Nicole Otchy: 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 to another episode of what is very quickly becoming one of my favorite types of episodes, which is a conversation with one of my clients. This is Marie Zydek. Marie is a Canadian-based personal stylist who has been a stylist for over a decade since we started working together.

As she shared in this episode, she came to me at a point in her business where she was financially doing very well. She had a really long roster of clients from her extensive years as a stylist.

All of those things can be true and your business cannot feel the way you want it to feel. That's why I encourage stylists at every single level to really be intentional about how they build their business for their life at any given point. Because that is a huge part of the success of your business, how you feel in it.

Marie shares in this episode how she came to me after going viral several times, which to some people sounds like an amazing gift. The reality of it, I've seen more often than not for a stylist, is it's not the gift that we think it is because if your business is not set up with the systems, the messaging, and the ability to know who the right client is for you and be able to figure that out in a sales call quickly, then you're going to have these months of income that seem quite high, but they're not repeatable.

They don't necessarily lead to more of the right type of clients. I really encourage you to take as much wisdom from Marie as you can in this episode. She's an incredible marketer. She has a real gift for it. She just has such a warm and kind spirit that it's not a surprise that she's attracted so many clients in her over a decade of working as a stylist. Enjoy.

Hello, welcome. I am very excited to have Marie, one of my clients here, to talk about our experience working together. Thank you for being here with me today.

Marie Zydek: Thank you for having me. It is so good to see you again.

Nicole Otchy: Good to see you too. I miss seeing my clients after the engagement ends. It's always hard to end. Let's kick this off with the question I ask every guest, which is, share a little bit about your background as a stylist and what led you to come to me.

Marie Zydek: Okay, so I've been a personal stylist for almost 12 years. I started out as a blogger back when there was no Instagram, no TikTok, I think maybe there was Twitter, but anyway, I started out as a blogger and then I met other fashion industry professionals through blogging.

Then I got into assisting a stylist on set, and on shoots with models for their portfolio. Then I had a friend, also a fellow blogger who got into personal styling and I was like, "Oh, that's so interesting." But I didn't really have the confidence to do that.

But to make the long story short, I was on set styling a photo shoot and the hairstylist says, "Hey I have a client who wants someone to go through her closet and then take her shopping. Do you do that?" I said, "Yeah, I do, but I've never done it before in my life, it’s fake it till you make it.”

She was my first client and then she recommended me to her colleague. I got a website up and running, and I did it part-time for a long time until after I went back to work. I was working in an office for about 10 years, and after I had my son, I was back to work from maternity leave, about two months after that, I was let go.

That was my sign to try and do this full-time, the personal styling, my personal styling business. So that's what I did. It was like one door shut, another door opened, and I've been a full-time personal stylist, I'd say for the past four years, where I have a good income to be called a full-time stylist.

Nicole Otchy: Wow. Yeah, that's so interesting. I forgot that you were kind of part-time and then you went full-time. In my head, you came out the gate full-time because you're such an experienced stylist, but you can be experienced and be part-time. Tell me when you were four years into full-time, we'll call it, you were at a pretty successful part of your business, what was going on that led you to think, “Maybe there's something more here for me”?

Marie Zydek: Okay, so I'll back up a little bit because what I'm about to say is very important for where I am now and what was the reason that I reached out to you. During the pandemic, I got a TikTok account, and I started posting videos, like styling videos, when I was at my client's houses, putting outfits together, and then there were a couple of videos that I did and they went viral. One went viral in 2021 with 1.5 million views, and then another one went viral in 2022 with 2.4 million views.

I was getting all these clients via TikTok. I was getting inundated with, "Oh, I want to work with you." A lot of them were international, a lot of them were American, and I'm in Canada, by the way.

I had all this business, and it was great, but the clients that I had were kind of like one-off clients, and I had so many different packages, different services, kind of one-off services, and I was getting just kind of burnt out.

I do my impersonal clients during the day, and then at night, I would do the virtual clients, and it was just go, go, go. I was getting burnt out. I was feeling like I wasn't charging enough.

