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.

Welcome back. Today, we're talking about one of the most common mistakes I see stylists making in their business and a conversation I've been having a lot of as I'm winding up the Income Accelerator launch. By the time this is live, the doors will be closed. So it's fresh on my mind because I'm hearing it a lot with established stylists that they get into these patterns where they panic, they get a client, then they put their head down, stop marketing, look up, don't have any more clients, panic, add a new offer, market that offer because it's a dopamine hit, and they lower the price.

It looks a little different than their other offers. Maybe the price is lower, they take stuff out. They're established enough to know to do that, but they don't sell their existing offers. So they get into this constantly adding and changing things around. That then results in them not having repeat business, maybe not calling in the right clients. Also, just this kind of issue around people need to hear your offer seven to 12 times by name in order to start to even register that they would hire you. They need to hear about it from different angles.

So if you're changing your offers, it doesn't really give you a whole lot of time to get people familiar and comfortable with them. But I totally get it. You're creative, you're entrepreneurial, you have ideas, you get excited, and it feels like a good antidote to the fact that you're anxious about looking down, not marketing, and having a drought in your business. But here's the thing I want you to know. Every offer, no matter how small or how large, isn't just that offer.

So if you offer a closet edit with a few outfits styled as a one-off, it's not just that. It's the time to go there. It's the intake. It's the style discovery, because you should have that. It's the offboarding. It's being able to even suss out, is this offer one that is going to upsell people to other opportunities in my ecosystem. Every offer you add has its own internal ecosystem inside your business. So you have a services ecosystem of just your services, but then within each one of them, you should have a bunch of stuff we're going to talk about today.

In order to deliver that service well, in order to make it something that actually sticks and people are attracted to the right people, you need to package it in the right way so that it's hitting with the right people that actually would come back again. It needs its own systems. It needs onboarding. It needs offboarding. It needs all of the things to get you up to speed with that client if they're new, and it needs marketing and messaging. It needs its own sales objections. It needs people to be able to understand the before and after. It needs a whole ecosystem of marketing.

That's why adding offers too quickly or impulsively is one of the fastest ways that stylists burn out and inevitably extend the time it takes to hitting consistent income and to feeling at home and not like they're constantly in scarcity inside their business. It's why copying other stylists' service menus never works. Never. You don't see the systems behind the scenes. You don't see the marketing they've built or need to build in order to actually sell it.

Just because it's on their offers on their website and they have a big social media following doesn't mean that they're selling it. Just because you see them in dressing rooms doesn't mean that they're not in those dressing rooms for them. People, not sure if you are new to this, but people do do this thing called lying on social media. It's way more prevalent than you realize in the industry. So what you see is the surface, you see their big followers, and then you think, "Well, they seem successful, they're always in dressing rooms. I mean they seem like they're setting up for clients on stories, that must be what they're doing, right?"

But what you don't know is the full story. You don't know if they've ever sold that offer. You don't know if they're giving it away to their friends and family for free. You don't know if they're in that dressing room because Madewell's having a sale and they're shopping for themselves. You don't know. So you are equating a big audience and the fact that they may have been in business for a long time or they're good at marketing, allegedly, you don't know what their sales are so you don't know if they're really good at marketing, but to you, with the offer being good.

That's a big problem because that doesn't mean anything. So in this episode, I'm going to give you a really simple guide with reasons not to add a new offer, reasons you should add a new offer, and how to know the difference between the circumstances that should be the front of mind things that make you think, "Okay, I'm going to put my time and effort into building out an ecosystem for a new offer."

So I want you to think about it this way. Every time you add a new service on the fly, you're actually committing to three invisible jobs in your business. Packaging, writing it up, clarifying who it's for, how it's delivered, how it's priced, and why it's different from your other offers. Internally, this isn't something you're doing externally; you're thinking through, "How does this help me move someone through my offer system? All of the other higher ticket things I have."

Number two, you are committing to systems, the contracts, the onboarding, the scheduling, the delivery process, the follow-up, the client management, the travel, anything else involved is also coming with that decision to add a new offer.

Number three, marketing. Most importantly, all the content, the stories, the testimonials that you probably need to actually sell it at a rate that even makes a difference, and the sales conversations that you're going to need to go into filling it.

So the average person that I talked to today have a very high sales call close rate, but they don't actually have enough sales calls on their calendar to make the amount of money they want. So that's not accurate. So we really underestimate how many sales conversations we need in order to make the number that we need. We often just think, "Oh, it's more marketing." Not really. It's often sometimes way better marketing, different marketing, because there'll always be a threshold of people that if you show up enough, they will pay you.

But not everybody is the right kind of client who can stay with you over time which not everybody will be but you want enough people in your leads that it makes sense. So when you are marketing and getting excited about this offer, you're in this like dopamine high of like, "Oh, this is new, this is fresh, I'm excited about it." But basically, it would take you a couple of weeks really, if you're not just talking about the price.

