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.

If you have mastered color and body shape analysis, and you think of yourself as an image consultant, and you were trained in that world, maybe you even train other people in these methods, but you're still trying to figure out how to create a business that is profitable and not all consuming, you are very much not alone. This is a really common conversation that I have with stylists all the time from this world.

And maybe what I'm about to describe looks a little bit like where you are in your business. You feel like you're undercharging, but you are charging the rate that you were told is standard in the industry. You're working consistently just to hit numbers that don't reflect all of your hard work and the hundreds of people that you've actually worked with as an expert.

You don't know how to create, or if you have created them, you don't know how to sell higher ticket packages or move one-off clients beyond those short appointments. And I'm going to guess that if this does resonate, when things are going "well" in your business, you are exhausted because you're just booking back-to-back clients. And even if you're not seeing big spikes and dips in your revenue, because you're seeing more people coming in during certain seasons, you still, even with consistent income, have no idea how you will ever hit your revenue goals without burning out in the process or ever seeing your family again.

I hear a version of this every single time I start promoting my Income Accelerator Program and I get on discovery calls with stylists. So today I'm going to show you what's really keeping you stuck as an image consultant and how you can fix it. The biggest blind spot I see for image consultants, and if you just do color analysis, that counts as you.

If you just do body shape analysis, though I rarely see that, that counts as you. The people that have sort of been trained in models that really deal with sort of like the tools of styling, is that stylists coming out of this world and certification programs tend to build their business around their tools, not around their ideal client's transformation. And so your marketing and your services start to look like a menu of techniques that you're selling.

Color analysis for $249 to $449, body shape analysis $199. Maybe you do some style assessment for somewhere between $200 and $500. And this might feel really clear and clean to you, like everybody knows what they're getting, but to your clients, it is screaming transactional one-off experience.

You are positioning yourself as someone who delivers experiences, not style transformations, and it's not your fault. You literally don't know any other way because you were told in the image consulting world that this is how it works. And because of that, it never even occurs to your clients that you could guide them through a more in-depth style journey or that you are capable of consistently and continually getting clients without putting color analysis front and center as the main payoff.

Because let me be very clear about this. Clients don't care about tools when they are looking for a deep transformation. Sure, the tools can help you increase your credibility. It can help you speak about things in a way that builds trust. I'm not saying the tools aren't valuable. I am saying people are pigeonholing themselves into just being good at one thing in their marketing when lots of people in this world—and if this isn't you, obviously this conversation isn't for you—really want to be doing more of what they see personal stylists doing.

They want to have these bigger and more in-depth conversation with their clients. And often the color analysis or the body shape analysis or the style analysis that you're doing with people over the course of a couple hours does lead to questions that you're not able to answer either because you don't have the knowledge, because you don't have the product knowledge of clothing and retail and you want it, or because you just don't know how to make a service that would take the client to the next level. And so there's always this feeling of a gap between how amazing the skills are with many of the people I work with in the image consulting world and what they can actually bring to life with a client.

Some might edit a closet or provide a few links, but they're rarely being paid at the level they should be. And again, they may be able to stack one-off services, but the way that there is no through line between those one-off services doesn't leave the client with the kind of transformation that could be possible if the stylist who has this type of training was coming at it in a more holistic way. The person that will pay you multiple thousands of dollars to style them cares about how their confidence, their public presence, and their life will change because you gave them the wardrobe and the tools to do that.

And when you package your expertise into transformational services like what I work on with my stylist and position them around your client's real-life moments and triggers, everything changes. You attract higher caliber clients who stay longer, who are willing to invest more, and actually value what you bring to the table. Something really unique to the image consulting world that I don't see as often with personal stylists is that image consultants, color analysis, people in that world are usually working with 100, 150, even 250 clients in some cases, but still only bringing in $20,000 to $30,000.

You just won't see that in the personal styling world as much. And if you are in that space, you probably have a similar pricing model and you're probably marketing in the same way. So this episode is going to be super relevant to you if you don't have these tools and you consider yourself a personal stylist.

Why does this happen? Because you are running a high-volume, low-ticket transactional business. That doesn't mean, I'm going to say this for the billionth time, that you're not giving people valuable tools that could boost their confidence or make them feel better about themselves. But they are a tool. They are not the whole picture. They are one piece of a solution.

Just because you give someone their colors doesn't mean that they're going to know where to shop for them. Or even—and this is the biggest thing I think that gets missed—which of those colors are going to resonate with how they want to show up in the world and what they want to be saying to people.

And while many people in the image consulting world do make six or multiple six figures, I see this all the time with House of Colour consultants; they are exhausted. And it's not the kind of business that many of the people who got into this world as they evolve want.