Then fast forward to 2023, I was feeling just stalled in my business, and I knew something had to change. Creatively, I was kind of feeling not at my best. I also thought at this point in my career, I've been doing it for almost 12 years, I think I might want to increase my rates and my packages. I just felt like I couldn't do it alone. I feel creatively creating Instagram posts, Reels, and TikToks, that was easy for me but on the business side of things, I felt lost.

I was looking for a business coach and as soon as I came across your Instagram page, you spoke to me with every post, I was just binging your content. Every post spoke to me. I was like, “Nicole's my girl.” That's when I reached out to you.

Nicole Otchy: You were in such a fascinating point because when you talk about going viral, I cannot tell you how many clients that I've worked with are like, “If I could just go viral, that would save the day,” or “If I could get a bigger audience, if I could get more views, everything would change.”

I think when I worked with you—and there's one other client I worked with that went viral multiple times—it actually can create a ton of chaos and stress, because if you don't have the business plan, the visibility is useless because you're just scattered, you're just creating things.

Talk a little bit about that experience of going viral and having all these people reach out. What were those sales calls like? Were you getting some of the right people? Or was it you think less about the people and more about the fact that the business wasn't set up for that level of influx?

Marie Zydek: I was getting some really good clients who were serious about working with me. But also just some one-offs. I'd go on sale calls and talk about my services. They're like, “Well, do you Rent the Runway?” We weren't on the same page a lot of times.

Then other clients were just like, "Well, I don't know what my style is, I just want to discover my style,” then that's it. My services weren't very in-depth for some of those people. I just felt like, “Okay, well, I'm working with them quickly, and then off they go.” Do you know what I mean?

Nicole Otchy: Yeah.

Marie Zydek: It was very stressful because I was dealing with sales calls and emails and just all of this. It was really stressful. Then when my views—because of the algorithm—declined, then my business decreased a little bit. I don't know if it's because of that, probably not, but I thought it was a factor, right?

Nicole Otchy: Yeah. Well, I think what happens is that we get used to whatever the norm is. If the norm becomes 12 sales calls per week or whatever, then it will decline. The other part of this that I think is interesting that you kind of touched on but not explicitly is when you have this much volume coming at you, you have a lot more administrative tasks.

That can eat up so much time. It's also something most stylists aren't pricing for. Most stylists are only pricing for the time they're with a client, and that may mean that they're not pricing for their admin time, they're not thinking, “What about the time it takes me to market?” because there's a cost to your marketing, like your time if you're marketing and you can't get new clients, all of that is part of the rates that stylists should be considering, because if you didn't have a business, you wouldn't be doing those things and you'd be making money in another way.

Those hours for admin or marketing or things that are not necessarily face-to-face, have to be accounted for. That was definitely something we did for you because you were so experienced. We just had to put some systems in place too, I think. That was part of it.

Marie Zydek: Yeah. I didn't have an onboarding guide. I didn't have an off-boarding guide. I wasn't set up on Calendly, all these simple things that you think as a business owner you should have set up already, I didn't.

Nicole Otchy: But that's actually really important because a lot of stylists say, “Well, I'm at this phase or I'm at that phase,” and you are almost at six figures, if not quite there, and yet, this is nothing to say that you were doing anything wrong, you didn't have a scheduling app, and you were doing amazing.

What I think people don't understand when you're in it, and I certainly didn't, is how much harder our life is when we don't have those things, it can feel hard to stop and put them in because it's overwhelming.

You're already making thousands of choices a day as a stylist. When you have to also make admin decisions, it just creates even more burnout and we don't realize that when we're in it. I think for you, that was certainly the case.

Marie Zydek: It was absolutely. Yeah.

Nicole Otchy: Yeah. Once we kind of figured out really who you wanted to work with and what did those packages look like, what did you discover about what you were willing to go of in terms of services? Because you had a lot of services when I met you.

