PODCAST SHOWNOTES

Nicole Otchy: 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.

Today, I am sitting down with my long-term client, Gab, who is a New York City-based stylist. Gab is the kind of stylist who makes running a successful styling business online look really effortless, like she has it all together.

Behind the scenes, Gab's business has been a very steady evolution, and we're going to talk about that today, what that looked like for her, refining systems, owning her voice at different stages of her journey, and making strategic shifts that most stylists do not even realize will be massive game changers.

In this conversation, she's going to share how she went from, "Sure, I'll take anyone," to building a business that runs with clarity, confidence, and killer boundaries. We talk about why your marketing might feel off without you even knowing why, and how little shifts behind the scenes can completely change how your business feels and performs.

If you are in the personal styling game for the long haul, this one's for you. Hi, Gab, thank you for being with me today.

Gab Saper: Hi. So happy to be here.

Nicole Otchy: So Gab is one of my clients who I've worked with for like two years, I feel like a long time.

Gab Saper: Yeah, two at least.

Nicole Otchy: I'm really excited to have her here today because we are going to talk about a lot of the evolution stuff that comes with running a styling business, kind of like the behind-the-scenes. What it looks like to step into your marketing, what it looks like to step into your feeling of professionalism.

So why don’t you kick us off with telling us a little bit about where you're located, when you started styling, and kind of where your business was when we first met?

Gab Saper: Yeah, so I am based in New York City. I started my styling business officially in 2018 as a side hustle. I was kind of just doing it with friends and family while having a corporate job.

Then in 2022, I left corporate and decided to do it full-time. So it's kind of been two chapters. The first, from 2018 to 2023, was just a fun little hobby. Then in 2023, I decided to really take it seriously. Obviously, that's a very different business than just working with family and friends.

Nicole Otchy: I worked with Gab for so long and through so many iterations, I couldn't remember if she was doing hourly or packages, and we remembered that she was doing a bit of both. So tell me a little bit about that, why you had a little bit of both, a little bit of everything.

Gab Saper: At that time, I was definitely in a scarcity mindset of, "Make it work for anybody." I understood that having packages was the right thing to do based on research and other service providers that I’d worked with. It just seemed easier for everyone and kind of more professional and nice to have a container that’s really clear.

But also, I didn’t want to turn away any clients. So if someone came to me and was like, "Oh hey, I just need event shopping," or, "I just need to pick out a couple pairs of shoes for me," I was just in a place where I was like, "Sure, sure, sure, we’ll do it hourly, no problem."

I was willing to take any business, even if it was something that didn’t feel like my wheelhouse, or someone that didn’t feel like my wheelhouse, or a project that maybe I wasn’t the right person for. I would just say yes to everything.

Nicole Otchy: In the beginning, you kind of need to, because you need the experience.

Gab Saper: Yeah, I mean, I definitely don’t regret it, but that is the mindset I was in at the time.

Nicole Otchy: Then we moved you fully to packages two years ago.

Gab Saper: Yeah.

Nicole Otchy: But you said that even though you had packages on your website, you were not as confident in selling them. Then you were mentioning how there’s a specific turning point that made you more confident. I think people would be surprised to hear what it was. Why don't you share that with them?

Gab Saper: Yeah, absolutely. It’s really interesting, I don’t think I even exactly realized it was happening until a little after it had happened.

So, in our first intensive together, that’s when I implemented onboarding and offboarding, and systematizing emails for every step of the process. Having templates for that, how to prep for a closet edit kind of emails, and just making systems of all of that, as well as having my freebie and setting it up in Flodesk with all the emails.

Implementing all of that process for me kind of filled in the hole of, "I don’t know, I’m a little girl buying things for people," to, "I’m a professional, this is my job."

It made me feel really confident in saying, "No, I am a professional, this is how I work. If you’re not interested, no thank you."

Nicole Otchy: You said something earlier that made me think of, so many clients say, "I knew there was something off. I knew I wasn’t running a professional business, but I wasn’t quite sure what it is."

Gab Saper: Yeah. That’s exactly how I felt.

Nicole Otchy: I see stylists, even ones that have been in the game for years, they’re like, "I know something isn’t right." A lot of it really is the systems and knowing why things work together and why packages upsell or downsell. It’s just like understanding your own business.