So sometimes people will want to work with you, and they'll be like, "Oh, but the price is so low so I'll buy," but that doesn't mean you fixed your problem because that person is likely not going to come back because they were watching you for a while, they were actually warmed up from a different offer. You don't realize this, people are usually warmed up from a different offer.

You drop something for a limited time at a lower price, and they act because it's good enough, but it's not what they really wanted, and so the likelihood they stay with you is not great. So whenever you're excited about this, I want you to just think, "Am I as excited about this if I also made myself sit down and did the packaging properly, did the systems properly, and did the marketing properly? If I was walking into this for long term."

You shouldn't be casually dating any offers that you're talking about often and publicly. I'll tell you how to test offers, but this ain't it. Especially when the money is drying up in your business and you need clients now. This is not the time, even though your instinct is going to tell you to do this, to try to go ahead and make some new exciting offer.

Because it's going to take more time to actually get the right people into your offers than you realize. Distracting them with other offers is going to be a problem. So now imagine that every couple of months, you get excited about an offer in order to offset your anxiety about not having enough clients. Now imagine that you have to do this foundation of packaging systems and marketing every quarter for a new one when you already have offers that are there that you actually have results for.

That's why so many stylists are spinning out. They don't necessarily have an offer problem. They might not even have a positioning problem. They have an offer overload problem, and they don't understand because the business skill isn't there to back them up. The business understanding of what it takes to even build an offer to make it sustainable, that packaging, systems, and marketing, they have no understanding of that. So it just keeps feeling overwhelming.

So let's talk about the reasons I see most stylists adding offers to their ecosystem. Let's talk about why it's problematic. Because I think when I break this down, you'll see yourself in this if this is something you do. This might make it even clearer of when you need to check yourself. So the first is someone asks you for it. Maybe they want something cheaper than you have available. Maybe they want to skip some part of your process.

It is tempting to say yes when you are in a situation where you don't have any new clients. But here's the problem. You just let somebody else determine your business for you. That is an amateur hour move disguised as a sales strategy. It is not giving expert energy. Once people see that they can get you to bend on something like your price or your offer structure, you are setting yourself up for non-stop boundary crossing. Mark my words on this.

Are there a few people that are fine? Sure, I guess. But it is not giving, "I am in charge of this." You should have a reason for every single element of your offers. It should be pretty easy to explain to someone why you're not going to cut one of them out. So someone asking you for it is literally never a reason for you to create an offer out of thin air.

Number two, you're panicking because your pipeline is empty. So the difference between the two is someone's asking you for it, and you're like, "Well, I could use the money." But this one I'm saying, there's nobody there. You're sitting in your house making up offers because you are nervous and anxious. It doesn't feel exciting for you to sell something you already have. There are no new clients in sight. The bills are piling up, and suddenly, you're convinced a brand new service is the offer because you're excited. It is not.

If your marketing and your sales process are not working for your current offers, for your current audience, adding another one will not solve that problem. It actually could multiply the problem because now you're taking up time with people who actually aren't good fits. It's making you burned out. It's making you less excited to then get up every day and market your business and be consistent, and you're right back in the same energy.

Reason number three that I see all the time, and I appreciate people telling me the truth about this, because I know it's not easy to admit, comparison. You see another stylist online with shiny packages, a big following, a group program, a membership that looks really cool, whatever it is, and you think, "Well, she's doing it and it looks successful, maybe I should too." I can't tell you how many times I have talked a client through their idea. They're so excited. They come to a call. They're like, "This is what I want." Then I say, "Okay, let's build out the offer. Let me tell you what it's going to take." They sit there and they're like, "What? I don't want to do that." I'm like, "Yeah."

Now also, how is it going to connect to your other offers? They just look at me like, "I have no idea. It just looked cool." This is the fastest way to end up building a business that you don't even like. You feel overwhelmed by it. Then you're stuck wondering and comparing yourself to why they look successful doing it, but it's not working for you. Because it isn't your business. Because it's not your business. Like that's why. So none of these are reasons to add an offer.

Notice the thing that these have in common. If you only take this away from the episode, I want you to hear this. They are all prompted by external factors like other people's desires, other people's offers, other people not responding to your marketing in the way you want. So you have no clients. Now you're like, "Well, let me do this dance over here so that they'll buy from me because it's less money." You're also then giving yourself a bigger self-esteem issue because you're just reinforcing that your offers, because you're not putting in the time that's necessary to sell them properly, aren't valuable when that's not true.

It's not about the value. It's not about how good of a stylist you are. It's about the fact that you are lacking the business skills to sell them. Once you notice that external things are driving your actions in business, you have a very good clue that you're not chasing the solution; you are chasing distractions. That I want you to tattoo on your arm. External things driving your actions in business mean you are chasing distractions, not solutions.

