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.

If you want to know whether your styling business is healthy, even if you're not where you want to be income-wise, you're on the right track. I don't want you to look at your follower count or how many people are liking your reels. I want you to look at your repeat client rate. This one number is one of the clearest indicators of how your business is really working behind the scenes.

Because when clients come back, it is never just about the one service that they did with you. It is proof that your marketing, your pricing, your offers, your delivery, and the way you position yourself are working together. That is exactly the kind of interconnected strategy that I teach stylists in all of my programs, but specifically inside Income Accelerator, because I find that established stylists are the ones that are so into the day-to-day of their business, they have created habits and routines that don't always allow them to have a little space and to reflect so they can't always see, as I couldn't see for a long time, how their business actually works together and how it's getting them the results they have, whether they like them or not.

So today I want to show you why this number tells the truth about your business health and how to use it as a compass for growth.

The first thing that we want to understand is that the likelihood of rebooking an existing client, and this is not just a styling industry stat, this is a service-based industry stat, is 60% to 70% from very light marketing or outreach. Those are the numbers, if people are happy with your service, of course. Compare that to only a 5% to 20% chance that a brand new prospect who you have had to show or talk about your styling offers to on average of between 8 to 12 times before they reach out to book a call with you, and then hopefully book.

So we're looking at a massive difference in the percentages between how much effort you're going to put into get a new client versus how much effort you're going to put into re-sign an established client. When you don't know this, you will build a business that burns you out. That means that if you've already delivered for the right client, meaning that they have the budget to work with you again, they have the need in their life, they are a transformational client, and they use this as a way of seeing themselves differently and experiencing their growth, their inner growth in their external world, and they've had a great experience, your chances of resigning them is so, so high.

But most stylists do not have a reliable system for signing clients again. So their emotions take over, and they reach out or they make the ask if and only if they feel like the client will say yes. But your feelings lie all of the time. All of the time, which is why I'm such a big systems advocate, because they don't have feelings. Sometimes we need to be saved from ourselves, myself included.

So in cases like this, having systems to re-sign clients reliably, unless you don't want to work with them, of course, is a critical part of building a profitable styling business. This is why I say you can be the best stylist in the world, but if you have no business skills, oh well, it doesn't really matter. Because your feelings and one little interaction with someone that might have meant nothing to them could be meaning a lot to you and being the reason why you're not reaching out to somebody when you misjudge the situation.

Repeat styling clients stabilize your revenue and cut down on the constant hustle of always chasing new people. They give you breathing room. Your experiences with them deepen over time, and it helps you create better and more transformational marketing. It allows you to focus on strategy, creativity, and growth instead of living client to client, which is a critical part of being a transformational stylist, because you cannot give people your full attention if you are burned out in your business, because you need to take so many clients in order to make a living.

Here's what stylists and actually all service-based businesses miss a lot when they are head down in the day-to-day of running a business. Repeat client rates are not just about loyalty. They're not just about your clients being like, "Oh, I got so many compliments on this outfit," or "I really like chatting with you." It actually measures the interconnected health of your business. That's why I take it so seriously.

When I was looking at business models over the years, I really could see that when you do the basics very, very well in a service-based business, a lot of the stress comes off of the person who's delivering that service. It has this ability to not just open up your world and your possibilities, like I've talked about on other podcasts, but it also has the ability to really create a new level of depth in the service experience and for the client.

So what happens when you are building a business and many times rebuilding a business—because we all have to start from wherever we are, you've had a lot of wins as an established stylist and now we want to amplify them in the work that I do with people—is that if your clients are coming back, it often tells us, even if we don't realize it—because maybe we borrowed our offers from somebody else's website or whatever, which is why I don't recommend that because it's very hard to diagnose the problem if you weren't thoughtful about how you got those offers to begin with—if your clients are coming back, your offers are usually designed well.

That doesn't mean that the offers that you're signing them into are designed well, but it means that they were clear, digestible, and structured in a way that leaves room for them to want more. But if you just have a couple of people coming back, that's not a good sign. You want a 30% to 40% repeat rate season after season.

