All I really do

I got back from my high school reunion on Monday night with a sore throat and twelve hours of sleep over 3 nights and 3 days. I had a fabulous time meeting with old friends who I haven’t seen in ages and also getting to know classmates I didn’t know so well before, but who are doing interesting things with their lives. That weekend was also the first time I didn’t have the urge to check email (although I did keep going back to the one spot on campus where my cell had reception to check on the store). I enjoyed the beautiful weather, wet my hair in the rain, and walked up a little hill in the slush to watch sunrise after staying awake all night. My husband, who had accompanied me, wanted to know who I had turned into, and if I could continue to be the “new Anaka” once we got back to Chennai as well.

The truth is, once I get into my routine with work I tend to get so serious about everything. Every small detail gets blown out of proportion in my head, and the lack of an office environment with colleagues doesn’t help either because it means I don’t have anyone to show me another perspective. Last night I spoke to an old friend I’ve known since 3rd grade and she said she hasn’t heard me sound so relaxed in three years!

Well don’t get me wrong, I really love my job and I find the work that I do both fun and stimulating, but it can get really exhausting. Very often I feel like how I imagine a single parent might feel with all the responsibility of raising a child but no time to really savour and enjoy the special moments (no offense to mothers with human babies- just that I often think of Brass Tacks as my baby). This isn’t the first time I’ve realized this about myself; other holidays and my honeymoon have shown me that I am more creative when I’m relaxed. I try to incorporate relaxing activities into my everyday life all the time (my latest is making sure I always have a great book to read and I find it’s the best thing to do when I’m worried about something that’s not completely in my control) but sustaining that “relaxed feeling” is the hard part.

Right now I’m behind schedule with ordering fabric for my winter collection, my bank balance is really low, and I’m worried about the sluggish sales at my retail section in Hyderabad. The difference, however, is that right now I’m able to take things in my stride and get work done without letting the stress get to me. In a week or two when this wears off I will be pulling my hair out and secretly wishing I had a “normal” job (i.e. a steady salary!).

My new mid-year resolution is to do whatever it takes to sustain that relaxed feeling. That doesn’t mean working a lot less, it just means staying relaxed mentally (and potentially getting more work done in less time as a result) and remembering that I’m in this for the fun of it more than anything else. And hey, at this point things can only get better as I start earning a decent salary right?

Staying Motivated for Others

A few months ago when I had contacted a recruitment agency to hire more sales staff, I had an interesting conversation with the woman who runs the agency. I was describing the kind of person I wanted to hire for the position of a sales manager and I said that aside from speaking English reasonably well, and having a sense of customer service, the candidate needs to be a motivated person who wants to move ahead in her career. The woman replied saying that most people are used to just taking orders rather than thinking for themselves and taking initiative. I feel that is so true of many people, at a variety of levels. Most of us settle into a comfort zone and a kind of complacency where we are just doing our everyday tasks without striving for more. I know that I too am often guilty of this. I go through my phases of high motivation levels, but I tend to burn myself out and then spend so much time recovering that I may as well have done things at a steady pace in the first place. But what is it that helps people to stay motivated?

When I quit my job in New York a few years ago to intern for two designers, I worked for free and used up all my savings. As a general rule I think unpaid internships are a bad idea- I think hard working people need to be rewarded in some way- but for me it was an opportunity to do something in fashion, a field that I knew so little about, and get some exposure before I moved back to Chennai and started my own company. That fact that I didn’t get paid for my work didn’t affect my level of motivation, but what did help was being around highly motivated and driven people (and when my managers weren’t motivated, it definitely set a more laid-back atmosphere that I would imbibe).

I think about Brass Tacks pretty much all the time, awake or asleep. Sometimes I am tired but do my work anyway because I “have to”, and at other times I am really motivated and positive, and do my work with enthusiasm. At all times however, my goal is very clear to me (that I need to put in this effort in order to reach the next step).

Lately, I’ve not been feeling very motivated. The long drives to work, the slow activity at the store, and just the relentless amounts of work have left me feeling a bit frustrated, tired and unmotivated. At times like these I really miss being in an environment where I am surrounded by highly motivated people who are passionate about what they do. If I feel this way about my own business, I can only imagine how my sales staff feel on days when few customers walk into the store. So perhaps it all boils down to how motivated I am, because the energy that I exude does affect my surroundings. I need to spend more time at the store (rather than in the comfort of my home office) to create a stimulating work environment for them. And since there is a high turnover rate with sales staff, there really is no permanent solution to this.