Gab Saper: Yeah, and making it feel like a real business. When you interact with a real business and you get a receipt automated via email, just the little things all being there, that made me at least feel like I was going from, "My little shopping business," to, "No, I’m a real professional." And it’s funny too because in my corporate life, a lot of it, I was in operations. So I love systems.

Nicole Otchy: You do.

Gab Saper: I love when things are automated. I love when software works. I love when things are set up. You know that about me better than most people. So I really did know, "There are systems that need to be here, but I do not know what they are."

Nicole Otchy: Yeah. And they’re really not that complicated.

Gab Saper: No, not at all. It took us a month to implement all of this.

Nicole Otchy: Yeah. It’s not hard. But if I had heard that, I’d have been like, "Oh, I don’t want to. That sounds terrifying." Trust that I have some pretty simple systems because I’m not that person.

But one of the things I found really interesting about watching your career unfold—this is what’s so cool to be a stylist or to just be in transformational work—is you watch people evolve, and it’s such a privilege.

It’s been such a privilege to watch you evolve. One of the things that’s cool is you kind of knew who your market was from the minute I met you, but it has definitely been a journey to shaping it and cultivating the messaging around it. So, who do you work with, Gab?

Gab Saper: Yeah, I love that question. You’re so right. I always kind of knew it in my heart, but I was in that scarcity mindset of, "I’ll take whoever, and if whoever is the person I like, yay for me. But if not, I guess, whatever, it’s fine."

So I think of my girl as, there are some demos, like 30 to 50, lives in a big city, most have corporate jobs, but not all. But for me, it’s really more of who she is in terms of mindset.

I realized through a conversation we had recently that most of my—what I say, "my girl" or "my girls" as my ideal client and the ones I’ve worked with that I love, which now lately is all of them, which is so great—but my girls have all gone to therapy. My girls are all doing work on themselves, be it journaling or meditation or just thinking about what their problems are and trying to fix them.

Style is seemingly one of the last places they’re stuck. I was relooking at a client’s onboarding form recently in preparation for my last call with her, and she had written, "I have a great job, awesome family and friends. I take good care of myself physically. I love how I look, and my style is kind of the last missing piece."

That really clicked for me, because I think a lot of my girls are in that situation. They’re killing it at their jobs. They have big social lives. They travel. They do cultural things. They have really robust lives. That style piece is kind of the last thing holding them back.

Nicole Otchy: That—we've never actually talked about this—but I actually think that is such a good qualifier for a client. Because it means they’re going to come to the transformational process like 90% there, versus trying to waste, they're ready, wasting time being like, "Okay, do you know who you are? Do you know what you like?"

That person’s already fine with stepping into what they like. They’re not looking for the permission, so it doesn’t slow the process down. So that is a really cool indicator.

One of the things you’ve done a lot of is refine. You’ve always known it was someone that was self-aware. You've always known it’s a woman. We've always known those things. But it’s interesting to watch your refinement then get reflected in your marketing, which then brings you in more clients, and then gets you more of the better client.

Nicole Otchy: So talk a little bit about that process and how that has felt.

Gab Saper: Yeah. So I remember actually, when I first started—again, from the scarcity mindset—I never wrote like, "I work with women who blah blah blah." I always wrote "people," because I was like, "I don’t know, men have money and need styling too. It’s not my favorite thing to do, but I’ll do it."

After—I don’t even remember which client specifically—but after working with one male client who was perfectly fine, I was like, "This is not for me. I just don’t like it." I remember so vividly that feeling of then writing my next social post and writing, "she," "her," "women," and making that specific change, how good it felt to just drop that "I’ll work with anybody" and narrow in on who I really want to work with, and frankly, who I can serve better.

My knowledge of menswear isn’t as strong as my knowledge of womenswear. Not that I couldn’t learn—I absolutely could—but I never wanted to, which I think says a lot.

So that was a big turning point for me. I had had some photos in my grid of men I’d worked with, and I archived all of those and changed my Instagram bio to say, "I work with women who blah blah blah." And each time I’ve done something—that was the biggest one—but each time I’ve made some kind of refining moment, it feels so empowering.

