Personal Style with Lauren Messiah

george grombacher 0:00
Come on

one life live. This is George G. And the time is right. welcome today’s guest strong and powerful Lauren Messiah. Lauren, are you ready to do this? Oh, I’m ready. Let’s, let’s go. Laura has been named by Google as one of YouTube’s Women to Watch. She is the author of style therapy 30 days to your signature style. She is a style expert, an entrepreneur and a CEO. Again, excited to have you on. Lauren, tell us a little about your personal life some more about your work and why you do what you do? Oh, well, let’s see.

Lauren Messiah 0:44
I’m in style of like, my personal life? Gee, that’s a big old question. So I’m all about using style to manifest the life of your dreams, you know, the way that you show up in the world is the way that you know, it affects everything, your relationships, how much money you make your happiness. So I am a promoter of using style as a tool to get what you want in life. I’ve got well, I’ve got a lot of great things in my life. So.

george grombacher 1:12
So so so it’s working. It is it is I love it. You know, it’s it’s fascinating that I’ve always been a proponent, and thought that how you present yourself to the world makes a huge difference. And it sounds like we’re coming from the same cloth.

Unknown Speaker 1:31
It does. I mean, it makes a difference in how you feel about yourself to self perception and other people’s perception. It’s just such an important tool that people don’t utilize enough.

george grombacher 1:43
And here we are, either at the beginning, the middle or the end of the pandemic, and we’re now on virtual calls. People are in their pajamas. 24/7. How has styles suffered? And what’s what’s what’s the way forward? Lauren?

Unknown Speaker 1:59
Yeah, I mean, there was definitely a shift in how we approach style. And I don’t know that it might change us forever, to some degree, I hope not. You know, at the very beginning of the pandemic, everyone’s like, what, what’s the pajama party, I don’t have to go anywhere. And I could wear sweat pants and not brush my hair, who cares? Video calls, I’ll just make myself presentable up top. But a lot of time has passed, you know, it’s two years now. And that affects how we feel about ourselves. Like we know when we wear sweat pants that we don’t exactly mean, business, we mean comfort. But when people go to put on their real pants, again, maybe they don’t fit as well as they used to. So I have been encouraging, you know, my clients and my followers to still get dressed, you’re not going to wear, you know, a three piece suit, in your home office, but put on something that says, I put some effort into the day. And it’s going to make the transition back into real life a little bit easier. I think the transition will be different than how we started. But we can’t wear these clothes forever. Or sweats forever.

george grombacher 3:18
Yeah. And even if we could, that’s maybe not that’s maybe not maybe not ideal. So what when when you’re engaging with somebody, what, what what is the goal of your work?

Unknown Speaker 3:31
My goal is to really transform people from the inside out, because people think like, oh, you know, I wasn’t born, you know, a fashion person, I don’t really care. You know, I don’t consider myself pretty or beautiful, or whatever. I want them to figure out who they really are inside. Because once you’re tapped into who you really are, who you want to become, you can’t help but to dress the part as well. And then all of a sudden, you kind of understand what looks good on you what you like what you don’t like, and you get to fully embody this badass person. So I’m really trying to help my clients unlock who they are. And we just do it through style. It’s more fun than go into therapy.

george grombacher 4:23
I think that that’s awesome. All right. So that’s a I imagine that that’s a super important step that you need to help people to really get down to the core of who they are. Otherwise, it’s just somebody wearing clothes.

Unknown Speaker 4:37
Exactly. I mean, it’s this vicious cycle that I think everyone goes through with material things. You really want something because you think it’s going to solve some sort of problem, right? I need a fancy car because I’m going to be cooler and people are going to respect me more and you go after this thing and once you get the thing, it wears off pretty quickly. You’re like, oh, this whole thing when that was a garment or an item you really saved up for. So you’re continuously chasing this outside thing, when you realize it doesn’t actually make you feel different on the inside. So there’s plenty of industries, including the fashion industry that are banking on that, we’re gonna make you feel bad about yourself. So you spend money to fix it. And we know where you’re gonna feel bad about yourself pretty quickly after it’ll have something new to offer you. So I want to break that cycle. And you can wear clothes that are many years old, or that were thrifted, or you found them at Target, and you can still feel like yourself, you can still feel authentic, you can still feel like a million bucks. So it’s that inside component that I think is missing in the fashion equation that I try to bring in for people.

george grombacher 5:50
Yeah, I think that that’s awesome. I mean, you probably can give me a pretty, pretty good list, but just really quickly, just kind of thinking that the coolest people, the most fashionable people out there are not necessarily the people that are wearing the most expensive stuff, it is folks who are showing up just as they are. And just by being them, whatever they put on. It’s, it’s, it’s gonna be cool.

Unknown Speaker 6:18
Yeah, I know, I tell my clients, it’s style confidence, you know, competence is really the thing that we’re after. And if you think about some of the most iconic people in the world, you know, who are known for their style, their styles, weird. It’s like, Elton John’s style icon, but nobody wants to wear. Say, No, it’s like, she’s Where did he get that? That. So him, you know, Lady Gaga can wear a dress made out of meat, and it’s photographed to death, and it will go down in history, but nobody wants to wear that. It’s the confidence that they have. And normal people can do their version of that as well.

george grombacher 7:03
I love it. So it is possible to do your version of whatever version you’re interested in doing. The mean, style is? It’s such a personal thing.