So if you are over-giving upfront, if you're stuffing too much into one package, if you're editing everybody's closet for every season, if you're making the service overwhelming, clients don't see a reason to return. What happens when we haven't done our work to deal with our own insecurities and issues, and when we haven't thoughtfully designed our business, we, in the name of giving "good client service," overwhelm people because what we're really actually trying to do is be liked.

This is so critical. When we haven't done our work, especially as transformational stylists, when we are obsessed with always being right, when we're afraid to make mistakes, when we don't want to ask questions because we don't want to look dumb, when we haven't handled that stuff for ourselves, we overgive to protect ourselves. The result is a lot of people notice that their repeat client rate is low.

So I often ask stylists, "How are you feeling when you do these packages, when you deliver?" Without a doubt, they usually say, "I gave so much to them, I stepped over this boundary, and I stepped over that boundary. I don't know why they didn't come back." It's because that's actually why. The energetics of that were programming them, and you basically, in that interaction, to take as much as they could to not come back, and because people don't ultimately respect experts that don't have boundaries.

So your services design tells me a lot about your relationship to your clients and to your need for approval. One of the ways we can fix that is fixing your services. It's true that systemic structures can help us create change in our business, but we have to obviously uphold them. But sometimes we don't even know where to start. So having a service that's designed really well is a really critical part of that process.

The second thing that your repeat client rate measures is your client experience. Repeat rates tell you if your client experience matched the level of the investment. Now, sometimes it can be too good for the level of investment, in which case we need to [inaudible] it.

But did the client feel taken care of because you had systems that helped them understand where they were at every part of the process? Did you go out of your way to anticipate the things they should know so that they weren't overwhelmed, and inform them of it? Did you let them know the best ways to communicate with you?

Did you make it clear how to use their style support or any other element of the package that they maybe have never encountered before? Was it aspirational enough to make them want to step back into that experience again, because it did more than just get them clothes? It helped them see themselves differently.

If the answer is no, that will show up in the numbers because it's hard to ask a client, "Hey, do you have a good experience?" We usually ask for a testimonial. If they don't follow up, we leave it. But no one often tells us the truth about the experience unless they come back. So that's why it is so critical for you to know.

Because I have had stylists with relatively high repeat client rates who start to focus on the fact that they think they have high repeat rates because their numbers are just so low, their pricing is so low. I've actually had a couple tell me that clients have said to them, "Wow, you're just so reasonable." It was a really big wake-up call to them because they hade been stylists for a long time, in one case, a decade, and it wasn't a compliment to be the most reasonable.

It means that you are not changing your prices to match where people actually perceive you in the market, because, you know, the better you get, the more you should be charging, which is one of the reasons why hourly is so problematic in the industry. Because you're actually punished as you get better. If you're charging hourly and you get better, then you earn less. So you're punished for getting better in that kind of model.

Your marketing and positioning are also incredibly important, and people don't realize deeply connected to your repeat client rate. Your marketing sets the tone for who you attract. I often get stylists asking me, "Can I just buy your service templates? Can I just buy your systems? Can I just work with you on repeat clients?"

And the answer is no, because you fundamentally don't, with all due respect, understand how a business works. I'm not saying you don't make a lot of money. You might. But there will be a breakdown at some point because your marketing sets the tone for the client you attract. If you're calling in a lot of people, but not the kind of people who were able to repeat and afford the experience again, or don't have the lifestyle or the self-development interest or whatever to stay in your world longer—they don't want a relationship with a stylist is a big one—then you have a bigger problem.

We have to start with your marketing because everything starts with the front of the house. You can't talk about anything in the front of the house if you don't understand how the offers work in the back of the house. This is why I don't let people just come into my world wherever they want and cherry-pick what they can get from me. Because I actually stand for a result for people and for an entire industry.

So I have to hold a standard that I believe is true. You can run your business however you want. But if you don't understand that the first touchpoint someone has with you is your marketing and your positioning, and it informs how they then move through your website, through a sales call with you, through your offers, then you are missing a very important piece of the puzzle.

The majority of human beings right now on the planet who are dealing with economic uncertainty are not the right people for your styling services. If people are worried about the price of milk and eggs, they are not your clients. That's why I say people will hire you once, they will hire you for an experience, but they won't come back.

That's why your marketing and your positioning are a critical part of what happens with established clients. Because if you don't speak to them then, and you don't get their attention, you're not going to just convince them to become those people halfway through the offer, which is what I think a lot of stylists think.

First of all, if that was the case, you'd be selling, we would all be closing more sales calls, right? If you could do that, you would have no sales problems. Then you would just be someone who could attract the right people up front. Second of all, you're trying to fight a lifetime, 30, 40, 50 years of identity work in a closet edit to try to get them to be someone who wants to do this work longer? That is delusional.

We will be, old me included, delusional in order to protect ourselves from doing what it takes because it feels scary. But what's actually scary is not knowing where your next client is coming from. When your marketing is aligned, when it calls in people who do have repeat needs in the styling industry, whether it's a seasonal wardrobe, lifestyle changes, identity upgrades, your retention reflects it.

This is why I always say your marketing and your offers are not separate. A weak front end will always show in the back end of your business, which is why this particular number, your repeat client rate, is so critical. Because when you get how things work together, you can actually fix them.

So let's talk about some of the common mistakes stylists make that really tank their repeat client rates. Number one is trying to sell for everyone instead of the right buyers for repeat business in this industry. Clients who are interested in this work for the sake of transformation.

That is why I am such a fan of the transformational model, why I've spent years researching it. It actually comes from the world of business development and leadership because it is actually taken from that model. Yes, people have been using the word transformational for a long time. It's actually based on the principles of that.

We're going to be getting into that in the podcast more next year. So I'm really excited to share that. But that's what I'm trying to say is that there is a model that actually, and it's in Income Accelerator, that actually qualifies people who are going to be right for this.

Right for this doesn't just mean they're willing to pay my fee this one time. Now, it doesn't mean we're saying, "Do you want to work with me forever?" Because nobody knows that till they have the experience. But there are things you can be aware of that are going to make that person on a sales call a better fit for you, which then means it's easier for you to proactively market, to give talks to the right groups of people, to reach out and cold pitch to places that would be good fits for your services. But if you don't know what that looks like on a client-by-client basis and you can't do it in a sales call, you're going to have a hard time knowing and pinning down repeat clients.

The second is marketing and structuring packages as transactions instead of part of a journey that evolves and supports a client as they grow and change. What I often see here is that stylists think that more packages is better. So what they'll do is they'll get a request from someone, and someone will be like, "Well, do you do this or do you do that," and so they'll just put it up on their website. So they'll have hourly or one-off packages, and then they'll have larger packages.

What? That is so confusing. It is such a sign that you are not doing the work to be the leader of the experience, that you will end up just trying to sell things as a transaction. Because anytime you're just trying to make people happy, you're stepping into transaction, period.

So you're going to be marketing on how fast it is, how cheap it is, how quick it is. All of those things are not signals that you are leading someone on a journey. It's not a signal to the people that want a stylist to grow and change with them.

So that's why we have to be really intentional about what we put on our service menu, because it is a signal to people of, "I am an expert" or "I will do whatever you want just to make money."

That's literally what it tells you. Again, it's not just with stylists. There are lots of fields that this is the case. Would you go to a personal trainer who said that you could choose your own adventure if you were really serious about your fitness goals? No, you'd be like, "You're the expert. Tell me what this is where I want to go. Tell me how to get there." But yet when it's our business, we forget that sometimes.

Another indicator that you might be unintentionally tanking your repeat client rate is over-giving a new client services so that there is no natural next step. Editing people's closet for every season imaginable. That's a good one. Staying in people's houses for six hours to edit their closet without any boundaries around that in any systems to ensure that that doesn't happen because you've prepped the client. Compromising your values or your standards to accommodate budgets that do not belong in the luxury service.