When does it actually make sense to add a new offer to your styling menu? Three times. Number one, you've tested it in a smaller way and you've liked it. Maybe you've offered it as a bonus to new clients, or you've run a pilot with your established clients, or you've delivered it to one or two clients and thought, "This really works. I like it. People are getting good results." You have pre-planned piloting it to the public. Like it's something that's been on the calendar. Maybe you're offering a group program.

Like one of my clients, she takes the summer off with her boys. We were like, "Well, it's kind of hard to go completely off and then turn back on because she's so busy in the fall." So I was like,"What about a group program?" She is marketing all the time. She's making a lot of money. It makes sense. Okay, fine. We can pilot that. We can try it. We're not committing to it forever. Also, it wasn't really to fix a problem. It was to just amplify and give her some space in her calendar without shutting off the tap entirely.

So it wasn't like something we needed. It was something that was like, "Oh, this would be good," right? It didn't have that urgency behind it. Just like it won't have urgency behind it if you're adding it in as a bonus or you're giving it to a few established clients to try out. That's just like, "Oh, this is fun. Let's test it." It's more curious energy, not, "Oh, crap, I need money right now."

Number two, you need a different structure to support your life and your goals. So I'm currently restructuring my business for this reason. So examples that I see with stylists, like maybe you're tired of the number of client appointments you have in a week, and you feel like you're not able to give people as much as you want to or deliver at the level you want to, or you need a higher ticket offer so you can hit your numbers with a few fewer clients. Or maybe you want to go from mostly in-person to online because your kid's school schedule is different. Whatever.

These are things that are coming from your actual life, right? They're not coming from fear. They're coming from circumstances. Maybe you want more flexibility and you want to do something like take the summers off or take them low lift. So you need a digital offer that you can market all the time, but not have to physically show up and produce.

But the rest of the year, you're good. Like the rest of the year, your money's coming in. That's a good reason to add something. Structural shifts like this are really good reasons to change your menu so that you can actually go further faster because it's working for your life, your goals, your energy output, your brain, whatever. But it's all you that is the reason this is going to change. Nothing outside of you.

Number three, your market has matured. So this is why some people end up in Income Accelerator or my one-to-one, changing their offers. Some people streamline them. Some people scrap them. Everybody has a different path, but almost everybody has to look at, "Has my market matured since I started?" So the clients you're serving at some point, you're going to outgrow either because your prices get too high. You evolve, and you want clients as maybe more of a sense of their own style. They want more refining. They're not totally clueless.

There are even within niches, levels of clients. I think this is something we don't realize. So sometimes we outgrow the level of client our services were originally aimed at. You either need to decide like, "Okay, I have outgrown this, I'm leaving these people behind," or you need to create an offer to keep those people, which I will say is not common, and keep them in your ecosystem in a different way. Or you need to change your front-facing new client services so that you're calling in people at a higher level. So they're meeting you closer to where you are.

So you can keep your established clients. Sure. I wouldn't do it for less money. That's the thing. But fine. If that's something you want to do while you transition your business model, absolutely fine. But you do need to think about like, "How am I going to call in the right people for what I want at this stage of my career with a new offer? How is that offer going to look?" I think that that's a completely, again, legitimate reason to add something new. Sometimes you can just change your marketing, change your positioning, and keep the offers. Sometimes you can't.

That's something you gotta think through. But I want you to notice the difference with these three reasons to add an offer. These aren't moves that are driven by panic. They're strategic shifts, and they come from testing alignment in client evolution or your evolution. They come from an internally led place. They are not coming from fear or FOMO. They're all internal shifts that then make sense to externally align with in your services.

Every offer you have in your styling business should strengthen your ecosystem. It should add to the life cycle of clients. It should meet a need of you or a client that is missing. It should help you actualize your vision for your business right now. It should not scatter that vision. It should not take you off of the path. Do not add a styling offer because somebody asked for it. That is panic mode and it is not being an expert or because another stylist on Instagram is doing it.

A better use of your time is to think about "What do I want to focus on in my business so I can feel the way I imagine that stylist feels about her business," because you don't know what that stylist thinks of her business. She may be failing in her own mind. There's something about somebody else that I'm attracted to because I think if I do what they do, I will have this feeling. Focus on what the feeling is. Don't focus on what they're doing because it will never convert the same way. You don't know what the backend structure of that business is.

Add something because you've tested it out of curiosity, because it supports the life and the business model you want, or because your clients or you are just ready for a next step, not from a place of panic and scarcity. Once you run your new ideas through that filter and the things we talked about today, good reasons to add a service, reasons to not, you are going to massively avoid burnout or at least slow it down and keep building a business that will actually pay off long term, that will work for you and that you will be genuinely proud of because it's an internal extension of the life you want, not copying other people's businesses or just doing what other people want by people pleasing.

That ain't what we're here for. So that's it for today. I hope this provided the clarity you needed on your offers. I will 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.