They want to go deeper with their clients. They want to be able to keep having a repeat client base. But if after you've done the color analysis or the body shape analysis or the style analysis, if you don't offer anything more, there's really no reason for them to come back.

So there's a very low repeat client rate in this world, which means it's a lot of churn. And the truth is that most image consulting programs never give the business foundation that you need to go to the next level. And so they taught you the tools, but how to actually turn them into a thriving, profitable business that is sustainable is a whole other conversation.

And on top of that—I'm going to say something that is a little controversial, but I stand by it because if we don't talk about these things as an industry, they only get worse—there is a pervasive scarcity mindset in the world of image consulting that I am talking and coaching clients through all of the time.

Now, to be clear, that exists in every business in all sectors. That's not just an image consulting thing. I obviously deal with it with personal stylists. You hear me talking about it on here. But I also see a lot of stylists who genuinely think that the world is their oyster and that we're just getting started as an industry. And those are my best clients, right? Because I feel that way too.

I feel like we've only scratched the surface. But the image consulting world has been around publicly a lot longer. 70s and 80s, it blew up. And a lot of my older clients came from that world because there was no other option. So I have a lot of experience listening to and undoing some of the mindset work with clients in this world. And I have a lot of people that I have worked with one-to-one in my higher ticket offers that came from this world that are just like, "Oh, my gosh, I had no idea that this is what was possible for me."

And sharing things that they've heard during trainings, things they were told about pricing, limitations that were placed on them that were just really not accurate with the way that the market is or the way that people think anymore. They are not given the skills to show up in social media. It's just a very antiquated and outdated world.

And for women that want to build a thriving and massive business that want to make multiple six figures, there just aren't examples of it when you are a standalone business owner. There are examples, like I said, I'm going to use House of Colour because I do think that they do a franchise model really, really well. I have been in masterminds with people making multiple six figures.

I know there are color analysts in that world making millions. I don't know that it's the average, but I know that it happens. But they're doing it because they're hiring teams, right? And they're still doing it with one-offs. So they are still leaving money on the table at multiple millions. I've consulted with these people. I know.

So if you're out there and you're listening to this and you're like, "Well, I'm making a lot of money and I have a team under me," you're still losing money just for the record. And that's what I work with my creative CEO clients on. So there's a place to fix the business model for those people too.

But all in all, what I see is there is a very outdated way of looking at business. And quite frankly, when I look at the ones that are not the franchises, they really treat it like it's a hobby that you do on the side. And that's fine.

Anybody can do any business as a hobby on the side. I don't really care. But it's certainly not giving them anywhere near the depth of business advice they need in order to thrive, especially in today's market.

A lot of people in this world are told that they need to keep their rates "competitive" and look at what other people within your certification are charging in your area. And that's just crazy to me because that's not the way other people are looking at your business. That's the way that these certification programs are looking at themselves.

It's like they have bad self-esteem and then they try to project it onto the people in their community and say, "Well, this is how much I charge as the trainer. So you need to charge this much." That's wild to me and completely ridiculous.

It's just the sort of pervasive belief embedded in the way that people are trained that there's not enough room at the top for you to charge what you're worth. That's crazy. And it also makes you constantly in a mindset of competing against other people when you should be building your business to your strengths and what you care about and what you want to do.

And using those tools as a part of that, sure, but it shouldn't be your whole personality in business because anybody can get the tools anywhere, especially with AI moving up. I'm not saying they're as good as people doing it in person, but you're commodifying yourself as an industry when it's only about the tool. Because somebody else will make the, somebody already has, many people actually have made the tools to get people that information, whether you like it or not.

And so now what happens to an entire industry? Well, it's not that people don't want that human touch, it's that I think more people are going to have to go towards the world of personal styling and understanding that people see themselves as brands more and more. And that is a holistic view of yourself. It's not just your colors.

It's not just being a body shape. It's also about the ways that those things come together to express yourself. And so inside my programs and inside the Income Accelerator specifically, where I work with a lot of people that are really trying to get to that six-figure recurring revenue mark, I really help them dismantle that mindset so that they can rebuild their business with confidence and pride in the tools that they've gotten, but not make it their whole personality.

And so I teach people in there how to create a tiered offer suite, low, middle, and high that upsells with clear outcomes and pricing that you can stand behind and also actually see your family during busy season. Because I see that stylists are just out doing person after person after person and draping them, and they're like barely eating lunch. But then other times, there's nothing because they don't even know what to say in their marketing to get people to come in unless it's like this one-off kind of experience.

I don't just think it works enough to say charge more. I think that doesn't work for anyone. And that's why you have to build the skills behind it. You have to have the systems, the messaging, the sales skills to actually back up those prices. Like I can see why some people in this world tell people like, "Well, you have the tools and this is what everybody charges for these drapes and these skills and this little booklet with your colors in it." But when you are being a transformational personal stylist and you're plugging into the model that I teach, there's a lot more that goes into it.

