Fashion Business Owner Musings: Slow Down

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Lately I’ve been feeling a need to move faster and it has been giving me an unpleasant feeling. Yesterday, I told myself out loud to slow down.

I’ve been allowing myself to get sucked into the mindset of needing to “hurry up”, that feeling that I’m not doing enough. I’ve been feeling frazzled by everything.

I think what tends to happen to a lot of us as business owners, is that not only is there always a long list of things that need to get done, but there’s also a worry about falling behind everyone else. So we start to feel frantic. We have this need to keep moving, keep making strides, keep pushing forward no matter the cost.

The problem is that the cost can be really high.

I’ve talked about the impact of stress and how we have to put ourselves first. I have taken back my mornings as a way of setting the tone for my day. But some days I slip up. Some days all my logic and good intentions go out the window and I get caught up in the rush.

You know the rush I’m talking about, right?

Like when I find myself jumping to conclusions and creating new goals as a reaction to something I’ve just heard.

Like when I hear about a new fashion business resource that has emerged, I immediately worry about the impact that will have on my business.

Like when I hear about a new technology that is all the rage, I immediately worry that if we don’t do it, then we’ll be left in the dust.

Like when I get a request for a blog topic or new resource in the StartUp FASHION Community, I immediately start trying to plan out exactly how I’m going to do that, without thinking much about whether it’s a good idea, whether it will help the community as a whole, etc.

Like when I have so many plans and ideas for StartUp FASHION that I sometimes forget that everything cannot be done at once. I get impatient and worked up when I feel like things aren’t moving fast enough.

Though these examples are my own, I have a feeling that a lot of you are going through similar things in your businesses.

Stuff like this can have quite an impact on us if we’re not careful.

But it’s not easy to avoid.

That’s why I’ve started this whole thing where I say to myself, out loud, “Slow down.” When I say it, I can actually feel myself relax. I take a deep breath, re-focus, and feel a lot better.

I know this journey you’re on is tough.

I know that growing a fashion business is overwhelming and you feel like you’re going at warp speed pretty much constantly.

But if you can try to implement little tricks like this to relax and help you focus on matters, I promise you’ll feel more calm in your life and more productive in your business.

Lots of love and encouragement,

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Nicole Giordano

Nicole is the founder of StartUp FASHION, an online resource and community supporting for independent designers around the world with building their businesses. A deep love for the craft of fashion paired with an adamant belief that success is defined by the individual, led her to found StartUp FASHION, where she helps independent designers and makers screw the traditional fashion business rules, create their own paths, and build businesses they truly love. More than anything else, she’s in the business of encouragement and works every day to remind makers and designers that they have something special to offer the world and that they can, in fact, do this thing!

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