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.

What if I told you that the same emotional patterns keeping you from getting business help and to your next level are the exact patterns blocking your ideal clients from reaching out to you? What if these seemingly opposite responses, "I should know this," which is shame, and "I can do this myself," which is pride, are actually two sides of the same psychological coin?

Today, we're going to dive into the two reasons I see over and over that keep talented personal stylists stuck in survival mode instead of stepping into their financial power and transformational expertise. It is not a coincidence that the same things that block us block our clients. It is not a coincidence that in order to be a truly expert transformational stylist, you need to be thinking about how these concepts relate to you.

Because what you're going to find is that to run a truly transformational business, which is why it's not for everybody, you have to take responsibility and be the leader first in your own emotional experience so that you can be an empty container for your client to have a truly powerful transformational experience. I want to talk about the two patterns I see over and over again in stylists over the years. I've said before, I'll say it again on this show, this business is two and a half years old.

But for many, many years before this, I worked with stylists one-on-one and mentored them and business coached in other people's programs. I've been doing this for a very long time. You're going to hear from some of the clients I worked with before I started the styling consultancy, but this is not new. It happens in business everywhere, but I think there is a really big cost to stylists not looking at shame and pride because it will impact the work that gets done and it will impact whether you as a stylist are able to consistently get results with clients versus having these clients that are amazing and then having clients where you're like, "Oh my gosh, this was a nightmare."

So the first pattern is this idea that I hear stylists say, even after I'm working with them, "I should know this." This pattern is a shame pattern. It is a shame response. This shows up as embarrassment about business knowledge gaps, despite your success with clients. You may think, "I'm a successful stylist. I've worked with ideal clients. I've gotten people amazing results. I should know how to write a newsletter by now." Or, "Everyone else seems to know how to market their business. Why can't I figure it out?"

The problem is, is that shame shuts us down. Because it shuts us down, and we feel a bad feeling like "I should know this, I must be bad or wrong," we never go and get the skills we need to actually run a business in a way that will make not just an impact on other people's lives and on our own financial freedom, but it literally gets in the way of us being good stylists. So we use the excuse of "I'm a good stylist," which is probably true, in order to block us getting the part of the business knowledge we need in order to actually let those styling skills out into the world in a way that's effective.

One stylist I was working with recently told me she wanted to run this multi-week newsletter that people paid for and had links and it was the subscription model. But when we dug into what would be involved, she said, "I'm not even sending out my regular newsletter every month. I'm not doing enough of this to begin with. Who am I to think I could do several times a month paid newsletter?" But the shame in her voice revealed the real issue.

This is a stylist who was at around $250,000, and she felt like admitting that she needed help with the business strategy, even after she had paid me, even after we were working together, meant admitting that she wasn't a real professional. So then there was coaching to do around that. This is why I believe that you cannot do mindset work without strategy work, because it is the strategy. This is also true in styling.

If you don't have a process that you're taking people through over and over again, you will miss the mindset work because it is in doing that the real mindset issue comes up. If you just start worrying about things, that's not mindset work. If you're just thinking of a random thing that could go wrong or having a negative thought about a fake potential issue in the future, that is not mindset work. That's why programs that only do mindset work are an absolute waste of time.

They're also something that women fall for in business a lot and are packaged as business coaching. They're not. That's why I say I do business strategy, because I don't even want to be involved with that nonsense. So if you're in my containers, we don't talk about your mindset unless we're talking about where it came up, because that gives us a lot of context to what we're actually dealing with: shame, fear, whatever else. Without that context, we are just guessing at what the root of the issue is.

The second pattern that I see is the one that the client who says, "I can do this by myself," and that's pride. I also see a lot of stylists who don't want people to know that they worked with a business strategist or a coach. They have a lot of anxiety about that. They're okay with people knowing that they're part of a cool networking group or that they worked with a celebrity marketing person, because it's access to a network. But if anybody knew that they're working with someone, even though they're successful, even though they're making a lot of money, there tends to be a little bit of an attitude around that and a little bit of, "You're not going to tell anybody that we're doing this."