Yeah, I'll tell you how to streamline your closet edit. I'll tell you why it shouldn't be more than two and a half hours long. I'll tell you how that messes up your repeat business, right? I'll tell you those things.

But it's also about the way you ask questions, how you show up. It's about the client experience you're creating that is not as quick and dirty as a lot of people in this world are used to delivering. It's a longer model, which means more in-depth time, which means the client actually comes back to you because you're working with people who don't just want their colors once. They want to evolve their style over time.

I think color analysis, body shape analysis, style analysis is a good starting place. But people that are trying to live their personal brand and live their style as a reflection of who they want to be in the world are expecting that they're going to evolve and change.

And that's where the business model fails stylists in the color analysis world and in the sort of image consulting world because it treats people one-dimensional. It treats it like you have this one piece of information about yourself and they'll go and fly as if there's not a little bit more to the picture. And none of us wants to be treated that way, right? None of us wants to be thought of as one-dimensional.

I don't want my stylist thinking that whatever services we create together, they're going to have the rest of their life because I want them to be evolving and changing. And so I think the question here is, what feels better for you as an image consultant, right? And this is where I'm saying, if you're someone who's comfortable doing a lot of lower-priced consult and you have a team and that's what feels good to you and you don't even want to get into the world of retail and shopping, whatever, I think that model is fantastic. It's wonderful.

Again, this is what I mean when I say transactional models still help people. They still do a lot for people. But there are people within that world who want more, who want deeper, longer relationships, who feel like something is missing from their work.

And so if that's you, I want to just be very clear. You could chase 200 clients at $200 in a year, or you could serve 25 clients at $3,500 in a year. How much of a change is that going to give you in your life and in how you experience your business? If that sounds amazing and you think, "Well, that sounds really hard and I don't know how I get there, but if you could show me, I would feel relieved," then what I'm going to tell you is really going to help you. Because my client, Dana, who did Income Accelerator the last round and was just a wild success, was not only a very, very well-trained and skilled image consultant doing color analysis, body shape analysis, and style analysis. She was a top trainer in one of these worlds.

I'm not going to say which one, but she was really stuck at like $249 on average for one of her consultations. And she was burning out fast. She was seeing numbers, but it wasn't getting her where she wanted to go.

And she really had a heart for helping people step into the next level of themselves. So we restructured her services, we shifted her messaging, and she was an absolute boss at her messaging because she used so much of her personal story. And she really learned to close sales confidently from her marketing.

It was amazing. And now she's booking anywhere between $1,500 packages to $3,000 packages with way less hustle, way more authority. And she is still doing color analysis, but she's doing it in this very specific way that I teach people in the image consulting world to package that and make it more of like a one-to-many selling experience versus you doing one-off, one-off, one-off.

And that usually also upsells them to larger packages when they do these sort of one-to-many experiences. So they're being paid for the one-to-many, and then they're getting clients from it, which is a way smarter and more leveraged technique that I teach people that have these types of skills. Sort of a unique thing that I can teach people in this community.

If you don't have this specific skill set, it's a little harder to do. But there are a lot of ways that we keep that idea of these style parties and things like that that people do, but really also make sure that you're being positioned as a premium expert.

Another pattern I see very commonly in the image consulting world is that when a stylist delivers a color analysis, say, the client may love it, and they may think like, "This is life-changing," and the stylist will say, "Well, let me know if you want to do the next step, if you want to do body shape, if you want to do style analysis," and they say, "Yeah, yeah, I'd love that," but then when they follow up, they don't hear anything.

And it's not because that person doesn't want more or didn't have a great experience with you. It's because you never framed the journey properly in the first place. All stylists do this, by the way.

And this is why so many stylists don't have high repeat client rates. It's because the way they talk about their services and their marketing leads people to think it's a one-off experience, not a process of evolution that somebody comes back for. And it's why most of them have seen very low repeat rates.

But the world of color analysis specifically is really, really, really like this is a treacherous issue that I hear about all the time. Because according to the people that I have spoken to, and I think I can see this as a consumer on TikTok as well, during the pandemic, I hear from a lot of stylists that color analysis really skyrocketed in popularity.

And image consultants started to get a huge boost in their business. It was kind of seen as like a sleepier kind of thing, I think, in the past, but it made it kind of cool again. There was definitely a resurgence of people opting into these programs to be color trained.

And it sort of became this thing where color analysis became something that was like fun and new and an experience to try with a friend. They were starting to see younger women opting into this with their friends, and not necessarily something that people that are ready to really take their image seriously saw as the first step in a larger transformational process. They saw it as like, "Well, I have 500 bucks or less to play around. We'll have some champagne. We'll get our colors done. It will be a fun bonding experience," and then that was it. And that's because of the way that it was being positioned, right? It wasn't seen as the first step. It was seen as the main event by the way people were talking about their process.

