Improvability Blog

I’m a real busy bee right now. My wings are going that fast that I might take off at any moment…

Well, actually, it’s my fingers that are typing so fast that’s causing the draught…

I’m writing madly from dusk until dawn in preparation for the live training event 3 Steps to Success for Image Professionals on 16th August.

I’ve got loads of great stuff to share on how to create the image business of your dreams.

And the reason I’m running this day is that it makes me so cross that there are lots of great consultants out there who have all the skills and enthusiasm to change the lives of so many potential clients - if only they knew how to find some!

I’ve been where you are now

As I started writing the notes for the course, lots of horrid memories from years gone by started to rear their ugly heads, like:

• those times when I’d taken a booking for a personal consultation and the client never showed up! (infuriatingly aggravating)
• the time when I ran a workshop for 12 and only 1 person turned up (utterly mortifying)
• those times (and there were loads of them) when I’d give a talk or presentation and not one single person would book with me (totally demoralising)
• all the money I’ve spent on advertising, leaflets, business cards, etc. and got zero enquiries (expensively exasperating)

I could rattle on for hours about all the stuff I did wrong, how I had the necessary skills, all the props, loads of enthusiasm but not a clue how to get and keep clients.

Thank goodness I finally learned how to never have any of this happen to me again.

Now I know I could start over again tomorrow

I know that if I moved to a brand-new location tomorrow, I could start offering personal consultations, workshops, etc. and have paying clients within days - because I’ve already done it, several times.

And let’s be real here:

• if you don’t have any clients, you don’t have a business

and all the skills and props in the world are not going to make you a single penny!

Would you like me to show you how I did it?

And how you can do the same?

There are just 2 places left on the ‘3 Steps to Success for Image Professionals’ in Chesterfield, UK on Monday 16th August and you can use coupon code MM30 at the checkout to save £200 - but only until the end of today Monday 9th. You’ll also get a complimentary copy of the 6-DVD recording of the entire day, and the next person to book will get a free strategy call with me after the event. Loads and loads of extra value. I must be mad, giving all this away.

If you can’t make the actual event, pre-order the DVD set - use the same coupon code MM30 to save £200 at the checkout - until Thursday 12th only.

I’ve already received several emails asking when I will be running this again this year. Sorry, but I have no plans to run it again. The only other live event planned in 2010 is the two-day Ladies’ Style course in September.

Susannah Atherton trained with me in Colour Analysis and then returned for the Advanced Colour Analysis training event on April 26th this year.

Susannah received the 6-DVD pack from the event and sent this in with just two days left of June:

“I have watched most of the Advanced Colour DVDs (and had a chuckle or two) but on the whole amazing how much you don’t remember. So good to see it all again and take in the information once more.

Well all has been fast, amazing, frightening and at times somewhat unmanageable here, but I love it.

I realised it had taken over the whole family’s lives when my 5-year old asked her friend, “Are you a Summer or a Winter, because you are Soooooo not a Spring or an Autumn?”

“No idea,” replied the friend.

My little daughter reassured her, “Don’t worry, my mum can sort you out.”

What a laugh my husband and I had at that one.

“I have yet to advertise…”

Since April 26th I have done 32 colours, I have 7 more booked in this month, so business has been very good and I am getting a reputation for being fun, fair, but above and beyond anything else ‘Great at my job’.  I certainly couldn’t ask for more.

I have yet to advertise, as word of mouth has been so good.

Stepping into the unknown

Tomorrow night (and now comes the….

I really am scared stiff) I am doing a tonal taster to Chailey Heritage school teachers… I have made my bright, soft muted, light, deep, cool and warm boards up.  Spent a number of evenings perfecting them (just can’t help myself) and tonight I shall stick them all down.  I have make-up and kettlewell products and a beautiful assistant to help me.  I am still bricking it (terrible phase!).  I need the evening to come so I can wing it (because then I am at my best).

I’ll report back on the tonal taster on Wednesday, I am sure.

Just wanted once again to thank you for all the information and the Tonal Taster info.

Regards, Susannah”

Did you GET those figures?

Just wanted to make sure you’d noticed the amazing stats from Susannah’s story:

• 32 colours already completed in exactly 2 months - that’s an average of 4 per week
• 7 more colours booked in with just 2 days left in the month
• plus a Tonal Taster evening in the same time period

What I can’t get my head around is the number of consultants who continually tell me there’s no work out there.

Pardon?

