She was actually in bed. In the half-dark, propped up against pillows. You couldn’t see who she was. She just lurked there in the darkness.

Believe it or not, I’m talking about a high-level networking event – you know, the kind where women entrepreneurs meet over Zoom to present their services and support each other. They were gathered in the hope of connecting with potential partners and providing a solution to someone present on the calls with their services.

Most ladies were well groomed and had their cameras and computers set up, but this other lady was lying in bed and, I think, eating. I would never want to work with her whatever she did.

You’re probably thinking that I’m a judgemental bitch and that people should be able to show up on calls as they want. I call absolute BS on that.

When it comes to marketing, appearance and Personal Branding are to be taken as seriously, if not more so than Facebook ads and all that malarkey. Image and Personal Branding come at the bottom of the list for conventional marketing gurus. But hey, you’re not conventional, and you are a sensitive, conscious creator, so let me see if I can stroke your Dress and Get Rich vibe!

After trying a gazillion programs, ‘experts’, a marketing agency and so much advice it was coming out of my ears as fast as the euros went out of my bank account, together with a significant life event (nothing like those to get you focused!) I called a halt to everything. Then I took myself through my own methodology, The Trinity Code, and decided I had fallen from Image and Personal Brand Grace… (Covid didn’t help, did it?!)

So, I made a 90-degree turn back towards this self-evidence. My focus has shifted away from Preeminence – a Feminine High-Performance Model – to ‘midwife’ and reveal utterly divine Personal Brands, with all the style, Image, copy, aesthetics topped onto some solid branding principles.

“You’re doing what? Branding?” A colleague commented last year with just the teeniest hint of superiority. 

I replied, “No, I create Personal Brands – Divine Ones” I replied. 

“Ohhhh, you’re doing all that personal Image and PR stuff,” she said.

“Nope. Not that either.” I shook my head. 

These are uber-common misconceptions. Most entrepreneurs think that Image is another way to say Personal Brand and that Brand-ing is about creating a pretty website and fancy fonts. Or getting your niche and customer avatar perfect.

But that is only the tip of the iceberg. There is so much below the surface of the superficial and misunderstood word, ‘a Brand’, let alone a personal one. 

But let’s take the Style and Image parts for now; in my book, it is not at all related to your social media metrics but totally bound up in a fabulous Personal Brand!

Dressing for Success is a pretty old-fashioned expression, even if the principles are sound. I like to talk about a Success Image or, more precisely, an Aligned Style.

For me, as an entrepreneur – a ‘Success Image’ or having an ‘Aligned Style’ is way more than just branding or clothes.

It’s about your energy and the powers of magnetising your perfect audience.

It’s about marketing from the inside out.

It’s the vital link between your ‘why’, your message, your life purpose and how you feel.

It’s the vital link in ensuring you are visible, coherent, ubiquitous, and attractive to the right people!

It’s the vital link in your vibe being a match for your intentions!

It’s a vital link to you loving yourself in the mirror.

It’s a vital link to you enrolling the perfect clients.

It’s a vital link to them recognising you as the person to solve their problem.

It’s a vital link in closing a sale.

It’s a vital link in scaling your business to the dizzy heights you dream of, even creating million-dollar deals.

Here’s the science behind it.

Our Image is our way of communicating with the world – that is, our potential clients and audience, including potential JV partners and people with money to invest!

Our Image is made up of three key elements:

Our energy: life force, vitality, prana, moods, mindset, emotional set point, hormone balance. You already know that everything is energy. That includes every part of marketing because it’s not something outside us; it IS us! (This is the topic of another blog!).

 Our Life Purpose: our ‘why’, mission, vision, goals, dreams, and ‘raison d’être’. And our message!

Messaging and purpose are familiar to coaches using the online space, but they are intrinsically linked to your personal values and aspirations. 

 Our Style. Yep, the stuff we slip off the hangars. Aka, clothes that speak. 

