The Six Figure Personal Stylist Podcast

Nicole Otchy - The Styling Consultancy

The styling consultancy is the first "stylist only" business consulting firm dedicated to making personal stylists like you into 6-figurecreative CEOs. We’re dedicated to pioneering a new category of badass, wealthy industry shifting stylists who run businesses that are ridiculously fun, have dreamy AF clients, and are making so much predictable monthly income, saving items in your The Real Real cart instead of checking out right away becomes a thing of the past. Everything is about to change for you.  Listen in each week as host, Nicole Otchy, takes you inside the world of Six Figure Personal Stylists and what it takes for you to step into this world for yourself.

  1. Taking Time Off in Summer Without Going Quiet in Your Styling Business

    2d ago

    Taking Time Off in Summer Without Going Quiet in Your Styling Business

    Every spring, stylists get busy. Client delivery picks up, the calendar fills, and the marketing starts to slow down. You're still showing up, maybe sharing what you're wearing, leaning on the links, but that deeper thought leadership that actually gets people to trust you and hire you starts to slip. Then summer arrives, the kids are home, the trips are planned, and pulling back feels not just reasonable but earned. And because the industry has always told you summer is slow anyway, it's easy to believe you're just doing what everyone else is doing. What most stylists don't connect until it's too late is that what you're doing in your marketing right now determines what your styling business looks like 60 to 90 days from now. So when you go quiet in June, you're not just having a slow summer. You're setting up a slow September. In this week's episode of The Six Figure Personal Stylist Podcast, I'm starting a four-part series on what it actually looks like to take real time off in summer without your styling business paying for it. I've taken roughly three months off every year for years, and my business has continued to grow. This episode is about why that's possible, what the 60-90 day marketing lag actually means for your business, and what we're going to cover in the episodes ahead. 3:05 – The sequence that starts in your busiest season and ends with you chasing business months later  6:07 – The well-established foundation behind why your styling business looks the way it does right now 9:06 – What the "summer is slow" story misses about how your ideal clients think, spend, and make decisions  11:07 – Why the spring and fall seasonal boost that many stylists used to count on is shrinking 14:24 – The real reason your income pipeline runs dry in the fall (and why it's so predictable once you see it) 17:35 – The meaningful distinction between stylists who step back and lose business and those who step back and don't 19:32 – A preview of the next three episodes of what this summer series will cover Mentioned In Taking Time Off in Summer Without Going Quiet in Your Styling Business Booked, Profitable, and Magnetic Private Podcast Income Accelerator Program Follow Nicole on Instagram Leave a rating and review

    22 min
  2. Building a Custom Clothing Brand for Women From the Ground Up with Lauren Linnane

    May 28

    Building a Custom Clothing Brand for Women From the Ground Up with Lauren Linnane

    Most stylists have seen the gap firsthand. A client wants something custom and the options are fast fashion off the rack or a men's tailor who adapts a suit to the female form. The fabrics are limited, the fit is a compromise, and nothing about it feels personal. That gap is exactly what Lauren Linnane set out to fill. Lauren spent over a decade in corporate accounting in Boston before she took a buyout, moved to Milan, and started building a custom clothing brand for women from scratch. She didn't speak the language, she didn't know the supply chain, and it took close to two years of relationship building before she had the right partners to produce a single garment at the level she wanted. In this episode of The Six Figure Personal Stylist Podcast, Lauren shares the full story of building PARLA, what the bespoke client experience looks like from first fitting to finished garment, why custom clothing for women is so rare, and how stylists can start working with a designer like her. 1:21 – Lauren's corporate background and the frustration with women's clothing options that started everything 4:22 – Why Lauren chose Milan and her early attempts to manage the supply chain from the US 7:28 – Building supplier relationships in a country where she didn't speak the language 11:32 – The personal styling experience in Milan that inspired Lauren and why she chose design over styling 14:02 – The client experience work Lauren and Nicole did together and where styling and custom clothing overlap 16:38 – The bespoke process from first call to final fitting 21:15 – What makes custom clothing for women so hard to come by and so expensive to produce 23:19 – How people react to custom pricing and the fast fashion expectation Lauren runs into 25:52 – Relationship-based marketing versus social media for high-trust businesses 31:52 – Advice for stylists who have thought about starting a fashion brand 34:54 – Lauren's upcoming trunk shows in Boston, New York, San Francisco, and London Mentioned In Building a Custom Clothing Brand for Women From the Ground Up with Lauren Linnane PARLA |  Instagram  Booked, Profitable, and Magnetic Private Podcast Follow Nicole on Instagram Leave a rating and review

