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

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Transcript

Nicole Otchy: Okay, I want to start out this episode with what looks on paper like a complete failure. So three weeks ago, I finished working with a nutrition and weightlifting coach, Ashley, who's incredible, who I've definitely talked about before. And we worked together for an entire year. And the day that I finished that one year program, I was and am the exact same weight I was when I started. And if you look at that result alone, you would think it didn't work. It was a failure. It was a lost investment. But I actually think that it may have been the first and only real chance I have ever had at lasting change, when it comes to my body in 45 years of life. Because what the last year revealed to me is that I don't really need any more information. What I did need and didn't know that I needed was the structures around my life, to change enough, to support a different identity. You see, I didn't realize, because I had done so much work on myself with my business and my own concept of motherhood and friendships and many other areas that I was sorely in need of an identity upgrade. 

So examples of this are that my schedule was not built in any way for this new healthy fit me identity. My relationship to food was doing emotional jobs for me that it wasn't its job to do. And my husband and I had never really talked about, as people that really have a 50-50 marriage, what this was going to look like for our life. Like, who was going to cook dinner? What were our nutritional goals going to be? We were not on the same page at all. I mean, he wasn't against it. He just wasn't even really fully aware of what I was doing, because I was not making that known. So there were a lot of things that needed to change in my life apart from just having a strategy. And it's not that there was anything wrong with the strategy. In fact, it is a strategy I will a hundred percent go back to. And it's not that my coach wasn't incredible and probably the best that there is out there, I think, in the field right now, in a world where a lot of people are hawking things that are complete lies. The problem was that my life couldn't hold the identity that the strategy she wrote for me required. And I think a lot of stylists are accidentally misreading this exact dynamic with their clients. 

And so that is what I want to talk about today. This is The Six Figure Personal Stylist podcast. I'm Nicole Otchy and this is a show for personal stylists building world-class businesses and setting the standard in the industry. We're talking all things profitable growth, thought leadership and real client transformations. Because the best stylists don't just edit closets, they shape culture. 

So here's the belief I think a lot of stylists unconsciously carry about transformation. It's that it either happens or it doesn't. In our minds, sort of this collective amnesia about the reality of what it actually looks like to create any sort of change. We have this idea that there's a specific moment in our work with a client, where the change is going to occur, where you can point to it. It's the reveal. For some stylists, it's the shopping session, because that's where the evidence is in their client experience that the most aha’s happen. The photo shoot, if that's the kind of stylist you are. The compliments you get texts about after. You know, an entirely new wardrobe, so the bigger the budget, the bigger the stylist believes, you know, the transformation is going to be. Lots of stylists think, when I work with people that have these big budgets, it will be different. But if transformation actually worked that way, your clients would buy one wardrobe and never struggle with confidence, visibility, body image, or self-expression again. 

So we all know, know, that that's not how change happens. But we don't know when we are looking at our own work, or our own abilities, we forget that. And so that puts a lot of pressure on us to do things and behave in ways for our clients that are not our job to do. We know that change, specifically identity change, is a lot messier than that. Because while I'm sure I don't need to remind any of you about how this goes, it can help to have somebody reflect back to you the way that this process as a stylist works. So a client comes to you, they're excited. They have multiple sessions with you, especially if they're a good client, they follow your process, they're excited. You know, that kind of good student client that every stylist wants, that takes your advice, that actually like takes a chance on something, that is not just treating you like a shopper, but as an expert that has a real opinion that they are weighing and considering. They maybe have a genuine emotional breakthrough during your work together. Maybe it happens in the dressing room. Maybe it happens during the closet edit. Maybe it's the first time that the client wears the clothes that you bought outside of the house and gets compliments and then they text you on it excitedly. 

But there's a moment that most of us can point to and actually are a little bit addicted to, otherwise we probably wouldn't do this job, where your client sees themselves differently, sometimes for the first time, sometimes for the first time in years. And then a few months later, that person is often reaching back into their closet for safe options. Not always, not entirely, leaving behind the work you did together. But there's a little bit of a regression sometimes. They're saving outfits for special occasions. You go to meet with them for the next season and they're back to criticizing their body again. And the stylist starts to quietly wonder to themselves, did the work not stick? Were they not happy with what we did? Did I miss something here? Am I actually good at this, if it's a really bad day? But what if that moment where you re-encounter your client again for another season, or just out and about and they don't have the same excitement, the same momentum behind them that they had, when you first left the last dressing room, last season with them. What if this moment that doesn't feel super positive isn't evidence that your transformation with them failed? What if it was evidence that the transformation that you provided, the service you provided, was real enough to momentarily disrupt their existing patterns? 

Because this is the part of being transformational that nobody really talks about. Lots of people, everyone's throwing it around now. It's been real interesting to watch. But we don't really talk about what it requires. And I think this is also important for transformational stylists to understand, because if you are truly transformational, then you are also doing this work in your relationship to your business. People don't just have to desire the change, they have to survive becoming somebody new. And that is much harder to do. Everybody wants to change. Everybody wants to be someone different. Everybody wants to make six figures, half a million dollars, millions of dollars, be famous on the internet without anybody being mean to them, be the perfect parent, have the perfect body, right? That that's literally like why we have commerce, it feels like, in our society, because people want to change, but they can't just have that desire. They have to be willing to go through the discomfort of becoming somebody new, there is no part of anything worth having, that doesn't require some discomfort. 

And we know that, because if everybody, you know, could be a millionaire, they would be. But it's hard, so there's a reason why everybody isn't. A client can consciously want visibility, to have a strong visual presence, to command a room with confidence consistently, day in and day out, a stronger presence at work, to be respected, not just liked and still have a nervous system that associates those exact things with danger. And I do have a moment here, where I'm like, oh, do I want to bring up nervous system? But that's the best word I can think of. You could say a view of themselves that is stronger than the few weeks you spent together, right? They don't have as much evidence for the person they want to be, as for the person that they've been, for however many years. And for most people, being seen, especially for women, has historically come with judgment. And this can be as small as somebody's mom telling them once that they don't look good in florals and you hearing about it later when they're 53 years old in a closet edit. Or being told at work that the way that they're showing up is going to cost them something, or being broken up with, because, you know what, you're not my visual type. There's a lot of things people come to you with. Past criticisms, past rejections, being told that they are too much. At some point, staying small becomes safer. We all know this. We all know this in our own life, too. 

So when that client puts on the clothes and someone says, wow, you look so different or, oh, would you have a job interview today? At the office, there's a part of them that feels excited and a part of them that feels like, this isn't safe, let me go into immediate retreat and go back to my boring black pants and shabby white top. And it's not because your work wasn't powerful, or you're not good at your job. It's because you were. And there is a part of them that wants to go towards that, the same part of them that hired you, but they have more experience shrinking. And now the question is, how long will it take for that person and that person's view of themselves to catch up? And that reality is what you are actually working with. The tension that makes this a much harder field for people than, I want to be a stylist, because I like clothes. In the same way that the majority of people that watch your content are not going to be your clients, because not everybody is ready to let somebody in, or has the money, or wants to prioritize their time or cash towards a stylist, not every person that wants to be a stylist is capable of sitting in this reality. That's the truth of what I have seen over the years. 

And I think it's important to know, because it's not like this is the only right way to go about it. But you are not just changing somebody's wardrobe. You are asking their identity to expand if you use this language in your marketing, or if you have copy somewhere on your website that says insides and outsides match or whatever people are saying. And identities don't update overnight, which is why it's so interesting to me, how many business models are out there, or how many thrown together services are out there by stylists that don't take that into account. You can't say that you're going to give someone confidence or transform them, which you can never do that for someone, but you can't even promise to be a catalyst of the process, if the way you are going about and leading someone through the actual transaction of the service, isn't mapped on to how change works. The reality is that the majority of people, which is why I always teach my clients that they need to market to a certain kind of person. You can't just raise your prices. You can't just put yourself out there more. You have to identify who the right people are for your services. 

The majority of people are not in a position, where they will not default to interpreting any type of expansion, especially any type of expansion that is viewed by other people, that is viewed publicly, as a threat to their safety. It may not be conscious, but it is the reality, because it's how we are, that's like literally who we are as people. So if you're working with people who are exhausted, who are burnt out, who just are paying you money so that you can just get the clothes in their closet, but they don't really care. And you're trying to be transformational, but you missed an important step in the process, which is identifying people who actually are not in that headspace, so that there's an absolute shot that they could achieve the result that you in your heart are hoping for as a stylist. And when you don't understand this, you end up misreading the messy middle, the reality of what it takes to get people from one thing to another, in terms of how they view themselves as a failure. You will read the natural normal consequences of change, the little tiny signs that they're actually on the right path, which look more like discomfort before they look like shiny and exciting. You will read them to think that nothing is happening. You didn't do this right. Something went wrong. 

And a lot of people that I work with walk away from, or don't nurture relationships with existing clients, because they think this normal phase is a failure. So this is where the idea of reps comes in. I recently had a conversation with one of my clients. I didn't ask for her permission, but I wish I had, before I recorded this, because it's such a great story. And it's like, it was really a moment of great pride. But one of my clients inside this round of income accelerator, who was going through a really hard moment, after her business had gone through a stretch of really great moments and wins and realization. And, you know, she felt like she was really in the flow. But, you know, as life happens to usually work out, we can't win them all. And when she was talking on the call, she said something interesting. She said, part of me is already thinking about maybe this could become some sort of content that helps other people. And I paused, when she said that, because technically the hard thing that she was experiencing wasn't over. It was a hard day she had ahead. She hadn't solved how she was going to handle this thing later on the day that was causing her stress. And she was like visibly upset on the call still. 