You also have clients that think that about you, by the way, who don't want people to know that they're working with the stylist. I had that a lot at the beginning of my career, and I can talk about how I got over that later if that's of interest to you guys. But this I can do it myself pride, and you might be able to do it yourself to a point, but anybody that's successful in business will tell you that at some point you need other people.

This is a stylist who says, "I've built the business to this point by myself. I don't need help now. What are you going to tell me that I don't know myself?" Even though you're attracted to the messaging of whoever it is that you're considering working with, and even when they're working 60-plus hours a week, which is very common for my clients who are at multiple six figures, they are grinding harder than anybody should be at their level of experience.

And instead of stopping and thinking, "Is there a better way for me to do this with all the experience behind me," they think that they're grinding at the expense of their personal life, of their relationships, of their health, mental and physical, is a badge of honor. And while I do believe you have to work hard to get results, like everything can't be on your laptop, sipping a drink at two o'clock by the pool, you have to earn that right. You have to earn the right to ease.

That pride response can sound like confidence, but underneath it, it is the same fear as shame. That fear is if I ask for help, what does that say about me? Here's what I want to share with you about why this is so important. When you don't have sales skills, which are ultimately a really elevated version of people skills, unfortunately, sales has gotten a bad rap; you will miss very important triggers and clues in your audience and in your clients that will tell you which way they go.

So for example, you will think that everybody buys like you. So as a result, you will not see the actual sales objections that are there. You'll hear it's about money, it's about weight. But underneath those things, there's actually a different sales objection. When you don't know how to listen for fear and shame, you will miss them. Now, it doesn't mean we push people that feel fear and shame into a container if they're not ready or try it. That's not what I'm trying to say.

But without sales skills, whether or not you ever try to get that person to work with you or not, whether or not you continue the relationship after a sales call, you'll miss vital information you need to message your offers properly. I tend to go more into the shame. I actually don't have too much of either of these, not because I'm so great, but because I grew up with learning disabilities. As a result of that, actually, I have very little issue asking for help.

Because I expected that there are a lot of areas in my life, like when I was growing up, it was math or in my business now, systems are one that I struggle with, which is weird because I also teach systems. I can do systems for stylists, but I struggle if it's bigger automations for other things like a CRM or something. Because of that, I think I had a lot of shame growing up. So I go towards shame.

But I've also dealt with that because I know I can still be very successful and have had learning disabilities in the past. In fact, so many people that are successful in business, almost every business coach I've ever worked with that's over a million dollars has had dyslexia or ADHD or something. So I know that this is normal now. So my shame, because I put myself in the right rooms, is handled, but I go towards shame.

So I could see myself if I didn't have sales skills, thinking that that could be something that most of my audience had. But actually, because I have sales skills, what I notice is that I attract a lot of stylists who have a lot of pride, and who really take a long time to even get into contact with me because they don't want to seem like they're not successful if they work with me. It's interesting. Because even when they get on the phone, I can tell that they go towards pride.

So because I know this, and because I've done the work on myself to see it—shame and pride—I don't have any judgment. So I can hold that sales conversation very lightly, and with no expectation.

I also have a lot of compassion for people, which is why I think a lot of those people end up circling back to me because they know I didn't push them. I also know what's going on. I don't care how much money you make. I don't care how many followers you have. I am not impressed by that.

I have worked with people that were presidential advisors, and I was not overly impressed with that. I'm not someone that gets impressed with that. I'm impressed by people that truly care about people. I'm impressed with people that actually are experts and do the work. So whether you make a lot of money, whether you don't, whether you have a big social media following, that is not of any interest to me because you can still have all those things and not be doing great. But I care about the impact and the way people treat other people.

What happens when you don't understand shame and pride and how they operate in you and how they operate in other people is that you won't treat people like that. You will treat people as a means to an end. It will impact things like your sales skills, your ability to read the room, and see what people actually mean when they give you a sales objection. It will also impact the way that you message and the types of people you call in.