Understanding the public perception of your business for everybody—image consultants, personal stylists, I don't care what your call yourself—is exactly what you need to understand about how you position your services so that people see you and see your skills as, especially if you're putting color analysis out there front and center, which I don't really recommend, they see that as at least one step in the transformation, right? They don't look at you as like a party trick that they try once. You have to be able to talk about what is missing when they only do that. That's a lot of knowledge and information and thought about what you do that lots of people have never even stopped to think about.

This also applies to stylists, by the way. But why that's so important is that if you are not equipped with referral systems, onboarding, offboarding, sales call messaging, you will continue to put all your heart into your marketing and end up with just a string of one-off clients that never sort of compound and get you to the next level. And you can do all of these things without feeling pushy, without feeling gross, and with truly believing that this really is just the first step.

And I think many of you listening, I don't have to convince you of that. You already feel that way. But what you don't have is the skills you need in order to make that apparent and clear in your marketing.

And this is why I say you can be the best stylist in the world, image consultant or otherwise. If you don't have the business skills to back it up, it really doesn't matter because it usually ends up hurting you. And it often hurts the client because they might want something deeper, but they don't think you can help them.

So you're leaving people kind of in a lurch. And this is where this idea like we should all know how to do this ourselves is such a selfish way of looking at this thing that we're trying to do to help people. Because if you don't have business skills, you don't have the ability to communicate to people what is possible for them.

And you can do all of that without feeling pushy or gross. So if you're an image consultant and your income is swinging wildly month to month, here's what I want you to know. This is not what it has to look like forever. You are not bad at business. You didn't miss something in one of the trainings. Or there's not something that you're experiencing that's unique to you and your business.

This is just the way it has been for image consultants for decades. I mean, my mom was like the original Color Me Beautiful poster girl in terms of like a client. And the culture of the industry is behind. But so isn't the culture of the personal styling industry and the way that we're teaching stylists. So you are not alone. And it's not, and I just want to say this really loud for the people in the back who have convinced themselves that people just aren't investing in bigger styling packages because that is very common. Do not tell me that. It's not possible.

I'm not saying that everybody is doing it because, of course, there's a skill level that comes with it. There's education that comes with it. There's systems that come with it. But it is possible. And people absolutely are buying from lower-ticket sort of one-off experiences into higher-ticket styling containers. Absolutely.

Happens all the time for my clients. So what's really often the case when people say this to themselves that something is impossible is that they just haven't experienced it. And if you've been in the color analysis world for a long time or the image consulting world for a long time, maybe you're even a trainer in that world, maybe you're somebody who's been involved in the training business for a long time, you probably don't have a lot of examples of it. You don't.

But I have examples of it all the time. The reason you're not seeing it publicly as much is because those people have gone on and decided to be called personal stylists. And while it's not your fault that that's the world that you came from, it is your responsibility to fix it if you want more for yourself and your clients.

Income Accelerator was designed to fill that gap. It always was something that I thought about when I was creating this program because so many of my first one-to-one clients over the years, well before I started the styling consultancy, were from this world and would come to me when they would see my marketing as a stylist or listen to my old podcast and say, like, "How do you talk about things this way?" And it is hard to piece it all together, especially when you come from a world where undercharging and seeing yourself as a commodity is the norm.

But you have all the skills you need. We just have to reposition you. And that is the best news. You also have most people in image consulting, what I love about working with them is they have so much client experience. They've seen so many people. It's mind-numbing to me how many people you guys see in a day as an introvert.

And so you can bring a lot of that information to your marketing to really light it up and turn it around. And it is one of the ways that I see that especially like really driven people in this field, the ones that are kind of in leadership and want more for themselves. And they also want to model that for the other people that they train.

They kill it in this program because you're bringing those skills and that human experience and your drive, and you're just applying it to systems that are really intuitive when you want to get people to the next level. And there's no reason with all of that experience, you can't turn your expertise into something that pays you more and gives you a more consistent, steady client base that goes deeper.

So if you've been feeling stuck in the cycle of undercharging, overworking, watching clients walk away after one appointment, this is your invitation to shift that. You do not need to throw away everything you've learned. You do not need to pretend like you're not someone who has these skills. But you do need to stop treating color analysis or one-off body shape analysis as the main event and instead focus on the client experience and what they're actually looking for and how those tools help them but are not the main event your client is.

Your expertise deserves to be packaged in something that is way more impactful for you and for your clients. If that's something you're interested in learning more about, please head to the show notes, fill out an application for the September round of Income Accelerator. I would love to see if you're qualified, have a chat with you, and help you really reimagine what's possible for you, given all of the skills and training that you have invested in. I'll 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.