Selfishness is never an attractive
quality. Whether it’s a room full of toddlers fighting over the same toy
or a friend who dumps you for her new boyfriend, selfishness is
repulsive… or is it?
Sure, the word selfish has negative connotations, but today I want
to encourage you to remember that it’s not always a bad thing to look
out for number one… and especially so when you’re trying to run your own
business.
David Allen, a
work/life management system guru and author of ‘Getting Things Done: The
Art of Stress-Free Productivity’ once said “You can do anything, but
not everything”. So often when we’re working for ourselves we want to be
the biggest, the best, the most popular, the most sought after… we
don’t want to be left behind, we want to get all the best clients, we
want to win the awards and be recognised for what we do… and that’s
great, but what does this mentality make us do? Take on too much and try
to do it all, that’s what!
This doesn’t benefit anyone and taking this chaotic approach will not
only dilute your product and the service you offer your clients (you
can’t physically give the same level of service to 100 clients as you
can if you only had 1) Cutting down commitments and allowing yourself to
focus on a few things, and do them really well, is paramount
to success.
You know the drill. It’s 9am Monday morning. You log in to your
computer and you have 75 new emails. Your phone rings. It’s a client
with an ‘urgent’ enquiry about her order.
You have to pop to the post office to ship orders.. You have a meeting at 3pm with a potential new client… which,
oh yes, has to be done by you… and definitely in person. You miss lunch,
you’re late picking the kids up from school (again) and you forgot to
pick something up for dinner. You’re overworked, over-commited
and overwhelmed. ARRGH!
According to Allen, this is one of the biggest ‘silent traumas’ of
workers everywhere. Plus, it’s got to be a million times worse for
someone running their own business, where everything you do
has consequences to how much money you have to feed your family. “We
inhabit a world,” he says, “where there are no edges to our jobs and no
limit to the potential information that can help us do our jobs better”.
What’s more, in a highly competitive market like the fashion industry,
that’s continually being reshaped by the internet, we’re even
more tempted to take on more than we can physically handle to stay ahead
of the curve. So how on earth do we know when to stay enough is enough!?
I’ve had a few people email me recently asking about how I manage my
time. While, sure, I’m a busy bee, I am not always running to keep up
with myself. I have time off. I watch crap TV. I go out for dinner. I
have regular nights out with my friends. I go shopping. I take day trips
to London. How? Well it’s actually quite simple. I’m streamlined, I’m
strict with myself and I turn things down regularly. I’m totally selfish
with my time.
Allen agrees, and argues that the real challenge is not managing your
time but managing your focus. “If you get too wrapped up in all of the
stuff coming at you, you lose your ability to respond appropriately and
effectively”, he explains. “Remember, you’re the one who creates speed,
because you’re the one who allows stuff to enter your life.”
After I’d been in fashion and styling for a few years,
external (and granted, at the time, very exciting) offers started to
come in. “We’d love you to write a column for our magazine…erm…no sorry
we can’t pay you but it will be great publicity for you!”, “Oh we’d love
for you to come as a special guest to our event… we’d love you to take
photos and write a report on this and this. Hey, you could even do a talk
if you liked. No, we can’t pay you, but it would be great for all of
us!”, “I’d love to have an advert on your site… How does a £50 voucher
and a free pair of shoes sound?”
And no, I’m not making any of those up. And yes, at the time I
accepted all these offers with an excited glee and a thrill to get
started on my ‘exciting new project’. In time I realised the unpaid
magazine articles were actually taking me at least a day to write, often
more with the emails flying back and forth and last minute changes to
briefs and deadlines. The ‘free exposure’ I was getting from attending
swanky events was reaching a smaller number of people and no new work was coming in.
Cutting down my commitments (and erm… putting my styling prices
up massively!) was paramount to how I progressed my business
over the years. I worked with less people, I earnt more per
project and I havd more time to focus my energy on the things that
mattered to me and my business. The people who would pay for my time and
services were the ones I really wanted to be working with… not
just because they paid my bills, but because they really valued what I did
and they wanted to work with me over anybody else. I’m never going
to apologise for what I charged because I know I did a bloody good job for
the people that choose to work with me.
I’ve let go of the guilt of saying no to
people (which gets much easier to do when you realise how huge the
benefits are). By turning down things I’ve been able to
really knuckle down and focus on the things I want to do for my
business… I started Wonderland with a few items in my spare bedroom, and now we are in the midst of launching our own in house line!
I’m not saying you should never work for free and I’m certainly not
saying you shouldn’t help other people. Especially when you’re first
starting out, collaborations or working for exposure can be hugely beneficial, and helping someone with something for no other
reason than to be selfless can, and usually will, come back and reward
you in the long term.
But I ask you, what have you done to be selfish recently?
