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.

Have you ever had the experience in your personal styling business where you were super excited about working with a new client, hiring a coach or a consultant, or starting out on a new content plan, and then for whatever reason, for whatever expectations you had of that experience, it did not go the way you hoped?

Did you ever have the experience where you really struggled to get out of the place where that continued to affect you? You couldn't change your thoughts about it. Maybe it's how much money your business made. Maybe it's what you hoped somebody would do for your business. Maybe it's the way that your marketing is being met on social media, whether it's getting a response you like or it's getting no response at all.

Today we're going to talk about what the key ingredient is to turning this experience of disappointment around. It's a really important discussion that is going to proceed the next podcast on what is going on in the online space.

This is a critical part of next week's conversation. I want you to lean in as we talk about accountability. Let's just kick it off with the definition of accountability so we all are on the same page.

Accountability is defined as an obligation or a willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one's actions. If you look up the word account, it means capable of being explained.

What I really like about this definition of accountability is the second part. It's to account for one's actions. It is so critical that we come to our business from an empowered place regardless of what's going on. That is going to require you to do something that most people will not do in their life. It is going to require you to step out of ordinary, everyday thinking and step into the behavior of someone who is extraordinary.

That is what this conversation is about. This is about us actually learning the framework for taking accountability because accountability in our lives, in our business, and in our relationships is the only thing that gets us results.

If we don't have this piece, all the frameworks, all the coaching, all the tactics, all the consultants cannot help you. I think what I often experience on sales calls or with clients who are struggling to keep up with the program that is created for them is that they often lack an understanding of what real accountability is.

Without this understanding, there are a lot of ways that our businesses don't grow and don't move forward, including the fact that if we don't understand this and master it for ourselves, we will not be able to create experiences where our clients are fully accountable for their side of the equation in a styling experience.

When that happens, you need to be someone who understands what's the client's world of responsibility and what your world of responsibility is. This is why taking your business seriously as a business and getting business skills and business acumen is an essential part of being a good stylist.

What happens is we sometimes have an experience with the client where they don't communicate well. There's a lot of time, they don't answer our emails, they don't answer our voice messages. They look at a shopping poll that we did online, and then they go unresponsive, or they keep pushing out a date to complete the project.

That is often because nine times out of ten, we did not create a clear expectation of what's the client's actions and what are our actions. That is because in our business, we probably do not have processes and systems and a clear sense of what's what.

I say that because a lot of stylists that I've worked with for many years struggle with this idea that they are “taking accountability” when they take all of the responsibility in the relationship with their clients. Because personal stylists tend to think just on a really small level like, “Oh, this is a high-touch experience, I shouldn't have to have them fill out a new client form, or whatever. I'll just remember it or I'll just do it on the call.”

What is failed to be understood in that belief is that it is actually for the betterment of the client for them to be reflective. It's not that it's about high-end or low-end experience. That's not even how this works.

In order for that client to get the best result and the biggest transformation, they have to take accountability for their side of the styling experience because it's a partnership.

Even in the highest end, even when you're bringing the clothes to the person's house, even when it's concierge level, it's a partnership because the clothes are going on their body and they need to be able to reflect what they want that experience to be.

Because if we don't know how to measure things and what the guideposts and the goals are for success, nobody can take real accountability. I often see that stylists who never want to stick with the business plan or that sort of dance in and out of wanting to get some help with their business, they often push it off because they don't want to have to take accountability because they know when they look at the numbers, when they look at the data, when they look at the facts, they will have to face their own effort that they put into the equation.

I can say that with a lot of confidence because I was that person for a long time. The story that I told myself was, “Well, I wasn't a business person, I wasn't good at that.” But what all that allowed me to do was to excuse sitting in my own misery or like, “Why isn't this working? I'm confused. It doesn't make sense.” It allowed me to do that longer and longer and be a victim.

