On human doing: my realisations from the world of business
I’m calling these realisations I’ve had in business, but they are also applicable to life. I suppose, in a way, they’re values I’m guided by for living. So, welcome to a momentary insight into my roughly 1130 cm³ fleshy, intestine-looking animal brain.
Firstly, going against most business advice—not to be divisive but to set the foundations here—I don’t know if I want to be an authority. I think I’d much rather remain a thinker, a student forever living among the creatures in the cracks, at the edges, and in the middle. I call this the grey space. This aligns with my anti-fundamentalist philosophy. These are my thoughts and feelings on what business means to me and how I’ve experienced this world of human doing.
An afternoon trip down to Rock-a-Nore beach in Hastings where the cliffs meet the tides and dinosaurs used to roam in the late-Cretaceous period: a favourite place.
Slow business
To me, slow business means an unhurried approach. We may approach our plans and projects not as races to be won, but as art to be created. Your business should work for you—not the other way around. It’s not about doing less, but about doing the right things well. It’s about integrity, ethics, and sustainability. It’s honouring your energy and working in alignment with your true self.
I often say I’ve been in and out of web design for the past seven years and that’s true. Whilst the reason for that is layered, and a large part owes to my journey discovering what a life beyond screens, immersed in the wild, would look like, I’ve recently realised that I’ve been in an uphill battle with what I’ve been told I should be doing in business. Spending my time ‘tracking “competitors”’, duplicating services others are offering, trying to be other. Not listening to my community but consuming content from other designers and wondering why it’s not working for me. It feels like a subtle shift in mindset that happened almost overnight. You know how sometimes things just click?
Well, it took me years of business to figure out that. Somewhat akin to therapy, I needed to turn the spotlight on myself and not others. Stop looking at what others are doing, stop copying, stop looking for inspiration. Instead, put on blinders and place a cup to the door of my community to listen for what is needed. I can’t tell you how many services and products I’ve created, putting countless hours into, for them to flop.
After 6 months of trying, I’ve taken the pressure off myself and finally began to really listen to what is needed, and overnight I had several inquiries. A simple, subtle shift in energy was all that was needed. Well, I say all. But really, I’ve been battling internally to drop a lot of unnecessary junk. To switch my perspective from reaching to receiving, in order to not ‘put off’ potential clients. Because too much excitement for a sale comes across as pressure. I’ve followed the words of a few trusted confidants in the marketing and business space–Tad Hargraves of Marketing For Hippies, Danielle Gardner an advocate for quiet marketing–and I’ve figured out what feels good to me and what doesn’t. I gave myself the time to have this process and moved around other areas of my life to make that work. To take off the financial pressure so that I didn’t come across as pressure-some in any way.
Be less fundamentalist
Hold space for two things to be true at once. Nothing is that simple. Every story has two sides. Even belief is a shape-shifter. What you believe to be true today may not be in a day, a week, a year. There is no absolute truth. Change is the only constant. Nothing should be unquestionable.
Fundamentalists often hold extremist, radical, or fantastical beliefs. When, in fact, life is mostly made up of grey areas. Think of all those times you’ve changed your mind. As someone who has believed in many extremes: veganism, starseed beings, 5D consciousness, blood type diets, no gluten/dairy/sugar. The list goes on. Nothing is black and white. Complexity and meaning are layered. Nuance exists. Nuance deserves recognition.
As I get older, and as a person who has often been black and white in my ways of seeing, I realise that I now prefer the middle, the edges, the cracks. Places that are un-definable, places that allow for all to exist. A world of understandings, not cancellations and throw-away culture. We are too quick to throw away: things, people, care, consideration. We are each other’s keepers. In a world of lefts and rights, let us choose care, let us stand in the middle, let us allow space for understanding.
There is an animacy to our entangled beliefs and truths. As Sydney Kale describes animacy in the Deep Times Journal “it is through the other that we are alive, and it is through community and encounter that our experience of being on Earth is saturated.” How do we relate to the world around us, to ourselves, to each other? We’re in a crisis of relationality. How do we practice relating to reground ourselves as non-fundamentalists?
A meticulously crafted and magnificently towering ash tree in Kew Gardens where I took a day trip to visit the plants with my partner, a PhD researcher at Kew.
Nature first, emails second
This one’s simple: get outside. Prioritise the wellbeing of all and spend some time at home. When I say home, I don’t mean the house where you eat, sleep, and shit. I mean the place you can go to come back to yourself, to your body, to your being. To be a human being, not a human doing.
I’m privileged in the sense that my relationship with “nature” came easy. Although I grew up in London, leaving for Brighton at the age of 9, I always felt a strong connection to and correlation (or, perhaps contrast) between the wilds outside and those going on inside. I took comfort in the woodlice travelling in the cracks of the pavement, the giant waterlilies of Kew Gardens, and the giant oaks of my school grounds that towered over me.
