Is a Style Consultant Necessary? 3 Options For Image Consulting For The Regular Guy

This post is based on the video – When Should You Hire A Style Consultant?

Gentlemen, Antonio here. Quick question for you. So, do you think the average Joe, regular guy, does he need to work with a stylist? Does he need to work with an image consultant?

Let me know what do you think in the comments. I love hearing from you guys and I’ll jump in there and interact.

But, my opinion is that most men can and should work with somebody to help up their style. Now, I know what many of you guys are thinking, Antonio, that’s crazy, I mean that’s going to cost thousands of dollars.

And, yes, if you work with a celebrity stylist like my friend maybe Ashley Weston here, it may cost a pretty penny.

If you want to work one on one with one of the top image consultants in the world, yes, that may cost you, but there are so many other options and many of which are actually free.

So, in today’s video, guys, I’m going to give you three options. I’m going to talk about paid options and going to a lot of detail about that.

I’m going to talk about indirectly paid options which I think are a great option for a man that’s already upping his wardrobe on ways to get a second opinion and I actually worked with I think some of the best stylist that actually don’t charge for their time or to go with a completely free options.

So, you don’t want to buy any clothing, you just simply want a free way to be able to get kind of personalized information about men’s style. I’ll talk about that at the end.

Now, guys all of these is supported with my article here at the Real Men Real Style. Go check I t out.  I actually recommend a number of my competitors. Guys, you know I’ve got courses I’ve got all types of stuff that helps men look better. When it comes down to it and the first thing I want to stress is you need to find somebody you resonate with. Find your Yoda.

Find the guy that is ahead of you in that particular area and to say, you know, I get his style, I really like his sense of the way he puts himself together, that’s who I want to – that’s who I want to imitate that’s who I want to work with that’s who I want to in a sense get something from.

#1 Paid Advice

So, option number one, paid advice. What am I talking about? This is very clear where you are exchanging money for their time. Now, the great thing about working with someone in a paid relationship is it’s going to be usually a lot more professional. They are going to make time for you, that’s what you’re paying for.

If you go free or if you’re relying on maybe someone that is doing you a favor, guess what happens? Oftentimes they flake on you or the level of professionalism drops.

So, speaking of professionalism, they should, you know, honor the time that they say they’re going to be there. They should give you the time that your owed and you want to make sure that these people are passionate. I’m not going to say that they need to be formally trained. Actually, some of the best image consultants, stylists, all these type of people that I’ve worked with, some of the best ones actually had no formal training, they were just very passionate.

All right. So, that brings up another question, Antonio, what is the difference between an image consultant, a style consultant, or perhaps someone that maybe calls himself a personal shopper. Okay. So, an image consultant should be able to work on your entire image. So, it’s not just going to be the clothing, it’s actually going to be – so body language, it may be etiquette, it may be manners, it may be other things that in a sense pertain to how you present yourself to the world.

Style, is going to focus mostly on clothing and then a personal shopper, they’re going to focus less on your education and more of actually taking action and doing what needs to be done, so they’re going to go out there and they’re going to shop for you. At the end of the day, what matters is that you know what you want and you know where you need to improve and you find the right person to be able to suit your needs.

Like I said, guys, in the article I recommend a lot of my friends aka competitors, but let’s say Tanner Guzzy at Masculine Style, Baron over at the Effortless Gent, Brock over at Modest Man, Grant Harris over at Image Granted, Travis over at Unkempt Gentlemen. Guys, these are people that you can work with one on one and they can help up your style.

Another option that is paid is where you actually go through a course. You guys probably know I have the Personal Image System, I love this course, run it probably about six to five times a year.

It is something that I have a set limit of students that I’m going to run through it, but there are other courses and go check out my link here, I’m going to refer to some other ones that you can go check out and see if they suit you and, again, that is the key, gents.

#2 Indirect Paid

So, now, let’s talk about indirect paid options. So, one of my favorites is actually specialty stores online that deliver and curate clothing and have it delivered to you. You guys probably have heard of Trunk Club. My favorite is Men’s Style Lab. I know the founder, Derian.

I’ve worked with his team over there and I love the attention right out of Iowa. But, finding one that works for you that delivers on the promise, you’re going to find that the price range is all over the board, again, one of the reasons I like Men’s Style Lab is I feel their price point is fair.