Because nobody has to have a business, you get to have a business. Without accountability, you don't actually have a business. You can get pretty far but eventually, things are going to go awry. I have seen this at every level.

If you want to think of the biggest level, think of someone like Bernie Madoff. There was no accountability there because there was no truth. There was no truth. If you think that you're at a point in your business where this is beyond you, you're never at a point in business if you own a business where it's beyond you.

I have to check myself on this every single day. It's one of the reasons why I don't have a lot of offers. It's because I take my word very seriously. If you're someone who doesn't follow up with your clients, if you don't give them deliverables, if you know there's a list of things you haven't done and you're hoping you can just sneak by, we have an accountability problem.

This conversation is important because when we become people who are fully accountable, the people in our lives become people who are fully accountable because we model that in our business and our systems model that.

In order to be accountable, you have to be able to, like I said, account for your actions, which means that you need to be clear on the things that you're doing and what the markers of success are.

That's why having a business plan and that's why actually following a plan, even if it's loosely, even if it's your plan, if it means, like, for example, in my Income Accelerator Program, in the Marketing Program, I have a section where I tell the stylist that I work with, “I want you to make a ‘marketing plan,’ like a strategy from your best energy, your okay energy, and your worst day energy. I want you to build the plan not to your highest energy.

“I don't want you to think you're going to post five Reels every week with new trending sounds and new original content, how about two Carousel posts? Could you do that? Could you do one if you were on your worst week?”

But that's how we can be successful because you cannot be successful if you are not consistent. So in order to figure out what does consistency look like for you, you have to be able to reverse engineer the plan to what your lowest hanging fruit is basically and then expect that everything over that is like the cherry on top.

This is what it looks like to be accountable. This is what it looks like to account for your actions. I have these markers in my one-to-one and in my group programs for this reason. I understand better than anyone that life happens. I understand better than anyone how hard it is to run a business.

I’ve gotten my first business to six figures. I had to get there again after the pandemic as a stylist and I did it with this business. I know. I know what it's like when nobody answers you. I know what it's like to market and feel like it's crickets. I know what it's like to not have clients for a few months. I've experienced all of those things.

I am still accountable for my actions that got me those results. I want to support every stylist who comes into my world, whether it be from this podcast or into one of my programs, to understand that until they take full accountability for the results they get, they don't have any power in their business.

This is where power lies. This is where success comes from. One of the ways that we can not take accountability is by not stopping ourselves and understanding the difference between busy work and result work in our business; work that actually moves us forward and work that actually just keeps us busy because they kind of feel the same. You're busy with all of them. You can be confused with all of them. You can think you're doing all the things and nothing's happening.

But the one difference between stylists that are at six figures, stay at six figures, and maintain that and go above it, and the people that don't, are the people that are doing work know what success looks like.

The people who are doing busy work are actually really not interested in looking at what it looks like. They don't like the plan. I get it if you're neurodivergent or whatever. But if you cannot stick with the general principle of, “I post twice a week. I look at my finances once a month,” I don't really love a very heavy and rigid schedule kind of a thing but you have to know what the markers of success are.

Let me give you an example of this business. We are now at 15 months of the styling consultancy when I record this. My goal was to get—and you're going to think this is crazy because the numbers are low—to 500 followers between 500 and 1,000 in the first year. We're at like 700 or something like that today.

The goal is before I get there, am I converting? That's why I don't focus on the numbers. I was like, “Okay, I need to get this account up so people are watching it, and I need enough people to be watching it in order for me to be able to know if things are converting or not.”

Because I was able to get to the business to six figures with that small of an audience and at that point, not even a podcast, I was just doing roundtables, I knew that okay, now that I know that that is hitting, now I'm going to invest in growing my audience.

I'm going to invest in an actual website, which is something that I did not want to screw around with until I was clear the business made money because I'm not going to put time, money, effort, whatever, into things, if they don't convert to money because this is a business and money is an indicator of impact.

