No-one is coming to you just for a colour analysis or personal style advice. They’re coming to you for the confidence to look good and feel better about themselves. But before we dive into the nitty-gritty of what colour & style is really about, let’s do a quick run-down of some of the ways I can help you get your image consultancy started, get your business moving again, or take a good long look at YOU and start all over again!
We offer self-study training courses in colour analysis, personal style, wardrobe planning, personal shopping, and so much more. There’s our Ultimate Program containing image consultant training, support, coaching and mentoring, in fact everthing you could possibly need as it’s our most comprehensive training package. I also offer private 1-1 image consultant training, coaching and mentoring. That’s the salesy bit done with. Just contact me for a chat.
So what is image colour & style really about?
Let’s start by looking at the training and the questions you want answers to:
- How can I be sure that colour analysis & personal style training is for me?
- I don’t want to run this as a business. Is it still ok to do a course?
- I want to run a full-time business. Can I make this pay?
- Will I be able to learn enough to get it right for my clients first time?
- Can I really learn everything I need from your self-study courses?
- Would it better if I came to see you personally for a face-to-face course?
- What’s included in your courses?
- What experience do I need?
- What else do I need to buy, besides your training course?
- I have never done anything like this before. How difficult is it to become an image consultant?
- Can I work from home or do I need to invest in premises?
- Can I go mobile?
- I’m not really keen on make-up. Do I have to include it in my services?
- When will I be able to practise as a qualified image consultant?
- What should I learn first?
- How much does it cost?
- Where and when are the face-to-face courses held?
- And lots more
With over 40 years’ experience running my own image consultancy in the UK, running a training & coaching business, a training school for image consultants, and a personal coaching mentoring service for business owners, let me show you what colour analysis is really about and give you a behind-the-scenes look at running a real image consultancy.
I’ll start by asking YOU a question…
Why do you want to become an image consultant?
(or add colour & style to your existing business)
Maybe you’ve had your own colours ‘done’ and just loved it so much that you’ve always wanted to do the same for your friends and family? Perhaps you’d like to have your own image consultancy? Or maybe:
- You’d like a change of career
- You want to get rid of the J.O.B. (which stands for Just Over Broke)
- You’re planning ahead for when you have a family
- You’re planning ahead for when the family have all left home!
- You want something more flexible than your current job
- You want to combine colour / style with your existing business
- You just love colour and want to do something tangible with it
- You’re mad about fashion
- You want to help other people look and feel fabulous
- You just want to study colour and style for your own personal interest and development
This is one of the most flexible and rewarding businesses around where you can:
- work from home, or from premises (your choice)
- work when you want to
- run it alongside your current job or fit your hours around the family or other commitments
- include colour and style with your current business:
- fashion
- hair
- beauty
- flowers
- life coaching
- alternative therapies
- the list is endless!
- have a full-time business all of your own
- choose who you want to work with (I particularly love this one!)
- earn good money (and decide how much you want to earn too)
- see the delight on your clients’ faces when you help them to look and feel fabulous – your clients will thank you over and over again for your help
- build great relationships and friendships with your clients who will then help you build your business by telling all their friends about you
- run this business from anywhere in the world
- have fun – this isn’t a J.O.B.; this is a lifestyle
- and, for ladies especially, this is one of the few careers that you will never be too old for!
Have you considered alternatives?
If you enjoy working with people, have you considered becoming an aromatherapist, massage therapist, hairdresser, or beauty consultant? Many of my trainees are already in these professions and complain that they are on their feet all day and spend all day in the salon, at the beck and call of their clients, many of whom fall asleep on them. That wouldn’t do for me! I much prefer to work with wide-awake, eager-to-learn clients and trainees and I’ve found that image work feeds ME as well as my client.
What about life coaching?
From experience, I have found that by the time people have made up their mind to go and see a life coach, they have ALREADY decided to make definite changes in their life. Booking to see an image consultant is often a fun, non-confrontational way for people to discover that they NEED to make those changes.
Image consultants are often signposters
Image consultants are often signposters, pointing people in the direction of a life coach, or even a personal trainer, hypnotherapist or counsellor. In many respects, we are coaches and mentors, as no-one is coming to you just for colour or style; they’re coming to you for confidence.
What exactly is an image consultant?
A stylist is either a person who co-ordinates the clothes, jewellery, and accessories used in fashion photographs and catwalk shows or a kind of designer whose designs are based on existing things, trends, and designers collections. An image consultant, colour consultant, personal stylist, or fashion advisor recommends styles and colours that are flattering for a specific client.
Image consultants show people how to make a fabulous first impression
When you look good, you also look healthy, and especially in an interview or need-to-impress situation, this translates into looking able and efficient.
For instance, I spent 17 years as a freelance computer consultant so went for interviews on a regular basis. Because I know how to dress to impress, I have been offered more jobs than I have had hot dinners. In my experience, a long coat in the right colour, worn with the right accessories and with the right amount of confidence (which comes from looking good and knowing that I looked good) meant that I have been offered jobs that I was nowhere near qualified for – but I clearly LOOKED as though I was!
Image consultants can teach you how to make a fabulous first impression by showing you:
- which colours to wear
- which style to adopt to make the most of your body shape
- how to dress to reflect your personality
- how to dress to be appropriate for the occasion
- how to put together a wardrobe that works for every occasion in YOUR life (and not everyone else’s)
- how to shop effectively for clothes, jewellery, make-up, hairstyles and hair colours, accessories, etc.
- some image consultants will also include grooming and etiquette in their portfolio of services
- others go on to present training programmes for the corporate sector
Image consulting can be split into various skill sets:
- colour analysis
- style, shape and fit for ladies
- men’s image
- corporate image
- wardrobe management
- personal shopping
- make-up advice
- the list goes on
Do you have to learn everything?
You can learn them all, and many companies offer the lot in one long training course. We offer all our training programs together in our Ultimate Program in case you do. Or you could decide to home in on what you’re good at (which is probably what you enjoy the most) and become a recognised expert in your field.
For instance, I have advised several of my trainees to stick to colour analysis and not learn style or anything else. They’re utterly brilliant at showing their clients how to look and feel fabulous using colour alone, and in my opinion, if they moved on to style, shopping, and wardrobe they’d just be diluting what they’re really good at.
One image consultant I know is exceptional at shopping trips, especially with ‘the suits’ so I have advised that she concentrate on marketing her personal service to business people in the city.
I have also seen that several image consultants would be absolutely wonderful working with men (it’s not for everyone), and have encouraged them to study colour and style first with ladies, and then learn the skills of translating that into the male market when they feel they are ready.
I’m well known for ranting on about all those image consultants who feel they have to offer everything to the world and his mother. Your clients will relate to YOU, not the 93 thousand services you feel you ought to have on your leaflet, website or business card. Specialisation is a major marketing tool in any business – or do you just want to disappear into the melee and never be noticed – like all the rest of them out there?
Stand out from the crowd!
Be different!
That’s the secret to never being without clients.
This is exactly why I offer modular training
Start with colour anlaysis, and only then decide if you want to move on to style. Then, by the time you are ready to take the style course, you will have a bank of colour clients ready and waiting to pay you for the next piece of their jigsaw.
Specialising and defining your target market
- Some image consultants will specialise in colour analysis alone
- Others will offer head-to-toe makeovers, perhaps working with photographers, hairdressers, and make-up artists
- Some image consultants are brilliant at personal shopping
- Some specialise in working with a particular target market:
- professional women
- cancer patients
- underprivileged women
- wedding groups
- job seekers, including those returning to work
- plus-size ladies
- ladies who lunch
- men
- corporate executives (and their partners)
- school and college leavers
- transgender individuals
- singles looking for a partner
- politicians or anyone in the public spotlight
Many image consultants provide one-to-one consultations for their clients while others may prefer to offer group workshops. The world is your oyster in this fabulous business and you can choose!
What exactly is colour analysis?
Colour analysis is a method of showing ladies and gentlemen the best colours for them to make them look fabulous, wonderful, healthy, able and efficient so that they can get what they want.
93% of a first impression has absolutely nothing to do with what you say; it’s all about how you look and behave. If you look good on the outside, then people assume that the inside matches the outward appearance.
With professional image consultant training, you will be able to advise clients how to (and you’ll have to pardon me being so blunt here):
- Get the job
- Get the man
- Get what they want
Because what you wear tells people how to treat you.
Colour theory
Understanding basic colour theory is fundamental to you being able to analyse correctly and confidently. Many training courses look at the well-established seasonal approach (Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter). Others concentrate on the tonal approach (Cool, Warm, Bright, Soft/Muted, Deep and Light).
