You're not supposed to judge people by their appearance, right? And yet we do! YOU do! It's the first thing you see about others and the first thing others see about you.
Studies Show a Better Image Leads to More Money
More and more studies are showing that a stylish and polished image leads to improved self-esteem, higher job advancements, more money, and more people wanting to be around you, either professionally or personally.
As a personal stylist, I have had an inside track on how an improved image has improved people's lives. From acquiring more clients in business, to getting promoted, to increased confidence in dating which led to marriage, and so on.
Every time I have checked in with clients to see how their new wardrobes are treating them, I have always gotten back news on how it helped them get a raise, or more clients, or helped them with their relationships, or just brought them renewed energy and confidence in themselves. Without fail.
Clothes Are a Big Deal.
So as much as I'd love to say that clothes aren't a big deal and people don't judge books by their covers, I would be leading you in the wrong direction if I said that. Nice clothes that flatter you matter. They will improve your life in ways you never would have thought of.
One client of mine reported back to me a month after we did a huge closet makeover. She was a lawyer and already a partner at her law firm so she wasn't really looking for improvements professionally. And she was already happily married, so she wasn't in the dating scene trying to find the one. She hired us because she was tired of feeling not put together and plain.
What she told me was astonishing. One afternoon at lunch, some women complimented her shoes and Chanel suit which led to a quick conversation about what she did. They ended up becoming valuable new clients. Her husband loved her new clothes that she wore around the house, and her happier attitude made him feel good, that he planned a romantic surprise trip for the two of them. Something he hadn't done in years. And she said that she got hit on so many times that month, she felt like a new person! She couldn't believe it.
That was all in one month.
Attractive, quality clothes can change your life.
You don't necessarily need to spend a ton of money, you just need to know how to choose the right pieces. You might even have great, hidden pieces in your closet that you already own. If you don't know how to discover great pieces on your own, a good professional image consultant can lead you in the right direction.
Below are some examples of how people improved their income, jobs, and relationships by improving their wardrobes and image.
PEOPLE BELIEVE WHAT THEY SEE. IF PEOPLE THINK YOU LOOK SUCCESSFUL, IN THEIR EYES YOU ARE SUCCESSFUL.
Over the last 12 months, I’ve acquired a new addiction… shopping. And it’s not because I love clothes. The reality is I don’t care for them at all. At home, I walk around in .com t-shirts and basketball shorts because it’s super comfortable.
If it were up to me, I would wear that all day… including in business meetings.
But over the last 12 months, I’ve noticed that when I dress nicer, I seem to be getting larger business deals. Mainly, it’s because people assume that I’m well off based on how well I dress.
Funnily enough, I’ve done all right for a while now… but it’s only in the last 12 months that I’ve been dressing extremely well. I’ve always dressed somewhat decently because I’ve learned that it builds trust and credibility. And dressing well helped grow my consulting rate from $100 to over $1,000, all because of clothes.
I thought it would be a fun experiment to take wardrobe to the extreme and see what spending six figures on clothes would do for my business.
It sucks because I would have rather spent the $162,301.42 on a charity than clothes, but I know I need to grow my business as it will make me more money in the long run. This will allow me to donate more money to charity.
I have been tracking every meeting I attend for the last four and half years. I have a big Excel sheet with my closing ratios, average pitch price, company name, people within the meetings, their job titles, etc.
What I realized is that when I started to dress extremely nicely, the people in these meetings felt I was extremely successful. For that reason, they wanted to be associated with me, and it’s helped to increase my closing ratio from 25% to roughly 40%. That means out of every 10 meetings, 4 result in the companies signing up with me now.
The difference is huge! It was so huge that financially it brought in an extra $692,500 in revenue. It’s especially astounding considering that nothing else changed—not my pitch, not the prices, and not even the type of companies I was meeting with. The only difference was clothes.
Read the rest of Neil Patel's article >> How Spending $162,301.42 on Clothes Made Me $692,500
NICE CLOTHES WILL BRING YOU OPPORTUNITIES YOU COULD NEVER IMAGINE.
Mike's new image after spending $10,000 on new clothes
Mike spent a bit under $10,000 on clothes, and now he dresses like this…
Mike came from a car dealership world, and he specializes in sales and sales management. After attending a few tech events dressed like in the image above, Mike found that people started coming up to him and asking him what he did.
While attending tech events, he consistently got compliments on his clothes, and a few of those people hired him to help them build their sales teams and fine-tune the process.
He did this on a revenue-sharing model, and it worked so well that he started to hit six figures in monthly income.
Now, you may say that he could have gotten the same results with his old clothes, but he didn’t. He has always been a confident and outgoing person. But when he approached people at tech events in a t-shirt and jeans, the people were nice to him, but no one wanted to work with him. Why? Because they felt he wasn’t successful.
To make the experiment even more interesting, Mike recently purchased a Lamborghini.
Like most of us would do, he decided to drive it for a bit and post a few pictures of it online. Can you guess what happened after he did that?
He received 107 Facebook requests from business owners. Most of them wanted him to invest in their businesses, but five of them offered Mike a portion of their business in exchange for advice. Mike moved forward with one of the companies, which is also providing him with a $50,000 upfront fee for his time.
Read the rest of Neil Patel's article >> How Spending $162,301.42 on Clothes Made Me $692,500
IT IS ALL ABOUT THE FIRST IMPRESSION
For many years I wondered why business men were always looking very sharp with their suits, wrinkle free shirts and impeccable shoes. Do they get bored of wearing a tie every day?
