Episode 12: How to Create a Sustainable Personal Styling Business Without Burning Out
Intro
Welcome to the From Hobby to Full Time podcast!
Show notes
I’m a firm believer that some people thrive working in a team environment with structure: a project manager or a boss, going to an office most days of the week, having tasks given to them - while other people thrive on more independent work: freelancers, self-employed, and entrepreneurs.
If you’re listening to this, then you probably fall into that latter category. You might not be living the full on entrepreneur lifestyle, but you either do it on the side, part time, or have the dream of doing it.
I don’t have to tell you this, but the entrepreneur lifestyle doesn’t necessarily mean millions of dollars, fancy cars, and expensive vacations - it equals freedom, location independence, and a different set of goals and priority than someone who thrives in a team setting.
BUT - just because you work for yourself, that doesn’t always mean you’re doing it right, or in a way that will support you to thrive. More often than not, entrepreneurs just find themselves in another job, they work for themselves doing all the things they would do in a job - and over time, they come to hate it.
In today’s episode, I want to give you 4 very practical ways that you can get a sense of freedom, and not chained to a desk feeling.
1 - Create a service process where you work with clients from start to finish
For personal stylists, I am NOT a believer in a la carte or one-off services. In the real world setting, this would be like a person coming to you and wanting to go shopping without first cleaning out their closet. I believe that method is ineffective, or in essence, putting a bandaid on their wardrobe problems instead of treating what’s wrong.
I also believe that it’s a lot harder to create a sustainable business from single services. Think about it this way - in order to make $10,000 from a $300 closet cleanse, you’d need to work with 33 NEW clients every single month. But imagine that you have a service-based process that takes your clients from start to finish that’s priced at $1,500. All of a sudden, you need 6-7 NEW clients. What do you think is easier?
When you have a process based service, not only are you going to make more money, you’re client is going to get a more effective and long lasting service, increasing your testimonials and their results, which in turn will bring you more clients.
2 - Structure your weeks and days to benefit YOU
I cannot stress this enough, but you MUST create a week that you, not your clients, control. I talk about this SO MUCH in The Founders Club, but you can google Week Design or Lifestyle Design to learn more. The basic premise is that you set up and structure your week to accommodate YOUR needs (self and family) first and then you plug in the business tasks. This looks something like: scheduling your work outs, sleep, appointments, self-care time, kid drop off / pick up, date nights, etc. THEN working in business time after that.
It sounds counterintuitive, but when you fill your cup first, you’ll have so much more for others.
Now, when it comes to your business structure, I suggest going a bit further and to time block / chunk your tasks. If Sarah Blakely of Spanx can dedicated certain tasks to certain days you can too. Here’s what that looks like:
Mondays = CEO days. Bookkeeping, marketing, strategy, learning. This is the day you take care of admin tasks. I used to also include client prospect calls on this day.
Tuesdays = Client days. Schedule all client sessions here: closets, shopping, outfits, cookbooks, etc.
Wednesdays = social media, marketing days.
Thursdays = Client days.
Friday = client days.
Now - go into this knowing that these things can be flexible. In fact, in a recent coaching call in TFC, we talked about structuring days where M - W MORNINGS were spent doing admin, marketing, etc. and those AFTERNOONS were focused for remote client work.
The important thing here is that you are creating schedule structure. This does a few things:
reduces stress on your brain and let’s you focus on tasks at hand and avoid multitasking
creates boundaries for yourself as self-employed and your clients
puts you in charge of the schedule, not the other way around
Discipline creates freedom!
3 - Evaluate - realistically - what you should charge in order to live (not just make ends meet)
No one ever likes to talk about money, but if you’re going to create a business where you’re the CEO or call yourself that, then you better get used to looking at and crunching numbers. This is how successful businesses work.
And you need to figure out that $50 or $75 / hr is not going to realistically be feasible to make a living wage. When you work for yourself you are paying for EVERYTHING: taxes, health insurance, rent, supplies, materials, graphic design, marketing, website, subscriptions, AND yourself. On top of that, if you’re a one person shop - this means you can’t spend all 40 hours of your week with clients. Which means you’re not working or charging 40 hours of income. Say that you work 30 hours a week with clients because the other 10 you’re doing administrative tasks, marketing, writing newsletters, doing social copy, etc. 30 hrs a week x $50 hr x 48 weeks (allowing 4 weeks of vacation) = $72,000. This sounds great as take home but guess what? That’s NOT your salary. From that $72,000 - you’ll need to deduce 20-30% for taxes - leaving you with $50,400. Let’s say you have website expensive and a few subscriptions to help you with social media, client management etc that cost you another $2,000 over the course of the year. You’re down to $48,400. If you pay for health insurance, you’re down to $42,000 - this doesn’t even include things like: renting office space, marketing budgets, print materials, etc. $72,000 can be a great salary, but it’s not enough for business ownership.
I include a salary exercise in The Biz Bootcamp of The Founders Club and it helps people take what they want to earn and do the numbers so they can get a realistic idea of what to charge, while ALSO taking into account 15-20 hours a week of admin time to work ON The business.
4 - Delegate + build a team.
This brings me to my final point. In order to expand your business and make more money, you MUST delegate tasks and start to bring people on to your team. This can be as much as a 5 hour a week person who does social media for you. Or it could be outsourcing your bookkeeping. But you will NEVER grow if you continue to do it all yourself. You’ll hit your capacity and burn out. Even the most passionate, enthusiastic person can’t keep it going 24/7.
Now, you may be thinking, are you crazy?? This is a side hustle- who am I to have someone work for ME? What would they even do? Wouldn’t it be HARDER to have someone do something when I can just do it myself?
The answer to these things is NO. You only have so much time in a day. You can’t do it all. What’s the first, easiest thing you can let go of? For most people that’s social media management. For others it can be someone to manage their schedule and client admin processes.
Where to find someone? There are a lot of places you can hire virtual assistances for fairly inexpensive. Literally google: inexpensive virtual assistances. You can often times find people oversees, a recent college grad, or even a Task Rabbit situation. Obviously, you’ll want to have an interview process, vet and trust the person, but once you’re there, give them just ONE thing to take off your plate. This will free you up and allow you to focus on the tasks YOU are uniquely created to do.
If you can even just start with the FIRST thing on this list, you’ll be on your way to crafting a business you love, not a job that drains you.
That’s a wrap!
This month we’re talking about practical topics you need to know on running a styling business: with everything from services, to marketing, to what you need in your kit. Got questions for me? Send them on!
As always, you can find the show notes at: www.chicstripes.com/podcast and come enjoy the insta stories over at @chicstripes.com
See ya on the gram!