Improvability Blog

It seems to me that women starting out in business bring so much unwanted baggage with them and, yet, we have so many innate skills that are just crying out to be made the most of. 

You would make an absolutely great business owner if only you stopped listening to the doomsayers and those who are probably green with envy at the very thought of NOT being brave enough themselves to do what you’re contemplating.

Look at what YOU bring to the business arena:

• Women multi-task - YOU do more than one job at a time brilliantly
• Women have brains - and YOU have the common sense to use them
• Women have compassion - YOU care and want to change other people’s lives for the better
• Women have the power - YOU could run your own business so incredibly well…

… and yet, there you are, listening to some grouchy old friend (or worse, a family member) rabbit on with such uplifting sermons as ‘most businesses fail in the first two years’, or ‘there’s already someone locally doing what you’re going to do’ , or ‘women round here will never pay that much’.

STOP listening to these sad people!

The statistics about whether businesses fail or not and when are not proven.  In fact one set of stats is always being dis-proved by another.  And quite frankly, you can prove anything with figures.

It wouldn’t bother me if there were image consultants living either side of me; there are 21 million women in the UK alone – how many clients can we all get round in one short lifetime?

And in any case, by the time I’ve finished with you, you will be able to charge what you are worth and clients will be queuing up to pay you.

START listening to these wise people!

The immensely wealthy Greek shipping magnate, Aristotle Onassis was asked, “If you lost all your money, Mr. Onassis, what would you do?” He replied, “I would pick up the crumbs from a rich man’s table.”

What he meant was that he would spend his time around and work for and alongside rich people. When you surround yourself with rich people, you become rich.  You meet other ‘rich’ people. You pick up their ‘rich’ ideas. You become exposed to and steeped in ‘rich’ thinking. 

And if you’re getting hot under the collar about money being seen as the prime motivator here, take a deep breath and read a little further. 

‘Rich’ doesn’t just mean having loads of money.  If it upsets you,  change the word ‘rich’ to ‘abundant’. 

Whatever you value in life – great relationships, financial freedom, excellent health – you need to be around people who are drenched in an abundance of what you are searching for.

So being around those poor, sad souls who constantly whinge and moan about life, money, the government, the state of the world and anything else they can think of is going to bring you down to their level (which is very, very low indeed).

Let them stew in their own sorrowful soup.

Move on, and up!

Instead, search out those people who are positive, upbeat, inspiring,  energetic, successful, and are drenched in abundance.

And then you’ll become as rich as they are, and as rich as you know you deserve to be.

A lecturer when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked, “How heavy is this glass of water?”

Answers called out ranged from 20g to 500g.

The lecturer replied, “The absolute weight doesn’t matter.
It depends on how long you try to hold it:

• If I hold it for a minute, that’s not a problem
• If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have an ache in my right arm
• If I hold it for a day, you’ll have to call an ambulance

In each case, it’s the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.”

He continued, “And that’s the way it is with stress management.
If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later,
as the burden becomes increasingly heavy,
we won’t be able to carry on.

“As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again.
When we’re refreshed, we can carry on with the burden.

“So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down. Don’t carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow.

“Whatever burdens you’re carrying now, let them down for a moment if you can.”

So, my friend, put down anything that may be a burden to you right now. Don’t pick it up again until after you’ve rested a while.

No, I’m not being rude.

I read this week that these ‘bags for life’ that we’ve all been exhorted to buy instead of using plastic carrier bags could be dangerous for our health.

Scientists from the University of Arizona did tests on shoppers’ bags which revealed half contained traces of E.coli, a lethal toxin which killed 26 people in Scotland in 1996 in one of the world’s worst food poisoning outbreaks. Plus they found many were contaminated with salmonella…

Oh, yuk!

I’ve written about this before.

OK, so I lie.

I published a fantastic article written by someone else about this and you need to read it right now.

Meanwhile I’m off to douse my jute ‘bag for life’ in bleach…

Hundreds of years ago, I needed to find a photo of both Neil and myself very quickly to post out to a friend abroad. As I absolutely loathe having my photograph taken, I had to search back through some holiday snaps from the previous year and finally found one that a kind passer-by had been coerced into taking for us.

I started scribbling a quick note to go with the photo trying to describe where it had been taken which, unfortunately, meant I had to take a closer look at it. And I was utterly mortified for, there, sticking out of my chin, were 3 enormous white hairs - each seemingly at least 6 feet long!

I was horrified that I had ever let my usually high standards drop so appallingly low. And there was no way that photo was going anywhere! I ripped it up right there and then.

I think this rather unnerving experience made me even more acutely aware of human facial hairs growing out of all sorts of nasty places. Even 5 years ago when I was writing my Colour Analysis training manual, I included this note in the ‘Presenting your Best Image’ section for consultants:

"I can’t believe I’m having to say this but…. remove noticeable facial hair.  Moustaches and hairs growing wildly from your chin, nose and / or moles will not increase your professional integrity!  Men have to shave daily – should you?"

Even further back in history when I was nothing more than a girl, I had to deliver some make-up products to a lady who had ordered them over the phone. I’d never met her before, I’d never been to her home, it was a wet, dark evening in late November, I got lost, I was cold and I had nowhere near the confidence I have now so I was totally unable to apply good social etiquette to the sight that met me when she opened the door.

Against a background of dark brown hair and pale porcelain skin, some idiot had just bleached all the once-dark-and-extremely-sturdy hairs on her top lip so they now stuck out like dazzlingly-neon-white fork prongs.

I felt my chin hit my knees as my jaw dropped open and I stared and stared, just like a 3-year old.

I know that, had she been there, my mother would have smacked me round the back of the ear because I just couldn’t take my eyes off these vile-looking protrusions.

I’ve never seen anything look so unnatural. How on earth could anyone think that bleaching dark hairs like this was in any way going to cover them up?

She may as well have stuck a sign on her forehead which said, ‘Look! I’ve got a moustache’.

I’m sure there must be some bleaching techniques that don’t produce such horrifying results but it’s probably worth asking your best friend for a down-to-earth diagnosis of whether your upper lip needs some attention.

And it’s not just me.

Do you know that one chap even started ‘a blog dedicated to making women all over the world remove their moustaches - soon’.

Amazing moustache facts

1. Swimmer Mark Spitz won 7 gold medals at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games while sporting a moustache when swimmers usually shaved all their body hair to decrease drag. Spitz claimed that it helped create a pocket of air to breathe. After the Olympics, many European swimmers began growing moustaches…

2. Mexican artist Frida Kahlo famously depicted herself in her artwork with both a moustache and a unibrow.

3. At the biennial World Beard and Moustache Championships in 2007 there were 6 sub-categories for moustaches:

• Natural
• Hungarian – big and bushy
• Dalí – narrow, long points bent or curved steeply upward. Named after Salvador Dalí
• English – narrow, beginning at the middle of the upper lip the whiskers are very long and pulled to the side, slightly curled; the ends are pointed slightly upward; areas past the corner of the mouth usually shaved
• Imperial – whiskers growing from both the upper lip and cheeks, and curled upward
• Freestyle – all moustaches that do not match other classes

4. ‘Movember’ is an annual month-long event involving the growing of moustaches during November. It aims to promote and raise awareness of Men’s Health issues, notably prostate cancer and depression.

5. Victorian writer Wilkie Collins created a mustachioed heroine for his mystery novel ‘The Woman in White’. ‘Marian Halcombe’s complexion was almost swarthy, and the dark down on her upper lip was almost a moustache’ yet she still manages to inspire the extracurricular passion of the novel’s villain, Count Fosco…