PODCAST SHOWNOTES

Nicole Otchy: I know I need to raise my prices. I'm just scared I'm going to lose people. I'm sure you've thought this before, even if you've never said it out loud. And I hear a version of this sentence every single time I open my Accelerator program. And I completely understand. When you've built relationships with your clients, especially clients you've been working with for a long time as a personal stylist, raising your prices can feel personal, like you're doing something to your clients. And there's usually someone very specific that a stylist is thinking about, when they say this to me. Someone who's been with you for years, someone you genuinely enjoy working with and you really don't want to lose.

But here's what we're going to talk about today. What happens when your fear of losing people keeps you at a price you know you need to move beyond and why that one person you're thinking about, or even a handful of them, are actually not the thing that's going to hold you back with your pricing in your business. Because if you're an established stylist who is busy or has busy periods followed by slower ones, your business has grown, even if it's not as fast as you want and you need to make more money in order to not work yourself into the ground. You don't really need me to tell you something needs to change, because you know you have to up your prices. You don't have a lot of other options. You can't make time multiply. But what you probably need to get yourself into a space for that to feel like the next step for you, is for your brain to have another story to hold on to, so that you can raise those prices and prove it wrong. And so the question we're going to explore today is, how do you raise your prices when you don't yet have proof that people will pay the new number?

This is The Six Figure Personal Stylist Podcast. I'm Nicole Otchy and this is a show for personal stylists building world-class businesses and setting the standard in their industry. We're talking all things profitable growth, thought leadership and real client transformations. Because the best stylists don't just edit closets, they shape culture.

I think the hardest part about raising your prices is that until you do it, you don't actually know how people are going to respond. And to think about your current clients makes that proposition of raising your prices seem way more personal than it is. What you know, what you have experience with, is the people who have gotten on sales calls with you or had conversations in DMs with you that have said yes to your old price. And nobody has said yes to the new number yet. So when you are sitting in that uncertainty, it's very easy to start making predictions. My existing clients won't pay that. People will leave. My market is too price sensitive. I just have to do more in order to justify that price. And I'm not going to lie to you, some of those things may be true. But you don't actually know yet.

See, a few rounds ago, my client, Jessica, who's a San Francisco based stylist, went through my Income Accelerator program and she raised her prices very, very significantly, like thousands of dollars. And she was nervous about telling her existing clients that she was upping her prices. She had built long relationships with these people and worked with them over years. But an interesting thing happened that she reported back to the group. Not only did she not lose her existing clients, several of them told her that they were proud of her and excited to see that she was growing and expanding her business. They were excited to see her charge more. And I actually don't see this as that uncommon of a response as somebody who runs programs every year with up to 30 to 50 stylists who raise their prices.

The one thing I want to point out is if you start your business wildly undercharging and suddenly try to raise your prices to a number that is completely disconnected from the market that you are operating in, that could be a different conversation, which is why I feel so strongly about helping stylists in my foundation program start at a price that actually keeps them with their clients longer. But for the majority of established stylists who are already charging a reasonable amount and need to raise their prices to support the next stage of their business and to keep them from burning out and honestly, just to stay in business, period. Most existing clients will react positively with a few outliers. That is what the stats show me, is that most clients don't freak out. That's also because that's something we're going to talk about in a later episode, about client life cycle. Because when you are thinking of raising your prices, you always go to the worst case scenario, which is your established clients.

But the reality is that your new prices actually affect the new clients you've never worked with yet more than your established clients. And the reality is that your established clients have watched you get better at what you do, if you've been around for a minute. Some of them have worked with you for years. They have seen your process evolve. They have seen your marketing evolve. They know that you're booked. They know they can't get you immediately. They've seen the results that you get. And the people who genuinely value your work, may be perfectly happy, in most cases, to see you build a bigger, more successful business. And even if they decide it's not in their budget, they will probably ask you if there's another way they can work with you. Will every client respond that way? No. But I think we need to stop assuming that people who know us and value our work, are automatically going to be resentful, because we are in a period of growth. And that is important because if you're attracting the right clients as a stylist, they too are growth-oriented people. And this is why I say your whole business is connected. It's not just like your price is over here and your marketing over here and your service is over here. If you are working with a business that makes sense together, a lot of these fears that stylists have, are completely irrational, because they understand the kind of people they're talking to and the kind of experience they're creating. And so the price is relative to that.

