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.

Hello, welcome back to the show. Today, we're going to talk about something that seems really, really small, like a really tiny detail. But it's something that can have an enormous ripple effect in your business.

It's how you talk about your sales calls. Now before you skip ahead and think, "This is actually kind of boring" or "What is she even talking about?" hang tight because if your website or your social media is inviting people to book any of these things, we are going to turn everything around for you. And it could be why things are feeling a little harder than they should in terms of booking clients.

So if you're using any of these terms, I want you to listen up: a style chat, a complimentary style consult, a free style discovery session, or any other vague, soft, semi-styled language that actually means get on a sales call with me.

When you're not being clear about the fact that you're inviting someone into a sales conversation, you are creating confusion. And in the world of premium service-based business, confusion repels clients.

It signals a lack of confidence. It signals an inability to be a leader inside a transformational container. And it shows that you are kind of afraid to call it what it is.

What is actually happening when I see these types of terms is that a lot of stylists are using kind of cutesy or softened language for their sales process in an attempt to make things feel more comfortable or friendly. They think it's for the client.

I understand why, but it's actually for them. It is a form of people-pleasing, because we have a belief, sometimes unintentional or subconscious, that calling it a sales call, or what I call it, a discovery call, like discover if we're a good fit, is being salesy. That is something that they don't want to be associated with them.

In fact, it's probably because you're thinking that you want to come across as approachable or service-driven or warm. But the problem is this: when you're softening the name of your sales call, it doesn't make it more approachable.

It makes it feel like a risk on the part of the client because it's unclear what they're going to get. And lack of clarity is the complete opposite of approachability. It is frustrating.

And the majority of stylists I work with who actually want to go, or already are high-ticket, are working with busy people that want solutions. And they actually want to be sold to.

This is why we have to know who we're working with. This is why audience understanding and having a client-led business is the answer to everything.

Because deep down, almost all good potential clients know what this call really is about. They know it's not just a chat or a vibe check or, in any way, a consultation about their style.

"Why are we calling it a complimentary style consultation?" You're not giving them suggestions. Last time I checked, I've not heard from one stylist who told me that a style chat or a complimentary style consult or a style discovery session means that you're giving them wardrobe advice.

So why are you calling it something that sounds like that's what they're getting?

And when your language dances around that fact, that you're saying and using language to say, "I'm going to give you something that I think you'll perceive as high value," but that's actually not what we're both here to do, the person may not say it out loud, but they will feel it.

It introduces just enough doubt to shake their trust. So you will get more money objections, even if they don't have them. Time objections, even if they don't have them. Ghosted, even if they really wanted it.

Because the way that they entered into the conversation with you felt fundamentally dishonest, even though you were trying to be honest. I know, you weren't thinking that.

In fact, you probably saw it on somebody else's website, which is why you gotta get off each other's websites. Because everybody that wants a solution just wants to know how to get that solution.

They want to get out of the discomfort they are in, especially if they have money to solve it, as fast as possible. So let's just call it what it is so we can all get there.

If you need to be at the highest level of trust with your audience, which you do to be transformational so that they can actually show up as they are and not with a bunch of head trash, then it should start from the second they encounter you.

Another part of this that a lot of stylists don't realize until it's too late—because maybe they don't have a mentor, or they never worked as a coach, or they have a coach that told them this was okay, or nobody ever mentioned it—is that some people will actually show up to the call expecting free style advice. Imagine that.

I have actually heard more than one stylist tell me that their potential clients get on sales calls and expect this from them. Then I go to their website and I look at their sales call booking page and I know exactly why. It's because you said complimentary call.

Well, of course, a sales call is going to be complimentary. If it's a sales call, you wouldn't even need to say "complimentary." Everybody does a sales call for free. So if it says "complimentary," I'm expecting that it means you're giving me something for free that I would otherwise have to pay for.

So they went to the call. I think it's weird, but still, they went to the call expecting styling advice or a mini styling session because that's how it was advertised. And honestly, that's not on the client. That's on marketing.

If your language suggests, "Come get free value here," instead of, "Let's see if we're a fit to work together," then yeah, even if that person doesn't explicitly say they're expecting style advice from you, one of the reasons you might not be closing the sale is because they were expecting you to start solving their style problems on the call. And they were waiting for you to take the lead because of the way your language sort of introduced that possibility into the equation.

