The Women's Center for Entrepreneurship hosted an amazing speaker, Savannah Hayes, on February 9th. This speaker event was free for Chatham students and open to the public. The idea of the event was to learn about making your dream job a reality. To build up to this, Ms. Hayes talked about her life and background. She primarily talked about how her internships under strong women led her on her motivated track of following her passion. She then realized she didn't want to work for other people for the rest of her life, she wanted to work on her own schedule. After realizing that her passion was in the textile industry, and her heart was in designing, she started the Savannah Hayes studio, where she designs textiles for the making of fabric, pillows, blankets, etc. Check out her Instagram @savannahhayesstudio, or her website to learn more about what she does.
During her talk, she mentioned a lot about playing to your strengths, something that is also outlined in Managing Oneself (Drucker, 2016). She talks about her success came from her becoming good at things she could (ie. picking up photography pretty easily), that she had strengths in, and delegating tasks she wasn't so good at (or just didn't want to do, like accounting) to outside people who specialize in that task. This allows her to focus on and do better at the things she enjoys and is good at. She has been able to excel by harnessing her best work points to something she loves doing.
Something I learned from this, that is also mentioned in the book, is that there a lot of benefits to starting your own business as a sole proprietorship. Ms. Hayes makes her own work schedule, which allows her to have the flexibility of raising her daughter. While her daughter is young, she is able to minimize her work hours so she can be at home as much as possible. When her daughter goes to school, she will be able to easily ramp up her work hours schedule to be closer to full time, or even more, if she wanted. She runs on her own time, and doesn't have to answer to anybody. She also is free to design and make whatever she desires. She does not have to bounce her ideas off of someone else before sending them to production. By naming the company after herself, she was able to acquire the business name for free. In the end, Savannah Hayes gets her dream job, and her family, too.
Sources
Drucker, P. F., Kanter, R. M., & Kantrow, A. (2016, October 17). Managing Oneself. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2005/01/managing-oneself
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