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.

Stylists love to say that when you dress a certain way, when you invest in styling, you will earn more money, you will think better, you will be smarter, and then add on this statement, it's backed by science. I'm confident that a decade, two decades ago, I also did that. What they're actually talking about, if you're not familiar with it, is the concept of enclothed cognition. Enclothed cognition is the theory that what we wear affects how we think and how we feel.

Specifically, how we think is what has gotten the most attention. This could be a really exciting and legitimizing piece of evidence for you when you are a stylist and you feel like you're having a hard time convincing people that this is a legitimate career. Maybe you're at Thanksgiving and your uncle looks to you and says, "So how's that little styling business going?" Having this up your sleeve feels like armor. It feels like you're legitimized. I know that feeling because I actually first learned about this concept back, back in the day before I was a stylist.

I worked at the Harvard Kennedy School in a section of the school called the Harvard Decision Making Lab. I worked there while I was starting to consider being a stylist, but hadn't really moved outside of that friends and family circle. Once I learned about enclothed cognition by complete accident, it made a big impact on my decision to go full-time as a personal stylist and how I thought about styling. It also deeply, deeply impacts how I teach stylists, how I work with them, and the business models I've created.

But I haven't talked a lot about it because it felt very technical. While I was getting my audience used to some of the concepts here like transformational styling and transactional styling, I wanted to wait a little bit. But it's very clear that there is more of a hunger for this conversation and more people are coming to me to be "transformational stylists." So if that is the case, that that is something you are drawn to, then I want to give you the background and the understanding of what is the framework of how I really think about it.

Because it's not just that your clients get more compliments. It's not just that they tell you that they feel better about themselves. There has to be elements of your framework and the way that you work with clients that is backed by this research I'm going to talk about today. This is one study that's an example that actually gets you results repeatedly. How I stumbled upon this and became interested in it is I was working with a team of behavioral economists and social psychologists.

I was a research assistant in this group. We were looking at how people made spending decisions and how our emotions impact our spending, which is another thing that I find really, really interesting and think a lot about and thought a lot about as a stylist. They used the enclothed cognition study that I'm going to explain more in a minute to see if people spend money differently when they wore different clothes and were told different things.

A lot of what I learned there really helped me understand that how we frame things and the way that we approach our clients, and this concept of niching in the business space is a little bit off when it comes to styling, because it's not necessarily that we all have to pick a demographic of people that have 2.5 kids and have a picket fence and a dog. It's more that we want to be able to use the language and the experiences and the understanding of the world that they have in order to communicate the value of the styling experience.

That's why if you're not able to connect with the psychological experience of your audience, it doesn't really matter if you're a good stylist in the personal styling world. Some of the findings that I learned from working with this research team and then looking at hundreds and hundreds of stylist businesses over the years, even long before the consultancy, showed me something that I feel very confidently saying. That is that very few, I would say no stylists that I've worked with so far, even ones who have a very, very strong process, have any idea how their methodology for how they run styling offers actually backs up and creates the results of the claim "look good, feel good," or look good, think better, look good, earn more, and how what we wear affects how we think and feel.

They may have a process. Somebody might have taught them that. But how and where that process, typically speaking, on average, generates change in people's behavior and self-perception, they are not able to pinpoint. Fair enough, because many people don't even know that this research and this study exists and other people are just trying to figure out where they're getting their next clients.

To be fair, as someone who has put this into my process, I haven't talked about it in detail because, quite frankly, most people are just trying to survive in their business. But I think that we're ready as an industry to feel more legitimized. So this entire episode is going to be dedicated to this conversation, because if you are serious about being a transformational stylist, you need to understand not just the outcome, which is what many people think makes you a transformational stylist.

"Oh, my client's getting compliments. My client feels good. Oh, my client," and this is the most common one, "likes the clothes I take out for them." But that actually just is an outcome. It doesn't mean anything about the process that got you there. It certainly doesn't mean that it will be repeatable. But the psychology and the steps that get your clients there are actually baked into very validated research.