Marie Zydek: Yeah, I had just a lot of personal shopping like, “Hey, if you want a couple of outfits, let's meet at the mall and do some shopping.” If you're starting out as a stylist, if you're new, that's great.

I listened to your podcast about transactional styling and then transformational styling. Up until, well, working with you, it was a lot of transactional styling, but there was transformations happening, but I just didn't really see that.

When we started working together like, “Well, who are your clients?” Kind of, “What's your niche?” I was like, “Oh, I help men and women of all ages” “Okay. Well, what is this significant change that you see in clients after working with them?” I was thinking about, “Well, what changes?” “Oh, yeah, well, this man was divorced and wanted to date again. This girl just got out of university and is going into the workforce, and this mom had a baby and her body's changed.”

So there were changes. Everyone's going through a transformation or a change and then that's what I was leaning towards. If you're going through such a huge change, probably a more in-depth package is more beneficial for a client, instead of just like, “Oh, I need a couple of outfits for summer.” I was ready to let go of those little services.

Nicole Otchy: I think what you're saying that's really important is we did the niche, and then we've called down the services because we really have to, especially to stand out.

Marie's niche is people that are in transition and because she had so many clients that were men and women, there was no need for us to pick one lane because she was so established in both. There was no reason to do that. Sometimes if a stylist can't get traction in one way or another, I'll say, “Okay, let's scale back on men, say, and let's just focus on women.”

But one of the things about you that you brought that was a complete superpower to this process is your marketing ability. We're going to talk about that more. Because I think that there's a lot for stylists to learn here from you on that. But I think more so in terms of people being afraid to not have a million services, or even yesterday, how the stylists say, “Well, how do I stand out? We all have the same services,” and your point is good.

When you're starting as a stylist, you need to have shopping, editing, and all of those things potentially on their own, three different, and then you can either include them together or not.

But before you make the choice to bundle services or go all in on a signature service, you have to know who you're talking to, because it could have been the case that you were dealing with a type of client that was so busy they only wanted that sort of one-off, and if that made you feel great, we would have gone in that direction. There's no right or wrong thing, it's just that confused buyers never buy.

So we wanted to speed up the buying process because you were doing fantastic in terms of your revenue even for undercharging, to be honest. But why not make it easier to supercharge your revenue by making it streamlined? And that's what you were super willing to go all in on.

I want to talk about your marketing superpower because it is a real superpower. How did you get so good at marketing, for lack of a better, more specific word? Because you churn out posts that are so engaging and so warm, impersonable, almost daily. How do you keep up that cadence?

Marie Zydek: Well, I think what really changed for me in my business is showing people what I do. Up until before COVID, Reels just came on Instagram—I don't know how long Reels have been on—but I think showing people what I do and showing what I can do for them, really helps people see, "Oh, okay, well, I like the outfit she put together and oh, I'm a mom and I don't know how to dress my body anymore and look what she did with her client here." So I think it's showing them what I can do.

Then, well, thanks to you, my marketing message is, like you said, people, my clients are going through transition, so really honing in on, “Okay, where were they when we first started working together?” and how did working with me transform them into the next phase of their life? What type of tools did I give them so that they can enter this new phase of life feeling great in their clothes? Not just their appearance, but how they feel inside as well. I think you really helped me with that marketing piece.

Nicole Otchy: We're definitely going to talk about tightening up the messaging, but just your ability, because you and I are around the same age. I think we didn't grow up with social media.

I do see a split between stylists who are our age and stylists I work with who are 20, even in their 20s, they're just popping off videos. You're just comfort with this, like you even showed me different ways to do voiceover videos. I just didn't know, did you study these things? How did you learn it? How did you get there for the people that are over 40 that want to know?

Marie Zydek: I have always had a blog for many years. I knew how to do the copywriting and all that, came easily to me. Then during the pandemic, I joined TikTok. I worked for a bar studio, a bar like it’s belly pilates, like that, yoga.

