the person who then goes to you as a one-to-one stylist wants a solution. That's the kind of client you want to work with because they are committed.

Maybe they were misguided in where that solution would come from so they got themselves on one of these apps. Doesn't mean they're cheap. Doesn't mean they're going to be a bad client. They just don't know what they don't know. They didn't stumble across your content.

This is why I do an entire sales awareness process in the Income Accelerator so that every stylist that goes through there and completes it, knows what the thoughts are that someone is thinking that is a potential client at every stage of the buying journey so that their content can be maximized for that person to either bring them closer to the sale or to let that person know that they're not a good fit for them. Because that's what your content should be doing.

If your content is doing that, if your content is speaking to people where they are like I just gave the example of like you use Stitch Fix, it didn't work for you, and here's how it impacted your daily life, that person is now even closer and they're buying belief to hiring me.

They now believe that I am the solution because I understand them and that is what's possible for you when you understand that the real value, the true value of the personal styling experience is the irreplaceability of the personalization and the one-to-one attention that somebody gets.

Another really, really big aspect of this, the second reason why you really don't have a lot to be worried about when it comes to AI and styling apps, is that you need to understand how a personal styling client perceives their own problems.

This is why. It feels like a broken record, but I also know that's how you build a brand, please know the more I repeat this, the more I am also like, “I repeat this a lot,” but it doesn't matter because we're trying to change a culture and you have to repeat things to change a culture.

One of the things in the culture that I want to change is our not being client-centered enough, are us not looking at our business from a really, really deep understanding of what a personal styling client is experiencing when they come to us. Because let me tell you, once you get this, so much easier to run a business, and so much more brain space cleared up.

One of the big things that stylists do not recognize, what's funny is even stylists who actually struggled with this issue is that the person who is a potential client thinks that they have a more complex body, personality, or some type of unique need or unique deficit in many cases that is not going to fit the “norm”. So, AI or an app won't help them.

Unfortunately, in a sad way, but also it's the reality of a lot of people—I know that after I had a baby, I didn't feel good about myself or think very good thoughts—I can only imagine if someone's been in this place for a long time, especially if they just went through a vulnerable life change, how deeply they would feel this and have this perspective that they really feel like what they're dealing with in terms of their body shape, their body type, their inability to figure out fashion or figure out style is unique and different.

They're going to need basically a lot more help than an app is going to need. I think stylists, because they come at this either from a position of like they had an issue with style or they felt—I'm not saying no stylist ever feels self-conscious, that's not what I'm saying—but maybe they had a prolonged period where they felt a certain way, then they decided to learn a bunch of skills about styling and then they became stylists.

Stylists tend to forget where they were before they became stylists in their content. Or, because they're someone who “love style since they were five” and was always seen as a stylish person, they don't have—unfortunately, honestly—the window into what it's like to be the client if the client is drastically different than them.

I see this a lot with stylists who are like undersized 10, they've not had a lot of weight fluctuations. They've always viewed themselves as stylish and/or have always been viewed by other people that way. No shade, that's your identity and that's probably why you have the gifts you have.

But one of the blind spots of those stylists is that they don't ask enough questions or get into the mindset of the people that they are serving, particularly when a new client comes aboard, because they get so anxious about their own abilities, they don't seek to understand the client, they just seek to not screw up in the styling container.

But the reason why you are such a value to the personal styling client is because in their mind, what they're dealing with is so complex that they need an expert. In your mind as a stylist, it isn't that complex or it's complex to you because you've never worked with a client that had that body shape or had that issue.

But in general, it's not like you don't think that this is the only person in the world who has this problem because it's not emotionally driven to you. You may not know how to fix the problem, but you know that people have drastically different sizes on top or on bottom or have two different size feet or whatever. We've all seen it all.

What you're missing is that there are actually stats on this that 62% of consumers claim that they have fit issues that require in-person assessment and styling, and that require one-on-one help outside of generic recommendations on websites.

This was 2024. This is a stat that I got from the 2024 report by the fashion industry analyst. That is saying a lot. If 62% of the customers and the consumers that were pulled—I'm guessing by what I looked at in this study that is actually done by stores. It was done by retailers—are saying that they have an issue that requires something beyond what they can get online or in an app, that's a pretty significant statistic. That tells you a lot about how people are looking at getting clothes and personal style and what they view as the thing in the way.

Another thing that I think really supports this view of a potential styling client is that 40% is the return rate of items that are purchased on an online styling app that has no in-depth styling process or any way of getting to know the potential client better.

Only 15% of items that are hand-chosen, or individually selected for an individual by a personal stylist get returned. We have a 40% return rate when we're talking about styling apps. We have a 15% return rate from personal stylists.

Now there may be a couple of you out there who are thinking about a few of your past difficult clients and you're like, “I know it wasn't 15%.” That thought actually ran through my own head when I thought of one of my most difficult clients.

But statistically, for people who work with the personal stylist, it's really the rite of passage to have the person return pretty much everything at some point in your career.

I think that that's a really, really, really clear statistic that 40% of people are doing returns from online styling apps that backs up the idea that 62% of consumers have fit issues and that they believe that's going to require more one-to-one assessment and styling.

The reason why I think this is the best news you could ever have is that even if you did not know these stats that I spent time researching, even if you didn't know that, enough conversations with your established styling clients, even if you did not know the stats that I just shared with you, if you were having conversations with your established clients frequently before, during, and after your personal styling packages, which is why systems are so important to make these like a normal part of how you run your business, this would be an instinct you have.

Obviously, the percentages would not be clear because this is a huge population we're looking at here, which is great because that means the sample size is big enough that these are legitimate percentages.

But you would have a sense of this, that it doesn't matter if you think your client just didn't have that hard of a body shape, they do. It's that self-perception that drives buying behavior.

It's that emotional sales trigger that is the thing that is making people hire you, which is why if you are only showing links, if you're only doing educational content, you don't hit on the thing that actually makes people buy from you, which is how they feel about the problem that they're having.

That’s why nobody cares about your closet edit. They care about how the closet edit or any part of your process is going to help them with the feeling that they don't want anymore, which is that they have a unique problem that is going to require a specialist and it's you.

People will tell you what they need to hear to buy, and the statistics show that at this point. Then the last one is that the experience economy is only growing, and styling is seen as a luxury service, which is why I sometimes struggle when I hear stylists being like, "Well, I'm not a luxury stylist." It's like, “You don't have to shop at Chanel for it to be a luxury to someone.”

I've said to my clients before, that if someone's shopping at Target, and you're bringing them to Banana Republic, then that's a luxury to them. Anytime you're elevating somebody's experience of personal style or opening their eyes, which is why I think people drastically underestimate the importance of style discovery in personal styling packages, they are no longer negotiable.

You have to have a style discovery part of your packages, especially if they're mid-tier or high-tier because people want that experience. We're in an experience economy. They want to understand why they're unique, why they're different, and if you don't have a process that brings them to that understanding, even if you're the one doing the analysis, even if you're the one bringing them the clothes, the fact that they're working with a stylist who's showing them how it's unique, and then making that plan come to life when they shop for them is an important part of the buy-in of the experience.

I worked with stylists, particularly celebrity stylists, who were like, "No, it's my vision. I don't want to know anything about them. I just have a quick conversation, and then I build them their wardrobe.” And that's great if that's the client you have.

I think that's really very much built on the idea that there's a purity to the styling process that is a little bit stripped of the individual who's in front of you, which is something that you get a lot in celebrity styling and editorial styling.

I know because I did some editorial styling and it's super fun because there are not a lot of the constraints that a real person has. We're going to talk about celebrity styling, I have a whole episode for you guys out there because I love you and I think you're so, so talented, like true artists when I think of celebrity stylists.

But when I see that, I'm like, “Oh, you're missing the fact that these people are actually hiring you for the experience economy that they are trying to take part in. It's a luxury service. However, they perceive luxury, that's not the point. That is subjective.

I have stylists who only think luxury Chanel, and I have stylists who think that it's like Neiman Marcus, and I have stylists who think that it's like [inaudible]. That's why there's enough room for everybody, because everybody who wants to work with a one-on-one stylist and doesn't want an app and doesn't want these types of things is looking for an experience.

That's what's missing in that in apps and in AI. You just can't give that to them. Now you can give them a better experience if you have onboarding systems that feel really high touch and you have all the things that are individual and personalized in these little touches that make it feel more luxurious, which also by the way is smart because it means you're going to retain that client for longer, so you're going to make more money.

But in 2024, a McKenzie study on the future of retail found that 70% of high-net-worth individuals preferred personalized, in-person shopping experiences either with a stylist or in a high-end store. 70% of high net-worth individuals.

Now, if you're sitting here thinking to yourself, "Well, I don't work with those people" A, the world is a big place, there's a lot of those people, more of those people than you can even imagine. But also the important part is that our society tries to mimic the behaviors of high net-worth individuals.

Even if somebody you're working with is only making $100,000 a year, they probably have aspirations because our society praises this to be a high net worth individual. They will have an aspiration to work with a personal stylist because it's part of the luxury service experience economy.

That's what they think is the marker of being where they want to go. Last time I checked, people were in credit card debt because they didn't only buy things that they could afford. We all do this. All of us.

We don't only buy things we can afford. It just depends on what our identity is pulling us towards that we're willing to over-invest in an area where we don't have the money versus another one.

Another part of this that's really important is that well the economy is on many different scales, not necessarily doing well, or it's been very like touch and go, like are we in a recession, are we not?

I've had a lot of conversations about this with stylists and there's a real misperception about what's happening in the world right now. Yes, certain things are really expensive which makes no sense.

But there are also more really, really high net-worth individuals than there's ever been before. This doesn't really look like the way the high-class, middle-class, and low-class stratification used to look. It looks very different right now because of the global economy, because of technology.

The stats are actually showing that by 2025, which is next year, the personal luxury goods market—which is what you are, and the personal styling industry, it's how you're perceived—is projected to grow to $382.6 billion.

That was what it was projected to be in 2023, and it is actually now on track for that or more. I'm recording this in July of 2024. So $382.6 billion means that especially if you're an online stylist, there's not going to be a problem of you finding clients if you get your marketing and your messaging right.

I'm my reminder that really, really wealthy people are just people. They have the same insecurities. They have the same issues, also true of celebrities, that they're just normal people.

What everybody is looking for, whether they don't make $100,000, whether they make $100 million is to be understood, is to feel like there is this personalized element that they're getting from inexperience, a transactional personal styling service that the style is used as transactional, but because of where that person is emotionally, psychologically or whatever, it's transformational to them.

Whether you are transformational or transactional, whether you have really long styling containers and you go really deep or whether you're like, “We're going to get this done in three weeks. I might use [inaudible],” I don't really care what it looks like, getting a lot of questions about that. I want you to understand that either way, depending on the price point, and the way you're positioned in the market, it can be seen as a luxury.

It's not that only transactional or transformational styling services are seen as a luxury. It's about how they are perceived. It's about the level of intimacy and one-on-one personalization that person's going to get over a styling app.

Now, I am not saying that all of your marketing needs to be about why you shouldn't use styling apps because I see a lot of people going in that route with influencers, and that's fine, but I think sometimes it makes our audience focus on things that they were not focused on to begin with, especially if they're following you.

Maybe they're looking at these other things, but it may not be something that you need to worry about. Before we put our attention there, I think it's just more about us really making the experience of our marketing and of our services to be so clearly different than these things that we don't have to call them out.

Or, if we do call them out, we can call them out like I have a couple of clients who tried the XYZ styling app. It didn't work out for them. Here's why. Then you highlight your service.

But I wouldn't make it a blanket statement because I actually don't think the stats show that everybody's using these styling apps to figure out their style. I think people are doing the same things they've always done with magazines that they're just either maybe they're doing it with influencers, maybe they're just doing it shopping the ads, they get on Instagram, honestly, I see way more of that.

Whatever that looks like, make it so that you are making it so clear in your marketing and even on your website and how you talk about your services that you're providing this really high touch experience and also your price as part of that perception, that whatever that person, whatever that group of people, whatever's a high price to them, I need to know more about them to know what that price would be.

But I think in general, we just want to make sure we are differentiating ourselves and always remembering in our own head when we're creating marketing that what we're really, really doing is we're creating something and an experience for a human being, for an individual.

When we go at our marketing from that angle, when we're having conversations with our audience, when we're interested in their lives, when we know what books they're reading, like when they are real people to us and we market to that, we don't have time to think about apps or AI.

It would take so much for somebody to create a program that could, I'm not saying it's never going to happen, but for right now, it's not what you have to worry about, it's not how most people want to experience their personal style.

Could it be a stop on the way to you? Sure. Is this the thing that should keep you up at night? Absolutely not. My hope is that hearing some of these stats really reinforces your value as a stylist or value in the cultural lexicon of where we’re going as a society and that you understand that you need to keep going to keep your eyes on your own paper and just keep making your services better so you can help more people.

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.