I did an audit of 75 stylists' websites, 60 of them had this type of language. Now, I don’t know if this is being taught in a program somewhere, but I think that's what led me to think, "Oh my gosh, this is wild," because every day I hear, "Oh, I'm being ghosted. Oh, I'm getting these sales objections. Oh, no one's buying. Oh, it's the market."

It's truly how we speak. And it’s interesting because as transformational stylists, we kind of know that language matters, how we describe things impacts how things appear in real life, right?

So we know that if we have a styling client who says, "I want classic with a twist," but we don't know what the hell the twist is, it's going to be a hard road ahead for us trying to get that wardrobe in check. If they can't use their words to match images, we're going to have a problem.

The same is true in your business. This is not me being harsh, and this is not about being transactional in your sales. You know I'm very into relationship-driven sales. This is about clarity. This is about being clear that your time is valuable, that their time is valuable, and that you're not here to give out advice for free.

This needs to be the first touchpoint in a transformational experience. That needs to be like your systems, like your processes, a point of safety by it being clear. Clarity is emotional safety. Period.

Clarity creates trust. Clarity allows the client to relax and tell you the truth about why they're really there. And that's what all of you want.

So I would love to speed this up. Also, it communicates confidence. It shows that you're someone who knows how to lead a client, not just pick out some cute outfits, which is what the majority of stylists want.

And this is why it's so important for you to understand that the prices you can command are directly related to the way that you show up: in the way you speak, in the way you message your website, in the way you show up on stories, and in the way you do your calls to action.

That’s not to say you can’t ever make a mistake and still do well. I’m sure there are plenty of people who have free discovery calls or free style chats or whatever on their websites who still get clients. But there will be a gap between them understanding what exactly is happening after they hang up the call, and the results that they get.

Because if you're someone who has to cloud or soften the fact that you're having, as a business owner, a sales conversation with someone, there's something for us to look at inside of you. There's something there that makes you feel, on some level—maybe subconsciously—that you have to apologize for charging for this thing that you do.

There's a little bit of, maybe a tiny bit of imposter syndrome in the background. I get it. I totally understand. But I want us to think about it through the client lens, through the eyes of the client who's expecting that they should be paying a premium stylist for their time.

And so, they’ll be getting on a free sales call to find out if that transaction is the right fit for them. They want to know what to expect.

And they will view you, that’s also why not having contracts, and not having intake forms, and all of those things are not just about not being organized. It’s about not thinking through how the client experiences emotional safety in order to get the transformation.

Yes, this is about your self-esteem, potentially. Or your belief in yourself. And all of that, that’s something for you to look at. But we often make our lack of confidence about us, and then we expect to be transformational.

And sometimes, just like our clients have to try on clothes that don't feel comfortable to them in order to get a result, which is feeling good about themselves and seeing themselves in a new way, they have to go through discomfort. They have to act as if. And you have to do the same. You have to act as if you are confident, clear, and sure of yourself, even if you're not.

And you may not even think that the words that you use on your Book a Call page have anything to do with it, but I assure you, they do. Because having to soften—and if “discovery call” isn't soft enough, you have some things to look at. Are you a business or not?

And I know you're thinking, "I am. I didn't even think about this, probably," right? And so, I'm not trying to be harsh, but I want to show you how the words we use impact how we feel.

If it feels edgy to you to say, “Hey, hop on a sales call with me. Let's find out if we're a good fit,” offhand in your Instagram stories, that is your assignment for this week.

So let me give you three things that are going to change the game in terms of upleveling you in the eyes of your clients or potential clients, and yourself. Not a thing in this means you have to feel ready to do it. You're just going to go do it. Because it's in the doing that you become.

That’s why confidence actually requires action. In order to truly be confident, you have to take action, not just understand. That’s true of your client’s closet as well. They can’t just think about the clothes. They’ve got to put them on.

First thing you're going to do is you're going to stop using the word complimentary. This is really simple. We all know sales calls are free. It's industry standard. You're not offering a gift by making it free. You're offering a decision point. You are guiding people through to completion in terms of their decision.