Another option is to go a specialty menswear store locally in your area or perhaps it’s worth you driving a couple of hours to go to one that maybe is in a larger city, but going to have experts or going to have men and women that work at these places that know what they’re talking about.

And you’re going to know when you talk with this person. Why? Because you’ve paid attention to my channel, you’ve learned quite a bit about style, so you’re going to go in there and ask some good questions. If you get blank stares or if you get it so that they’re not wanting to spend time with you, probably not the right place. But, hopefully you’re able to find a great salesman and I mean a traditional salesman who understands that his job is to help the customer find what they’re looking for and to serve them.

When you can find someone like that and they’re able to points you in the right direction, they’re able to say, hey, you know, don’t buy right now because guess what, we’re going to have a sale here in about a week and I would rather you come in and build up your wardrobe. You asked some great questions, I’ve enjoyed talking to you for the last thirty minutes and  you’re sitting there holding a beer which he brought up to you, but just because, you know, he  wanted your time there to be more enjoyable. That, gentlemen is a specialty menswear store.

Another indirect paid option is to work with the custom clothier. Now, you’re going to see there’s a wide range of them and some of the menswear specialty shops which I just mentioned will actually have custom clothing in them, but what I’m talking about more are more of traveling tailors or specialty tailor shops. So this is where you walk in and they will actually just have a lot of fabric or they’ll come to you because they’re may be in from Kowloon, Hong Kong, the Hong Kong area, or maybe they’re in from Bangkok and maybe they’re in from London.

In any case this guy is going to come to you and he is expecting that you’re going to do business with them especially if he comes to your – your place of business, but this guy also bringing in with them a wealth of information, hopefully. So, again, you’ve got to be able to bet people and that’s why it’s important that you’re watching these videos that you’re learning so that you can ask great questions.

#3 Free Options

The final indirect place where I think a man can actually get some pretty darn good advice, vintage stores. Why? Vintage stores are great because what you’ve got working there are enthusiasts. People that care about style.

And this is going to be if you’re a little bit more fashion forward or you want to have a little bit of fun, you can go into some of these vintage stores and they’re kind of separated from the modern fashion trends because they’re pulling in from clothing from last twenty to thirty years, they’re able to help you approach style  in a way that’s a bit maybe different than what you’re used to, but I find that some of the guys working there or the gals working there, they are just great people and they are there to help you.

Option number three completely free. Guys, have you downloaded and checked out my app? Almost three hundred reviews, most of them five star. I’m pretty proud of this thing. Guys, I’m also going to link to the article here. In that article I’m going to refer to other apps that you can download and you can check out.

So, the great thing about these apps and why I’m having them here is that many of them actually can customize a bit of the information to you. You can actually go through there and find – I mean some of the articles I’ve put out or Aaron Marino’s put out or number of other guys out there, they’re so specialized that you can use them maybe change a few things, but it’s almost like getting a free personal style consultation.

Another free option, reach out to the best-dressed men in your network. You’re going to find that if you just talk with these guys and you ask them you reach out to them for their advice, they are going to be more than happy to point you in the direction of the barber they use, of the clothier they go to, their opinion on this fashion trend, or this style, you know, should you wear this, how does this work. The key here is don’t waste their time. Treat them as you would a professional and don’t – don’t ask for too much.

So, at the end of the video, what’s the final free option? Guys, I have created an automated consultation which is absolutely free. You can go to it right here. What I did is I set up a series of questions depend – it’s kind of like choose your own adventure book. You actually go through and you choose various options and out spits a customized video. I can tell you guys we put a lot of work into this and we created a lot of videos.

My thing was I wanted to be able to scale individualism, I realized not everyone can afford to go through my Personal Image System, not everyone is going to be able to go off and, you know, work with a coach one on one. So, I wanted to create something that could reach more people help answer some of  their questions and depending on what you think of this and I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments of what else I should ask and where else I should focus with this. You know I may create more like this, but I love being able to give you exactly what you need when you need it.

All right, guys, that’s it. I will see you in the next video. Take care.

This post is based on the video – When Should You Hire A Style Consultant?