I'm not going to build a website with messaging that is not speaking to anyone. That's a waste of time. I can sell off of a PDF. I could have spent months doing busy work and building a website and guessing but that's what people that are just interested in not really getting results do.

I was convinced that I would take everything out of my way when I built this business that would get in the way of me creating real results, so there is no website until the next couple months now that I'm 15 months in.

There was no money towards ads or towards, in this case, I'm going to use Pinterest to grow my Instagram to getting a professional to do that until I knew the messaging converted. There was no expensive podcast art created until I knew that people were resonating because those things are great, but nothing matters more than connection and conversion in your business.

This idea that so many statuses have like, “Well, I'm planning for my social media post. I'm planning to be visible again,” you cannot plan for something and have it come out the gate perfectly. The game is create, perfect, create, perfect, create, perfect. But if you don't know that's the game, then you'll stay in busy work for a long time because you are in business to help people and you don't know other people until you talk to other people. So accountability, when it comes to getting results in your business, is about you having the metrics to decide what success looks like.

For me, it was like I will get the messaging down, I will invest in growth. I knew I could get to six figures with that. So if you're out here saying that it's not possible, you need more followers and you have 1,000 or 2,000 followers and you have not converted 40% of those people, then your work isn't in growing, your work is in doing the actual thing that's going to get you a result, which is figuring out how to talk to the people who are already there.

People don't like that answer, but that's what it looks like to be successful. I do not put money towards things that I have not tested. I did one-to-one for over a year. I perfected the framework because one thing about me is I am not going to give you the plan that I used to get to six figures 14 years ago like so many people do. That is absolutely the worst thing I could do for you.

I used a plan that got me to six figures again after the pandemic because the world is not the same, the online space is not the same, we'll be chatting about that next week, and then I tested it and perfected it over a year with clients. Now it's a group program because I know it works right now.

That's why so many people come from other group programs to my program or from other group programs to my one-on-one because they're using frameworks that I was using 15 years ago to grow a business and the world is not the same. I would be very cautious of someone who tells you they're giving you their business model from when they started growing.

I would ask them, “Well, when did you start that business? When did you get all those Instagram followers?” Because even two years ago, Instagram growth, for example, was much different and easier than it is now.

I'll tell you it was even easier 10 years ago, which is what I wish I could go back and tell my old self. Just because someone says, “Make six figures,” how much money are they taking home?

I run an incredibly lean business. I have my stylists run lean businesses for this reason because it's not impressive to make a million dollars if you're only bringing home before taxes, $100,000. All those people, all the help you had to spend in order to make that money isn't impressive. Because now you can't show other people how to have a profitable business.

This is why understanding for you and for the people that you hire and for the places you're in and the relationships you build with your clients, what the markers of success are is where you can have true accountability. That's why business plans have to exist. That's why frameworks are important in following them.

For example, if you end up saying, “Well, no one's converting, it's just about money,” you're posting on social media, but you're not getting new clients, the question isn't,

“Why are you getting new clients?” the question is “Why is your content not resonating so that you get clients?”

People go to the last step of the process and then they look and say, “Well, I didn't get the client.” But in order to get the client, you have to warm them up, build a relationship, educate them on what it would mean to work with you, connect with them emotionally, and then they convert.

I know because it happens all the time on my feed. I know because I get on sales calls every day where people are quoting this podcast back to me. You're experiencing it right now.

What I see all the time is when you go to the edge, and it's just about getting the client and about the money in the bank, you actually miss all the steps along the way that you could have been accountable for and aware of, that would have actually given you information to get to that end goal faster.

It's not about why you don't have clients right now because you posted a few times. It's about what you're saying, what about it is not landing. I'll give you a little hint. It's usually because your content does not mirror the lived experience of the person who would consider hiring you.

These are what I call snapshot moments in my program. If you want to learn about it, get on the waitlist because it's life-changing for people's content. It’s how people binge my content when they get on to my Instagram account and they get on a sales call with me, as Bari talked about in an earlier interview within one day of finding me.