The owner asked me if I could create videos during the pandemic. She actually got me into TikTok and video editing and voiceover. That's what I did, yeah. That's how I learned everything and she really helped me. Then I was like, “Well, then I can create my own TikTok.” Do you know what I mean?

That's how it happened. I watched tutorials on TikTok. Again, this is during the pandemic, so many content creators were TikTok tutorialists. I watched that. I just kind of taught myself and added music and YouTube too. You can learn a lot on YouTube.

Nicole Otchy: Yes.

Marie Zydek: Yeah, I feel that's how I learned. I was kind of thrust into it. It was a little bit intimidating at first, but once you get the handle of it, I love it. I love editing videos even more than filming them.

Nicole Otchy: You're just exceptional at it too. I think interestingly, this wasn't part of the conversation I had meant to go in, but sharing that you did other things, I think it's really important for our businesses, we forget this, to not have a business that's so packed—I mean, it was during the pandemic, you were saying—but not having a business that's so packed that we can't have an outside interest because those outside interests—like this example, going to the bar studio—can absolutely end up being the serendipitous way that your business gets better.

Having outside interests or something that I think lots of us think head down, we have to be busy all the time, but really having a business model that gives you some space to be able to do other things makes your business better. This is just a side tangent, but it reminded me of that as you were talking.

Marie Zydek: Yeah. I also do some acting, that's what I went to college for. I think I'm comfortable talking in front of the camera and all that. That helps as well. But people want to see you, they want to see you before they work with you, right?

Nicole Otchy: Yeah, they want to feel the connection, especially with personal styling. Yesterday on the last roundtable we did, we were talking about how it's kind of crazy, you're a stylist and you see people in their underwear, but you're not a doctor.

I think as stylists, we really take that for granted because to us it's like, “Okay, I've seen a million people in their underwear in my career, it doesn't matter.” But to the person on the other side, that is vulnerable. You're going into their home or you're "judging" in their mind, their clothes, even though most of us aren't.

There's a lot of vulnerability. What you just said about people want to see you, they do because they want to be able to feel that connection before they let you in their house or their closet.

Marie Zydek: Yeah, because it is very vulnerable going into someone's closet. Even the things some clients tell me, they're very personal. They want to know that they'll be comfortable with you.

Nicole Otchy: That's a huge part of the video. I think it's easy when you focus on yourself and how nervous you might be, or in my case, me because I think you're much more comfortable in front of the camera with being on film. We forget that it's not for us. It's for other people. They're probably not viewing us the way we're viewing ourselves.

When you switch that mindset that you just gave people, it helps you be more brave. I think it helps you be more present in your marketing, which is something you're really, really great at.

One of the things that we talked about was how we narrow it down on a niche, even if it seems quite broad because so many people are going through different transformations and transitions in their life. Did you feel any fear about going down to a niche? Did you worry that it would make it harder for you to market, or you wouldn't have enough to say? Because that's a huge thing that I hear from stylists.

Marie Zydek: Well, when you told me what you thought my niche was, I was like, ”Oh, my God, yes, that made so much sense." I was so excited and it just gave me more clarity of what I needed to do to attract those clients and those buyers.

But on the other hand, people can still hire me if they just need a spring refresh, do you know what I mean? People are still going to come to me for just transactional styling. I wasn't really concerned about that.

Nicole Otchy: Well, I think the point of it focusing on you is good because I think a lot of people fear it when they just think about it generally, but to your point, we looked at your whole business experience and then we created the niche.

We weren't just like, "Hmm, let's just think of a random niche." That's why when I talk about working with a stylist, we're actually drawing from creating a niche that can sometimes make your business more yours.

Because what we're doing is we're just taking the experiences you've had and synthesizing them into the niche and the stories and the marketing that feels best to you.

Because all of us have had clients that were not ideal. That's just having a business. But once you start to create marketing that feels right to you, then your point is great. Other people will find you because that energy of alignment will be there, whether they're in a life transition or not. That's fine. It's just an attraction mechanism, talking about transitions.

