laneimageconsulting
1) Marketing is everything
You must get yourself out there and tell people how you can help them. I had no idea when I first started, how much marketing I would need to do to properly get going and sustain my business. I knew I was good at what I did. I had excellent technical skills, particularly in colour, and I thought that was enough. 😅😅😅 Technical ability alone is definitely not enough to make it as a personal stylist.
After about six months, it dawned on me that I needed to learn how to get good at marketing myself. As the years went on, I understood how much time you must spend marketing yourself and that you need to be relentless, showing up repeatedly. There are no real shortcuts. Yes, you can take courses and learn different techniques to help you, but you only get good at it by doing it. If you start and keep going, your skill and confidence grow over time.
Many people struggle to market themselves, so they outsource it to someone else. I disagree with that approach. You have to work on it yourself, so you learn to understand your ideal client on a deep level and get clear on your messages – the things they need to hear from you so they know that you’re the one to help them. Of course, you can get help in time. I have support to get my newsletters out, but do the bulk of my marketing myself because I know my ideal client better than anyone else.
2) Mindset is as important as strategy
I’ll be honest here. I don’t like the term mindset because when many people hear it, they think, oh, I need to be doing meditation, I should recite positive affirmations daily, or I need to flip my negative thoughts into positive ones.
The reality is it’s practically impossible to flip your thoughts because they’re based on experience, what you’ve been taught as a child, and what you’ve learned from your culture. So many other things come into play too.
I like to talk about mindset in terms of energy. You need massive energy to show up consistently in your business, and we all know that if we’re feeling low, we don’t feel like posting on social media to market ourselves. Also, if we do manage to make ourselves turn up when our energy is low, it comes through in our words and body language. Our lack of energy seeps out, and potential clients pick up on it.
So, how do we get to a place where we have all this energy we need to get our businesses where we want to be? What do we do so we can make the showing up easier?
We need to work on creating more energy. And we do that by uncovering our unhelpful beliefs, the beliefs that are driving our negative thoughts. Once we’ve identified the limiting beliefs, we can work on clearing them.
I’ve been doing work like this with members of my 6 Figure Stylist program since the start of the year. I’ve since created a standalone program, the Chakra Empowerment Program, purely to help stylists with their mindset/energy because I saw such need in the industry.
As stylists, we sell confidence, but we can’t sell confidence if we don’t feel confident ourselves. If we are suffering from imposter syndrome or comparing ourselves to others, it’s impossible to turn up and market ourselves in a way that will make people believe we can help them.
My Chakra Empowerment program includes 12 live sessions with me, where I will be systematically taking you through 12 different exercises to help you identify and clear your self-limiting beliefs. You also get direct access to me outside the lives, so I can support you with the day-to-day stuff that comes up. You can message me if you get stuck, and I’ll work with you to find a breakthrough.
I’d been looking for a system like this for years, and was so excited when I went through the program myself. The results were mind-blowing. My marketing now comes from a place of energy. I’m turning up daily as my most confident self. I’m motivated, focused and able to take action that pushes my business forward.
If you want all that for yourself, email me at aileen@laneimageconsulting.com, and we’ll get the ball rolling.
3) Focus on one thing
If I’d known about this 20 years ago, I’d be a millionaire by now: rather than having loads of different services, focus on one thing.
I know it sounds back to front, and I used to think the same. If I add more services and provide more ways to help, I’ll get more clients. I even offered a bra fitting service and nutritional support alongside colour, style, and makeup at one point! It didn’t work. It doesn’t work like that. You can’t keep adding things in the hope of appealing to everyone. You must be specific.
It’s, therefore, best to start with a signature program that you charge more for and put all your energy and creativity into designing and marketing it. If you add on more and more things, you end up diluting your message. People won’t be able to keep up with all the changes. They’ll get confused, and when they’re confused, they won’t buy.
Market the hell out of your signature program with consistent content that talks about it from all different angles, and you’ll become known for it. Over time you can split your program into smaller modules to help people with a specific issue. I’ve done the same by pulling out the energy work I do in my 6 Figure Stylist signature program and offering it as a standalone product in the Chakra Empowerment program.
4) Take care of yourself
This is the most important and one I didn’t really understand in the beginning. I’m an overachiever and totally focused on success which often comes at the expense of my health and well-being. I had to learn how to take proper time out to avoid burnout, keep my energy levels high and just enjoy the journey.
Since discovering the Sacred Money Archetypes, I’ve learned that I’m a ruler, so it makes total sense that I struggle to rest and prefer to be busy all the time. Knowledge of my archetype and the strengths and challenges it brings has enabled me to get more out of my strengths, and build systems to help me overcome my challenges. Awareness has been the key.
There are seven other archetypes so take my short quiz to find out which one you are. You’ll get feedback on your strengths and challenges too. Here’s the link: https://pages.laneimageconsulting.com/sacredmoneyarchetype.