relax.

RULE #2: TO EARN POWER, YOU MUST FIRST RELAX

You might have heard the quote: “Happiness is often the result of being too busy to be miserable.”

Now I didn’t write that, and no one knows for sure who did, but if I had I would have taken out the word “busy” and replaced it with the word “full,” because busy is a badge of honor we need to unpin from our collars. It’s become a way to define ourselves and prove our worthiness, and there’s a broken social currency connected to it.

How boring is it when we ask someone how they are and they reply with, “Oh, so busy!” Parents often appear hurried and overwhelmed at the school gate, rolling their eyes at the next activity they must deliver their children to; or at the office a co-worker will complain that they’re already late for their next meeting (“Sooooooo busy!”) or behind on a deadline. Our default is always to dramatize how busy we are and play against one another in a game of who’s busiest. Why do we keep doing this?

While we’re busy telling everyone just how busy we are, it’s interesting to learn that our work hours have actually been in decline and haven’t increased as much as most of us think they have. For the past five decades, our work hours have flatlined at around forty hours per week. This might not be your reality, but it’s the reality of many full-time workers.

Billionaire Jack Ma, who founded e-commerce giant Alibaba, says, “My grandfather worked sixteen hours a day in the farmland and thought he was very busy. We work eight hours a day, five days a week and think we are very busy.”

I’ve got a confession to make: I’m not busy. My life is very full, and I have a heck of a lot of responsibilities, but I’m not busy. I have no interest in ever being busy again.

My friend Liz is not busy either. I mean, Liz could be busy—she has New York Times bestselling books to write (she has five of those under her belt already) and speeches to give and causes to support as well. But Liz is not busy. Nope. Far from it. The only thing Liz gets busy at is being relaxed (and I don’t mean hot-stones-and-essential-oils kind of relaxed either). I’m talking about the great Elizabeth Gilbert, of course, and I love her take on what it means to let go of our obsession with busyness.

Liz says that the most powerful person in any room is the most relaxed one, and she suggests that the way to get there is to work on our priorities: that is, who—and what—are most important in our lives.

Liz isn’t shy about telling people that if she doesn’t get back to their emails, it’s not because she’s busy—it’s because she doesn’t care. That might sound harsh, but anyone who understands boundaries will tell you it’s simply self-preservation. Don’t confuse Liz’s holding boundaries with her being unkind, either—she’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever met, but she stores that kindness up for the people who matter most to her.

To me, being relaxed appears as living in the moment, having fun, breathing more, caring less about people’s perceptions of you, choosing who and what really matters and occasionally grabbing the hot stones and essential oils when you can.

A busy person is consumed by perfectionism.

A relaxed person is consumed by purpose.

A busy person is good at everything.

A relaxed person is good at the important things.

A busy person complains about all they have to do.

A relaxed person lets the results of their work do the talking.

A busy person feels better when others are busy too.

A relaxed person wants people around them to be effective.

A busy person gets frustrated by many competing priorities.

A relaxed person selects a few priorities carefully.

A busy person constantly appears rushed.

A relaxed person always appears calm.

Which type of person do you want to be?

RULE #3: DO THE RIGHT WORK

Management is doing things right;
leadership is doing the right things.

Peter Drucker

One of the core values of my company is “Do the right work,” and I’m not ashamed to say we stole it. I first saw this on the wall of a company we were visiting on one of our Knowledge + Study Tours to Los Angeles. We run these tours two or three times a year, and they’ve become the most phenomenal experience for the twenty-five or so members who get to come along. We partner up with leading business schools in LA and New York and get to learn from some of the world’s best professors and academics. We also get to experience some money-can’t-buy activities like going behind the scenes at Disneyland or learning how to lead through pressure and stress with the Fire Department of New York (hint: amazing!).