It will have this Groundhog Day effect, where you can't figure out why you're attracting these clients that can't seem to get it together within the container. It's because their fear and their shame is blinding them to the experience. What's really fascinating about this is that psychological research shows that shame and pride are actually defensive responses to the same core fear, the fear of being exposed as inadequate. Shame says, "I am not enough, so I will hide my gaps." Pride says, "I'm enough on my own, so I don't need anyone." Both are protective mechanisms against vulnerability.

Brené Brown's research on shame resilience shows us that shame-prone individuals often flip between these two states, depending on the situation they're in and their personality type. Shame-prone perfectionists, which a lot of us are, tend towards, "I should know this" response. But then they still shut down and don't get the information because they are flooded with shame. Shame-prone controllers, people that want to control things, they need to always be right and in charge, tend towards, "I can do this myself" response.

They often miss really important things that are making them work harder in their life because they're insistent on doing it alone. But the root fear is identical. "If people see that I don't have it all figured out, they will question my expertise and everything will fall apart." I want to talk to you about how this will be mirrored in your clients because you have to get this if you work with human beings.

Because this is where it gets very interesting. Your potential clients and clients are experiencing these exact same patterns about working with a stylist, particularly if you work with women. I'm not saying men don't have shame. They do. They have a lot of it. But I'm going to give you examples with women because society has this expectation that we're supposed to know how to look good and how to smell good and how the house should look good and how we should know how to cook.

So you see a lot of this shame and pride behavior in women, even though they do reach out to stylists or they are circling stylists. So this is going to give you a lot of information, this conversation, about why you might be getting some of the responses you are or why you can have people interested, interested, interested, and they ghost you. Clients' shame when it comes to personal style can look like, "I should know how to dress myself."

In fact, you can have somebody hire you and hear them saying, "I should know this. Nobody taught me this. My mother never taught this to me. I should know this." You can hear that happening often with a client. I know I've heard it for years. If you just keep brushing over it or you do really surface-level messaging, you will never get to a full transformation point with that client.

There will be no breakthrough, especially if you haven't dealt with this in your own life in whatever way it shows up for you. It probably doesn't show up with clothes, though it could. Actually, in some cases, it does with stylists. But if you don't deal with it in your business or in any other area of your life, you won't be able to help these people through it.

So here are examples I've heard. "I'm 35. I should know what looks good on me by now. Everyone else in the neighborhood seems to have their style figured out. That's why I don't like going to the playground. What will this stylist think when they see my current wardrobe? How will they judge me?" Those are things that people think when working with you and before they work with you, that keep them from getting to the deeper results and actually block them from listening to themselves because they are too preoccupied with their shame.

This is why I say transformational styling requires transformational marketing. You need to help them see themselves differently so that by the time they get into the container with you as a stylist, they are able to overcome it. Here's what it looks like when you have client pride. This often comes up with a client who looks like she's very well styled. You may be a little confused about why she's even hiring you. That's often what I saw in my career.

That's, "I can figure this out myself." Even though they hire you, they sabotage often. But before they hire you, someone sitting in pride who also knows deep down that they need some help will think things like, "I don't need help, I just need to shop more. I just need to try harder. I've dressed myself for this long and got this far in my career. Why do I need a professional?"

That's often a trigger, a pride trigger that people will say if, say, you mentioned, "Oh my gosh, I would love to work with you," or you somehow cold pitch them, or you warmly pitch them in a conversation. You'll hear people respond like that. If someone truly just didn't think they needed the help, they wouldn't answer in such a triggered way, like, "I've got it figured out this far." There's an attitude behind it. I hear that with stylists a lot that are at multiple six figures.

Another one is, "I should be able to do this without spending money on help." Now that's someone that's very hard to convince. I'm not trying to get you to convince anyone. That's the point. When you don't look at your own shame and fear and pride, you will end up not knowing what your job is as a business owner and stylist to help somebody work through, and then you will end up trying to convince people of things and putting your attention in the wrong places in your marketing so that you're not attracting people that have worked through their own pride and shame.

