Fashion Business Owner Musings: Often What You Need is Right in Front of You

Dear Designers,

There’s something that happens as we create goals for ourselves. Sometimes, if those goals are scary, we subconsciously find things that we need to have before we can get started. We hold ourselves back without realizing it, telling ourselves that we need something, when often what we need is right in front of us.

Here’s what I mean.

The people, information, and resources that we need in order to accomplish our goals, already exist. We just have to get used to looking for them and actually seeing them.

When we create this habit and change out mindset, we start to see real impact on our businesses.

I think it’s easy to believe that we don’t yet have what we need to be happy or accomplished or ready. The problem with this mindset is that we will never feel that we do. We’ll never feel  like everything is in the perfect place to get started.

I truly feel as though often, what we need is right in front of us. We’re just not seeing it.

I’m going to break this down into a of couple examples.

This idea can certainly be applied to a broad, more existential, life lesson. The idea that we have so much more than most and in that, we are able to seek out and find what we need to be happy and content. This is something I think we all have found ourselves forgetting every now and then– like when we experience a little Instagram scrolling envy.

And the above example is important and real, and something we should all try to remember.

But, I think this concept applies to really specific things, as well.

What I’m talking about it the understanding that so much of what we want to do in our businesses can be accomplished by looking at what we have already created. Whether we’re talking product design, marketing ideas, or something else entirely.

Here’s another example– I’ve been working on my marketing plan for StartUp FASHION and one of the things I want to do more of is video. The reason I haven’t done more video is because every time I sit down to work on it, I feel completely overwhelmed by the amount of content I need to prepare. “I don’t have time to write these scripts!” is what I say to myself.

I eventually started to get on my own nerves with this b.s. excuse and sat down to get this going. Once I stopped allowing myself to make excuses, I realized that every piece of content I need is already written. In blog post form! I have over 1500 blog post on this blog and if I’d just open my eyes, I would see that about 90% of them could be turned into helpful and informative videos.

Do you see what I mean? It’s all in the mindset.

If we keep telling ourselves that we don’t have what we need to execute an idea, it may never get done.

But if we stop and ask ourselves, “How can I re-use what I already have to bring this idea to life?”, I bet we’ll find ourselves accomplishing a whole lot more of the ideas and goals we want to achieve.

Try not to feel like you are constantly without what you need.

Lots of love and encouragement,

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!