Unknown Speaker 7:16
Yeah, it is. And when you make it not personal by chasing after what you saw on the Instagram feed, or trying to recreate something in a magazine, it’s no longer personal to you. If you keep it personal to you, it can always be you, which is what we’re going after, I think.

george grombacher 7:35
Yeah, I think that’s I think that that’s awesome. So let’s, let’s just let’s let’s fast forward through the really important stuff of you helping people to actually figure out who they are, than how do you start to if if if we’re not comparing? Or we’re not looking at, you know, looking through Vogue and trying to find clothes that you like, how does that part of it work? How do you help people match up to what’s what’s what’s what’s right for them.

Unknown Speaker 8:02
You start by looking at yourself. So every time I work with a client, whether it’s through my book, or a program, or one on one, I have my clients do something called the seven day selfie challenge. And that’s where they take selfies every day for a week. And they journal about what they wore, how they felt, and how they were perceived. Because what was shocking to me, when I first started working as a stylist for everyday women, none of them had full like the mirrors in their houses. I’m like, you just walk out. You just go away looking. And because these, these women are looking at themselves. So when you actually look, you will be so surprised of what you see my clients are like this was eye opening. This was transformative. They don’t see how tired they look. They don’t see, you know how much they’ve really abandoned themselves. They don’t notice that. Wow, nobody smiled at me today, I was completely invisible. And then when they start playing with it, and they dress up maybe in a brighter color or something that flatters themselves. It’s like, oh, yeah, people are holding doors open for me, and I got more done. And you really get to see what style does. It’s not going to be found flipping through a magazine. Now later we get to do that. You know once you find yourself figuring out what you like going shopping, but it’s that like introspective, aha moment that you kind of have to force people into I mean, the pandemic force people into that you just stuck with yourself all day. You don’t have any distractions. So many people had, you know, these spiritual experiences. So you can do that too with style just by taking a little selfie.

george grombacher 9:50
Yeah, I think that that. I’m surprised to hear that. That so few people had full length mirrors.

Unknown Speaker 9:57
I had to put it in the book is like like on the shopping list, because they’re like, Oh, I did have one how?

george grombacher 10:04
And I’m thinking, I’ve always had a full length mirror. And then I remembered, oh, I’m super vain. So that all make sense. So, how how? I’m sure it depends, but when people are like, Well, yeah, I guess I, I couldn’t really wear that, though. Do you have to coax people to really just let it out? Just be yourself? Do what makes you happy? Who cares? What are the people going to think?

Unknown Speaker 10:32
Well, this is where more internal work comes. I have my clients work through style roadblocks. So these are, you know, mental things that are in the way like, money, you know, money mentality issues, worrying about other people’s opinions, body image issues. So when someone’s like, oh, I can’t pull that off. It’s like, well, let’s figure out what the deeper thing is. And that’s where they get to come up against, oh, you know, so one of my clients, she was really afraid to wear form fitting clothing. And it wasn’t because her body was bad. And it wasn’t a matter of me being like, Oh, girl, like you could pull it off, put it on, yeah, to do the internal work. And what she realized was that when she was really young, when she was 11 years old, she had over developed, and all of these creepy dudes were like, hitting on her when she’s a child. So subconsciously, She’s protecting herself by hiding behind baggy clothing. But now that she has this information that she had suppressed, she can say, I’m not going to let these creepy old dudes hold power over what I’m going to wear today. You know, she’s in her 50s today. So that’s the type of work that helps you pull things off. Because a lot of times, we don’t realize why we don’t like something when we don’t want to wear something, it could be much, much deeper. And breaking through that is really powerful.

george grombacher 12:05
Yeah, there’s no doubt about that. You mentioned somebody who’s in their 50s. Is it ever too late or too early to start this?

Unknown Speaker 12:15
No, no, no, no. As far as it being too late? Absolutely not. I have so many clients that are in their 50s and their 60s. And they finally have given themselves permission to not give a crap about what people think. So I have one client, and she is so cool. She’s in her 60s. And she’s like Aging Backwards, her before and after picture, you know, before she looks like, you know somebody whose grandmother, and now she’s got on like, patent leather leggings, and she she dyed her hair pink, and she looks cool. Like, oh my gosh, this like, older woman has lost it like no, she looks awesome. Because she’s finally just like, why I haven’t been living my whole life dressing for other people, when I should be dressing for myself. And as far as being too young, I think it’s amazing if someone can start looking at themselves differently from a young age, because when we’re developing when we’re teenagers, we get so warped by body image by what’s cool and what’s not cool. And if you could learn how to approach the way you carry yourself and styled differently. Whoo, whee, you’re going to be like a total badass. So never too early, never too late.

george grombacher 13:39
Yeah, I that certainly makes sense to me. And I think that anytime that you can do the work that you’re describing, of really trying to figure out how it is you want to feel and then set goals from there versus the opposite, which is what we normally do with goals. And if you can figure out where your blocks are talked about money blocks, or just blocks from when you were 10 years old, you got negative attention, or just fears that people aren’t going to take you seriously, if you were a certain, you know, dress a certain way. That’s just a positive exercise to go through no matter what.