Marie Zydek: Yeah. I used to post just outfit videos like, “Get ready with me. Oh, I got these pants from Zara.” What is that doing? That's just showing people that I know about personal style, this is my personal style. What's the point if I don't have a message or something concrete to say? Do you know what I mean?

Nicole Otchy: Yes. You made the pivot very quickly. I was super impressed. Usually, people need to warm up and you were just like, “Next video out the door.” You're a fast mover. You were ready. What did you feel was the trickiest part, the hardest part, or the most cumbersome part of making the changes in your business that we did after having been a stylist for so long?

Marie Zydek: Probably increasing my pricing in my packages. That was probably the hardest and the most nerve-wracking of the whole process.

Nicole Otchy: How did we get you through that? How did that work out?

Marie Zydek: Well, I had to write this down because you said something to me that was really profound. I remember you saying you should reach out to your established clients in January saying, “Hey, I'm booking my established clients for any spring refreshes, please reach out to me.”

I remember in our Q&A doc, I said, “Well you know what, it's January and people probably are paying their credit cards from Christmas. It's midwinter where I live and maybe I should wait till February until it's warmer,” and you typed back, you said, “Let's not worry what people are doing with their money or assume we know if they are going to be ready to book.”

It was something so simple, but I was like, “Yeah, you're right. I can't judge people. You don't know what's going on in their financial situation.” The same thing with increasing my pricing, people are paying the increased prices. They see the value in it and people are booking with me.

Nicole Otchy: Of course. There's never a time that you raise your rates in your whole career that you don't want to throw up, but then once people start to say yes, you're like, “Oh, okay,” and you'll have people that say no, but you also had people—not just you, all of us—people that say no at your cheaper rate too.

We can't give one more weight. If someone's saying yes to more, even if you have three more people that say no, one person in the entire world said yes, the world's a big place, someone else is going to.

But your point about what you asked me, that question, it's so interesting that that's just a doubt to you, we all do, and I'm so glad you shared that because there are definitely going to be people that resonate with and it's a muscle. It's a practice to not get in our heads and fake other people's business. It's like fake, we don't know.

Marie Zydek: Absolutely.

Nicole Otchy: I mean, people are in credit card debt in this country every single day. If people were only buying things they could afford, we would not have this problem. Clearly, that's not the issue.

I also want to say though to people listening that it wasn't just that she raised her rates and it was just this magical, “Oh everyone's going to pay because it was a significant amount.

But she was also marketing. She was showing the value. She never stopped marketing when we worked together. She hadn't stopped marketing when we started. She didn't come to me not posting.

We weren't reviving a dead or a cold account. Because if she did, it would have taken longer to get people to be on board, not just with the prices, but just to sign up in general because we would have been coming from a cold audience.

The fact that Marie didn't stop and kept going even when she needed help is something I want you to take from her because even if you know there's an improvement to be made, keep going because then you'll at least have a warm audience for when the improvements are made. You can't just stop.

Marie Zydek: Yeah.

Nicole Otchy: Yeah. Raising the prices felt a little bit tricky. I mean, we definitely added some systems and stuff that on-boarding, off-boarding. Was that pretty [inaudible]?

Marie Zydek: Yeah, probably just the technical details. I never really used Google Docs.

Nicole Otchy: You're a pro by the end.

Marie Zydek: Yeah, and I had a MailChimp newsletter and I put it out maybe once every six months, but then you got me onto FloDesk and just the technical stuff, transferring all those contacts to FloDesk and figuring out how FloDesk works.

But now I do a monthly newsletter and I've gotten a lot of business from just putting out a newsletter. I think it's mostly the technical stuff and setting that stuff. I'm intimidated by technology, not creating content, but the behind-the-scenes technology. But then I learned how to do it and it's easy and you helped me and now it's smooth sailing.

Nicole Otchy: You are so in good company on that. Not only have I struggled, but I'd say 90% of stylists, [inaudible], unless they're 22 and they've been building websites since college, I've noticed that even people who were bloggers, I have a lot of stylists that were bloggers, it's a very natural business upgrade. I think that's just super normal, so I'm glad you shared that because you're certainly not alone at all. I think in our head it gets worse. It's worse than it is.