Using “complimentary” dresses it up as unnecessarily fluff, or it subtly signals that you're trying to make the invitation to have a sales call with you more palatable. You don't need to apologize for having a sales call with anyone. Period. I won't allow that anymore for you.

We have standards. And the first standard is you have to think you're pretty great, because sales isn't a favor. It's a service. That’s where your work is.

If me saying that “sales is not a favor, it’s a being of service to people” makes you uncomfortable, that’s the mindset work. I feel so differently about sales. I love sales. I love it because really good salespeople pay attention to people. And stylists are really good at paying attention to things. So the real issue is how you're defining it.

The first way you're going to start to knock that off is you're going to stop using the word “complimentary” before “sales call.”

Again, you have two options: “sales call” or “discovery call.” That's it. Not “style chat.” The word style shouldn't be anywhere in it, because you're not styling anyone. Maybe you will talk about their feelings about their style, but you're not going to ask them how they feel about the black pants in their wardrobe. So it's not a style call. Period.

Number two: Call it what it is. I kind of already gave this one away, but call it a “discovery call,” call it a “client fit call,” call it a “consultation call.” Call it something straightforward. Call it what it is. Call it a sales call.

Here’s the bonus: when you're clear about the nature of the call, you can also give yourself permission to show up differently on the call. No more wondering like, “Do I have to give them a few tips in order to make this worth it? Should I be coaching them now?” No. You're evaluating alignment. That's the purpose of the call.

Sometimes you’ll give them insights because you’re evaluating and something comes to mind, that’s cool. I do that all the time. Sometimes I’ll even say, “Hey, can I coach you so that we can get you to a yes or no?” I ask permission, but I don’t assume, because they haven’t entered into the relationship with me. That’s also unethical.

It is unethical—especially if you call yourself a style coach—to start to coach people before they have paid you and signed the contract. Because they haven’t entered energetically into that agreement.

That’s why overgiving is about us feeling good about ourselves, not keeping the other person safe. That’s why overgiving in business is a form of codependency we have learned in our personal life. We bring it into our professional life as stylists. It’s so common in this industry—and all industries—but really in ours.

We think, “Well, this will keep me safe, because this kept me safe in my personal life.” I’ve got news for you: it’s the biggest destroyer of your business. Not because you’re bad or wrong. Not because you’re not a good person. But because, unfortunately, you have the wrong idea—as have I, most of my life, for the record—that overgiving makes you valuable.

But what it does when you’re in a client-centered business and you’re a service provider—especially a transformational one—is it sucks the oxygen out of the experience for the other person so they can have the learning they need to have. They can have the full buy-in in being a partner with you in order to get the transformation we are promising.

It derails transformation. It’s like never letting your kid have a bad feeling at any time in their life, so they crumble when they go into the real world. It is the same thing.

Also, that we can feel like people like us. It never feels like that when we’re doing it. It never feels like manipulation. But I’m really seeing this every day with my clients and with myself as I do my own deprogramming.

I learned to stop doing this as I saw why. “Ohhh, no wonder I was so stuck for so many years.”

So, I'm giving you permission right now to call it what it is so that you can get your potential client the best possible outcome.

Then the third thing that I want you to do—this is bonus—but this also is something that I probably should be giving away somewhere with some sort of expectation of an email address or something like a freebie, but I’m just going to do it here. I want you to write a description that sets the expectations for the sales call. This is going to change your life.

All it has to be is, like, two to three sentences, and it’s going to set you both up for a boundary that lets everybody feel safe and keeps you in check if you’re an overgiver. It’s kind of why I like systems. I think that’s why I got really obsessed with them, because I really saw that it got my own people-pleasing back in the day into check. Because I was like, there’s nobody listening here that was more out of control than me. Just trust.

So on your booking page, I want you to tell your potential clients what it is, what this call is and what it’s about. Something like: “This is a 20-minute call to explore whether working together is the right next step. You’ll share where you feel stuck. I’ll walk you through how I support clients. If we’re a good fit, I’ll share the next step to book one of my sales packages.” That’s it. Tell them what it is.

If you really want the bonus points—because I think this is all connected—put your prices on your website. Because I think it’s connected. I don’t want to get too off topic here, but this idea that we’re going to soften the fact that we have a sales call with language, and call it “complimentary,” as if all sales calls aren’t complimentary? It’s super weird even though we don’t mean for it to be. But when you break it down, it makes so much sense.