And I never think again about, "Oh no, but what about all the men who could pay me?" Like yeah, there are enough. My niche isn’t so niche that it’s 25 people and I’m not going to have a career. There are plenty of people out there who I can work with who are my girls, as I like to call them.

Nicole Otchy: Yeah. It’s interesting because you’ve mentioned the word "scarcity" a few times. But it’s so funny, when I think of scarcity, I always think of, "Oh, there’s not enough money or clients around." But some of the scarcity that I’m hearing is—it’s so interesting because I think this is so much more common—is like, "I don’t deserve to fully love every aspect of my business. I have to take what I can get."

It wasn’t even about money. It was like, "Who am I to enjoy this? Who am I to be lit up?" And it’s like, honestly, nobody wants a stylist that isn’t.

So if you’re listening to this, and you feel like you’re past the point of getting the experience, Gab already had it. She knew how to do a closet edit. She knew how to run the sessions, it’s interesting to notice that a lot of scarcity is often just fear of feeling happy or feeling like you deserve to have the people that you actually want to work with, versus, "I’ll take what I can get."

Gab Saper: Absolutely, yes, and I would add that coming from having worked in corporate for over a decade before doing this, I had a lot of jobs that sucked and made me miserable every day. So it’s not an overnight transition to, "I’m building a career that I love, and everyone I work with is great."

It took some time because I was just used to being like, "Well, yeah, this is how you make money. It’s not always going to be fun."

And obviously, being an entrepreneur is not always fun. There are plenty of things that are annoying or hard or whatever. But if I have full control over who my clients are, shouldn’t they all be people I like? I think the deprogramming of what is normal at work from working in corporate is a huge part of that, too.

Nicole Otchy: Yeah. It’s not culturally normal to be like, "I love what I do." That is part of it as well. I think that’s a really important point for anyone that’s coming from the corporate world. Or even if you’re not, if you’re not around other entrepreneurs, you have so little control.

Gab Saper: I just never thought "I love what I do" was real.

Nicole Otchy: Okay, yes, also that. Yeah, it kind of seems like people are lying, doesn’t it?

Gab Saper: I thought—especially in corporate—like, "I love what I do. I do marketing for fun." Like, no you don’t.

Nicole Otchy: No you don’t. Jane, no one believes you, Jane. Sit down, Betty. You're right.

Gab Saper: Yeah, coming from that world, I was like, "Yeah, you love what you do if you’re a world-famous painter, cool, but that’s not for normies." Now I see that it can be, and that’s wild and amazing.

Nicole Otchy: It’s really hard for me to not go on a tangent about how this is also true of our client’s style, but I’m going to keep it locked into this. Because I’m like, yes.

One of the things that’s super cool about Gab is that she does things scared all the time. I’ve been like, "Go do this," and she’ll be like, "Okay." And I know that it’s not, because some clients are like act first, think later. Actually, I have a lot of clients like that. Gab’s more in the middle.

She’s not as slow of a decision-maker as me, but she’s not the fastest decision-maker. She’s right down the middle, very logical. And so she’ll do some deliberation, but it won’t keep her back.

So it’s been interesting to watch you really step up your marketing, refine your messaging, and put yourself out there in new ways. So talk a little bit about that process of, kind of every time you get to the next level, as you were just talking about, being a little scared and doing it anyway. Do you get used to that, or how’s that going?

Gab Saper: I will say, when I’m in those moments, I hear you in my head saying, "Imperfect action." I’m not your stereotypical perfectionist. I’ve always described myself as a type A minus.

Nicole Otchy: I love.

Gab Saper: I would rather do the thing pretty well, but definitely on deadline and not have an all-nighter.

Nicole Otchy: Yes.

Gab Saper: So rewriting, rereading something 75 times before posting it was never going to be me. But rereading it 10 times and beating myself up a little bit and then posting it was always going to be me.

So your phrase of "imperfect action" has been really helpful for me. Just like working for yourself, in some ways the stakes are really high, but in other ways the stakes are really low.

If I make a mistake, my boss isn’t going to yell at me. Like, literally nothing’s going to happen if I make a small mistake. If you make a lot of small mistakes, that’s bad. Obviously, it adds up. But yeah, I’ve posted things with typos and found it four days later and be like, "Okay." And fixed it. And it’s literally fine.

Nicole Otchy: If anybody even noticed.