That's why you don't need a ton of numbers to get to your financial goals if you understand the metrics that actually matter in your business. So many stylists are obsessed with what other people are doing. There are not enough eyes on their content, but they have way more followers than even I have at this point. The question is, what is the result-driven work that we avoid and what are we being busy with?

That answer to that question, like what are we not measuring, what are we not taking accountability for, what are we not looking at, if the answer is like, “Well, I have a content plan, but I'm not really using it. I know what kind of content I need to create to convert, but I want to do this instead,” that's fine. You can do that.

But don't be surprised when you have the results that you have because when you look back at your actual actions, that's what we're doing here, we're counting on our actions, we get the results that we get for a reason.

I want to talk about something that I just posted on my Instagram account and I will link it in the show notes here, which is the three levels of business growth. Now I really want to give you the frameworks to understand what it looks like to create the right measurements and the right expectations for outcomes.

I think that what happened for a very long time in the online space was that you could hire someone and they could give you their plan and then you could replicate the plan, cut and paste it, and you would get a certain result.

But now—and we'll talk about this like I said in the next episode more—all industries and online businesses are more saturated. There are more online businesses than ever before post-pandemic and certainly true in the styling industry.

What you see is that because so many people from around 2016, 2017, and beyond were taking online courses, particularly stylists that you have a lot of business models that look exactly alike, and again I took a program a long time ago, it doesn't exist anymore and many of us have the same business model but there wasn't enough saturation for people to figure that out.

In-person was pretty much the way the game worked. There wasn't really a lot of virtual. It was very rare back in 2015, 2016, 2017. So I wasn't like me against all the other stylists that had the same website.

I remember there was one point where like there was me and somebody else in Boston who had a similar set of services, and I remember I changed it. But that was the first time that I felt like, “Okay, people could get on a sales call with me and that person and we would look alike, so I needed to differentiate myself.” So I did that.

That was probably 2017 or 2018 when I noticed that. But now there are so many stylists, and what I hear is that so many people come on this program, they all have the same price and they all have the same services. They all look the same. Now people's awareness of stylists is just way, way more savvy.

When you just go out your business from that, like this cut and paste model, there becomes an expectation that I see that the person who gave you the plan is responsible for you getting or not getting results.

But the truth is that because the business world has changed and because consumer expectations of services, particularly very personal ones like personal styling, is that they're going to build a relationship with you, it doesn't matter what the plan I or anyone else gives you is if you are not building the relationship with your clients and the people that are talking to you because you're not talking about the things that actually matter to them and you're just doing what's easy for you to do in your content, you will get those results that you get.

I think a lot of us were able to, back in the day, just sail by on that. We didn't have to be that specific. We didn't have to capture people's hearts and minds as much, but we do now.

A lot of stylists don't realize who is newer to the game because they're just following what they see other people doing that were successful before. But those people got their 10,000 Instagram followers back at a time when it was a different world.

If I still had my old account, it would look very different. It was bigger. I built that. It wasn't even huge either, but I built that at a very different time. Growth was, like I said, a lot easier. It wasn't that it was easier, it was just the rules were much clearer. There was not as much expectation of connection as there is now.

I think a lot of us expect that from the people we hire, but we forget that people expect that from us. I know that because stylists tell me all the time that they're impressed that I'm a business consultant for stylists because it feels like I understand them, well, why wouldn't somebody who wants to hire a stylist want a stylist who they feel understands that?

This is what the accountability piece looks like. It's about self-awareness. It's about really looking and saying, “Okay, what level am I at the business? Am I in the beginning, and I'm really just trying to get a sense of how to be a stylist?”

If that's the case, what you should be expecting and accountable for should look very different than if you are a stylist looking to build a team. I have stylists at all different levels, people that are like in it for a year, are getting outside of the friends and family group, starting to charge people, and getting their legitimate business off the ground.