I bet, just like you and me, many of these business men prefer to wear a more relaxed outfit and would rather enjoy their day on pajamas instead of a suit and tie.
What many of these men won’t tell you is that one of their ways of making more money and getting more business deals is actually by dressing up. If you stop to think for a second you will realize that this makes more sense than you ever thought.
IT IS ALL ABOUT THE FIRST IMPRESSION.
Unfortunately in our society you need to play with their rules and how you look is a big part of this game just as the way you introduce yourself, your gestures, eye contact, etc… if you are able to show credibility to the person next to you, you can make a lot of money.
If you want to make more money in business or grow in the company that you work for, you need to show that you are not sloppy.
One day I showed up at a Mercedes dealership to buy a new car for me and my wife, I approached a seller’s desk and I asked if I could take a look at one of the new cars that they had. She quickly responded to me “Do you know how much that car costs?”. I knew that she meant that I didn’t ‘look’ like someone that could buy a new Mercedes at her store.
I just realized why that was the motivate when my wife mentioned to me, "If we came in here dressed up all nice, she would have treated us differently."
Long story short, I left the place with a car sold by another seller.
That was my wake up call and I started testing what difference would the way I dress make in my life; the result was success.
I showed up at business interviews dressed up better and I presented myself like a big company instead of a small business from town. I changed the way my employees presented themselves as well; I made them wear uniforms, drive the company’s cars which had the company’s logo on it etc, and I started to see a growth on my business right away.
Even though most of the times I priced my jobs higher then most companies, my customers felt more secure using my company because their first impression of me and the company was better than the other guys.
Read the rest of Marcos Paulo de Andrade's article >> How Spending More Money on Clothes Will Make You Richer
CLOTHES DEFINITELY MAKE THE MAN (OR WOMAN).
A number of independent studies maintain that clothing can affect a first impression dramatically. Is it possible, then, to determine how someone is paid based on what they wear? For men, the answer is nearly always yes according to a 2011 salary report from Payscale.
For women, the answer is more complex: According to some studies, dress doesn’t influence higher income for women as much as it helps to ensure security in their current roles. Forbes writer Laura Sinberg warns that dressing ‘too sexy’ can make a woman seem less competent.
Mary Anne escaped an abusive relationship and found herself alone in Southern California with a child and no work skills. Then [she was] surprised on an NBC morning news show in San Diego with a wardrobe upgrade. She immediately landed a new part time job, started a company teaching etiquette to young kids and with her new swagger, landed a new boyfriend as well....
Every person who gets an image makeover reports increased self-esteem and greater trust and respect after changing their image.
In all, it’s clear that the way you dress can affect your income. So how is your current image and wardrobe supporting your ability to command optimal pay?
Read the rest of this article on Forbes.com >> Can Dressing Well Increase Your Income?
IN A PERFECT WORLD YOUR PERFORMANCE IS ALL THAT WOULD MATTER...BUT WE DON'T LIVE IN A PERFECT WORLD.
"Shouldn't how well I do my job matter more than how I look?" I asked.
"In a perfect world your performance is all that would matter," he said. "But we don't live in a perfect world. Take my advice: if you want to be promoted into a certain position... make sure you look like the people in that position."
I've thought about that conversation a lot over the years.
I've hired and promoted people who looked the part... and they turned out to be all show and no go. I've hired and promoted people who didn't look the part at all... and they turned out to be superstars. I'm convinced that how you look and, at least to a large degree how you act, has nothing to do with your skill and talent and fit for a job.
Still, he's right: the world isn't perfect. People still make assumptions about us based on irrelevant things like clothing and mannerisms... and height and weight and age and gender and ethnicity and tons of other qualities and attributes that have absolutely no bearing on a person's performance.
Read the rest of Jeff Haden's article >> Does How You Dress and Look Impact Your Career? Sadly, Yes
HOW YOU DRESS IS IMPORTANT FOR YOUR COMMUNICATION
At a lecture about personal branding and appearance, I asked 80 people to describe what a typical professor, computer hacker and high-school art teacher looked like. Not surprisingly, the answers didn’t vary all that much. It became obvious that uniforms, however stereotypical, were not limited to those of French maids and parking attendants.
Advertising executives and art directors have a “look” too. Take a unexpected step away from your working context (such as sporting a bodice-ripping outfit at a conservative bank, for instance) and professionalism, competence and judgement may well come into question.
It’s about trust and credibility. The reptilian part of our brain tells us to trust what we see more than any other sense. And trust what the person is wearing.
Several well-known studies from the 1960s involving lab coats, prison guard uniforms and electric shocks show we are more likely to rely on uniforms as an indicator of expertise and authority, than not.
At the end of the day, I think most of us would share a moment of doubt if the pilot of the transatlantic flight you were about to board showed up for work in Juicy Couture jogging pants. Call me shallow, but I’d sooner trust the uniform, if only for the fact that most uniforms are uncomfortable enough to keep people awake.
Read the rest of Annika Shelly's article on Forbes.com >> Are You Dressing The Part of Your Job?
SHOP RELATED PRODUCTS
Dressing sharp pays - in fact studies have shown that handsome men can make $230,000 more over a career than their less attractive counterparts.
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The Shopping Friend is a team of image consultants, personal stylists, shoppers, and coaches dedicated to elevating and improving our customers' and clients' lifestyles and careers through image, wardrobe, communication, and etiquette tools.
Our goal is to help you look and feel awesome according to your personality and lifestyle. We help you facilitate upward mobility in your job, career, and relationships with improvements in your wardrobe and image.