Susannah has quite clearly demonstrated that there’s PLENTY of work out there, but maybe it only shows up if you’ve got the right attitude to go out and find it. Remember what she said, “I have yet to advertise, as word of mouth has been so good.”

Susannah - a huge well done from me for being so successful; not that I expected any less from YOU. Kim.

HOW TO CONTACT SUSANNAH ATHERTON - If you would like Susannah (or perhaps her 5-year-old colour savvy daughter?) to help you with your own colour, style and confidence, then email her at susannahatherton@hotmail.com or telephone 01273 401233. Susannah is based in East Sussex, UK.

It’s dead easy, really!

During your Colour Analysis training, naturally you get your own colours done (appalling English but you get my drift). It absolutely makes my day to see the light dawning as the session progresses and ladies start to see how and why certain colours just do nothing for them, and yet others make their eyes sparkle.

I love my job!

On a recent training course, one of the ladies (we’ll call her Ermentrude) had trained with another company in the dim and distant past.

Ermentrude told me that she’d never quite got the hang of how to she was supposed to use the plethora of colour drapes with her own clients. She felt overwhelmed with the number of drapes and with the number of possible combinations and, after only a few months of trying, had totally given up on the idea of ever having a successful business.

Now that is a crying waste of time, money and talent but, thankfully, Ermentrude was determined to give it another go and came to me for an update, to learn some new, quick tips and techniques to help her run her own successful colour consultations.

Towards the end of her own colour analysis, she was amazed when I showed her only about six drapes and even more amazed when the draping session itself only took about 20 minutes!

I’ve been there too!

At one time, I used to have over 180 colour drapes in my collection and clearly overwhelmed my own clients because I was so busy showing them every nuance of colour under the sun. And it took forever!

The problem is that when you’ve started going through 63 different shades of yellow on a particular client, she then wants to know why you’re not going through the 74 different shades of green as well.

What a waste of time!

The brain can only absorb so many different shades, tones, and tints of one colour at one time (that’s why the swatch wallet is such a good shopping aid), so I found that my clients were totally confused by the end of the draping session.

I was also excruciatingly bored by the whole process, so I finally stopped doing it to save both my sanity and my client’s!

You don’t have to drape your client to within an inch of her life any more

Draping isn’t what colour analysis is about anyway.

You’ll be pleased to hear that the image business HAS moved on during the past 3 decades and now I can show you lots of other ways to diagnose your client’s colour direction. These appeal to all the senses and make it much more fun for both you and your client.

And then your client only takes away information about the colours that she looks absolutely fabulous in - and isn’t that what she really came for?

Ermentrude went away feeling very relieved that there was another way to help her future clients, and I was reassured that interminable draping is just a pile of old balderdash and should have been slung out years ago!

If you’ve experienced a colour consultation personally, I’d love to hear how much you actually remembered and what it was that helped you to do that.

Are you feeling like poor Ermentrude?

If you’re an image professional and you’re now where Ermentrude was, we have the solution to your problem.

Monday 26th April I’m running a one-day Advanced Colour Analysis course where we’re going to cover lots of hints and tips to help you update, improve and make your colour analysis sessions much simpler and more productive.

Pre-order the Pack that we’re going to create from the day itself. This will contain the DVD video recording of the live event, omprehensive course notes from the day itself and exclusive post-event training materials, and it will be posted to your door on 17th May.

If you are going to run any kind of business that purports to teach, educate, inspire or motivate your client, then you need to put your client centre stage.

Just a little point here - this isn’t about you anyway. 

It’s about the person who’s paying you good money for your expert advice - your client.

Over the last 30 years, I’ve seen far too many image, colour, style consultants delivering the same boring old stuff to every single client they see, sometimes regardless of age, culture, time of year and, worst of all, personality differences.  This has to stop. 

It’s time to treat every single client as an unique individual (which, amazingly, they are).

Stuff the system; put the client first

If you decide to train with me, I’ll warn you now that I have huge disdain for systems, especially ones which include ticking off a check list and wielding some drapes just to make you feel like you know what you’re blethering on about.

I will show you how to work out what your client really wants from the consultation, and how to deliver exactly what SHE wants. I am not going to give you a checklist of subjects that you must go through with each client. If you want that approach, please go somewhere else.

A bored, confused client who has been treated like a number will moan about you to lots and lots of people

A happy client who has been treated like royalty will recommend you to everyone she knows

What type of client and resulting business do YOU choose?