PODCAST SHOWNOTES

Nicole Otchy: What if the moment you start obsessing over what you’re supposed to be doing, is actually the moment you realize you’ve outgrown the way that you’ve been doing things? What if, you’re looking around, at everyone else, and what they’re doing in the industry, because you’re trying to figure out what your next move is? And what if you’re not actually looking for inspiration? What if you’re looking for instructions, about how to be.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, because my business has moved into some territory this year, that I genuinely didn’t see coming. You see, I’m about to co-host a three day conference, here in New York City, about the next era of personal styling. With my co-hosts, the ladies at Nove. If you asked me in January if this was going to be part of my year, I would have said “Absolutely not.” As it got closer, I noticed myself doing something that I think a lot of us do, when our business starts changing, faster than our self-concepts have caught up to.

I started looking around, at what other people were doing. How are other people that host events doing this? How are they presenting themselves, what do they call themselves? How are they showing up? I was really trying to figure out the next version of myself, through the screen of my phone and working on other peoples’ Instagram accounts. To try to figure out, who I was supposed to be. And if I’m honest with you, it started to get a little ridiculous. First of all, I started obsessing over whether I should call myself a business coach, ‘cause quite frankly, I didn’t love the vibe. Should I be a business consultant, a business strategist. If I say ‘mentor’ will that be as valuable? I started questioning if I should be recording this podcast in a fancy studio, or not at all. Whether I needed to look more classic and polished, which is not my style. Did I need to wear a blazer, if I was going to be interviewing former Vogue editors on a stage? Would it be ok that I feel most natural in black, even though I know, as a speaker, you’re supposed to wear colors? And eventually, I had to stop. All of this. And ask myself “Do I actually want any of this?” And the answer to a lot of it was actually “No. I don’t.”

This is The Six Figure Personal Stylist podcast. I’m Nicole Otchy. This is a show for personal stylists building world class businesses and setting the standard in the 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.

Here’s what I realized, I was looking for outfit inspiration, right? I wasn’t trying to get better, at being a host for an event, or speaking on a stage. I was genuinely looking for the instruction manual to be my next-level self. I wanted somebody else to show me what successful was supposed to look like, so that I could follow the outline, and be safe, and know that I was doing it “right” and, if you really wanna drill down on this, on like, you know, a more existential level, I really was looking for acceptance. Which is really what every single one of us are doing, when we do this.

By doing this thing that I had never done before, I was trying to offset the chance of not being liked, or being rejected, or being judged. By looking out there, and following somebody else’s plan, for how I should be. I think a lot of established stylists hit this point in their business. You’re good at what you do, you’ve built a client base, ya made some money, maybe hit six figures, maybe you’re tryin’ to get consistent revenue. But you know that people that are strangers will hire you. And suddenly the old version of your business, doesn’t quite fit you any more, but it doesn’t necessarily register that way. Because the new version isn’t clear yet, and maybe you’re thinking “Well if I could just fix my marketing, if I could just fix this, I could just fix this one thing.” You think you’re one or two tactics away. Just like I did, thinking that a podcast studio recording situation was gonna change everything. I’m not sayin’ that I’m not gonna do it someday. I really do kinda want to. But it’s not goin’ to be the thing that completely transforms my career. It, and so you’re looking around, and looking at other people isn’t the problem. I wanna be really clear about that because I can’t think of a single big shift in my business, and honestly in my own personal life, that hasn’t come from being around people that’re ahead of me, or people supporting me. The difference is what you’re doing with what you see. There is a huge difference between looking at someone and thinking “That’s interesting, what can I learn from that?” And looking at them and thinking “That’s what my business needs to look like.” And then pressuring yourself to act, or show up, or build a business exactly like theirs. Basically, copy.

Those are completely different things. One is expanding your thinking, and the other is abandoning your own thinking. And I think this is particularly easy for stylists, because we’re trained to notice things. We notice how people dress, how they move, how they speak, what they say, what they don’t. How they present themselves. So when you’re entering a new room, or stepping into a bigger version of your business, it can feel very natural to start studying everyone else in the room. Virtually, of course, I mean. But eventually, you’ve gotta come back to this. What do I actually want?

Because I really did start to realize, that a lot of the things that I was trying to make fit weren't things that I wanted. At this point in my career, which doesn't mean these things won't change in the future, but as of today, when I record this, I don't want a massive company. I want to make a massive impact, sure. I want to make a lot of money. I want to reach a lot of people. But I don't want to manage a massive company. I don't want a team of 15 people. I don't want event staff. I don't want to be in a position where I have so many coaches under me, that I never experience or interact with a client unless I'm on stage, or hosting a fancy event, or you know, you're paying me just like, tens of thousands of dollars. I don't want to be removed from the people I work with. And yet so many of the examples that I see online, of people that have scaled businesses, are examples of people that are incredibly removed from the work. And because I was a stylist, because I'm not just like, telling you how to build a business that I didn't also do, that feels wildly unnatural to me. And I'm not saying that there won't be a stage in my life where, I am at a different point and I feel like, okay I've had that experience maybe it makes sense to have other people doing some of the delivery of the thought leadership or the coaching. But I'm not there today. And so, I was trying to build for a version of me, that I didn't even like. I like small curated groups, so it's not a big coincidence that my group programs are pretty small, less than 20 people, and that I'm curating a room with the Nove co-founders of less than 55 people. It's not because there couldn't be bigger rooms, it's because I don't think that my values live in bigger spaces, better. Right now. Maybe someday they will.