Because there are very much things you can work through and heal from, but if you don't know this even about yourself and you haven't dealt with your own pride and shame and you constantly think, "I want help, but I don't want to get help, but I should know this by now, but I'm not making enough money," which, how are you going to make enough money if you don't know how to make money? If you don't have the skills to run a business, you have to spend money to make money. That's how this works.

If that creates an enormous amount of shame in you, notice that there are probably other places in your life you take on debt without any shame. Maybe you paid for college because that's what everyone else did. Maybe you have a house you haven't paid off. You have a car you haven't paid off. Why don't you feel shame about that, but you feel shame about getting some help in your business? That's weird.

Because something about you not knowing something about business, something you've probably never done before, because nobody was born running a business, means you think that there's something wrong with you when it's just something you've never done. If you've never ridden a bike, why would you feel shame about it? If you didn't build the house yourself, you probably owe somebody some money for it. You had to pay for a college education. You had to get that information before you had it, but you didn't seem to feel any problem with that. Why is it triggering shame to get help in your business?

I'm not saying you need help in your business. I'm saying if you've had the thought and then your answer to yourself is, "I should know how to do this myself," why? If the feeling is, "Because then there's something wrong with me," that's what you have to look at. Because even if you do get help, you won't be able to actually integrate what you're learning into your work.

So these parallels are exactly the same. The same emotional barriers keeping you stuck in your business are exactly what are keeping your clients stuck in their wardrobes. Even if they hire you and you work together, you're going to notice there are times when it's just very confusing. "Why did this person hire me? They seem to have good style, and they seem to be fighting me on every suggestion I make. They almost seem like they want me to prove it to them." It's because they're in shame or pride, because they're afraid that if they take your suggestions or your expertise, it means something about them.

That's a tricky place to be in if you've never dealt with your own, because you cannot have compassion. You will be triggered. Let me tell you the ways that this will block your next level. Because when you operate from shame or pride instead of neutrality, because you've handled these issues in yourself and at least looked at them critically, three things happen: you're going to repel ideal clients. Because clients can sense when you're operating from insecurity and defensiveness. The right people don't want to be around other people who are defensive and insecure on the way to trying to become secure and confident.

They need you to become confident in a genuine guide who's been where they are and understands them. So if you are secretly worried about your own inadequacies because you don't have business acumen or you don't know how to communicate with people or you don't understand what's yours to take on inside the styling container and what's not, they're going to feel that uncertainty. Even if they complete the sale with you and go through the service, they won't come back.

The second issue here, by not looking at your own fear and shame responses, is that you will get triggered by very normal client responses. When a client doesn't love everything you picked out, your shame will say, "I am not good enough." Or your pride will say, "They don't appreciate my expertise." But in reality, this is just part of the collaborative styling process.

Because you haven't dealt with your fear and shame, and you haven't gotten the business skills in order to make it clear that, "Hey, it's normal for you to not like things that I give you, because it actually helps us sharpen your perspective," you will never have access to saying that to someone with a straight face, because you're too busy thinking about how you're a good stylist, and they need to validate it. Your job is to guide your clients through their preferences, not to be right about everything.

When you don't do your own work, you will be triggered by everything. It will be like an emotional landmine, 24/7 in your business. The third reason that these things have to be handled in you is that you will stay in scarcity mode. Shame and pride keep you in survival thinking and the best thing you can do is work on your nervous system, especially as you do get help in your business.

Because if you stay small, you will stay in scarcity forever, even when you're acting through pride. Because pride can look confident, pride can look flashy, pride can look like you got it all together, but it will cap you. Because you won't see opportunities for growth, ways to collaborate with other people and grow easier, or scaling possibilities that require other people to come beside you and support you because you're too busy protecting your current pride.

