Improvability Blog

Being put forward for an industry award by one of your peers just has to rank pretty high on anyone’s list of business achievements. 

But to be nominated by the same person two years running and then to win the IFIC Spirit of Inspiration award for ‘Most Inspirational Consultant Running an Image-Related Business’ in October 2009 has made a profound difference to my personal confidence level and to the way in which we now market our business.

Thank you, Debbie Gray, for having the single-minded determination to nominate me not once, but twice.  Debbie won the
inaugural IFIC Spirit of Inspiration award for ‘Image Scholar of the Year’ in 2008.

We’ve received congratulations from other business owners, consultants and clients all over the world.  One brand-new client took the time to let me know that it was the award that was the final motivation for her to book on a training course with me. 

And it seems that my story is now motivating other consultants to want more for themselves.  One lady wrote, “This gave me quite a lift and has made me determined to believe in myself and get out there!”

Winning this award has not only been a personal high for me but it’s also bringing us more business AND inspiring other image consultants to achieve more in their own business.  

Well done, IFIC.  The Spirit of Inspiration awards are clearly working!

Hundreds of years ago, I needed to find a photo of both Neil and myself very quickly to post out to a friend abroad. As I absolutely loathe having my photograph taken, I had to search back through some holiday snaps from the previous year and finally found one that a kind passer-by had been coerced into taking for us.

I started scribbling a quick note to go with the photo trying to describe where it had been taken which, unfortunately, meant I had to take a closer look at it. And I was utterly mortified for, there, sticking out of my chin, were 3 enormous white hairs – each seemingly at least 6 feet long!

I was horrified that I had ever let my usually high standards drop so appallingly low. And there was no way that photo was going anywhere! I ripped it up right there and then.

I think this rather unnerving experience made me even more acutely aware of human facial hairs growing out of all sorts of nasty places. Even 5 years ago when I was writing my Colour Analysis training manual, I included this note in the ‘Presenting your Best Image’ section for consultants:

"I can’t believe I’m having to say this but¢â‚¬¦. remove noticeable facial hair. Moustaches and hairs growing wildly from your chin, nose and / or moles will not increase your professional integrity! Men have to shave daily – should you?"

Even further back in history when I was nothing more than a girl, I had to deliver some make-up products to a lady who had ordered them over the phone. I’d never met her before, I’d never been to her home, it was a wet, dark evening in late November, I got lost, I was cold and I had nowhere near the confidence I have now so I was totally unable to apply good social etiquette to the sight that met me when she opened the door.

Against a background of dark brown hair and pale porcelain skin, some idiot had just bleached all the once-dark-and-extremely-sturdy hairs on her top lip so they now stuck out like dazzlingly-neon-white fork prongs.

I felt my chin hit my knees as my jaw dropped open and I stared and stared, just like a 3-year old.

I know that, had she been there, my mother would have smacked me round the back of the ear because I just couldn’t take my eyes off these vile-looking protrusions.

I’ve never seen anything look so unnatural. How on earth could anyone think that bleaching dark hairs like this was in any way going to cover them up?

She may as well have stuck a sign on her forehead which said, ‘Look! I’ve got a moustache’.

I’m sure there must be some bleaching techniques that don’t produce such horrifying results but it’s probably worth asking your best friend for a down-to-earth diagnosis of whether your upper lip needs some attention.

And it’s not just me.

Do you know that one chap even started ‘a blog dedicated to making women all over the world remove their moustaches – soon’.

Amazing moustache facts

1. Swimmer Mark Spitz won 7 gold medals at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games while sporting a moustache when swimmers usually shaved all their body hair to decrease drag. Spitz claimed that it helped create a pocket of air to breathe. After the Olympics, many European swimmers began growing moustaches…

2. Mexican artist Frida Kahlo famously depicted herself in her artwork with both a moustache and a unibrow.

3. At the biennial World Beard and Moustache Championships in 2007 there were 6 sub-categories for moustaches:

• Natural
• Hungarian – big and bushy
• Dalƒ­ – narrow, long points bent or curved steeply upward. Named after Salvador Dalƒ­
• English – narrow, beginning at the middle of the upper lip the whiskers are very long and pulled to the side, slightly curled; the ends are pointed slightly upward; areas past the corner of the mouth usually shaved
• Imperial – whiskers growing from both the upper lip and cheeks, and curled upward
• Freestyle – all moustaches that do not match other classes

4. ‘Movember’ is an annual month-long event involving the growing of moustaches during November. It aims to promote and raise awareness of Men’s Health issues, notably prostate cancer and depression.

5. Victorian writer Wilkie Collins created a mustachioed heroine for his mystery novel ‘The Woman in White’. ‘Marian Halcombe’s complexion was almost swarthy, and the dark down on her upper lip was almost a moustache’ yet she still manages to inspire the extracurricular passion of the novel’s villain, Count Fosco…