And the part that's really critical here is that the longer you stay stuck, the bigger the fear gets. Because here's what happens when you keep delaying a price increase that you know you need and that is actually causing you to become resentful of your business. If you're already busy, staying at the same price means you have to keep the same amount of work coming in, in order to make the money you need. You have to have all of your clients stay with you. You need to keep taking new clients at the same rate. And you need your schedule to either expand or stay as it is, which is usually causing some sort of an issue to your stylist's mental or physical health by this point. So if you're already working too much, that really doesn't leave you anywhere else to go. The longer you stay at a price you know is unsustainable, the more dependent you become on the business staying exactly how it is. And then you eventually look up one day and think, I don't know if there's any way out of this.

And then raising your prices becomes something that is harder than it needs to be, because you need every single client you have, in order to survive. You don't know where your next client is going to come from, because there's no space in the business. So I think when someone says, I'm scared to raise my prices, because I don't want to lose people, we need to look at both sides of that. Yes, you might lose a client, but what is it costing you to keep them at those prices where they are? And for how long are you willing to pay that price? How many clients do you have to take, to make the money you want? And are there enough working hours for you to do that? And more importantly, are there enough working hours for you to do that and market your business and continue to grow? Because that's the truth of owning a business. So staying in the same price range that you're in now, when you know this isn't sustainable, is a decision. And sometimes I think we treat that safe decision as if it is the default, when actually it is creating a whole series of problems that we don't want to look at.

There is actually a question underneath this fear. And I think that this idea that raising your prices will mean you lose people that you like and that you respect and that you value as a stylist, isn't actually the whole story. It's sort of like the story we tell ourselves, because it's the easiest example of rejection our brain can grab, because we know these people. You raise your prices, maybe somebody even says yes and a whole new series of questions gets triggered. So if someone's paying me more, what exactly are they getting more, in value? What are they going to expect from you? Will the experience feel good enough at that price? Will you feel like you're delivering enough at that price? And if you're already working incredibly hard at your current prices, you may look at the higher prices and think, well, now I'm going to have to do even more. And that is a level of pressure I'm not sure I'm ready for. And that is the real reason why so many stylists I work with get stuck. And what's interesting about this is that they don't actually realize this, that this is what they're thinking, that this was the main core belief holding them back, that maybe they couldn't sustain the value in the eyes of their clients at a higher price, when they were actually telling themselves they were afraid to lose clients.

It wasn't about the clients that were already there that they were going to lose. Yeah, sure, that might sting. It was about the fear that if anybody came into the business and paid them that much, they would let them down. They think that if they charge more, they need to become more valuable. And that ends up looking like adding on more time, sessions, shopping, rounds of edits, unlimited access to you, which is so exhausting, more deliverables, more meetings, because they're trying to make sure the client feels like they're quote, getting their money's worth. But more, when you're a high-touch expert, it is usually not more valuable if you are talking to the right people. Doesn't mean you don't want to be intentional. Doesn't mean there aren't instances where adding more actually is the right move. But if you're already working yourself into the ground at your current prices, adding more to justify the higher price is not going to solve your problem.

So this is where this conversation has to move beyond, well, what number should I charge to stay safe, or to stay in business, or to keep my energy sustainable? Because sometimes the real issue with pricing is that you haven't taken the time to look clearly at the business underneath the number and you're going to a fear of rejection story, instead. So when you are really good at the work, which is the majority of people that listen to this podcast and reach out to me and I know they're good at it, because they never think they're good enough, right? That's how you know somebody actually like is dedicated. They often don't see that their doubt in their abilities as a stylist isn't actually always that. It's lack of clarity about the business. And this is something that's so, so common with established stylists. Because they're good at their job. They have proof that it works. They have clients that have come to them that are strangers. They get referrals. They have very busy seasons.

