The Power of Fashion on Your Mindset with Katie Allen

We’ve all grown comfortable working in our loungewear and favorite Lululemons since COVID completely changed work culture. But does that mean you should bid a forever goodbye to the luxury of dressing up and experimenting with your look? Not at all! In fact… it’s time you reintroduce the fun of fashion into your everyday life! And this isn’t just for vanity-sake…

“I had gotten that aha moment of, oh my God, style is so much more than just helping people pick out clothes. It’s how we feel in our bodies. We can literally transform our moods and our energy from moment to moment with the colors that we wear, the fabrics that we wear, the clothes that we wear, the sounds that our jewelry makes and all of those things coming together. At that moment it kind of just clicked. And then I realized that style coaching was a whole association. There are people that do this for a living. And I was like, oh my God, where have I been my whole life?” — Katie Allen

There’s an inherent, powerful connection between how you look and how you feel. On days you don’t want to leave your (adorable) pajama set, Netflix and chill is the only thing on your agenda. But when you’re meeting friends for a lively dinner or hitting a new vacation spot, you want to pull out all your show stopping wardrobe features! So what’s to say you can’t find a happy medium (and achieve success along the way)?

Playing with style was always in the cards for Katie Allen. Fashion was her calling but chose to check other boxes with a traditional marketing career. So when COVID hit and she was without a job, Katie was left with the time and space to wonder: who am I? And more importantly, how can I deeper connect to that woman I’ve always known myself to be?

One fateful encounter spent spewing style advice from her bathtub granted Katie the clarity she was looking for. (All the while launching her very own podcast and participating in a business mastermind, by the way!) Katie leant into her truest desire and launched her business designed to empower women by creating their own unstoppable style. And now she’s showing everyone how to put on their power with confidence and clarity!

I’m so ecstatic to welcome the fabulous Katie Allen onto this week’s IHML Show! Not only is Katie sharing her success story, but she educates us on the interconnectedness of our wardrobe with core values. She even shares the connection fashion has to our menstrual cycle. Together we’re discussing the importance of styling for success and why it’s crucial we experiment with our day-to-day look.

If there’s anything trendsetting Katie has learned, it’s that you deserve to feel like your best self no matter the occasion. So open up that closet and start sifting through the clothes that haven’t seen the light of day… because you (and your next-level self) know you’ve outgrown them and deserve a fresh hot look!

In This Episode:

[0:51] Katie welcomes us into her stylish world and starts us off with her story!
[4:11] The early thoughts and inspiration behind Katie’s podcast (before she rediscovered her stylistic calling).
[6:53] Katie divulges her true intentions for joining a business mastermind in early 2020— without a business!
[9:53] These are some of the shifts Katie underwent under the guidance of her coaches to help her move through her dark times.
[13:41] How mind mapping empowered Katie to achieve ultimate clarity surrounding her work with styling!
[16:23] Did you know you can manifest your desires with your clothes? Katie explains the deeper connection between them!
[20:12] Katie breaks down how to figure out what to wear based upon your instinctual feelings.
[22:04] FYI, you CAN dress according to your menstrual cycle according to Katie’s expertise!
[25:11] If you’re stuck in your Lululemon and sweatpants phase, this is the advice Katie has for you to start experimenting more…
[31:00] This is Katie’s wisdom and guidance on how to create a life better than your dreams

Quotes:

“Everyone would always ask me ‘what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do with that degree? Are you gonna move to New York? What are you gonna do?’ And I was like, I don’t know. I’m just trusting that it’s gonna figure itself out.” — Katie Allen

“At the time I was a breadwinner and I really identified with that as a powerful woman.” — Katie Allen

“To make a really long story short, a friend of mine was like ‘Hey, I have a client she’s on a photoshoot with to help her pick out what to wear. And I just was like sending her ideas and helping her strap from my bathtub. And my friend was like, how much do I owe you? And I was like, nothing. I’d do it for free cuz I was in the bathtub and it was fun. And she said, no, Katie people get paid to do this. And it was like the heavens parted. And I was like, oh my God, this is what I was always supposed to be doing. Um, and that is like long story short on how I came back to styling and really have just like immersed myself into using it as a tool to help women just like feel amazing and you know, go after their dreams” — Katie Allen

“Podcasting was a portal for me into really finding myself. And when I started listening, I was just listening to women talk in a way I’ve never heard like strong women talk. And I was like, ‘oh my God, this is amazing. I think I’m supposed to be doing this too!’ I love to be really vulnerable. I have always been an oversharer, and for a long time, I felt shame. And in the professional corporate world, people are like, ‘you can’t talk like that and you can’t say this and you can’t say that it’s not professional’. So it became like this outlet for me to just talk about the journey. And quite frankly, I just felt dead inside and I was like, there’s gotta be other women who have chased that dream of checking the box and still feel like something’s missing.” — Katie Allen

“I never identified with an entrepreneur because I didn’t identify with taking risks. I felt really, really safe, just checking those boxes. And I don’t know at what point in my life I just started to shove down those desires.” — Katie Allen

“I think that part of the journey was that I had to go through and go back to the corporate job. I had to negotiate for the money. I had to try to start a business with someone else because I didn’t trust that I could run a business by myself.” — Katie Allen

“When I was mind mapping, I was really back to that [important question], ‘what are my real values?’ Because I had been in this business mastermind I did feel like I knew what my values were, I knew what I wanted. So [I asked myself] what could I do every day to get back to that?.” — Katie Allen

“I tell my clients all the time: getting dressed for yourself is so much more powerful than getting dressed for other people.” — Katie Allen

“[That mind mapping is when] I had gotten that aha moment of, oh my God, style is so much more than just helping people pick out clothes. It’s how we feel in our bodies. We can literally transform our moods and our energy from moment to moment with the colors that we wear, the fabrics that we wear, the clothes that we wear, the sounds that our jewelry makes, and all of those things coming together. At that moment it kind of just clicked. And then I realized that style coaching was a whole association. There are people that do this for a living. And I was like, oh my God, where have I been my whole life?” — Katie Allen

“So when I start working with people, I always go back to [this idea that] we have our core values as people that probably stick with us most of our time but then on a day-to-day basis and what’s going on in our lives. I always try to honor the fact that we’re multifaceted and we wear different hats, we’re doing different things. And I always bring it back to ‘how do you want to feel today?’ So one of my clients referred to this as like people have their core desired feelings, she was like, ‘oh, these are like my core style feelings.’ So it’s this idea of like, how do you wanna feel today? And then what makes you feel that way physically like your clothes, something that you can adorn your body with. And then it’s the physical reminder as you move through the day.” — Katie Allen

“There’s nothing wrong with wearing sweatpants or leggings, but I think that you probably know naturally when you have those clothes on, you’re like ‘I’m relaxing, this isn’t really my creative energy’ vibe and that’s fine. That’s more of just like a relaxing and receiving mode, but sometimes we have to be in creating mode too.” — Katie Allen