Gab Saper: If anybody even noticed, which probably no one did. Maybe one person did and they were like, "Oh, she made a typo. Okay, she’s a human alive." Also, someone who sees you make one typo and discounts you as a person is not someone I care about anyway.

Nicole Otchy: Honestly, it’s a great way to vet people that are not who you want to work with. Yeah, it’s actually great to be a little human. I was listening to a podcast about this today.

You said you unarchived some of your posts for something you had to do, and it was very telling. Tell me more about that.

Gab Saper: It was wild, I have to tell you. So there’s like two chapters. There were the posts I was doing when I was just doing this for fun as a side hustle that were like so unhinged and embarrassing, but also at the time, who cares?

Just like pictures of random stuff, like a collage of, "I bought these three things with a client today," but no brand tags, no links, it just was like someone who does not know how to be a creator on the internet, which is what I was at the time, and it's totally fine.

Those were kind of like looking at a drawing you did as a child. I was like, "Oh, that's cute for her." In the context of the time, it’s totally fine.

The ones that made my skin crawl were the ones from the beginning of taking it full-time when I was still living in that scarcity mindset and thinking I had to do what other creators did, posting things like, "Here are my sale picks from the Bloomingdale’s sale," or really bad graphics and things spinning around in ways that are atrocious to me now. Because I was just still finding my footing and not understanding what my voice should be based on who I am. I was just doing things I saw other people doing.

Nicole Otchy: But like, do you think you needed to go through that?

Gab Saper: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, there's no way, you’re not just born a full-grown adult. You don’t just arrive as an entrepreneur who knows all the things. I had to go through that to get here. But it almost makes me a little sad for her, because I’m like, "Oh, she was just trying to do whatever she thought she should do."

Nicole Otchy: What’s interesting is you did have some frameworks during that point. I think you’re talking about the beginning of probably our work together.

Gab Saper: Even before, right when I started, before our work together.

Nicole Otchy: But even with frameworks, people still do this. Because what it was for you, I think, was—as you talked about—the peeling away of the scarcity and the doing of the systems, the doing of the business in a way that was so drastically different than before, because you just didn’t know how to. Every time you stepped a little bit deeper and a little bit deeper, you got a little closer to your real voice.

That over time—because we’ve worked together for so long, in so many different containers—the refinement with you specifically has been very, very clear to me.

To me, it’s like, "You’re the doer, you do the work," that’s not what your thing is. It was about the work being the catalyst for you seeing yourself and listening to yourself and almost becoming better acquainted with yourself as a creator.

Gab Saper: Totally. Yeah, totally.

Nicole Otchy: So many people are afraid of that work because it is public. But also, if you’re not a little embarrassed of yourself, you’re kind of not doing it right.

Gab Saper: Right. Exactly. There’s some famous quote that if you’re an artist, you should be embarrassed of things you did every five years or something like that. Again, it’s not a thing of regret. It’s just a little cringe. But yeah.

I honestly hope that two years from now, I’m looking at the stuff I’m posting in 2025 and thinking it’s cringe because I’m continuing to evolve. There’s an Ira Glass quote that I’m sure I’m going to butcher, but it’s something like, "When your skill hasn’t caught up to your taste. It’s very hard to know what to do. And the only thing to do is keep doing it until that delta is bridged."

Nicole Otchy: Yes, I was thinking of that. That is the perfect way to say this. I think we get so obsessed with having the answer and having the framework, and we don’t even realize that even when we have it, we still have to become the person who can do that in our sleep. That is what expertise is.

When you start a business, you think it’s going to be about being that person with style, not with marketing. No one’s dreaming of a business so they can market it, you know? I don’t think, I don’t know who they are if they do.

Gab Saper: So it’s funny you say that about no one dreams of marketing their business, and like, yes, agree. But I will say at this point now, I feel like thinking about my marketing and writing copy and thinking about who is reading this and who is she and what do I want to say to her, has actually made me a better stylist.

My questions to my clients have gotten deeper. It's kind of like a self-feeding thing as I have better, more robust conversations with my clients, that informs my marketing. Then people respond to that marketing, which makes me have more thoughts, which makes me ask different questions. They’re both self-feeding and building each other up.

