If you don’t have a vision, have a something
It gets easier to create when you know what you want to create.
It has taken me an embarrassingly long time to learn that a lot of business projects don’t have a driving vision.
Maybe it’s a theater thing. Maybe it’s just a creative industry thing in general. But for the longest time after transitioning out of theater I simply assumed most people had a vision for what they were doing.
Because artists always do.
It might be a shit vision. It might get lost or muddled. It might be disjointed and not hold water, it might actually be three warring visions in a trench coat.
Of course, you hope it’s a clear, cohesive, unifying, moving vision. But even if it’s a bad vision that falls apart, at least at the beginning there was a vision for the project.
I’ve always approached business projects the same way. Because if you don’t know where your project is heading, how could you possibly decide how to get there?
Fortunately, lack of vision does not come up very often amongst my clients (business or style). But what does happen is the vision changing, or getting muddled, or getting lost amongst the day to day running of a business.
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- How do you reorganize your CRM and email list?
- When should you pivot your business?
- How do you redesign your 16 year old website?
- What do you wear to an interview on an entirely new aspect of your career?
Those are some of the questions that have come up over the past month and all of them in some way are struggling with a lack of clear cohesive vision.
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I’m working with a non-profit client on implementing some more streamlined business systems. In this instance the vision for the whole organization is crystal clear. The vision for how the day-to-day operations and systems should run has become muddled. And so we come to questions like: how do you reorganize your CRM and email list without clearly knowing how you want to use them?
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I’m working with the founder of a next-gen fabric start up. She’s a creative, she went to fashion school, she has a vision. Her vision was B2C next-gen fabric handbags, but is getting non-fashion industry advice to focus on textile manufacturing rather than B2C finished product commerce. The question she’s facing is: should I pivot from B2C to B2B? When is it time to shift the original vision?
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I’m working with myself on redesigning HollyChayes.com. Redesigning my website has been on my list for longer than I care to remember. I’ve had some version of this website for about 16 years, there have been a lot of projects over the years, so redesigning it is pretty daunting. The question I’m facing is: what does a website hub that presents my current work, makes space for my future work, while honoring my past work, look like?
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I have a friend who does astrophotography and was invited to participate in a fireside-chat-style conversation about her work. She has no clue what to wear yet. She’s given tons of presentations in her past careers, but nothing like this, and not about her art before. The question she’s facing is: what is my vision for myself in this new phase of my career?
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Four unique situations. Four unique questions. All coming back to: what is the vision?
Once we name, or clarify, or decide, or envision for the first time the vision, the details can begin slowly falling into place.
Like the gravitational pull of a planet or the destination for a vacation, a project’s vision gives the tasks, to dos and decisions a focal point.
It’s like trying to plan a trip without any idea of where you’re going to go. “Travel more” is harder to plan than “go to Paris” or even “go anywhere as long as the flight is between $X and $Y on one of these three dates.”
A vision. A feeling. A mood. A vibe. A something. An anything that gives you a direction to point your feet, and to gut check decisions against.
Start with the something. Because “fix it” or “make it better” or “I REALLY NEED TO SOLVE THIS!” Doesn’t tell you which flights to book or month to go in or even which map to pull up.
And if you don’t have that something yet, make it your first priority.
As always, if you’d like to work together on your business, your style, or your creative life, schedule a call and we’ll get the process started.
This post was originally emailed as part of September’s newsletter. Sign up to receive next month’s email.
Photo by lilartsy on Unsplash
Use your favorites as a guide
Your favorites are important guideposts
A while back I ended up in an internet rabbit hole about why making friends is simpler when you’re a kid then when you’re an adult and two themes came to light:
1. Kids are trapped with each other for hours a day in school for weeks and months at a time. Friendships are formed as a kind of survival mechanism. But then, those same friendships are fostered through connecting outside of the school day.
2. Kids haven’t been trained out of being overtly rude yet. If some people are friends then other people are by definition not friends. Friendship shows a kind of favoritism.