    37 min
  3. The Part of Transformational Styling That Most Stylists Misunderstand

    May 21

    The Part of Transformational Styling That Most Stylists Misunderstand

    I recently finished a full year of working with a nutrition and weightlifting coach, and I ended up weighing the exact same amount as when I started. On paper, that looks like a failure. But I actually think it may have been the first real shot I've ever had at lasting change, because what that year showed me wasn't that I needed a better strategy. It was that my life wasn't built to hold the identity the strategy required. I think a lot of stylists are accidentally misreading this exact dynamic with their clients. You do great work together, your client has a real breakthrough, and then a few months later they're reaching back into their closet for the safe options. And most stylists quietly start wondering if the work didn't land. But that pulling back is a normal part of how identity change actually works, and if you don't recognize it, you'll walk away from clients and evidence that your work was doing exactly what it was supposed to do. In this episode of The Six Figure Personal Stylist Podcast, I'm talking about what transformation actually requires beyond the reveal, why clients pulling back isn't evidence that something went wrong, and what your business needs to look like if you want your work to go deeper than one good shopping session. 3:05 – The belief most stylists unconsciously carry about when and how transformation happens with a client 5:53 – What's actually going on when a client retreats to safe options a few months after great work together 8:31 – Why a client can genuinely want visibility and still have a part of them that reads it as a threat 14:08 – What "doing the reps" looks like inside a program and how identity starts shifting before the hard stuff is fully resolved 19:38 – Why repeat clients and clients who pull back are often evidence that your work went deeper than you think 21:29 – What your business needs to look like if you want transformation to go beyond one exciting moment Mentioned In The Part of Transformational Styling That Most Stylists Misunderstand Booked, Profitable, and Magnetic Private Podcast Income Accelerator Program Follow Nicole on Instagram Leave a rating and review

    24 min
  4. What Personal Stylists Get Wrong About "Making It"

    May 14

    What Personal Stylists Get Wrong About "Making It"

    Someone asks how your styling business is going and your stomach tightens before you've answered. You start calculating. How much to say, how enthusiastic to seem, how to make it sound like enough. Underneath all of it is a quiet belief that if the number in your bank account were bigger, or your months were more consistent, or you had a waitlist, the question wouldn't do this to you anymore. A client of mine recently said she'd know she'd made it when she could feel calm in her body during that exact conversation. I knew what she meant, because I spent years thinking the same thing. Then I signed a $36,000 contract, went to a family event, got asked about my "little styling business," and realized the calm I was waiting for had nothing to do with the size of the check. In this episode of The Six Figure Personal Stylist Podcast, I'm talking about the feeling stylists are actually waiting to feel when they say they want to "make it," why no external marker is going to give it to you, and what to start doing right now if you want to stop bracing every time someone asks how business is going. 1:34 – The marker one stylist named for what success would actually feel like 3:19 – The $36,000 contract, the family event, and the moment Nicole realized the calm she was waiting for had nothing to do with the check 5:55 – Why outside things never rewrite the story you have about your business 6:35 – The unconscious belief that's keeping a lot of stylists under-earning even when they're doing everything right 9:43 – The question almost no stylist can answer about their own version of success 11:01 – Why hitting bigger milestones doesn't deliver the calm you think it will 13:43 – What the stylists who get where they want to go are actually doing differently 16:52 – The question to ask yourself if you want to start building real internal markers of legitimacy Mentioned In What Personal Stylists Get Wrong About "Making It" Booked, Profitable, and Magnetic Private Podcast Follow Nicole on Instagram Leave a rating and review

    20 min
  5. Why Color Knowledge Belongs in Every Personal Styling Business with Carrie Harkin

    May 7

    Why Color Knowledge Belongs in Every Personal Styling Business with Carrie Harkin