Unknown Speaker 14:14
Absolutely.

george grombacher 14:16
How long does a typical engagement go for people?

Unknown Speaker 14:21
I mean, you know, in my book style therapy, we knock this out in 30 days. So it helps the process from start to finish. If you go at it, you know, intensely is 30 days, but you know, everybody’s journey is different. Sometimes it takes a long time. Sometimes it takes a short time. You just have to do what feels right for you.

george grombacher 14:43
Yeah, yeah. I appreciate that. I appreciate so thinking about people that that that I know and i i Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that you work predominantly with women. I do And it’s such a, like, my wife, for example, is is a pretty stylish person, but she’s so cognizant of dressing professionally. Because she wants to be taken seriously. And I imagine that this is something you come across a lot.

Unknown Speaker 15:17
Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is the thing, like when people are like, who cares what people think? Just dress for myself? It’s like, yes and no. So, you know, that’s why, within the seven day selfie challenge, it’s how you feel, and it’s how other people are perceiving you. So if you’re in an environment where, you know, professional dress matters, then you got to play the game. You know, I, I hosted this challenge a couple years back called the getting the room challenge. And obviously women are, we’re we don’t have the same advantages of men, you know, that men do in the workplace. But we have these other little tools in our tool belt that we can tap into, like style, you know, so men just could wear the same old whatever suit or polo shirt to work, women, we have so many options, and we look at that as a negative of like, Oh, we got to think about it as clothes, we got to spend money we got to stress out. But if you can flip it, and you can use it as a tool to be taken more seriously to get ahead. Why not use it. So I think dressing the part in the workplace is incredibly important. But just being aware of every body’s version of what’s considered professional or industry appropriate is different. So make sure you’re paying attention to the industry that you’re trying to infiltrate and look at the wardrobe for the people who are really crushing it and start aligning your wardrobe in that direction.

george grombacher 16:56
Nice. What do you think about capsule wardrobes? Like Steve Jobs wears the same outfit every day? Or used to write?

Unknown Speaker 17:05
Um, you know, it just depends. It just depends. I think a lot of people will use, you know, Steve Jobs or Mark sucker for good. They’re like, well, he just putting every day Why can’t Right? Like, well, we’re also like geniuses. They’re saving time, it makes sense. Not everyone has the luxury of being a genius and just pulling off wild success in a hoodie. But I do love the idea of a more simplified wardrobe, finding things that you really love, and that are easy to mix and match. So in my book, I have the something called the ultimate wardrobe checklist. And it’s items that you should have in your closet that work well together. Because I used to just buy any crazy thing that I loved, and nothing went together. So you were saying once and it’d be a total waste of money. But if you do have the basics, then your wardrobe will have a lot more longevity. And you can get away with wearing something multiple times without people thinking you’re wearing the same hoodie every day.

george grombacher 18:12
I love it. I’m such a proponent for having a standard operating procedure, or, in this case, the ultimate wardrobe checklist making sure that you have and you can correct me just sort of staple clothing or fundamental type clothes that you can wear frequently. It’s not just something you’re going to wear once. Yeah, absolutely. Nice. Love it. We’re Lauren, the people are ready for that difference making tip. What do you have for them?

Unknown Speaker 18:39
Oh, boy. I guess I’ll kind of wrap to into one. I always tell my clients do the work, get the results. And I will add to that of being consistent like those the difference making tips. I think a lot of times people think just because they buy the thing or they think about something they want that they they’ve done it. You have to do the work if you want to get the results. And it’s uncomfortable work and it sometimes takes a lot of time but it’s always worth it. There’s no shortcuts. There are people that can take the bumps out of the road for you. They can give you a roadmap, but there’s no true shortcut. So do the work, get the results and do that work consistently and it will pay off.

george grombacher 19:31
Well, I think that is great stuff that definitely gets come up. Yeah, you’ve got to do the work. No shortcuts. Couldn’t have said it any better myself. Lauren. Thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you and work where can they get a copy of style therapy 30 days to your signature style?

Unknown Speaker 19:50
Well, you can definitely check out my website Lauren Messiah comm follow me on Instagram. Same thing, Lauren Messiah, my YouTube Channel is loaded with free fashion advice and how to be a badass live videos and that’s also Loren Messiah. And my book style therapy 30 days your signature style is available anywhere books are sold on Amazon, Barnes and Noble anywhere, pick up a copy of it.

george grombacher 20:21
Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show, learn your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to Lauren messiah.com That’s laurnmssh.com Find her on Instagram and YouTube. I’ll link all those in the notes of the show and pick up a copy of style therapy 30 days to signature style wherever you buy your books. Thanks again, Lauren. Thank you, and until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai