The Six Figure Personal Stylist Podcast

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 [https://www.parlathelabel.com] |  Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/parlathelabel]  Booked, Profitable, and Magnetic Private Podcast [https://thestylingconsultancy.myflodesk.com/bookedprofitablemagnetic] Follow Nicole on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/stylingconsultancy/] Leave a rating and review [https://ratethispodcast.com/stylist]

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 [https://thestylingconsultancy.myflodesk.com/bookedprofitablemagnetic] Income Accelerator Program [https://thestylingconsultancy.com/incomeaccelerator] Follow Nicole on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/stylingconsultancy/] Leave a rating and review [https://ratethispodcast.com/stylist]

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 [https://thestylingconsultancy.myflodesk.com/bookedprofitablemagnetic] Follow Nicole on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/stylingconsultancy/] Leave a rating and review [https://ratethispodcast.com/stylist]

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 [https://www.carrieharkin.com/] | Color Clarity Training [https://www.carrieharkin.com/colorclaritytraining] | Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/carrieharkinstyle/] Booked, Profitable, and Magnetic Private Podcast [https://thestylingconsultancy.myflodesk.com/bookedprofitablemagnetic] Follow Nicole on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/stylingconsultancy/] Leave a rating and review [https://ratethispodcast.com/stylist]

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 [https://thestylingconsultancy.myflodesk.com/evdmtz8x0r] 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 [https://thestylingconsultancy.com/2024/11/07/nove-helps-power-your-personal-styling-business/] Join the Foundations of Professional Styling waitlist [https://thestylingconsultancy.myflodesk.com/evdmtz8x0r] Booked, Profitable, and Magnetic Private Podcast [https://thestylingconsultancy.myflodesk.com/bookedprofitablemagnetic] Follow Nicole on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/stylingconsultancy/] Leave a rating and review [https://ratethispodcast.com/stylist]