Running to Avoid Inertia

I got married at the beginning of this month to a man who has held my hand through all my ups and downs in the last few years. Unfortunately events were such at work that I had to work right up until the day before my wedding (actually, I was still sketching out styles for the next collection on the morning of my engagement ceremony so that my pattern maker would have work to do while I was gone on my honeymoon). Then the wedding went by in the blink of an eye, and my lovely honeymoon seemed like time had stopped for one week. Now I’m back in Chennai, but I’m still settling into my apartment- unpacking, dusting, putting away things, shopping for more house things- and getting used to working while juggling things on the home front as well.

When I lived with my parents, I had the run of their car, food and laundry were taken care of, and I could spend all my time thinking about and doing work for Brass Tacks. And if I felt like having a lazy Sunday morning, I could do that too without having to do errands or supervise a carpenter. In a way it’s nicer to ease back into work because my honeymoon was the first time since I started Brass Tacks when I didn’t do any work at all (not even a single sketch). That’s the tough part about vacations: coming back to work and resuming your “regular” pace of work.

On my agenda I have training sessions planned for the two new sales women I’ve hired, I need to edit the styles in my Summer collection, get started on my Monsoon collection, and finally I have to complete the terms and conditions agreement with a store in Hyderabad, where I will start retailing in a couple of months. Aside from all of this, I need to get cracking on a better marketing plan for my store.

But first, deep breaths every morning as I struggle to settle into a routine. I thrive on routine and that’s the only thing that will prevent me from yearning for those days when time stopped.

The Treadmill

People kept telling me that starting my own business would mean a lot of hard work. I was and still am prepared for that. However no one mentioned the extremes of disservice and incompetency I would be confronted with, and that too at practically every step.

One thing I have never really understood is how I, as a customer, have to often chase my fabric suppliers to send me swatches (so I can place new orders), and after placing an order with them I have to keep calling them to follow up and ensure the fabric reaches me on time. Perhaps it’s a question of them being craftsmen first and businessmen next, or perhaps they know they have a bit of a monopoly in the market when it comes to their craft. I’m not sure, but it does take a lot of energy to get what I want and to get it on time!

Recently I’ve had to deal with the Chennai Corporation for a store maintenance issue. A couple of months after I opened my store I saw these damp patches appear on one of my walls. The patches spread to another wall during the monsoon, and then the paint started crumbling off and peeling. Next came a nasty smell and ever since then I’ve been burning aromatherapy oils in my store! My store is in a corporation building, so my landlord is the government. I had written a letter complaining and asking for an engineer to figure out where the leakage is coming from. Nothing much really happened so I had some local waterproofing and re-painting done in my store (which I’ve repeated since then when the patches made a re-appearance two months ago).

Two weeks ago my neighbour, a silver jewellery store owner, showed me his wall and ceiling. Almost the entire wall was damp and you could see beads of water on the wall as well as the ceiling. Next to his store on the other side (my store is on one side) is the stairway up to the next level. It was wet and the stairs were filled with water. I wish I had taken a photograph that day because there were literally buckets of water piling on the floor above and water dripping down from the ceiling. I knew it wouldn't be long before my store was next. It doesn’t take an engineer to figure out that the leak was from some broken pipe from the toilets on the second floor, but which pipe, and more importantly who was going to deal with the problem?

Letters in duplicate were sent off to the AEJE (Assistant Engineer’s Junior Engineer) and phonecalls made to the corporation office. Meanwhile the building had minimal water supply because we had to shut off the tank to prevent further leakage. Finally a team showed up three days ago and since they couldn’t find out the exact location of the pipe, they are demolishing the toilets to build new ones.

So in the end all that badgering and writing and calling did pay off (I’m hoping I didn't just jinx it), but sometimes problems like these make me feel running a business is always going to be an uphill run. And on really bad days I feel like no matter how fast I run I still don’t get anywhere.

This is a photograph of the wall and ceiling at the Silver Moonlight, the store next to Brass Tacks. Below that is a photograph of the ceiling on the floor above. Before they shut off the main tank, this ceiling was dripping with water.