So I was just doing a presentation earlier today to a group of stylists, and I was saying how a lot of my clients turn $3500, $4500 for packages, and they have people that have lower budgets for their actual clothing than they do for the stylist fee. So they'll pay more for the stylist fee, but wait and cut back on some of their clothing because they actually respect the advice and want to learn and use this as a learning tool and an experience. So it's not just about the clothes.

What happens when stylists say, "I can accommodate any budget or whatever," is that they compromise their values as a stylist often. So they'll start to have to pull from Amazon or other cheap clothing places that don't actually reinforce what they believe, which number one should be that you're teaching your clients quality. Because even though it's illogical that someone's going to blame you because they bought something off Amazon because they didn't have enough of a budget, it still reflects their experience with you.

You're not responsible for everything, but it's not going to be reasonable that the client's going to take that $20 lounge set to the tailor because they didn't invest enough to make it make sense. So you can't really stand on your values, whether that be we shouldn't be buying clothes and then throwing them into landfills, or "I don't believe in child labor practices that are unfair." Whatever it is, we forget when we are in a place of desperation that compromising on the basics of what it takes to actually lead somebody through a process to get actual results that are aligned with people's expectations of a stylist, that they're going to learn quality clothes, that they're going to learn how to dress themselves better, that they're going to be able to do more with less in terms of styling themselves.

When we compromise on price, our price, in order to make people happy, we absolutely dilute our own reputation as an expert. So you have to decide what do you stand for? Is it money at any cost? Because you can go get a job and probably do better. Or do you want to stand for something? Because when you do, and you don't compromise your values, people step up to the plate. I can tell you that from experience as someone that used to struggle with this.

At the end of the day, what people want is a luxury service. I don't care if it's $300, and that's a lot of money to them, or it's thousands of dollars, and whatever, it's a stretch for them. But you are supposed to, as a stylist, be giving people an experience they can't get somewhere else. So the question is, when you say "I can accommodate anything," what are you then having to deal with as a result? And is that what you really want for your business?

Every one of these choices that we just talked about chips away at a client's desire to come back, even if we are doing it in the name of making them happy, because they don't know what's going to make them happy. They know what outcome they want. It's probably not the one that we compromised on. Your repeat client rate is your business report card. It tells you if all of the pieces, your marketing, your offers, your pricing, your delivery, your client experience, your positioning are working together.

When the rate is high, it means you are not just good at getting clients. You're good at keeping them. When you're good at keeping them, then you develop a reputation. When you develop a reputation, people seek you out, and you're in demand. That is the difference between a business that feels like a grind and a business that feels like an opportunity that you can't believe you wake up to every day.

Inside Income Accelerator, I connect all these dots with you. There are only 10 people in the program, so you are not constantly patching holes up in one area of your business and ignoring another, because I am your partner in this experience. We build the systems that naturally raise your repeat rates regardless of what your front-of-the-house styling offers are. Every client leaves with different services. This is tailored to you. This is not a group program where you're all going to get the same thing and leave looking the same. That's why it's small.

When your repeat rate goes up of your established clients, so does your income, so does your long-term stability, and so does how easy it is to actually market because you have these ongoing relationships. So if you are obsessing over how to find new clients so that you can pay yourself this month, shift your focus. Is there anybody in your world that you could invite in again? Look how many clients last season came back from the season before. That is the number that's going to tell you the truth about what your next step is in terms of creating a more profitable styling business.

I hope this was helpful. Link in the show notes to Income Accelerator if you want to grab one of the last few spots. We're almost full. I will talk to you next time.

Thank you so much for hanging out with me. It turns out that social proof is actually pretty important. So if you could help me out, I'd so appreciate it. If you just had a quick free moment and could leave me a rating or review on the podcast app, that would be killer. And even better, if you wanted to share this episode on Instagram and tag me, that would totally make my day and it would bring so much more awareness to the podcast and would help other stylists just like you who are looking to build lucrative styling business because the better each of us does, the better all of us do. Thanks for hanging out with me and I'll chat with you next time.