Free image consulting tools and guides
Everything you need to plan, price and start a consulting practice, free. Use the calculators, take the checklist, and read the document guides.
- Four calculators for pricing, startup costs, and earnings
- Two step-by-step guides to starting and growing
- Ten template guides covering the paperwork
Free tools and guides
No sign-up needed. Use them as often as you like.
Consultation Rate Calculator
Work out what to charge for a consultation. It runs from the hours the session actually takes including the preparation and the written follow-up, the experience you bring, and what your market carries, so the figure has reasoning behind it rather than being copied from somebody's website.
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Startup Cost Calculator
What it costs to start seeing clients. Color analysis tools, a portfolio, the booking and payment setup, insurance, and the wardrobe you present in. The one people underestimate is the unpaid time spent building a portfolio before anybody pays for a session.
Open it nowEarnings Calculator
Model a month and a year. Put in the consultations you can realistically hold, your rate, and the costs you carry, and see what is left. Change one number at a time to find which one moves your income, which is usually repeat clients rather than new inquiries.
Open it nowBusiness Name Generator
Names that sound like a professional rather than a personal brand experiment. It builds from what clients actually search when they want help dressing well, and avoids the initials-plus-Style constructions that are already everywhere and impossible to spell over the phone.
Open it nowHow to Become an Image Consultant
The full path, in order. Choosing whether you focus on color, wardrobe, personal shopping or corporate work, building the skills each needs, setting your rates, and finding the first paying client. Start here if you have not settled on a direction yet.
Open it nowHow Much Can You Make?
What the work actually pays, with the arithmetic shown. One-off consultations, ongoing packages and corporate contracts broken out separately, because they are three different businesses, and an honest account of how the mix usually shifts over the first two years.
Open it nowDocument guides
What each document a consulting practice runs on needs to contain.
Image Consultant Business Plan Template
A plan turns "I would like to do this properly" into something you can act on. This walks through every section a lender, a partner, or a future you needs to see, without the jargon, and without pretending a consulting practice looks like a shop.
Read the guideImage Consulting Startup Checklist
Most people starting out are not short of information, they are short of an order. This is the sequence: what has to be done before you can take money, what can wait, and what people buy far too early.
Read the guideImage Consultant Client Intake Form
The intake form is where a session is won or lost. Ask the wrong things and you spend the first half hour recovering; ask the right things and you arrive already knowing what the client needs and what they are afraid of.
Read the guideColor Analysis Report Template
A palette that only makes sense with you standing next to it is not a deliverable. The report is what the client takes into a shop six months later, and it has to work without you there to explain it.
Read the guideImage Consulting Contract Template
Most consulting disputes are not about money, they are about what was included. A short agreement everybody reads is worth more than a long one nobody does, and it is the cheapest protection in this profession.
Read the guideImage Consulting Proposal Template
A proposal is not a price list with a covering note. It answers the question the client actually asked, in their words, and then explains what you would do about it. The ones that lose usually described the consultant instead.
Read the guideImage Consultant Invoice Template
An invoice is a payment instruction, not a receipt for something already settled. Most late payments are caused by an invoice that is unclear, unnumbered, or sent to a person who cannot approve it.
Read the guideImage Consulting Price List Template
A price list is a decision aid. Laid out well it answers the question before it is asked; laid out badly it produces inquiries that were only ever going to end in "how much is it, really".
Read the guideWardrobe Audit Checklist Template
An audit is not a clear-out. Done well it leaves the client with more to wear than they started with, because most wardrobes contain a working wardrobe that nobody has ever assembled.
Read the guideCorporate Image Workshop Outline
A corporate workshop is not a group consultation. The buyer is not in the room, attendance is often not voluntary, and the session has to be useful to somebody who did not ask to be there.
Read the guide