    A client asks you why a color washes her out, and you answer, but it's a little wishy-washy. She holds up two purples and asks which one, and you pick the right one on instinct, but you can't fully explain why. Most stylists I know are good at color in practice. Fewer can talk about it the way they talk about fit or proportion. My guest this week, Carrie Harkin, spent years inside the Nike Color Lab before becoming a personal stylist, and she came into the industry with a technical foundation most stylists never get access to. Now four years into her own styling business in San Diego, she's built an in-person color training specifically for working stylists, and she's done it without taking on the "color analyst" identity that's kept a lot of stylists at arm's length from this work for years. In this episode of The Six Figure Personal Stylist Podcast, Carrie and I get into why color analysis and personal styling have been treated as two separate industries, how she folds color into her own services without leading with it, and why she's chosen to keep her training in person instead of taking it virtual. We also talk about what it took to build a second arm of her business while keeping her one-to-one work steady, and why that order matters. 1:23 – How working at the Nike Color Lab informed Carrie’s work and thought process as a stylist 4:30 – Two things responsible for the disconnect many personal stylists have with color analysis 7:08 – What Carrie discovered as a personal stylist that she didn’t find in the fashion industry 8:41 – Why so many stylists have rigid views about the color analysis industry 12:01 – How Carrie integrates color analysis into her personal styling services 15:00 – How Carrie wanted to up-level her business before joining the Accelerator program 17:05 – What needed to be in place already for Carrie to leap into a new branch of her business 22:58 – What makes Carrie’s training unique, and why many stylists have such resistance to color analysis 30:30 – The shift that happened among skeptics during Carrie’s first training (and how it was faster than expected) 33:20 – How AI is presenting an opportunity for stylists who are prepared and a problem for those who aren’t 35:36 – Why Carrie refuses to take her training program virtual and insists on giving it in person 39:39 – What excites Carrie most about the next four years of her business Mentioned In Why Color Knowledge Belongs in Every Personal Styling Business with Carrie Harkin Carrie Harkin | Color Clarity Training | Instagram Booked, Profitable, and Magnetic Private Podcast Follow Nicole on Instagram Leave a rating and review

    41 min
  6. What Keeps New Personal Stylists From Feeling Ready to Start Their Business

    Apr 30

    What Keeps New Personal Stylists From Feeling Ready to Start Their Business

    I hosted a stylist meetup in Los Angeles a few weeks ago, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. I was sitting there listening as the established stylists traded client war stories and laughed, completely unfazed. Then it hit me that the newer stylists in the room were probably hearing something entirely different. Not funny stories, but a list of everything that could go wrong. Same room, same conversation, two entirely different experiences. The difference between those two experiences isn't years logged or time in fashion. It's something every established stylist in that room had built, and something every new stylist can start building right now, before landing a single paying client. In this week's episode of The Six Figure Personal Stylist Podcast, I'm getting into why most new stylists think they need more knowledge or experience when what they actually need is something else entirely and how building it from day one changes what you're actually able to build from there. I'm also sharing how I've designed the Foundations of Professional Styling program to help you build it. 2:41 – Hearing about the hard parts of business as a beginner vs. an established stylist 5:36 – The specific gap between advanced knowledge and real-world execution that most stylists fail to close 8:03 – How an unstructured free trial for a client can actually do more damage to your confidence than not working at all 10:16 – Why seasoned stylists can laugh off situations that leave beginners completely rattled 11:45 – The costly mistake one stylist made by launching fast without a foundation, and what happened when she stopped winging it 15:43 – The right clients vs. ones who push back on normal business practices and why stylists get stuck in the “friends and family” styling stage for too long 17:35 – What the Foundations of Professional Styling program covers and who it's built for  Mentioned In What Keeps New Personal Stylists From Feeling Ready to Start Their Business How Nove Helps Power Your Personal Styling Business with Founders Megan Wright and Kaitlin Oran Join the Foundations of Professional Styling waitlist Booked, Profitable, and Magnetic Private Podcast Follow Nicole on Instagram Leave a rating and review