Again, even if they're not completely consistent all the time. But the business has developed organically and they've just added things over the years. They're usually very good at taking quick action. And in order to stay in motion, they have made a lot of exceptions. They've adjusted their process, depending on what a client needs and told them that it's good customer service. They've cracked up their offers, based on what they've seen on other people's websites, or what they felt made sense at the time. And that's not bad. That's being scrappy. That's actually who I want to work with, because it shows me that you have intentionality and motivation and you're going to get where you want to go. But eventually you reach a point where you need to stop and look back at what you built. And this is not about you going into like, oh my gosh, I did all these things wrong. No, not at all. It's about asking yourself, what exactly does each client get, when they work with me, so that I can plan out the reality of what I need to sustain this business? And if the answer is, well, it depends, I usually customize everything. That lack of structure is also a part of why you are burning out. Yes, the price is part of it, but when I look at stylist business, it's usually that not only are they undercharging for the work they're actually charging for, but there's tons of hours of work they've never accounted for.

You don't actually know what you're selling, because you're reacting. You're not selling. You should know what your process looks like. You should know how long it takes on the high end and on the low end. You should know what makes one service different from another. And it's not just you get shopping or you don't get shopping. You should understand what you are responsible for, what the client can expect from you, what the timelines are. That doesn't mean every client gets the exact same experience. It means that you have enough structure in every single offer that you're not guessing on will this be a three week service with this client, or will it be a six or eight week service with this client? Because I don't have any process for following up with them and it could take seven weeks for them to get back to me about their shopping pull. That's what I'm talking about. There is a difference between having a personalized experience and having a completely undefined experience.

And completely undefined experiences are very, very problematic in any kind of self-development work or anything, where you're attracting people who don't see themselves as creative, but are spending a lot of money, because they will doubt your prices. They will doubt you, because they don't know what they're supposed to be doing in this container, but you should. When you are carrying this much of your business in your own head and you are making these many decisions in real time, It says a lot about your ability to become successful, but you have to slow down and you have to look back and think, am I anticipating what my clients need for each offer? Or am I constantly adjusting on the fly? What is that doing to my own ability to show up for my clients? Because you care about doing a good job, but you're giving more and more of yourself to doing a good job than you need to. And then you are depleted. And then you wonder why charging more feels uncomfortable. And it's because from your perspective, you are already giving everything you've got. So how in the world are you going to give more?

And that is the fallacy that sits at the bottom, the truth of the majority of the stylists I work with beliefs. It's not about the people they know. That's just the first level of fear. It's about how I could possibly give more? And the answer is, it's nothing to do with your prices and everything to do with the business model. And when you handle that, the pricing becomes the easy part. One of my clients, Liza, who was in the last round of Income Accelerator, who's a really big stylist in Chicago and is just an incredible marketer, was so, so busy when she reached out to me and she was consistently booked out. Like, getting clients was not her issue. But she was totally burnt out and she knew, she knew that she needed to raise her prices. But when we started looking at the business, it became clear why that felt so difficult to her. She was over-delivering, like more than over-delivering. Her clients were obsessed with her. Her repeat client rate was super high. But there wasn't enough structure around the client experience for her to feel at peace, when she sold the offers, because she was carrying all of it herself in her head. Every client required a lot of decisions. She was constantly anticipating what people needed. She was adapting things in real time. And because she cared so much about doing a good job, she was giving so much of herself to the work and it was exhausting.

And so we didn't start by raising her prices. We looked at her offers. What was included? What wasn't? What do we want to restructure? What do we want the deliverables to be? What was taking unnecessary time? How could we outsource that in some way, whether that be through systems or an assistant? What could a client expect at each stage? And were there things that we were over-delivering in the front, but could have put in the back to an established client offer to keep their life cycle and the client around longer? And once she started to see the business more clearly, she could make better pricing decisions. So she raised her prices and started selling at a rate that allowed her to basically make twice what she was making from every one client. She then started to sell her offers at a higher price pretty much immediately in the program. So her next sales calls, because she had a lot of sales calls on the calendar, were automatically selling at the new price without anyone batting an eyelash. Then, less than three months later, last we talked, she had some serious breathing room in her schedule, right? And then it became about her being aware, hey, I could actually do the same thing to myself again and wear myself out, because I tend to over-deliver. And so now she has enough money to go away to celebrate her one-year business anniversary, this fall. And she can be aware that she needs to raise her prices again and that she also needs to be responsible for how she over delivers. And that is what's going to keep her balanced in her business, not just upping the price. Because one client alone could pay her almost double what she was charging before. But if she has to overwork for that client, it's not worth it.