I was thinking about this favoritism aspect again because another stylist I know asked for input on a SubStack article about why we don’t wear the clothes we don’t wear.
In answering her questions I realized I play heavy favorites in my closet and sometimes clothes fall out of favor. It doesn’t mean they’re bad clothes, they just aren’t favorites of the moment.
The thing about favoritism is, when you think about it as data it highlights your strongest preferences. It’s why I ask clients about their favorites in their closets. I’m learning more about what they love so we can add more love to their closets.
In business…
Obviously you can’t use favoritism in business the same way you can in your closet. People are not objects and shouldn’t be used as such.
But your favorites still hold valuable information. Your favorite clients to work with, your favorite products to sell, your favorite services to deliver – all of these hold clues about where you should be directing your future.
You can and arguably should craft your business in the direction of your business’s North Star. This is true even (and especially) if your business is “just you” or “just your freelancing” or “just a couple of gigs.”
This applies outside of style and business too…
Knit more of what you enjoy knitting. Cook more of what you enjoy sewing. Grow more of what you enjoy growing. Sew more of what you enjoy sewing. Read more books you enjoy reading. Spend more time with your favorite people.
Lean into what you love. Important clues live there.
As always, if you’d like to work together on your business, your style, or your creative life, schedule a call and we’ll get the process started.
This post was originally emailed as part of August’s newsletter. Sign up to receive next month’s email.
Taking deliberate action: slowing down to speed things up
I have a client navigating some health challenges and so one of the things we’re working on is doing fewer things better. We’re creating more lead time so she has room to maneuver around flairs, low energy days, and other surprises. And generally building in more buffer and proactive rest days.
In some ways this looks like working slower. But what it really means is working more deliberately.
Working deliberately carries its own kind of speed.
This is one of the most counterintuitive things that I keep needing to relearn in new ways.
Staying within my capacity expands my capacity faster than pushing outside of it. Deliberately slowing down each step speeds up the whole process.
It’s frustrating.
And it’s one of those things that requires repetition after repetition after repetition to learn.
But it works. As counterintuitive as that is.
I suspect the magic comes down to smoothness and getting things right the first time.
Rushing and pushing almost inevitably leads to mistakes. In the rare instances it doesn’t, success comes down to luck, not skill.
Troubleshooting and back tracking and fixing and getting back to where you were are time consuming. And no one knows exactly how time consuming and frustrating it’ll be until it’s done.
Going slowly, staying within your capacity, and doing the very next right thing means you can focus enough to do this step right and plan the next one. You aren’t jumping from the past to the future to the present. You aren’t zooming between the granular details and the big picture and the in between all within the next five minutes.
Slowing each step down means you can stay in one time at one level of detail until your task is completed or road blocked.
I see this happening in…
Movement – slowing down a lift to make the same weight more challenging, a controlled approach the edges of your flexibility expanding your flexibility.
Making – late night knitting makes for early morning ripping, rushed sewing means more time with the seam ripper, hasty measurements means your cutting is probably going to be wrong.
Business – doing the very next most obvious step is typically better for growth than flailing around, deliberately laying the groundwork means growth is typically easier to manage, and taking the time to build a coherent strategy means you’re less likely to get distracted by something new and shiny.
Style – hasty shopping makes a mess of a closet while deciding on your style cues ahead of time gives your shopping a personalized filter, and taking the time to practice your style makes iterating clear.
Recovery – recovering before you’re depleted means you’re not trying to fill an empty cup because the cup was never empty in the first place. (Leave some energy in there, it’s like seeding the tip jar of your energy banks.)
I know deliberate action is difficult in the short term, while overworking seems easier. Taking steps slowly seems slow, while speeding up seems fast.
It helps to remember that the tortoise won the race against the hare.
Of course this does require belief that the race you’re running is one worth winning.
But that’s a topic for another time.
That’s all for now.
As always, if you’d like to work together on your business, your style, or your creative life, schedule a call and we’ll get the process started.
This post was originally emailed as part of July’s newsletter. Sign up to receive next month’s email.