I like to look into the eyes, and know what is happening in my client's business. I actually like to write my own marketing, and to own my own Instagram stories, even though I have a team helping me with my social and my podcast. But somehow, I really was confusing successful online business owner, with something that, I didn't want. And I was doing it kind of, unconsciously. I was so worried about the presentation of how I was showing up in this next chapter, that I forgot, for a few minutes what, I actually wanted. And the truth is, is if you forget that then why do you even have a business in the first place? If you’re just going to abandon what you want, ultimately, not saying you don't have to make some concessions, but if you're ultimately abandoning your values? You might as well go work for somebody else. And that was the clue that I needed to get back on track.

I started confusing someone else's polished version of success, that I didn't even truly know behind the scenes of, with what had to be my own success in the future. I also wasn't investigating whether it was true, that that was the only way to be successful, in order to have events, or an online business, or whatever else. Did I have evidence that the way I wanted to be successful in business, the vision I had for myself, couldn't work? The answer was no, I didn't. Because I was lazily scrolling through Instagram, or looking at a few people's websites. I didn't see under the hood of their business. And this is where I think we get ourselves into trouble. We assume that once we see a version of our next level is out there, it is the only version that will help us get to what we want. But sometimes the next level doesn't come with a blueprint, or at least not a blueprint that's perfectly packaged and, put together for you. Sometimes you have to piece it together.

I did know, and I do know, that I want to host more in person experiences. I know, that I like a curated feel to an event, because I've been at big events. I've experienced them. I don't love them. I knew I wanted to create something that felt like the kind of community that I wanted to be a part of, and that I would be proud of, but I didn't know what my version of it looked like exactly. And eventually I realized I was going to have to do it, and then find out. And that, my dears, is wildly uncomfortable. Wildly. Because I think, it is also the part of the business, that we forget, is the only part that can belong to you. Despite what I am sure, you listening out there, with your little perfectionist brain, and me sitting here, with my perfectionist brain, would like to believe. You don't always get to know what the next version of yourself, success, or anything in your life is going to look like, before you do the work to create it. So if you're constantly looking sideways for the answers, you're going to miss the information that's already in front of you. And that is the lesson I had to learn.

Your clients, the things they love about you, the things that keep them coming back to you, the parts of your business that are actually working, even if they’re not packaged perfectly or in a polished way, that is the stuff you will lose sight of when you're trying to reverse engineer somebody else's business plan. And if it's, and it's not that you need to stop looking at other people, it's the opposite. You need other people more, when you're advancing. Another lesson I am learning, despite years of resisting it. You need exposure to new ideas that you wouldn't have come up with on your own. You need people who challenge you. And you need to be in rooms where you can see what is possible, that you couldn’t see alone in your own, but you also need enough clarity about yourself, that you can take what is useful and leave what isn't. And that is a very critical skill, it's one you have to hone over time, it is discernment. And it's something a lot of the stylists I work with do when it comes to fashion and style, but not necessarily how they approach their business. And it is one of the most important skills you can develop, as your business grows.

Because the bigger your business gets, the more options you're going to have, and the more options you have, the easier it is convince yourself, that you should be doing all of them. So if you're in a place right now, where you know you want more for yourself, but, and you're looking around, trying to figure out what more is supposed to look like. I want you to consider that maybe you don't need that answer from somebody else. You need to do the work, to get clear on your own answers. Because the reality is, that your dreams, whatever those are for you today, were built on the steps that the real you already took. You have done the work to become the person that could even envision your next level dream. You didn't have that dream before you became the person you are now, so why do we convince ourselves that getting to the next level means becoming less ourselves? When being who we are is what got us here in the first place, and allowed us to even, conjure up this dream that you have for your next level.

Listen, I know what it feels like to build a styling business when you're trying to pay the bills, when you don't know where your next client is coming from. I know what it feels like to be painfully unsure of yourself. And I've also experienced what happens, when you have the right people around you, who can see something in you, that you haven't quite figured out how to see on your own yet. But I didn't get to this spot, because I figured it all out perfectly right away, even when I had insight from other people. I still had to do the messy work. I got to the point of having this event show up out of nowhere in my life in May, when it wasn't even on my vision board in January. Because I've had enough experience, and enough people around me to recognize myself more clearly, so when an opportunity like this, event in 24 hours shows up, I could say yes to it. And that is a big part of what I want for every stylist I work with. Not another perfect blueprint for what a “successful stylist” is supposed to look like. Not another person, me, telling you exactly what your business needs to become. I want to help you understand what you have already built that's working, figure out what you actually want next, not what other people are doing, and make your decisions from there. And that is the work I do inside the accelerator mentorship program with my clients.

You will be around other established stylists, who take their business seriously. You're going to hear ideas, and see businesses, that might make you think differently. But you're not going to be left alone, to figure out what to do with that information, or how to execute it, because that's where the one-to-one strategy and collaboration with me comes in. The final round of the accelerator mentorship kicks off October 19th, and at the time of this recording, there are three spots left. So if you're at the point, where you know you want your next level, and you've been looking around, trying to figure out what you're supposed to do to get there, It's probably time for you to apply to the link in the show notes. 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 have a quick free moment, and could leave me a rating or review on the podcast app, that would be really killer. And even better, if you wanted to share this episode on Instagram and tag me, that would totally make my day, 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, I’ll chat with you next time.