And so I want to be clear, I'm not telling you the story, because I think everyone out there should go and double their prices. Her demand was so high, we could have tripled her prices, right? But she went at a pace that was comfortable for her. That's not the point. The point is she didn't need to create some completely new level of service. She just needed to get clear about the business she was already running, which also showed her how amazing of a job she was doing. I think we tend to think, oh, no, when we look back at our business and we look over things, we're going to find all these things were you know, ashamed of and embarrassed of. But nine times out of ten, I find that people are so proud of themselves, because honestly, y'all are not good at giving yourself credit for things. So you're probably skipping over some things that I'm going to tell you are pretty amazing that you would never have even given yourself credit for in the first place. And that is critical.

So what if you really do have price sensitive clients? What if you really are in a market that can't bear the price? Let's talk about it, because that could be true. So if you're raising your prices, but you're having trouble selling at the new number, there's a lot of things you can look at. It could be the way that you're talking about the offer. It could be the way that you're positioning the people that are a good fit for it. It could be that you've been marketing to the wrong people and haven't thought about what language needs to change. It could be that you don't have a solid sales process and you're kind of being too chummy-chummy with people in that process, when you get on the phone with them. But I want to remind you that it's not because the offer is bad, or that people are thinking, oh, the price isn't good enough, because they haven't actually experienced the offer yet. It's that their perception of the offer isn't valuable enough yet. They don't know if it's valuable yet. Lots of people sell things that are wildly valuable that they're bad at marketing, that they can't show the value of. It doesn't mean the offer is less valuable. It just means they're bad at talking about it.

And so there are things you can look at. But in a time of online business, it's pretty hard for you to make the argument that there's nobody anywhere that would buy the offer. The bottom line is that if you can't figure out which problem you're dealing with, staying in your head longer isn't going to fix it. It's going to make the problem bigger. And at some point, you're going to need better information than the information you have, where you're standing, to get yourself out of this problem in your business. And the way you get better information is by looking at the business, making meaningful, thoughtful decisions, giving yourself credit for the things you've done well and eventually making some small changes, they're usually not even that large, in how you market, sell and position your offers. Not by trying to predict every possible disaster, before you make a move and raise your prices.

So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, OK, I get it. I need to raise my prices. But this is a lot of information. I don't know where to start. Do not pick a random number and announce your price increase tomorrow, because the truth is nobody on social media even knows where your old prices were. Think about it, do you have a good view of what is happening in the business underneath your current prices? What are you selling the most of? What does your client experience look like? How and where do you create the most value? Where are you burning yourself out? Because when you have a sense of that, sometimes you don't even need to raise your prices. You need to adjust some stuff in the back end. Sometimes pricing is just the most obvious sign that you've outgrown other parts of your business.

And that is why I created the Income Accelerator the way that I have. It's for established stylists who already have a business. They have clients. They know how to do styling work. But something about the way they are running their business isn't getting them where they want to go. They're exhausted. They're not making enough money consistently. Their prices are either too low, or they're just not sure if they're in the right market, or dealing with the right clients, in order to get where they want to go. And maybe you've been trying to solve all of these things on your own and you're in a spiral of self-doubt and you just need someone to come into your business and help you make sense of it that knows what they're talking about and can reflect back to you what you are uniquely good at. That is what I do inside Accelerator. I work with each of the clients inside this program and give them feedback on their offers, their client experience, their marketing, their positioning, their sales process. And we tailor a business plan to them with action steps to actually make it doable.

So if you're saying to yourself, I know I need to raise my prices, but I am still a little scared. I want you to know that there's probably some assumptions underneath that fear we got to take a look at. If you are ready to enter the next era of your personal styling business, the next round of my Accelerator program is officially open for applications. It kicks off on October 19th and it is the last round of 2026, which is wild. We are already here. I would love for you to apply. This is not a commitment. It is a conversation when you apply and we will have a conversation about if one of the eight remaining spots is a good fit for you, what support would look like and what we would specifically work on, in your business, to get you where you want to go, whether that's pricing, or a variety of other issues. I look forward to seeing your application come through into my inbox and I'll be in touch soon. I'll talk to you in the next episode.

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 a 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.