laneimageconsulting
We cannot escape the reality that none of us is getting any younger and that as we age, we don’t have the same energy levels as in our younger days.
I certainly don’t have the same energy as when I first started in business over 15 years ago! I have many more responsibilities compared to then – my husband, my two boys, five dogs(!), and older parents who live overseas.
If we’re honest, the traditional model for a personal styling business is a lot of hard work.
If you’re working with individual clients face-to-face and being paid by the session, then you need a whole LOT of bookings to earn anything much more than pocket money.
If all you need from your business is pocket money, that’s fine. You can get by with a couple of clients coming to your home studio every week.
But, if you want to be making the same amount of money you’d get in a corporate job, or even more, I’m talking consistent 5, 10 or 20K months, you need to examine your business model critically.
Is it scalable?
Can you really create that kind of income with your current setup?
Suppose you’re charging for one-off face-to-face consultations. In that case, even if you’re adding in personal shopping trips and wardrobe edits, your earnings are severely restricted to the number of hours you have available in each working day. It just isn’t realistic to do more than a couple of sessions.
There is so much talk within the image industry about how we all love our work and how lucky we are to find that one thing that brings us so much joy when so many people are trapped in jobs that drain their souls. However, few talk about how hard it is to make decent money in this industry. That’s why I’m addressing it today.
You are a trained, qualified professional who changes people’s lives with your work. You deserve to be making so much more than pocket money because of all the time and effort you’ve put in to get this far, and you don’t need to kill yourself to make that your reality.
Read on for my advice on getting started on the path to significant earnings whilst also making your business work effortlessly.
1) Design your business and your life
Pop the kettle on, make yourself a cuppa and sit somewhere comfortable with your notebook or journal and write down what your perfect day in business would look like. When I first did this exercise, my ideal day went like this:
- Get up and have a cup of coffee
- Take the kids to school and go for a walk with the dogs
- Have a shower, get ready and read or watch something inspirational for a while
- Spend one or two hours on client work
- Spend the evening with the family, whether at home or out and about
Then I had to design my business to fit into my perfect day. I didn’t want to see clients face-to-face anymore because it took up too much time, and with two demanding young boys, a husband that runs a business from home, and my crazy dogs, I couldn’t create the right atmosphere for clients to come to my studio. I didn’t want to work all hours of the day trying to promote myself either, and I desperately needed to earn more. So, I moved the business 100% online and created training programs that I could deliver to groups simultaneously rather than on a one-to-one basis with individuals.
I share all my knowledge and tools on creating high ticket online group programs with the personal stylists who sign up for my 6 Figure Stylist program. Once they start selling their own group programs, they earn extremely good money by doing only a few hours of client work each day. There’s still effort required to do their marketing and other admin tasks. There’s no shortcut on that, I’m afraid!
2) Know yourself
This is the essential part of creating a business with ease and grace. You need to understand yourself.
What kind of environment do you like working in?
What kind of people do you like working with?
How many hours do you want to put in?
How do you want to deliver your work?
What lights you up out of the services you provide?
What don’t you like so much?
It took me a while to properly understand my strengths and challenges. Still, once I became aware of what I’m best at, what made me happiest and made me feel like I was making a positive impact, I was able to create the business I have today – training other personal stylists – AND generate a great income at the same time.
One of the tools I’ve introduced recently for stylists in my community to understand themselves better is my sacred money archetypes quiz. It’s a money personality quiz, and you can learn a lot about yourself by finding out which of the eight archetypes you are. If you’ve not done the quiz yet, try it now to find out more about your unique talents and how best to develop your business, so things become a lot easier. Try the quiz here.
3) Know who your perfect client is
If you’ve followed me for a while, you’ll know I constantly talk about the importance of knowing your ideal client. I go on and on about it because I’m still always seeing stylists trying to appeal to anyone and everyone, and it’s just so hard to get traction in your business that way.
If you want effortlessness in your business, you must identify your ideal client and what precisely they need from you. This then becomes your speciality or your niche, as it’s sometimes called, and is the thing you focus on selling more than any other.
To identify your speciality, you should know that it’s almost always something that you geek out over; the thing that you feel is your area of genius. Something that you’ve gone deep into learning about and know more about than other people: once you’ve found it, that’s what you talk about and promote in all your marketing.
Keep your ideal client in mind for every piece of content you create; every social media post you write, video you make, blog you publish. Talk about their problems and how your speciality service can help solve them.
4) Start living your dream life today
So many people put off celebrating until they achieve their ideal income. They wait to do all the things they want to do until then, but my suggestion is that you start living the kind of life you want from today and start doing the things you want from today too. I say this because even when you hit your target income if you haven’t already started doing the things you want, you’re probably not going to start doing them then either.
So, start celebrating your wins. If you’ve recorded your first video, celebrate it. If you secured another fantastic client, celebrate that. If you get asked to guest on a podcast, you’ve guessed it, CELEBRATE!
So, there you have it, the four key things I say you need to implement in your business today to have ease and grace and the income of your dreams. Nobody comes into this industry to have a tough time, scrounging around for money, questioning and doubting themselves, so start making some changes today.