Nicole Otchy: 100%. That is a genius point. It is also why I feel like a broken record on the podcast being like, "You can’t be transformational if you’re not looking at these things yourself." This is what I mean.

It will feel hard to run a transformational business if you are not looking at yourself and saying, "Why am I not evolving?" Not just looking for the answer. Not just looking for the framework. Not just looking for the marketing hack.

What’s wild is the reason why marketing feels hard is because we’re not willing to be okay with ourselves and our own imperfection, so that we can just put it out there.

Because the thing that’s interesting is—I was thinking this when you were talking about the things that make you kind of cringe from that period—is you were still getting clients.

You can be cringe. You could not be doing that great. Maybe you’re not working with the clients you wanted. Maybe you weren’t getting a million clients. But you were still attracting people. You still had paying clients. And it wasn’t where you wanted it.

Gab Saper: Yeah, that’s right.

Nicole Otchy: That’ll teach you a lot about life. Now you are pretty good at vetting.

Gab Saper: It’s not binary.

Nicole Otchy: No, it’s not. But it’s so much easier to think it is, because then our brain gets to relax a little and give us a pass. But now your messaging clearly calls in the right people. What has that experience of watching that change—like watching the literal sales call forms change—what has that done for how you think about your business in general?

Gab Saper: It makes it feel so much easier. Because I’m like, "This is exactly the type of person I should be working with." I’m excited to work with them, and I don’t feel like I have to convince them to work with me. I know that if I just—A, the marketing has done a lot of the convincing for me and brought them here, but B, it’s very obvious that this is a good fit.

If they don’t move forward, it’s usually because it’s a timing thing. "I’m traveling for work" or "I’m waiting till I get my bonus," things that are not objections about me or my service.

It’s circumstantial things that they will clear in the next few months.

Nicole Otchy: When you started marketing more fully in your own voice and you could see that progression, was there any part of you that was afraid of judgment? Or do you think it was just like not realizing what was in the way? Do you think some of it was, "Oh, if I say what I really think, I’ll get judged"? Or do you think it was more like, "I didn’t even know that that scarcity was in the way"?

Gab Saper: It’s definitely less about judgment. Caring about other people’s judgment is work I have already been doing for a lot of my life, so I think I’ve cleared a lot of that.

I think it’s kind of similar to the systems thing. It’s like, I didn’t realize there was a deeper I should be going.

The more I worked with you and talked through it—and there have been times where you have sharpened, given me specific content ideas—and you’ve said, "Okay, but how can we take this deeper? What’s the real, when she says this, what does she really mean, and how can you speak to that?"

Then understanding like, "Oh, I’m skimming the top. There is more I can do here." Then, "What does that look like? What do I actually want to say?" It’s more like a block I didn’t realize, rather than, "Oh, I know this is the thing I should do, but I’m scared to do it." That’s not really my style, for the most part.

Nicole Otchy: Yeah. That’s what’s interesting about you. That’s why I asked. Because I was like, "Huh." That’s one thing that’s really unique about you. I feel like you had done so much of the self-acceptance/worrying about people’s judgment. And so we’ve moved pretty quickly through things.

I think that’s similar to what we were saying at the top of the episode about clients. If they haven’t done that self-acceptance, everything’s a little harder. But you can't control for that. We could hope for it, but you can't control for it.

Gab Saper: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Nicole Otchy: Do you think that your marketing—getting better at marketing—has reinforced your feeling that your prices are worth what they are?

Gab Saper: A hundred percent.

Nicole Otchy: Yeah. You don’t think it’s the other way, that you upped your prices, do you think that’s also a self-feeding system? That’s what I’m trying to say, basically, of you get better at marketing, then your prices feel more aligned. Then you up your prices, then you get better?

Gab Saper: Not for me, actually. That thing I was talking about earlier with the systems and implementing that, after we did that month, I literally doubled my prices. And then I raised them again later that year, and now I’m raising them a little bit every year.

Literally every time I do my service, I’m making micro tweaks to it to make it better from what I’m learning that time. So I’m getting better at my job every day. Therefore, I should raise my prices every year.