But her brain was relating to the experience differently than it used to. And that kind of a shift, in the moment of difficulty, is something I didn't even know to look for, with a client before I understood and was trained in transformational coaching. And it would have sent me into over delivery mode in the past, seeing a client upset on call like this. And trying to fix something for her that was not mine to fix. But her brain had already started to relate to struggle differently, because she had been in the container doing the reps. She fully showed up for this program, this client. And she had been repeatedly exposing herself to the discomfort that happens, when you're trying on a new business model, when you're doing new things, when you're saying things on the internet that you've never said before. Repeated weeks to the tune of two months of continuing to show up, even before she fully believed in herself, she had evidence that it was going to be, you know, a huge raving success. Her identity had started to change. And it was still an uncomfortable moment for her. Both things were true.

And to be totally honest with you, that's the part that no nutrition plan that I did, no lifting strategy, no business coach, no business strategy, no marketing plan could give me or you either. Because the information can be there, right? I know this as someone who now runs program after program after program. But the reps happening outside the plan, the emotional patterns, the lifestyle shifts, the identity work that was or wasn't done before the person encounters the plan, the strategy, the service. Those are on a completely different timeline. And I think this is where a lot of stylists accidentally underestimate the depth of the work that they do and are in a rush to see something like they grew up seeing on What Not To Wear or something. Because the outfit, the lookbook, isn't the transformation. I know everyone says the outfit is the tool. A lot of us say that. But if you don't get this part right, about what happens once you start using the tool, if you're not onto the fact that some days the tool doesn't work as good as you want it to, because there's other things in the way of the tool working. Like the way you view yourself, or your relationship to visibility, or whatever it is, you're not going to be able to fully embody what you're saying in your marketing. You're not going to fully believe that you're capable of the change that you want to be sparking in other people. 

What creates transformation is repeated experiences of becoming safe and showing up and being seen, when it comes to your wardrobe inside the identity that the clothes represent, inside the framework that the stylist and the client does to talk about what these clothes are going to represent to them, before the clothes go on the body. Your client who wants to show up differently at work doesn't just need one good shopping session. She needs enough experience wearing the clothes that her brain stops flagging being seen as a threat, as maybe considered being looked at in a way that looks like she's trying to take up too much space, right? She needs enough repetitions of being complimented and it not meaning that the outfit is good, or not being complimented and it meaning the outfit isn't good, if she liked it before. Enough repetitions, taking up space, saying what she actually feels in those clothes. Feeling like it is okay to be visible. Surviving discomfort that comes with being someone new in public, even if it's just for 20 minutes at a time. Until eventually it stops feeling performative and it starts feeling like who she is now, or who he is now. And one reveal cannot permanently change somebody's self-concept. One emotional breakthrough in a dressing room can't permanently transform somebody forever. Repetition is what builds identity. 

This also explains something I think a lot of stylists misunderstand about their own businesses. Repeat clients are not evidence that your work failed. A client coming back to you and saying, I don't feel as good as I did before, you know, when I was first working with you, now that we're three months out, doesn't mean your work wasn't amazing. A client returning to work with you, or sharing these thoughts through different seasons of their life, is often evidence that the work was deep enough to evolve alongside their identity, which should be changing in a world, where we radically applaud self-growth, but seem to have no real understanding what it actually takes or looks like. People change careers, they become parents, they go through divorces, they age, they experience loss, they step into leadership, they fall out of leadership, they outgrow old versions of themselves every single day. And every one of those transitions creates an opportunity for someone to look at their old identity and decide, is this something that we need to upgrade? Is this a change that needs to be made in the story of what I tell myself about who I am? 

And in every one of those sorts of life transitions, resistance comes back up to the surface again. And this is why I think some stylists accidentally walk away from evidence that their work was transformational, because they mistake the messy middle of identity change for failure. The client pulling back is not always regressing. Sometimes it's the exact moment that the real work begins. And if you understand that, if you fully get this and you understand that it doesn't just look like these clean before and afters, you stop building your business with this idea that you're only successful if you have a series of these incredible after moments and start understanding your role as a stylist very differently. 

Your job is not to create one transformational moment. Your job is to help somebody build enough emotional safety inside of a new identity that it eventually starts to feel natural that they are the person that wears these clothes and shows off in this way. And that's going to take time. It's going to take reps. It's going to take systems that you are constantly providing to clients to create a clean and organized experience, so that they can focus on the experience and what they are sort of trying to learn about themselves through the styling process, instead of worrying about what's coming next. That's why I say transformational businesses are not just about your marketing or, you know, your taste. It's about how every element of the service is built to support what we're talking about today. And it usually takes support beyond one exciting moment, which means your business has to have a lifespan for clients that goes beyond that one moment, which is something that a lot of people don't plan for, when they're building a styling business and thinking about it being successful. You are not just helping people dress differently. You're helping people survive becoming someone new long enough for it to finally feel like who they actually are. That's it for today. I'll catch you next week. Thank you for being here. 

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.