My colour analysis training courses cover both seasonal and tonal systems and work out which one suits your learning method and personality best, or whether you might prefer to combine the two. The actual words you use for these seasonal and tonal types are unimportant so don’t let that put you off.
There are so many ways of diagnosing colour directions – let’s find the one what works for you.
Put the client first
From my own experience, I don’t personally think that everyone can neatly be put into the 4 seasonal boxes; neither do I think that the 6 tones work for everyone.
For instance, I am absolutely seasonal and the tonal approach doesn’t cater for me at all, but my mother was never comfortable with her seasonal diagnosis and heaved a huge sigh of relief when I showed her that her tonal direction allowed her to wear the colours that really suit HER.
You might decide that one method works perfectly well for you or you might prefer to work with both – why not find out for yourself?
Colour is subjective
There is no right or wrong in the world of colour. There isn’t a scientist in the world who can categorically prove that you and I are seeing the same shade of a colour. Colour is subjective and anyone who tells you otherwise should be put in the stocks on the village green and have rotten tomatoes thrown at them for being so out-of-date!
What colour analysis isn’t
Colour analysis does NOT have to be a franchise, selling make-up by the bedroom-load, or meeting sales targets.
Colour analysis is NOT about the swatch wallets, the drapes, your technique, or even whether you get it right or wrong – and I can show you how, with and without the drapes.
Too many image consultants get caught up in the detail of which drapes to use and which swatch wallets to supply to their clients. In my opinion, the swatch wallets are a pain in the proverbial!
For too many years image consultants have confused their clients with too many drapes and delivered their diagnosis rather than shown their client how to discover it for themselves, slapped a wallet in their hand, and sent them on their way, never to be seen again.
No wonder clients get totally hung up about their colours and misuse the wallets when they’re not being shown how to use the darned things.
The swatches are NOT meant to be matched. Unless you are going to buy three yards of fabric from the manufacturers (and that will never happen), you are NEVER going to find the exact same shade in the shops. The swatches are meant to give an overall impression of the colours for each of the 4 seasons (or the 6 tones), and each client should be shown how to use the wallet properly. After all, we can’t pin down poor Esmeralda to a measly 18, 30 or 45 colours for the rest of her life, can we.
The contents of the wallet are meant to be a guide.
Does what you’re about to buy live, breathe and look great alongside the colours in your wallet? No? Then don’t buy it. If what you are contemplating buying looks lovely alongside the contents of the wallet, then it will also look lovely on you.
The proof? Your client should be able to buy her mother or mother-in-law a duplicate of her own wallet for Mum to use 2000 miles away. Mum should still manage to buy her daughter something that she’ll look good in. They will be immensely relieved when it completely cuts out those perfectly hideous Christmas and birthday presents in vile colours that they used to receive.
This is just my opinion and you can throw this to the four winds if you want to, but I think the wallets are a pain because too many image consultants use them as the fulcrum for the rest of the consultation; they are using their props like a safety blanket.
As long as they’re brandishing a drape in their hands, they feel like an image consultant.
This is not professional.
Instead of investing their energy into making their client feel a million dollars, and that has to be different for each client, they seem to derive some short-term satisfaction from churning out the same old facts to all and sundry.
I advise my clients on what suits THEM as an individual, not to wear everything that’s in the wallet, and I will show you exactly how to do this.
There have been 3 occasions when I have absolutely refused to sell a wallet to a client on her first visit – because I could see that those particular ladies just weren’t taking in how to use the wallet. Often a lady will be so excited by her diagnosis that she will only listen to the last thing she hears in her consultation – all the more reason to keep the amount of information short, snappy and useful, and then arrange to see her again.
People who are primarily digital or auditory learners aren’t interested in the contents of the wallet anyway
- Digital learners need lots of detail and a set of rules
- Auditory learners need the words, so writing down just their best darkest and lightest neutrals, best accent colours, best colours for jewellery, hair, nails, etc. meets these needs far better than any wallet
No-one comes to you just for colour or style. They’re coming for confidence – the confidence to look good and feel better about themselves. Colour is just one of a number of tools that you will use to help them achieve their goals. It’s about:
- building up your client’s self-esteem and confidence
- creating a rapport with your client so that she trusts you and the advice you dispense
- feeding your soul
- your own personal satisfaction with a job well done
Does this sound like something you would like to do?
Just contact me for a chat.