All of these experiences are incredible, but in my mind, the best parts of these tours are the brilliant businesses that open their doors for us to learn from. On one tour we were able to spend time with TechStyle Fashion Group—a company with a bunch of brands such as Fabletics (which Kate Hudson co-founded) and ShoeDazzle under their umbrella. TechStyle is an online subscription fashion retailer with more than five million VIP members. In 2019, they surpassed $750 million in revenue. They’ve had an incredible trajectory, and when we asked their execs how they managed to achieve this growth, a number of them pointed to their core values as being central to this success.

The core value I loved the most (and subsequently stole for our business) was “Do the right work,” as it’s a problem I see companies and individuals suffering from all the time: they run around being busy but without actually achieving much in the process. Sure, they’re working hard, but they’re often busy doing the wrong work.

It’s worth mentioning that “Do the right work” matters as much in our homes as it does in our workplaces. It shouldn’t matter whether the house is always spotlessly clean, the dishwasher is unloaded, and the books on the shelf are color-coded (do you do that too?). What matters is that you kissed your partner when you arrived home, that you looked them in the eye at least once that day and told them you loved them, that you got on the floor and played blocks with your kids without your phone for even just five minutes or read them a book before tucking them into bed, or you spent a few moments petting the dog. It’s choosing to do the activities that matter the most rather than getting busy and distracted with the ones that matter less.

In our business, doing the right work manifests in many different ways. For example, one of the ways we make money is through selling sponsorship opportunities—so brands might buy a page in our magazine, or if they’re a car brand, for example, they might place one of their vehicles in the foyer at our events, or they might even partner with us by sponsoring a digital workshop we’re producing. It’s actually a hugely labor-intensive exercise for us as more than eighty brands a week approach us wanting to partner up, from the local yoga studio to a major credit card brand. Just to respond to each one of these requests creates a mountain of work for our sales team.

Doing the right work in this case means getting smarter and faster in choosing whom to work with. It’s working out who are the tire kickers and who are the quality potential partners. We could waste a ton of valuable time talking and going back and forth and having coffees and meetings with the wrong brands, only to learn that they don’t have the type of budget that we need to make a campaign happen. We’ve worked hard on training our team to know when to shut a conversation down (preferably very early in the process so as not to waste anyone’s time) and when to invest time in the brands that could actualize into healthy, paying clients. So, doing the right work here means saying no faster (in a lovely way, of course) and concentrating on the more likely lucrative opportunities.

Only you will be able to know if you’re spending your time doing the right work. It’s different for every person and every company, but here are some general examples of wrong work and right work.

Wrong work Saying yes to every person who asks to have a coffee with you.

Right work Strategically building a relationship with someone who you know can help you and who you can help in return, and then working to foster that relationship.

Wrong work Starting an email chain to five people about a problem that then turns into a mammoth game of email tennis with everyone throwing in their two cents’ worth.

Right work Identifying the decision maker and picking up the phone and sorting out the problem as fast as possible.

Wrong work If you’re in sales, agreeing to a meeting with someone without knowing their budget, or without at least doing your research well enough to know if they’re a potential fit.

Right work Clarifying their budget before meeting; if that’s not possible, pre-qualifying to the best of your abilities.

Wrong work Starting a business and focusing your time on producing a podcast, designing your business cards and perfecting your look on Instagram. Of course, for some businesses this might be a necessary or wise strategy, but for most, these tasks can be built over time and usually shouldn’t be the priority.

Right work Finding paying clients who can start giving you solid income and doing all you can to look after them.

Wrong work Micro-managing your team through too many meetings and conversations, thinking you need to be involved in every conceivable detail of what’s happening.

Right work Hiring smart people and trusting them to do their job well.

Wrong work Jumping into a task or project without thinking about whether you’re actually the one who needs to be doing it.

Right work Thinking about who could do the task or project better and delegating it to them, if that option is available to you.

Wrong work Spending too much time in your inbox, mindlessly looking for something to respond to or answering every email that comes in when it comes in.

Right work Setting aside two (or three if you must) sessions in the day to check and respond to your emails.

