Love Yourself

Well it is the start of the new week. I woke up at exactly 12.50am last night, uncanny as it would have been, approximately the time Edward was boarding his flight for New Deli. I wonder if the mothering instinct ever really dissipates as I know the next five weeks will leave me with a small knot in my stomach just knowing that he is so far away and likely to encounter so many new situations. At least the weekend offered up another set of opportunities.

A day in Auckland saw me make some great appointments re. our new Howick store as well as some decisions re. visuals for the fit out. We have so much that is planned for this year yet I still see so many of my retail colleagues suffering and they still they make such incredibly bad decisions when recruiting people. Great people are the life blood of business; not just people, great people and recruitment for us is an ongoing process.

I am always looking... if someone turns up on my company doorstep and I don't have an advertised opportunity, I am likely to create one. For me, it is always about looking at the outcomes that they can generate; not what they will cost me!!! I am surrounded by the most amazing women everyday. Women that feel physically sick if their store turnover drops, women that are so passionate about my brand that they continually advocate for it in and out of work, women who push themselves to higher and higher heights everyday (what they did last year will never be good enough) and lastly they are likable (yep, that is the key attribute that I look for when recruiting).

Likable people make for great company cultures and provide extreme levels of service when in roles that they love and offer the right opportunities to them. Likable people have an inner peace, they are comfortable in their own skins so have nothing to prove, therefore they are not disruptive; they simply get on and do the job. They self-assess and have no need to seek approval from others.Goal for 2012: we all need to become more likable.

And just so you don't think that my weekend was all about work, I managed to get in a bit of shopping. I am now the proud owner of a new Nespresso (coffee machine) as well as some new underwear. Yep, I decided to take the advice of our senior stylists and invest in myself. How often do so many of us overlook what we can't see... ill-fitting bras and shattered undies. Sunday was time out at a well-know brands lingerie store which showed no service, in fact quite the opposite. A very disdainful look from the assistant manager (I know this as she had a name tag on). She didn't like the pile of intimates that I had on the floor (I guess hanging it would have been okay). Little did she know that the floor pile were my keepers (never second guess people)... we all know that. It was everything she could do to say thank you at the end of what I would suggest was a large sale for them on a Sunday. Really... how hard would it have been for this lady to have been more likable at point of sale... and just think how much better I would have felt! I certainly wouldn't be reflecting on it in a very public format!