Marie Zydek: Yeah.

Nicole Otchy: To your point about YouTube, there's nothing you can't learn.

Marie Zydek: Yeah, exactly. Just YouTube it or ask your coach.

Nicole Otchy: Or ask me. You don't really need that many if there are stylists listening that are thinking we did some huge systems overhaul, we changed three things, it wasn't like that.

Marie Zydek: No.

Nicole Otchy: It wasn't that crazy. You don't need a very complicated business technologically when you're a stylist. That's always good news for many of us. But when you talk about some of the sales things we mentioned, like the newsletter, and go into past clients and just all sorts of stuff like that, were there things that you had never thought of? Were there things that were newer sales processes? What was it like to do that?

Marie Zydek: You were like, "We'll reach out to your established clients," and I never reached out to my established clients. I had let them come to me like, “Oh, if they need help, you know what, they'll just contact me.”

You're like, “No, send out a newsletter just for the clients that you've already worked with and you want to work with again and just put it out there.” I got a lot of business that way. Just sometimes you just don't think like, “Do they really want to work with me?” I didn't think much about repeat clients. You know what I mean?

Nicole Otchy: I'm obsessed with repeat clients.

Marie Zydek: What was I thinking?

Nicole Otchy: It makes your life a lot easier because you don't need as many new ones.

Marie Zydek: Exactly. Since you told me, “Just reach out, reach out, reach out, reach out,” I've been getting a lot of business that way and I love working with my repeat clients, especially the ones that I've worked with two, three, or four times already. That one little suggestion you gave me has given me a lot of business for sure.

Nicole Otchy: Yeah, you're just amazing though. You took everything and you just went and did it. You just ran with it. You can give people the plan, but if they don't implement like you did, then there's not much you can do.

It was very impressive to see. What are you most excited about in the next year with your business?

Marie Zydek: I'm excited that I am doing what I want to be doing and what I love. We were talking about, sometimes I was doing six-hour closet consultations. Cleaning out the closet or organizing the closet, giving them a shopping list after, maybe putting together some outfits.

I dreaded those, they were just so long, and then they wouldn't work with me again because I gave them a shopping list and all that. So I'm excited to be doing what I want to be doing.

My packages are very thorough and step-by-step. We're not just going to go shopping. I'm going to go and look at your closet, see what's working, what's not. I'm not going to spend six hours cleaning it out and organizing it, but then we're going to discover your style. Then we can add some pieces. I can put outfits together.

It's more thorough. I'm really enjoying that and I'm excited about that I'm excited that I'm feeling like I'm getting paid what I think I'm worth because honestly I didn't really think I was worth what I was charging now, but now I see that I am and you gave me that confidence and the tools I needed to feel that. I am worth it, and my packages give a lot of value.

Nicole Otchy: Yeah, and we'll be raising those prices again before 12 years, for sure, okay, deal?

Marie Zydek: Yes, deal, deal, deal. It's funny because the first client that I had, I think I was charging $60 an hour. This was 12 years ago. She said, “You're charging way too little.” My first client said, “You're not charging enough per hour.” I was like, “Oh, okay, so then I increased it right away.”

Nicole Otchy: Wow, what a great client. That was definitely [inaudible].

Marie Zydek: Yeah, from the get-go.

Nicole Otchy: Thank you so much for being here and chatting with me.

Marie Zydek: Thank you for having me. To all the other stylists out in this podcast world who are listening right now, if you're thinking of working with Nicole, just do it. You will not be disappointed. She has changed my business and the way they think about my business. Working with her has given me confidence. I'm just so grateful to you. Thank you.

Nicole Otchy: Thank you. Thank you for being such an exceptional example of what's possible in this industry. I'm so proud of you and I can't wait to watch you continue to grow and raise those prices more.

Marie Zydek: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Nicole Otchy: 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.