Nicole Otchy: Ah, there you go. That is part of this, of the awareness it takes to run a business. This is a really good point that I didn’t even think of. In order to fully be an expert, the awareness it takes of the marketing, the messaging, the places that you are blocked, and then your service, all of that is like, you just expect that everything’s going to change. But not overhauls, which is how we like to think sometimes, just like, you expect that this is a process of evolution just like we expect our clients to grow out of clothes and get over it. When you feel that way, I think it just changes how you look at your business because you’re just a little bit more chill about things. You’re like, "Oh, yeah."

Gab Saper: I also, as a person, prefer never-ending micro tweaks. I don’t like to do a big spring cleaning. I’m cleaning a little bit in my home every day. I’m editing my wardrobe, like every time I get dressed, I’m like, "Oh, should I get rid of this?" It’s just how my brain works.

For me, it’s so much easier to do things small and often than big overhauls. I find big overhauls scary and stressful and overwhelming.

Nicole Otchy: But it’s kind of exciting, that’s why people never stick with things because they’re like, "I’m going to change who I am." Our brain loves it, but then it never gets us a result. I was like, maybe it’s because you’re good at systems and you know that. Then I was like, "No, I think that’s probably just you realizing that that’s how life is successful."

Gab Saper: I’ve only realized that honestly, in the last four or five years. We’ve talked about this a lot, like the work I’ve done on myself around body image and stuff. But I also used to do really intense diets for 11 days and then fall off.

There are so many other reasons why that is bad for me emotionally, physically, spiritually. But yeah, I’ve just found I have so much more success doing the thing a little bit every day. Never having to do a big overhaul refresh.

I mean, I’m sure at some point I’ll review my website. There are times and places for that. But for me, it’s just so much easier to literally, I think the last five clients I’ve worked with, I have made one or two micro tweaks to my process just based on something that they had asked a question about that they thought was confusing that I’m like, "Oh, this shouldn’t be confusing. I can change the wording here, or I can send this email earlier or later or whatever."

Nicole Otchy: Yeah, that’s why I’m like, "Everyone’s got too many services. Because if you’re doing this level of paying attention, you could never make them all good.

Gab Saper: Exactly.

Nicole Otchy: Yeah, that’s such a great point. I mean, you talk to a lot of our stylists. You follow other stylists. You’re in this community. You know what’s up.

What do you think, when you look out at the industry and other people in it, after all the work you put into your business, what do you think is missing from the general understanding of how to run a styling business? From the outside, now that you can make it your own?

Gab Saper: Yeah. Oh yeah. I think your people, because you teach us that, right? But every stylist is going to be different. People, I think, have a lot of preconceived notions about what a stylist does. Some of those might be right and some of those might be wrong. But it kind of doesn’t matter as long as you find the stylist that’s for you.

Like you’ve talked about before many times, how some stylists, including you when you were a stylist, hated doing closet edits.

Nicole Otchy: Hated them.

Gab Saper: And I say this with genuinely zero judgment, but to me, that is so important. I also love it. I find it tickles a part of my brain that’s very satisfying, to get rid of stuff. I’m just that kind of person.

And I feel like that’s when I really get to know people. Because with each item, they’re telling me a little story about it, which is kind of painting a picture of how they got here and whatever.

But I also understand that other people hate it and don’t find it helpful, and that’s amazing for them. They don’t do it. There are no right or wrong ways to build your business as long as it is serving people. So I think that is a lesson a lot of people could learn from.

I remember we talked about this, because of a software I had where you could document, take pictures of every single thing in someone’s wardrobe, I was like, "Oh, I have to do that. Then it’ll be like the Clueless closet and people will love it."

I did it once. I told you, "I hated every minute of doing that. That appointment was so tedious. My client seemed bored and annoyed. I was bored and annoyed. Uploading it all was useless."

Then I checked in with that client two months later, and they were like, "Oh yeah, I just use the outfits part. I don’t really use the individual pieces." I was like, "Wow. Cool. I’m never doing that again."

Nicole Otchy: Yeah. 100%. Some clients want it, and for some people it makes them a lot of money because they have their clients’ closet there and they’re doing a lot of little services. So it’s fine. But everyone is different.

It’s so funny you said that about the closet editing. This is why I think it’s so wild in this industry. Because when you were like, "I feel like no one talks explicitly about—even me—as we’re having this conversation about these things enough."