 Clothes that claim who we truly and uniquely are. 

 Clothes that attract and magnetise our audience. Coaches often complain that they don’t know or can’t articulate their message, but our style is also our message.

 Take a look at your colleagues and sister service providers. Just look at how they showed up today, ha! Their Image is precisely their message and couldn’t be described more succinctly in words! How you show up, dress, speak, act and sell IS your message. You can have fancy words on your banners that mean you want to make a difference in the world, but what you do today and how you show up doing it are the actual message. We are our message. It’s the truth. 

So once we get a lovely prospect on a call, what do you think the brain in that important person opposite you will register first? Yes, your appearance or Image, together with your life force energy.

Before any golden words about benefits and payment plans drop from your ruby lips, in just three seconds, they have sized you up.

That’s scientifically proven, by the way, and the topic of a wonderful book called Big Dress Energy written by the author Shakaila Forbes-Bell. She has a master’s in fashion psychology. If you’re in any doubt as to why your Image is essential, her highly acclaimed book will clarify it for you. 

Swapping seats, as a prospective client, you might be in a meeting about possibly working with this person you’re drawn to, but your brain is working at a light speed faster! The interaction between two people is energetic and ultra-complex. For the sake of our topic, appearance, aka Image, does the job of conveying that energy. 

In fact, it’s a values thing. When people communicate, they unconsciously figure out if they share the same values. In marketing and enrolment, this is a prerequisite to working together. You’re not going to sign up with an 8 figure coach who wears nose rings and a gender-fluid outfit if you’re on the conservative, soft, spiritual side. In energy marketing, energetic interrelating is a big deal. And your Image and appearance lead the way.

In this world where visibility and connection are vital, Image is not just a communicator; it’s the most essential beginning to each day’s success cycle and how we rock the living daylights out of it.

Image Mastery is our personal expression. It’s our powerful divine, ‘I AM’.

It’s an art and a science, but it’s not Rocket Science! It’s an easily learnable but vital skill.

Showing up every day as world-class brings world-class results.

Maybe not tomorrow or the next day, but it will happen.

It will elevate your ‘ordinary’ into the extraordinary, even Issima!

Showing up every day as world-class will raise the mediocre into the spectacular.

The routine hum-drum into the adventurous and impactful.

Networking from bed eating won’t.

So, how much of a priority is style for you?

Do your style and Image speak of your own success signature that expresses who you are in your most brilliant glory? Or do you look like everyone else out there – fitting in so as not to stand out?

If that’s the case, how do you expect MILLION DOLLAR DEALS to find you?

A magnetic Image attracts. That’s the law!

But is the mantle of your magnificence hanging on the hangers in your wardrobe? 

Does your personal style speak of your own success signature that expresses who you are in your most brilliant glory, your identity, your values, and your sense of your own beauty?

Or is dressing an unconscious or rushed affair? Do you look like everyone else out there – fitting in so as not to stand out?

If that’s the case, how do you expect success to find you?

I know it’s a pokey question.

The Image you project …. is it the one that says you playing at your highest level?

Do you feel stunningly beautiful and comfortable in it?

Does it feel like your soul is clothed in all her glory?

 So what can you do today? Tonight? This weekend, to create that cycle?

Firstly, check in with your dreams and make sure they are big enough.

Then ask yourself what it is you need for you to play at world-class.

Then go and look in your wardrobe and see what’s hanging on the hangers.

Ask yourself if the Image of your victories is already in there – if the mantle of your magnificence is hanging on the hangers. If your style speaks of your own success signature that expresses who you are in your most brilliant glory. 

Dressing for Success is not about showing up as society expects you to.

Within your Personal Brand, Image and Style are a huge deal.

You may have to send people to your website, but show up on a connection call, a masterclass or a networking meeting dressed as YOU as your highest self, you stack all the cards in your favour and give yourself a huge advantage. 

And if you ever see the dear lady lying in bed, munching (you’ll know her).