This study of enclothed cognition is very famous because it has been replicated. Let's start with what the research actually says. I am going to read to you, which is nothing I've ever done before, but I think it's important for the sake of this, from the book called Big Dress Energy. It is an amazing book. I'm going to have it linked in the show notes. I think every stylist should have it.

If you want to be a stylist, you need to study it like it's a textbook. In their study, Adam and Galinsky enlisted a group of participants to wear white coats. The group was then split in half. Group one was told their white coats were painter smocks worn by creatives for art projects. Group two was told that they were wearing medical doctor's lab coats.

Both groups were then tasked with two attention tests, a timed spot-the-difference task and a Stroop task. For example, someone sees the word red written in blue font, and they have to correctly identify the font color without being confused by the text. The result revealed that when people believed they were wearing a doctor's coat, they scored significantly higher on the attention test.

Enclothed cognition works because, unbeknownst to us, certain clothes and outfits trigger our psychological schemas, bringing the psychological meanings of clothing to the surface. Psychological schemas are cognitive frameworks or thought patterns that condense vast amounts of information and allow us to act appropriately in different situations based on our prior knowledge. We possess different schema types and our person schemas include information about people such as their behavior, appearances, and attitudes, and so on.

So what's really, really important about this is this concept of psychological schemas. Cognitive frameworks or thought patterns that we have that are personal to us that tell us something about the clothing that we are wearing and then trigger symbolic meaning. In other words, the original Enclothed Cognition Study didn't just hand people blazers and ask them how confident they felt.

People were first asked to assign meaning to what they were wearing in order to, before the clothes are ever brought into the picture, create a sense of the participant being able to access the cognitive schema that is attached to that piece of clothes, what meaning they make of that piece of clothes. If the schema that they attach, the framework that they attach to that piece of clothing, pairs with certain traits like being smart, being good with detail, being precise and methodical, then it will trigger that action in the person, that behavior.

The bottom line here is that clothing only changes how we think or behave if the wearer personally attaches significance to it. It's not the idea that they looked at a picture once on Pinterest and now they gave you a board and now you're going to shop for it and they're going to get the result.

If you do not have a conversation that triggers and a process that you go through with every client, this is what I call style discovery, I teach all my stylists how to do this in my programs, then the client themselves, if they are not forced to use their own words in their own mouth to tell you what that piece of clothes that they put on their Pinterest board triggers for them, they will have no access to the findings of this study.

So a lot of stylists miss and skip the part where the client actually has to do the work of assigning the meaning to the clothes before they put them on. Often stylists think they're being very high touch by not having clients do this. But what happens when we overfunction for our clients—and that's what I would argue that this is, if it feels like a big ass to have somebody talk you through their Pinterest board and you lead them on a 30-minute call—then there may be some things we got to look at here. Because when stylists overfunction for their clients, mostly because they don't have any processes in place to keep them on track, honestly, they usually strip out the transformation.

It's ironic because it's the same people who want to be the most transformational that tend to do this the most because they identify, as many clients I have spoken to do, as people pleasers. What happens when you don't get that in check is that you end up taking the results away from your client and waiting for them to validate you by how hard you worked. So that's why I say you need to know all of the parts of the process, of the services, of the intake form, you need to understand why they are there.

Because here's why this nuance is so important for your business. Every client who works with you wants to feel confident. That is the surface-level desire that they come to you with. But true confidence, the kind that lasts beyond the excitement of the shopping trip and the styling session, comes from a sense of inner congruence, from a sense of alignment between who they believe that they are or who they really want to be, which they have to have thought through and written out, the studies show, and what they see in the mirror at the end of the styling process.

If you're addressing a client without first helping them name the adjectives, the feelings, the aspirations that they want their clothing to reflect, you can't trigger the result of the enclothed cognition study because you are not going to be triggering the psychological schemas that bring the symbolic meanings to the forefront of their mind when they are wearing the clothes.

They may look amazing. You may be the best stylist in the world. You could have given them the most incredible white glove experience of their life, but it doesn't mean anything in terms of the transformation because you didn't bring online the psychological schemas, the way they think about those clothes and the symbolism of them, because you didn't do the work at the beginning.

When this is missing, transformation doesn't stick. I can tell you as someone who also does transformational work in a different vein right now, in a different world as a business consultant, that if you don't have people speak what they want out loud, you will have a hard time and they will have a hard time remembering what brought you there, and that will make it hard for them to see the value in the work they did with you. That's why a lot of stylists don't have high repeat client rates.

In the original study that I just read to you about, something that a lot of stylists are incredibly uncomfortable with when I tell them to do this, because somewhere, somehow, they got the idea that asking a client to do anything, especially if they're in person, means they're being low value. In the study, and this was something that I learned a lot when I was working at Harvard, the writing exercise mattered. Participants literally wrote down what the garment that they gave to them to be in the study, what it represented before they put it on their body.

It's the act of reflection that created the identity buy-in. That is the difference, I would say, if I had to boil this down to one kernel of the difference between transformational styling and transactional styling, it's that it requires an act of reflection and sharing by the client for you to do your job right. Number one, because you're a stylist, not a mind reader. You're a stylist, not a fairy godmother of self-esteem.

People have to be responsible for themselves. So your intake form, your pre-style discovery call, even the homework assignments and the pre-style work and the style prep work that you give them before the shopping and the editing, that is your "lab coat moment" for them. That's where you help them think about what their lab “equivalent” is.

Again, it's important to point out that it's not that the study was saying everybody that puts on clothes that makes them "feel good" thinks smarter or thinks better or behaves better or gets better results on tests. It was only the people who were primed to get those results by saying that it was a doctor's coat and not a painter's coat. So it's not that it showed that wearing clothes makes you smart. It showed that when you think about clothes in a certain way, you will get a certain outcome in how you think, which will then drive your actions.

That is critical for you to understand because there is no outfit that universally makes people earn more, perform better on tests, give better presentations, whatever. It has to come from the client and it is not low status or not high touch or not a luxury service if you lead people through a process to help them make those decisions about what they are identifying the clothes to mean in their life.

This is where your clients anchor the meaning of the person they actually want to be and the feeling of confidence to the reality of putting the clothes on their body, and if you skip it and you think "Well, I shouldn't need to pay anybody to help me figure this out," you are literally not creating transformation. You are creating a sense of codependence in your business and most of us don't know that we're doing that.

But I do think it's wild that we are this many years into an industry and we are not talking enough about the fact that we love to cite the studies and legitimize ourselves. But no one is thinking, "If I'm teaching stylists, shouldn't I be using the studies?" And I just happen to have this weird experience in my own life that has made me realize the full circle of my work experience getting me to where I am. Because I feel very passionately about this. I've thought about this for over a decade. I was like, "Well, somebody must be doing this shortly."

But the reality is when I looked around, they weren't. People will cite it. But when it comes down to how it is applied in the work of stylists, it's not there. So I'm going to tell you how I make this study, but there are many, many more studies that I've used, this is all very practical and what it actually looks like in your styling business.

There are three touch points that we need to have to create meaning in order for the transformation to be triggered. Again, transformation doesn't mean compliments. I think that is important. Number one, before you ever get into the clothes, before you edit closets or go shopping, you are not just gathering your client's preferences in a mood board.

You're helping your clients define the emotional language of their style. What do they want to feel seen for? What do they want to be noticed as? What do they want to experience more of in themselves when they walk through the world? And what is shifting in their life or their identity that their current wardrobe is no longer representing?

This is the stage at which the client has to self-define what the meaning is in their wardrobe. It's the equivalent of writing down what their doctor's coat is in order to elicit the behavior they want in their life consistently.

Number two, during the styling process, you need to be, as a transformational stylist, constantly in a conversation that requires reflection of the client. It's not just, do you like this? Do you not like this? You have to invite the client into a conversation where they are narrating their thoughts. When you put on this blazer, does this feel like you are the badass seven-figure business owner you want to be?

When you put on this blazer, do you feel like this is what you envisioned when you told me XYZ on our style discovery call? When you wear this outfit, does this feel like the cool mom that you want to be on the playground? I sense hesitation. Let's go through the outfit piece by piece and talk about what might be off.

It is in this conversation that people begin to become honestly more reasonable is what I found. This is what people pay real money for. This is what real experts do. This is why the stylists I work with are at a completely different level. Because this is not something that some outdated model that's going to go away. People are people.

The simple questions that you ask them build awareness and it builds their sense of agency. Side note here, as I go on a rant, if you work with women, the majority of the women you work with are looking for permission to get rid of things, permission to show up, permission to be seen, permission to not be a size negative zero, permission to not feel bad if they are thin. Permission, permission, permission.

That is not agency. So when you have a real serious styling process to back up what you do, and you're not just winging it because you're going to close, you give people agency in their style and it turns styling into a collaboration. This is not costume design and cosplay confidence. This is what it looks like to do the work.

That's why the stylists I work with charge a lot of money. Because this takes care. This takes attention. If you're not charging an amount that allows you to be present with people, then it's very hard to do transformational work. You have to price for the energy that it takes, for the awareness. If you're someone who doesn't do a lot of self-reflection, it probably isn't for you. Like if you're afraid of feelings, this is going to be hard for you. I'm just being honest because it used to be hard for old me until I started to do the work I needed to do.

So the last part is that after the styling is done, you need an integration moment, a space for your clients to articulate what changed. You as a stylist have to be able to articulate the changes. One of the things I have trained myself to do over the years is to show people how far they've come in my coaching with them. It is consistently something that I am told by the people that I work with is a strength, but it is something that makes them come back to me for years because they know that I see them. They feel seen.

When your clients learn how to articulate their wins and how far they've come versus how far they might need to go, that becomes a space of true transformation. I hate the word because I feel like everyone uses it and we're definitely going to find a new word for this. But whether it's through a follow-up call or through adding 10 minutes at the end of every session to talk about what they learned, what their wins were, what they're going to let go of, they need to name it and they need to own it.

They need you at the beginning sometimes, depending on the client's style savviness, to do it for them first. This is how enclothed cognition and the result of that study become more than just a buzzword that stylists throw in their marketing. That's why when I see stylists taking the concept of transformational styling, which isn't a word that I own, and throwing it everywhere and saying, "I'm a transformational stylist," but they haven't actually worked on their process or they can't pinpoint where that comes from. It's not really ethical, if I'm being honest. This is something I'll be talking about a lot more.

I'm going to be way more explicit about it in my content because this is how, again, we become completely AI-proof, right? There's no world in which right now, not saying there isn't one in 20 to 30 years, but I'm worried about right now, AI can do this. From a marketing standpoint, when you learn to style in this way, you number one, become wildly confident that what you have will change people's lives. That's why I came out the gate pretty confident about my offers, because I knew how to do a lot of these things in the coaching containers that I have now.

When you learn the keys and the foundation of what makes something transformational, you can apply it in different places because the human brain is the human brain. But over-functioning for people will always rob them of their transformation. It will always rob them of their lessons and their change. Sometimes clients don't go on the timeline that you want them to. But when you have these types of processes that are backed by the science that I have studied for years and that exists, like it literally exists, but we are being too lazy and we are not putting it out there, you have the confidence of even if a client is on a different timeline, you know that the steps you took were the steps that would create change if they were ready.