If you’re not sure that you’re going to overgive on the value here, then what I want you to do is make sure that you’re writing a sentence or two like this, right above where they’re going to book the call, that says what they should expect. Because it’s going to keep you in check, it’s going to keep them in check, and it’s also going to make them feel super, super safe.

Remember: emotional safety is a prerequisite to transformation. Emotional safety is how experts show up. And that tells your potential client exactly what’s going to happen between you. There’s no guesswork. There’s no surprises. There’s no weirdness when they think they’re going to ask you about the best colors for them, and you kind of look at them like, “What are you talking about?” Okay? Everyone’s on the same page.

That should take you about ten seconds to do if you have AI, or you could just write it yourself really quick. Stick it up on your website. Change the name of it. We’ve solved this problem.

The deeper work to consider next time, below dyeing your hair or on a walk, is: why does it potentially feel uncomfortable for me to call something what it is in my business?

In any area, is there some way that I’m overgiving unintentionally in my language to try to soften people’s experience of getting results? What am I afraid of?

Literally, this will change your life. It will also make you the kind of transformational stylist who really creates change. Because these are the questions transformational stylists ask their clients.

Here is the bigger picture for you. When you are not confident in your sales process, you are going to unconsciously try to soften it. You’re going to do it through language. You’re going to do it through overgiving. You’re going to do it by avoiding direct invitations to buy. You might do it by putting up your services once and then acting like you don’t know why no one’s buying.

But if you’re considering yourself a transformational stylist, I need you to hear this: people want to be invited into something real. They want to be led.

When you are trying to blur the lines between helping and selling, they don’t feel more safe. They feel more confused.

Confused people do not buy. This is especially true for high-end transformational styling. When someone is investing in you to help them redefine their identity through style, they need to trust you, which means you need to trust you first, and that trust is going to start the moment they interact with you and your process.

If your process feels unclear or indirect, that's the vibe they're going to associate with your brand. And you may never know, and so they will give you the easy excuse—it's time, it's money, it's weight—or they'll ghost.

Call it what it is. It's a sales call. It's a discovery call. Be clear, be direct, and trust that the right clients want that kind of leadership because they are ready for results.

And if you've been softening your sales call language because you're still figuring out how to feel confident about your place as a stylist or in your selling or in your services, good. That is a signal. It is not a failure. It is feedback.

That's where you have work to do personally. Because you're a transformational stylist, I actually think that you'll probably lean into that, because learning to sell with clarity and integrity is a skill that most stylists just need to uncover.

They don't need to be someone else. This isn't about being more salesy, because we think of sales as being manipulative, but what's more manipulative is not being clear about what we're actually doing when we're on a sales call.

All the sales call is, is a conversation between two people where both parties are fully aware that one person is selling something, and the other person will be giving the person money for that thing. You're there to vet them, not to say it's a definite yes just because they got on the call with you.

Your job is to help steward them through their potential investment so that you are doing the opposite of what we think of people being salesy is. You're being clear and you're being honest about whether or not you can help them get the most out of their investment.

We tend to think of sales as like you're going to take the money and run, but none of you were going to do that. None of you are going to do that. So you literally learned because of society that sales means something gross, when actually what we're doing as a result of that belief is the gross thing.

And that's what's so interesting about this and why I wanted to talk about it. Learning to sell with clarity and integrity is one of the most valuable skills you will ever build as a business owner and as a stylist.

I don't care what you do in the rest of your life. It will help you as a parent, it will help you as a spouse, it will help you in dating, it will help you in all aspects of your life.

Being clear will change your life because people can sense that level of groundedness in you, and they will be called forward to you. And you will have a lot less drama in your life because you can always say like, "Hey, I called it what it was," right?

And you don't have to do it in a way that feels aggressive. A discovery call is not aggressive, but we know it's discovery to see if we're a good fit.

So take a look at your booking page, your Instagram bio, your services page. Check your language. If it's not where you know it should be, rewrite it and don't make it a big issue.

Clarity in your language is not just a communication strategy. It's a trust strategy. And trust is what sells in transformational styling. That is it for today. I will see 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.