RULE #4: ASK “WHAT FOR?”

If the reason for doing something is that everyone else is doing it, it’s not a good enough reason.

Warren Buffett

We’ve been trained that when it comes to business, bigger is better. Business owners take delight in bragging about all the new hires they’re taking on and how their company is growing, growing, growing. They celebrate as their revenue rises and their team doubles. With this growth comes all sorts of fresh challenges—how to retain culture as it was designed originally, how to remain efficient, how to find talent to fill all the new roles—and before you realize what’s happening, you’re managing people, problems and processes rather than building your business. The irony of growth is that you’re often making less money than you were before while having to deal with more problems. Less money, more problems.

The same pattern can be found in the pursuit of a bigger career. I’m sure we can all think of examples of people who strive to climb the corporate ladder, mindlessly chasing the next promotion and the next pay raise, without ever asking themselves what they are actually aiming to achieve.

Sometimes I think we chase the wrong things just because we believe it’s what we’re meant to do. We’re told to get a job with more responsibility, and we’re told we need to get promoted because that’s what everyone else does. I have a couple of people in my organization who are great leaders but have no ambition of managing more team members. I’m one of them!

A salesperson might be great at selling and feel as though they have to strive for the next rung on the career ladder by becoming the sales manager. After all, being the sales manager most likely comes with a higher salary and perhaps some more prestige, and it might make them feel a little more proud at a barbecue when people ask what they do for a living. The problem is that in most companies, when salespeople shift into being the boss or the manager of a team of sales executives, their role changes from rainmaking, hunting down leads and chasing deals into hours and hours of meetings and reports and administration. There’s no problem with this if you enjoy these activities and thrive on making sure they’re done well, but most great salespeople aren’t built for desk roles and would rather be out there inspiring others and closing deals.

I’ve found it very useful to ask myself (and my colleagues, frustratingly at times, no doubt) two little words before starting any task or project. The two little words are: “What for?” Sometimes we do things mindlessly for the sake of doing them. We’re going through the motions, and instead of being intentional and smart with our time and what we’re trying to achieve, we just do the same things over and over with no real outcome or effect.

So someone in my team will say, “We need more video content,” and I’ll ask, “What for?” to encourage some intelligent and robust discussion. Sometimes there’s no real purpose or need to do the tasks we choose to do. We just do them because we think they need to be done, and it’s considered a good idea at the time. Now, of course, every single business’s requirements are going to be different, and what is a priority for us might not be a priority for you. I get it, but just because everyone else is investing a ton in video doesn’t mean we need to, unless it specifically works for us and returns what we need it to return.

In a business sense, it’s about knowing why you do things and being brave enough to really question your activities all the time. It’s about never settling with an answer of: “Well, everyone else is doing it, so we should too,” or “We just thought it might be a good idea.” Coming back to the “What for?” question and encouraging that same level of curiosity in your people is a really important skill for any smart leader to master.

Of course, the “What for?” question isn’t just for managers, the C-suite or business owners. Any strong leader will appreciate a team member who stops and says, “Actually, I’ve thought of a better idea for tackling this.”

When the pandemic hit, the question “What for?” became even more critical to my company’s survival. We had no choice but to get back to being scrappy. For the people who love layers of process and management and procedure and systems and meetings, this idea was sheer terror. For me, it was like coming home. It was a return to our deeply entrepreneurial roots. When the virus started to take hold and a ban on in-person events was put into place, a massive percentage of our livelihood was swept away. We had to put tools down, get the whiteboard out and strategize ourselves into a new hustle if we were to survive.

The big management consulting companies might argue against this, but when it comes down to it there are really only two ways to save a company: you can make more money, or you can cut costs. The first option had been taken away from us, so the second one it was. Go!