I’m like, "You know what’s weird?" It’s like, I hated closet edits. I felt about closet edits as how you felt about photographing everything. But I always had a closet review where we talked through the pieces.

It was the organizing and getting rid of... and I did do it when I had to, for the higher-up clients, the higher-price clients. But it’s so funny because it’s like, what we all often see as valuable in the process is that talking through things with clients, right? Most stylists would say that’s really important.

I don’t know many. But it’s like the depth and the level you take it to. Some stylists are like, "I can’t wait to get the new hangers and get all the dust bunnies out." I was like—

Gab Saper: Oh, that's me. That’s so me.

Nicole Otchy: I know, I know. That’s what’s so funny. Because whenever I say in a podcast or say anything about like, "Hey, I didn’t do a closet," it’s just to list the point, not that you don’t have to, but that you can do whatever you want, I always think of your love for closet edits.

It always is like the polar opposite. It’s just so funny because it’s again that example of we feel like we almost... some of it is just blind, not knowing. Some of it’s like we don’t know what matters in a business. Then some of it is just like, "Who am I to not like this? Everyone else is liking it. How dare I?" That’s interesting. I didn’t think that your answer was going to be that you can do it your own way.

Gab Saper: What did you think it was going to be?

Nicole Otchy: I didn’t know. I was genuinely curious. If you had to say what you think your biggest area of growth in your business has been, what do you think it is?

Gab Saper: Mindset, for sure.

Nicole Otchy: The scarcity stuff or something else?

Gab Saper: The scarcity stuff. Just owning that I’m a professional and I can do this. What I was saying about not realizing that my marketing could or should go deeper.

I don’t think my actual skills of how to shop for someone or how to do a closet edit have changed that much compared to everything else.

Nicole Otchy: Yeah, and that’s why I think being established and having some experience under your belt gives you the bandwidth to then focus on the business part for a little bit. I think you were in the perfect place. What are you most excited about in your business in the coming future?

Gab Saper: The momentum that I’m in right now. What you were saying before about how shifting my marketing is making just the right clients come to me. Like continuing to work with the people who really light me up. I have one client right now that every time I hear from her, I’m like, "Oh, what does she have to say now?" Because she’s so smart and so funny, and I cackle at her emails.

We have our closet edit tomorrow and I’m so genuinely excited. It’s going to be fun. I want to work with more people like that.

Nicole Otchy: Isn’t it the best feeling? That’s how I feel about you guys every day. I’m like in my DMs like, "Oh, I can’t believe I get to do this."

When friends or family are following me, I’m like, "Excuse me, this is not for you. This is for us. Why are you following me?"

Gab Saper: Right. Like, "Get out of here."

Nicole Otchy: This is not your party. Get out." And you can feel that way every day. I feel like I did for a lot of my styling business, but I really feel like I am in this business. You feel like you can just like... it’s the best.

Gab Saper: It’s insane. I can’t believe this is my life.

Nicole Otchy: I know. Isn’t it great? I’m so excited that you guys get to feel this. It’s why I do everything I do. Because it’s wild to wake up and be like, "Holy crap, this is my life."

You get to go to this closet edit tomorrow with this woman.

Gab Saper: Truly, after being emotionally abused in corporate jobs for ten years, and now I am my own boss and I pick who I work with, I can’t believe it. Sometimes I’m like, "I’m going to wake up from this dream and be at a soul-sucking corporate job and cry."

Nicole Otchy: Nope. You’re too far in, girl. You’re too far in now.

Gab Saper: Yeah, no. Oh my God. Way too far in.

Nicole Otchy: Yeah, you are almost unemployable like me. Thank you so much for being here. I know that everything you share is going to help so many people.

Gab Saper: Thank you.

Nicole Otchy: I’m sure we’ll have you on here again. Thank you, my dear.

Thanks for hanging out with me on this episode. As you have heard today, Gab went from saying yes to everyone to having clients that she genuinely cannot wait to work with.

That shift happened because she stopped operating from scarcity and started building systems that reflected her unique worth as a personal stylist.

So if you’re tired of taking whatever comes your way and you’re ready to create a business that lights you up, I can help you get there. But I only have three spots left for one-to-one work in 2025. There’s a link in the show notes to book a discovery call to see if we’re a good fit. It’s time for you to stop settling and start thriving.

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.