Or making sure that you cover any inadequacies or any issues you have. You never want anyone to know that you made a mistake. So you make no new choices and try no new things because obviously you're going to have to learn, and that might mean you make a mistake. This is why I am not here to push anybody to build a business that is transformational if they're not ready, and it's why a lot of people that I work with are not ready for this work because they haven't done it themselves.

And we're going to be talking about this a lot more in the next six months because I am rebranding to talk more about transformational styling, so that you all can have the skills you need because nobody's giving them to stylists who want to do deep work. We are in a time in our country and in our culture across the world where people are ready for this type of work. But you can't do it if you haven't done your own work.

That doesn't mean you're perfect or you don't make mistakes. It means you are aware of the basic issues that get in the way. Pride and shame are the two things that are at the foundation of what most human beings get held back by. Any of Brene Brown's work digs into this, and if you're curious about that, definitely look at it because you're going to see a lot of patterns you probably have seen with styling clients.

But it doesn't really matter what's happening with your clients because you are a mirror, and how you handle it is what matters. But if you don't have the ability to do it in yourself, then it's not going to work. You can't fix somebody else but you can do your own work so that you can be a legitimate guide that isn't triggered every 10 minutes by somebody's responses to the shirt you picked out.

The stylists who build truly transformational businesses, the ones who step into real financial power, become thought leaders, and are in demand, understand this. Expertise isn't about having all the answers. It is about being secure enough in your value to get the support you need and guide your clients through uncertainty.

Because most people come to stylists during life transitions, which means they have one foot in their old life and one foot in their new life. There's going to be fear and fear brings up shame and fear triggers pride, so that people don't know that you're afraid. It protects us. It's not the best protection tool, but it is there for a reason.

So think about it. The most successful stylists I work with aren't the ones who never ask for help. I'm not just saying that because I'm a business strategist. I'm saying that because that's true of all of the rooms I've been in in my whole career. Everyone who's successful has a coach. Everyone who's successful has a team.

They're the ones who invest in business skills without shame about their knowledge gaps. Remember what we just talked about, about do you have shame about your mortgage? Do you have shame about your education debt? They ask for support without diminishing their expertise. They stay neutral when clients have preferences that are different from their recommendations because ultimately, they know it's their life.

They recognize that transformation, both theirs and their clients, requires vulnerability, and vulnerability cannot be present in the room unless you have done your own self-acceptance work. So when you operate from a place of service instead of self-protection, you get the business help you need because it serves your mission, not because you're lacking as a person, but because you came here to do something and you not having certain skills are getting in the way.

You stay curious instead of defensive when your clients have feedback. You attract clients who are ready for an actual transformation because you embody that possibility in how you do transformational marketing. You charge appropriately because you're focused on the value you provide, not protecting your ego. The value you provide is related to doing this work.

You don't need more style training likely. I mean, you might, I don't know, but I'm guessing you don't if you've had clients that have paid you and gotten good results. What you need is some time to make sure that your side of the street is clean, that you're running a business that is actually going to be a container for people to transform, and that you've done your work to clean up your side of the street.

As I want you to notice this week, as you go through getting into fall and getting your business all set up for one of the most important seasons that we have, are you operating from shame? "I should know this." Pride? "I can handle this alone, even when it feels hard." Or service? "What do I need to better serve my clients and my mission?"

The same courage it takes to get business help is the same courage your clients need to transform their relationship with style. When you model that courage through showing that you're open to changing yourself and to learning and to growing, you give them permission to do the same. That is what both you and your clients need to step into their next level.

Watch when you do it, it will absolutely start to manifest the clients in your life who are open to the same type of work. You will finally unlock the thing that is going to make the deepest difference in the lives of your clients. That's what I know you want to be known for.

So if this episode resonated with you today, and you notice these patterns in yourself, I would love to hear from you. My DMs are always open over on Instagram. This is an important conversation. We're going to be talking about more over there. So if you're not following me, definitely do that at Styling Consultancy. 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.