That's the part so many of us sense in our clients, they're not ready. The more you get that it's not just that you have a good eye or that you have learned color theory, but why you apply the things that you know the way you do, that's what builds trust in your marketing. That's what builds trust in yourself. That's what makes you completely competition-proof. That's why my stylists can all be in the same room together being a community and helping each other.

Because once you add your own niche, you add the things that make you different, you add the services the way that you want to do it versus doing what everybody else does, you realize there's no competition, but there is competition when you are using old and outdated business models that leave everybody with the same services and the same perspective and the same niche. That's a problem. I'm not going to lie. But when you get this different playing field, let me be clear, the way that I'm talking, the way that we're going to be getting into in the new year, what for now we're going to call transformational styling, more to come on that, this is deeper work.

It's work that requires a higher price tag because it also signals to the people that it's going to be worth it to what is in store for them if you're marketing it correctly. It's also a very expensive step to skip and say you are transformational. But for many people, this is not the way for them to go. There's nothing wrong with that. Some people are not in the season of life. They're not in a situation where they can take on this emotional load, which, quite frankly, if you have boundaries, should not. But there's often personal work that stylists need to do so that it doesn't feel like more emotional load.

That's why I caution people before they say like, "Oh, I'm definitely transformational." Well, okay, hold on a sec. What level of work have you done on yourself to be clear that you are okay with the boundaries and this is your responsibility, this is my responsibility that are going to come with this? Because if you're an over-functioner in every other area of your life, transformational styling is going to be real hard for you. I'm just going to be honest, it was so hard for me before I did the deep work.

When you rush into the doing of styling without creating reflection, notice if you do that. Because if you're unwilling to sit with the discomfort of letting the client have a minute to figure it out for themselves, or to say to the client, "I'm going to need you to communicate with me to do this properly or to get this job done," you are setting yourself up for inconsistent results for low repeat client rates and for surface level testimonials that never get you any more sales, and honestly, marketing that's probably pretty shallow.

But if you want to be a transactional stylist and you're good at just doing the shopping quickly and getting, there is an absolute market for that and there's no shame in it. There isn't. But this is a different game. It's a game that people haven't been taught. Because when I show people, even people that have done extensive image consulting training, they have never seen a style discovery process that requires the client to speak for themselves, to represent the future self they claim they want to live into.

So I don't care about what colors are best for someone. If they don't know how they want to feel as the next version of themselves and they don't know how those colors impact that, it doesn't matter what tools you give people. So while those things are important tools, without this underlying framework of how you run your business, the transformation has no space to breathe and live. But when your process helps people understand the meaning behind their clothing choices and you're okay with giving people the space to be the adults they need to be to live into it, they become the walking proof of your method.

That's what drives word of mouth referrals, the way that your marketing starts to convert very quickly and repeat business. The takeaway here that I want you to get is that transformational styling is truly not about the clothes. It is what those clothes represent to the person wearing them. Most stylists get this, but they don't have a process or way of working with people that gets them there. So Enclothed Cognition provides what you already know intuitively, that clothes can change how people feel and how they behave.

But only when the meaning and the work that they have to do and only they can do of assigning that meaning to the clothes comes first. So when you reference this thing in your marketing, I want you to ask yourself, does my process reflect it? Am I giving my clients a way to assign meaning before I start pulling clothes? Because the real difference between transactional styling and transformational styling and the claims that we make ethically in our marketing comes down to this.

One group of people dress people, and that is a valid and absolutely dignified and acceptable and very, very, very profitable side of the styling coin. The other helps see themselves differently. For many decades now, stylists have not had a way of truly explaining how they do that. That impacts their own confidence, let alone the consistent confidence of their clients.

So if that's something you want to learn more about, head to the show notes, get on the wait list for the next Income Accelerator. We are launching it again in spring. I am so delighted you're here. I'm so excited to hear you guys' feedback on the transformational and transactional styling episodes that we've done. Definitely more to come in the new year. 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.