We interrogated every single line item on our profit and loss statement, deliberating over every detail. Could we still afford cleaners a couple of times a week for the office? No, we could not. Could we afford the many external consultants who’d advised us the past few years? No, we could not. Could we afford weekly sessions with my business coach? No, we could not. Could we afford to keep employing the number of people we were? No, we could not. Unfortunately, and inevitably, saving our company also meant cutting some jobs, which was of course the hardest decision. If we were to salvage the business and the jobs of the remaining people inside it, these tough calls had to be made.

And here’s where the learnings started to appear. Almost a year after the pandemic hit and those tough calls were made, our revenue was down by over 70 percent, but so too were our expenses. And our net profit? While it wasn’t what it had been in years past, it wasn’t dire. As I sit here writing this book, my team is smaller. They choose whether they work from home or the office. I’m more engaged with them because there are fewer layers of management. And there’s an unbreakable sense of camaraderie because together we survived this phase and have emerged stronger from it.

Marriott Hotels took the same approach and miraculously grew their net profit during the pandemic, even though their hotel rooms in the US were only a third full and in Europe only a fifth. How did they do this? Through herculean cost-slashing measures, or in other words, they saved their way through the pandemic.

There are many others who have taken the opportunity offered by the pandemic to think more deeply about the direction they were taking and whether it was really what they wanted. (Of course, some were forced into this by circumstances, others by the desire to do something different.) My friend India was laid off from her job as a personal assistant, so she took the chance to do what she’d always wanted to do but could never quite find the time for—study interior design. She admitted to me that she would never have found the courage to do this if she hadn’t been made redundant. Another friend of mine, Amy, worked in a small business that got hit hard with Covid-19, losing the majority of their revenue and clients. Amy loved her job and loved the business, so she went to her manager and offered to help out more with other tasks outside of her regular job. She ended up working in two different departments during the lockdown (remotely, of course) and learned a whole heap of skills from the experience. Thankfully, the company has picked up since, and Amy is back in her old role, armed with lots of new knowledge and some serious career kudos too.

Business Chicks member Virginia Brookes recently told me, “We always dreamed of escaping the rat race, heading off traveling and moving out of the city but I was always so busy working in my life and in my business I could never look at the bigger picture.”

When the pandemic hit, Virginia lost 90 percent of her business. Leading her team through the unknown began to take a toll, and she felt herself plunging into the depression she’d been diagnosed with twelve months earlier.

“I was posting videos on social media all bright and full of life, but inside I was slowly breaking down, and I could feel myself spiraling . . . I was finally at home with my kids and husband and was enjoying the time, and all I could think was I wanted to escape reality, and fulfill a long-term dream of heading off in our RV and deciding what I wanted to do with my life. I’m not afraid to say that when I headed off I almost didn’t care if I came back to a business—I would just start again!”

A few months into their RV trip, Virginia felt more relaxed and present than she had in years. It was the nudge she needed to sell her house and move an hour out of the city for good. Four months later, the kids are in new schools, they collect eggs from their chickens every morning and Virginia spends two or three days a week in the office, staying in the city at a hotel sometimes so she can do two “big” days. Her team is also set up to work from home, but she says most still choose to come into the office to be around each other.

“I look back now on 2020 as the most incredible gift I could have been given—I was given permission from the universe to slow down, realign with what was really important and to make decisions with a clear head.”

Makes you think, doesn’t it? We can apply the “What for?” thinking to almost every situation in life, too, and it’s a beautiful way to stop and think about why we’re actually doing something and see if a bit of a reprogram might be required. On one of my last trips to New York, I met a lovely woman who was on vacation there and we got to talking. She told me how she had brought two empty suitcases to New York to “shop up a storm” and “buy everything she possibly could.” My immediate reaction was to ask, “What for?” I mean, how many new purses do we actually need? We’re often so much on autopilot and listening to the soundtrack of our past behaviors that we don’t stop to really question our actions. It wasn’t my place to ask this stranger, “What for?” but if you’re a switched-on person wanting to get terrific results efficiently, you’ll add these two little words to your vocabulary and help everyone else around you wake up too.