We are not defined by our careers
It’s human being, not human doing. As a friend, Joseph (@home_with_the_trees), shares “there is a balance between discipline and surrender – doing and being to dance in the flow.” We are not defined by our careers. As someone who thought that my career, my job, the work I do was my everything, was what defined me, this took a long time to realise. I’m also someone that is driven by strong morals and I’ve always wanted my work to be guided by offering value, by aligning with my values: to do good, to be good. This meant that for a long time, I felt embarrassed to work in social media and web design. It felt not good enough, not worthy. It felt out of alignment with my values.
About 5 or so years ago, I adopted the mentality of "it's not what you do, it's how you do it”. This felt true to me but it’s taken me the past 5 years to actually see through this lens truly. Sometimes things need to settle for a long time to embed themselves within us. Just as some things take a long time to emerge and release their tick-like body from our flesh. I still work in conservation part-time even though I am sometimes of the post-activist mindset and left thinking “what’s the point”. This, perhaps, fulfills my need for work that aligns with my values.
I’ll be very honest about the fact that I’ve tried multiple times to turn away from web design. I have tried to calm my hand in its persistent efforts to be a designer of perfection and I keep coming back to it. I love it. And I hate it. It’s a love-hate relationship, if I’m entirely honest. I’m good at it. I think I’m really good at it. It’s something I’ve been crafting for the past decade or longer. So, I’ve tried to turn away from web design many times feeling embarrassed that it wasn’t enough, that it wasn’t a good enough thing. As somebody who’s guided by a moral compass, I want to do good in the world. But there’s something that keeps pulling me back to it.
When I think about design, I really enjoy the process of being able to take a foreign concept of an idea in someone’s head and translate that into something that looks how they feel inside. So, I’ve tried to find multiple different ways to make it feel more meaningful to me. One of those is the people I choose to work with: those that have the same values as me, those that care about the earth and being outside, and care about their wellbeing, and human connection to the kin all around us. Hopping in and out of web design isn’t something I’ve spoken openly about: The real reason has always been out of embarrassment for feeling like it’s not enough. But I’ve now scrapped that idea. I’m going to own that web design is one of my things that is going to be part of my life and that I’m going to contribute my time to keep getting better, keep working with people, and keep translating ideas.
Do what feels good! Scrap everything else
Maybe it’s time to stop following that over-prescribed list of things you should be doing. Where do you actually want to put your energy? What do you enjoy doing? What feels most you? What aligns most with your character? Do you want to go out seeking work? Or are you more of a responder, a receiver? This isn’t about trying to go against the mainstream conventional advice, it’s about trying to get into a space where you’re being yourself.
Be honest
Be honest, be yourself. People feel drawn to what is real, to what is true, to what is human. Sometimes, we might feel as if we need to… what do they say… ‘fake it till you make it’. We, animals, are excellent at distinguishing what feels real from what feels like a mask, like an act. I’d challenge you to be completely honest in your business. Be honest about your reasons for being in business, about where you are in your business, about decisions you make.
One of my favourites, Danielle Gardner, author of Quiet Marketing, wrote on her blog about something she calls ‘The Golden Hour of Marketing’. It kind of reminds me of the old adage to act on inspiration when it strikes. She explains what happens when we share something while the process is still ongoing. Say you’re just been struck with an idea to create a new offer. Dani invites us to share from that space, that immersive creative bubble of excitement and happenings: “The Golden Hour of Marketing is that period of time when you are amidst the creation process of a new offering. You are inspired and full of awe about what you are making and how it’s valuable.”
A selfie of me marvelling amongst the rich, sweaty green plants of Hastings’ West Hill area. Another favourite place.
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I don’t hope that you found some value here (well, perhaps a little) as I have no expectations for how this will land. But I do hope. I hope that the world of business will become less pressure-some, a lot more real, and most importantly, more in tune with human beings, not human doings. I suppose this is an ode to the human, to the animal, to being whilst doing. On a separate but entirely relevant note, I invite you to read Ash Before Oak by Jeremy Cooper. Why? Because this book has inspired me to finally write freely without judgement, to write in the knowing that we are all human, all animal, and most of us have the same damn thoughts anyway, thinking that they are somehow inconspicuous. This novel–which I only realised half-way through was fictitious–opened my eyes to the human within us all. I hope (there I go hoping) that it may do the same for you.
One final outgoing note: In times of uncertainty, perhaps, lean into it. For me, the last few years have been a journey of learning to find comfort in the Great Uncertainty. I think we all need to practice this more regularly. It might help us to judge less, to bring more grey to situations that appear to some as black and white. Let us exist in a world of maybes, perhaps.
Written by me — Hope Nothhelfer (lover of the em dash)
I picked up on the use of the em dash from my beloved grandmother Nancy — Nan for short. She lives in the mountains near Asheville, NC. With my body here in the UK for most of my life, we’ve stuck largely to email exchanges. I remember noting her perhaps somewhat excessive use of my now beloved em dash. At the time, I guess I thought it was the done thing. We learn by example, we mock others. And so, I began using it and it stuck. It’s been with me since, god, 2012 at least. I believe it’s here to stay.