    21 min
  7. Corporate Experience Is a Hidden Advantage for New Personal Stylists

    Apr 23

    Corporate Experience Is a Hidden Advantage for New Personal Stylists

    If you're transitioning from a high-level corporate career into personal styling, you probably feel like you're starting from zero. You look at polished stylists on social media and decide that your years in HR, finance, marketing, or consulting are irrelevant to this next chapter. So you start trying to prove yourself by the wrong metrics. More courses. More certifications. More time getting ready to be ready. What I've seen, over and over, is that corporate women come into this industry measuring themselves against the finished product of stylists who have been at this for years, and deciding in advance that their own raw material doesn't count. Meanwhile, they're sitting on skills that most stylists without that background spend years trying to build. They just can't see it, because nobody has shown them how what they already have maps onto a styling business. In this week's episode of The Six Figure Personal Stylist Podcast, I'm getting into what actually transfers from the corporate world into a styling career, why the skills you're dismissing are often the ones your future clients are quietly looking for, and why "getting ready" stops being responsible and starts being the most expensive decision you can make. 3:03 – The trap that makes highly competent women feel like beginners when launching a styling business 7:43 – A specific skill honed that corporate career women possess and most traditional stylists haven’t figured out yet 12:11 – The difference between making a suggestion and building a rationale that commands expert-level authority 14:48 – The hidden proximity advantage that your corporate background gives you over other stylists 19:07 – Measuring yourself against the wrong metrics and looking to fill the wrong gap 23:16 – The subtle but critical shift that turns corporate experience into revenue Mentioned In Corporate Experience Is a Hidden Advantage for New Personal Stylists How Erin Stoll Turned Showing Up Into a Six-Figure Styling Career Raising Your Prices Even When You’re Scared with Michelle Loo Join the Foundations of Professional Styling waitlist Booked, Profitable, and Magnetic Private Podcast Follow Nicole on Instagram Leave a rating and review

    27 min
  8. How to Get Your First Personal Styling Clients Without Social Media

    Apr 16

    How to Get Your First Personal Styling Clients Without Social Media

    You've probably been preparing. Building the website, working on the branding, telling yourself you'll start reaching out once everything looks more official. From the outside it looks like progress. But none of it is what actually gets you your first personal styling clients. The stylists who move fastest aren't the ones who have the best Instagram or the most polished website. They're the ones who figured out the right person to talk to first and exactly what to say. I know because I spent 14 years as a working personal stylist, made every mistake in this phase, and have since helped hundreds of stylists get their businesses off the ground. In this week's episode of The Six Figure Personal Stylist Podcast, I'm giving you the exact playbook for getting your first personal styling clients, the specific ask that gets a stranger to say yes to a free session, what to say in the moment to turn that session into referrals, why who you choose as your first few clients matters more than most people realize, and the progression from free to hourly to packages and when you're actually ready to move between each stage. 0:49 – How Nicole spent months preparing to launch her styling business and didn't get a single client from any of it 4:12 – The one conversation that actually got Nicole her first real clients and how it led to her first paying client base 8:09 – Why most new stylists get their first personal styling clients from a direct conversation, not from social media 10:01 – The order of operations for getting strangers to hire you as a personal stylist, from free sessions to hourly to packages 13:11 – Why direct one-to-one outreach gets you paying clients faster than posting on Instagram or Facebook 14:24 – How to identify who to reach out to first and the exact language to use when making the ask 17:31 – Why working with people who are too close to you doesn't build the skills you actually need as a stylist 19:35 – How one stylist booked three testimonial clients and three paid clients in her first month and a half using this approach 23:25 – How to convert testimonial clients into paying clients and why most stylists get the referral ask wrong 25:38 – The right moment to ask for a referral and exactly what to say when you do 28:35 – When to start charging hourly and how many clients you need before you move to packages 30:44 – The full progression from free sessions to hourly to packages and what needs to be in place at each stage Mentioned In How to Get Your First Personal Styling Clients Without Social Media Join the Foundations of Professional Styling waitlist Booked, Profitable, and Magnetic Private Podcast Follow Nicole on Instagram Leave a rating and review

    34 min
See All (111)

5
out of 5
24 Ratings

About

The styling consultancy is the first "stylist only" business consulting firm dedicated to making personal stylists like you into 6-figurecreative CEOs. We’re dedicated to pioneering a new category of badass, wealthy industry shifting stylists who run businesses that are ridiculously fun, have dreamy AF clients, and are making so much predictable monthly income, saving items in your The Real Real cart instead of checking out right away becomes a thing of the past. Everything is about to change for you.  Listen in each week as host, Nicole Otchy, takes you inside the world of Six Figure Personal Stylists and what it takes for you to step into this world for yourself.

Information

  • Creator
    Nicole Otchy - The Styling Consultancy
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    111
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Six Figure Personal Stylist Podcast
  • Show Website
    The Six Figure Personal Stylist Podcast

You Might Also Like