When I Look Back, It All Makes Sense

My career has taken me from modelling, to image consulting, to luxury training. The more I look back, the more I realise how much each chapter prepared me for the next.

I began this work because I understood image and presentation, I had the exposure, and I knew what it takes to be comfortable around people with very different levels of wealth and status.

And I understood that luxury sales and service is about much more than an expensive product.

Most luxury training begins with the things we can see:

·      Grooming

·      Dressing

·      Professional presence

·      Communication

·      Etiquette

·      Product and brand knowledge

All of these things matter. But it is important to recognise that, while crucial, these aren't enough.

Just because you can teach someone how to look polished, that doesn't necessarily mean they feel comfortable sitting across from someone considerably wealthier than them.

You can show them how to behave correctly, but that doesn't mean they will know how to hold their own.

You can teach them the external codes of luxury, but something deeper is often missing.

The internal sophistication to feel that you belong in the room without having to pretend to be someone you aren't.

And this is something I understood instinctively, because I had been learning it since childhood.

It’s not because I grew up HNI-rich. I was lucky to grow up in a family where exposure was valued.

Exposure without intimidation. That is probably the most important thing my upbringing gave me.

As children, we met people who had much more money than we did without being taught that they were somehow better than us. And we were encouraged to observe rather than to be impressed.

My parents gave us access to experiences, not to teach us to aspire to status, but as a way to teach us how to conduct ourselves.

• How to speak to people.

• How to ask for what I wanted.

• How to appreciate quality.

• How to be comfortable with who I am.

I learnt very early that wealth doesn't automatically make someone more important, sophisticated, intelligent or confident. These are things that can be learnt through education, observation, experience and exposure.

And I never needed to pretend. I didn't need to perform sophistication.

And, most importantly, I didn't feel that my own worth changed depending on who was standing in front of me.

Looking back, that is probably why the progression of my career feels so natural to me now.

I was the little girl who stood on her toes at a hotel reception desk asking for her favourite room, the teenage model who wasn't particularly impressed by celebrities, and the young woman who became fascinated by image and perception, eventually becoming the trainer working with professionals who serve some of the world's wealthiest people.

I spent my life learning how to navigate different worlds without losing myself in them.

• I learnt that people are people, whatever their wealth or status, and that you just need to listen and pay attention.

• I learnt that you can appreciate beautiful things without worshipping them.

• That you can respect someone's wealth without being intimidated by it.

• That you can enter an unfamiliar environment without pretending to belong there.

• And that much of what we call sophistication is actually something we can learn.

  
  

That is what I bring with me when I walk into a training room today.