I have people who are right in the middle. They’re stylists that are kind of what I call the growth phase and you can be at the growth phase for a decade, you can be at the growth phase for a long time. What I see as people that are stuck at the growth phase, they're trying to get consistent income months, they're trying to stand out, they're trying to get to a more even keel in their business, this is where the real, real, real work of developing accountability is for you and for creating a business that also models that for clients.

Because it's at this place when people are trying to grow to consistency. This middle range that requires you to have systems in place that let people know what comes next at every step of the way. Explain your styling services in a way that you get buy-in from the other person because they feel like they're from them, which is why that cut-and-paste model doesn't work anymore.

It's about making sure that you are being magnetic enough in creating a point of view and a perception and putting out your values as a stylist enough to attract the right people consistently. Then after you get to that point, now it's time to step into your expertise, now it's time to think about thought leadership, now it's time to think about if you want to write a book.

I've have so many people that come to me and they're like, “Well, I want Allison Bornstein's career. Allison Bornstein doesn't have the business model that 99.9% of the stylists I work with have.

She was a celebrity stylist who, of course, did regular people, got onto TikTok during the pandemic, created a wild following at a time when it was much easier because it was like the beginning of TikTok to create that, owned her niche, owned her angle, created a language around it, and then got a book deal.

She does one-hour calls with people. Public-facing, she does not have extensive styling services. I don't know what she does behind the scenes. I don’t know Allison. But people come and people go, “I want Allison Bornstein.”

You haven't done the work. You're not showing up enough. Do you have a whole lexicon of concepts that you're going to sit down and talk about every single day over and over? If you are, cool.

But you also just don't know who she knows to get a book deal. You don't know what it is. But I can tell you right now, for the last couple of years, before she even had the book deal, she had a one-hour call. That's not what most stylists are doing.

So when you look and you compare and you truly want to be accountable in this experience that I'm talking about in this example, you have to say, “Wait, wait, wait, if me saying I want that model when I want to work with clients on a longer-term basis or whatever, what do you really want? Do you really want her business or do you want to feel successful and that's what you think it looks like?”

Because again, what we don't measure, what we don't define, we cannot be accountable for because we cannot take stock of our own actions toward it. Just wanting to have a business like Allison Bornstein is not a vision for your business. If you think about where you are, are you at that point where you're just trying to get out of your friends and family and get certain people, are you at the point where you're in a growth phase?

Which again, all of these things can stay at this for three months, a year, six months, nine months, and nine years. It doesn't matter how many years of business you have. It matters how much result-driven work you're doing in your business versus busy work.

But most of the stylists that I see get stuck in the growth phase, they're not at consistent income months. When I look at the people that are in the expertise phase, the people I'm working with are multi-six figures, wanting to get beyond that, that want teams, or have teams, they don't get stuck in the “Well, l let me get it perfect. Let me get my Instagram plan right. I'm not ready yet. The website has to be perfect before it goes up,” because perfect to who? This is how not taking accountability keeps us small.

When I say to someone, “Perfect to who? The people that are hiring you are not stylists, they have no expectations, they want their problem solved. If you tell them and can convince them in whatever way, shape, or form you do that, that you can solve their problem, what does it matter what's on that website? Because people don't even remember what's on your website.”

We hide behind things because it's easier than truly accounting for our actions because that is hard. That's painful. It makes us feel bad about ourselves. But when you look at it like this, “Did I do the actions to merit that outcome? Did I post consistently, for example, for 90 days?” which is how long it would take you to see if your message is resonating with my new content plan, with the pillars that we outlined in order to get the type of client I want, did I do that?

That's accountability. Yes or no. So many stylists I talk to think that accountability is beating themselves up or blaming someone else. But that's not actually how it works because neither one of those stress response tactics gets you answers.

What gets you answers is actually taking accountability. Notice none of this is about blame. None of it's about blame. It's just what is so? It's accounting. It's either there or it's not. They actually either happened or they didn't.

I'm not saying you're not going to feel a certain way about it. But what you can do is get out of the feeling, go for a walk, scream in a pillow, do whatever, and then get back to the facts.

If you're not getting results in a coaching container or in a relationship with a consultant or a marketing person that you hired, “What was promised? What was outlined at the beginning of it? What was your part to take? What is their part?” nine times out of ten, what I see is that people want results by just having a plan.

Here's the thing, if it works like that, more people would be successful in all areas. This is not a personal styling-only conversation, but I am relating it to personal styling because there are not enough people talking about things that aren't just mindset-related.

The real mindset work comes in when you start taking accountability, when you can account for your actions in your business and you're going to feel a way about it. I know. I have them all the time. I have them every day.

If you become someone who can manage your feelings because you are looking at the actual data action plan that you are or are not carrying out, that is where the actual mindset work is.

It's not in the thinking about the thing. It's not in the, “Maybe I'll get my confidence up to do it.” Confidence comes from doing. Confidence comes from doing something and then looking back and thinking, did it work or if it didn't.

Here's what I want to tell you, the secret is about looking back on things that we “think” failed. I was having a conversation recently with a stylist who had a sales page for a program she was really, really excited about.

She said to me, “I had this many people on the list, and I only got these many people in.” I said, “Well, why do you think that was a failure?” She said, “Well, because I wanted X, Y, and Z number of people.”

She got two. She wanted to say 10. I said, “Well, how many people were on your waitlist?” She told me, and actually, she had like a three-percent conversion rate from her weight list. The industry average is two percent.

Let me give you another example. If you have 200 people on your waitlist and you get four people, you've done really well. But if you wanted 10 people in the program and you're not looking at the right metric, you're looking at, “Well, I wanted 10,” okay, but do you have the data you need to actually convert the number of people that it would take to get 10 people? No.

But if we are not responsible for our business and for our business plan and for knowing what success looks like because we're educated business owners, then we will live our lives thinking that we failed at something.

In that case, it would be such a huge, huge, huge travesty for that person, that stylist to then not go back and relaunch that program with that information in mind. If she wanted 10 people, she had to get way more people on her email list or she had to warm up the people on that list a lot more. For example, I have a 26% conversion rate for my online program from a very small waitlist because I do this every week, because I'm consistent.

It doesn't mean I don't want to get my number up higher, it doesn't mean in my last launch, I didn't meet my goals. But my 26% conversion rate to a very small waitlist means I know that my messaging worked so now I just have to focus on the numbers. Sometimes I see stylists who have the numbers, but they have absolutely no conversion. I see that a lot, actually.

This is why when we compare ourselves in business, it's critical to know what the important markers of success and achievement actually are. If the two percent is a really good average for people converting from your waitlist, but you're telling yourself that how you did wasn't good or that you failed, you will not go back to the drawing board with all the things you've already created because if you've converted people, it's probably the messaging is fine, you just need more numbers, so you have different work to do, you will say you failed.

Every single day I get DMs, “I need more clients.” How are you relating to the people that are there? How are we accounting for the experience, the current clients you have are having with you? Is it good? Are we making it better? Since we don't have enough clients, could we make that better? Could we reach out to past clients?

If you have a very low client repeat rate and you've been in the game for a while and you don't have enough clients, let's look at how we can make that experience better instead of worrying about where more people are coming from, because people that already bought for you are statistically so much higher, likely to buy from you in the future if the experience is good.

By good, I just mean that it really just doesn't have to be terrible in most cases. This is the kind of thing that I'm working with stylists on all the time in the Income Accelerator. These are the conversations we're having so that you can get the metrics for success so you can set yourself up to actually succeed, to actually move yourself forward.

So if that's something you want to do, hop on that waitlist. We're open in the next round in September. This round has been incredible. It's been wild to see the success that stylists get when they really understand what they should be looking for in their business and I would love for that to be you. Talk to you next time.

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.