Stefanie Sword - Williams - F*ck Being Humble: Why self-promotion isnt a dirty word

Publishing Director Sarah Lavelle

Commissioning Editor Susannah Otter

Assistant Editor Stacey Cleworth

Art Director and Designer Luke Bird

Typesetter Jonathan Baker

Head of Production Stephen Lang

Production Controller Sinead Hering

Published in 2020 by Quadrille, an imprint of Hardie Grant Publishing

Quadrille

5254 Southwark Street

London SE1 1UN

quadrille.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders. The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

Cataloguing in Publication Data: a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Text Stefanie Sword-Williams, 2020

Design and layout Quadrille 2020

eISBN 978 1 78713 514 7

To my family for empowering me with limitless self-belief, my friends and boyfriend for continuous unconditional support, and to anyone who has ever supported the platform with an open mind and appetite to grow.

I couldnt have done it without you all.

CONTENTS

(its the defining factor of your success)

(working out what you want and crafting your profile towards it)

(make sure youre present in all the right places)

(and why its a game-changer when growing your career)

(how to recognise and demonstrate what you bring to the table)

(how to get what you deserve)

(why emotional intelligence is the secret component)

(we all do it, heres how to handle it when it happens)

(keep striving until you find what makes you truly happy)

N ot a saying you hear a lot, is it?

Of course not. Until this very moment, youve spent your entire life being told that being humble is how you earn respect; and, while there is merit in the sentiment, trust me when I say its not quite that straightforward. You see, you can be the humblest person in the world, but if youre not willing to be your own champion, you might be waiting a long while for someone to bow down and kiss those Stan Smiths of yours.

Sadly, we live in a world where the word self-promotion has acquired so many negative connotations that being associated with it is as embarrassing as getting a tattoo on your arse in Magaluf. Yuck. But what is it about putting ourselves out there that were really scared of?

An acronym Ive coined to summarise the paralysis we face is FOSS (Fear Of Sounding Stupid). This is the anxiety that the very way you describe yourself could be classed as cringeworthy or self-indulgent or worse still, could be challenged for not reflecting who you really are. But while youre busy obsessing over how the rest of the world perceives you (by the way, everyone else is doing exactly the same thing and isnt thinking about you anyway), the real problem you should be facing is FOBG (Fear Of Being Generic). Now, I know that doesnt roll off the tongue quite as well as FOSS, but just stick with me

FOBG is what should really be keeping you up at night, because you, my friend, are most likely doing everything you possibly can to not stand out and you may not even realise it. You follow the rules, you communicate the way you think is expected of you, youre modest, and you definitely dont send a weekly roundup of your latest work. Instead, you sit in Camp Generic with your Nandos medium chicken and piri-piri salted chips.

Dont worry its normal; we all do it. In fact, its too normal. There are many things that may be stopping you from self-promotion: concerns around sounding arrogant; a severe lack of confidence; and the one that suffocates people the most you dont know where to start and you feel too embarrassed to ask. But let me ask you a question: were you born a talking, cycling, cartwheeling adult? No, you were taught all of those things throughout childhood, or even as an adult.

The truth is, we have never been trained in self-promotion, a skill that is integral to building a career, whatever your industry. Whether youre in full-time employment, working as a freelancer or running your own business, failing to master this one skill can lead you down the common path towards a quarter or mid-life crisis of feeling undervalued, lost, and dissatisfied with where your career is going.

So why now? What is it about the world we live in that means we have to start taking this a whole lot more seriously? Well, the recession has meant job security is a dying breed, and our rising expectations of flexibility and freedom mean we need to find a way to not only stand on our own two feet, but rise above everyone else whos developing side hustles on their lunch breaks. With freelancers accounting for 77 million people globally and younger people wanting to become their own bosses sooner (the number of self-employed workers aged 16 to 24 has nearly doubled since 2001), the question is: Are we equipped to take on the real world?

Our education has been focused on endowing us with knowledge, but not necessarily the soft skills we need to make it in our careers. According to LinkedIns 2019 Global Talent Trends report, with automation and AI reshaping the future of the workplace, its the personal attributes you can bring to a business that companies are looking at when recruiting: 82% of UK employers said that finding individuals with soft skills was more important than hiring those with hard skills such as a programming language with a limited shelf life.

The gig economy may be growing, but unless your confidence in tackling self-promotion and asking for your worth is too, Id wave goodbye to any thoughts youve had about building a thriving business or remotely working on a beach in South America. From not regularly updating your platforms to shying away from asking for referrals or sharing personal work, there is still a significant disconnect between the lives we want to lead and our ability to build and maintain them. We expect the pay rises, the recognition and the belief from others, but we dont give people enough reason to provide them and then we complain when all our stars dont perfectly align.

The good news is, youre reading this book because youve finally recognised the importance of sorting your shit out if you want to get far in life.

I have spent the past seven years working in advertising producing stories for brands all over the world, and I think it is with that knowledge and exposure of seeing the positive impact storytelling can have for brands that I have realised the positive impact it can have on individuals too. But I also recognise that not everyone is sitting on the frontline of Mad Men style meetings to see the significance of promotion, particularly if youre not working in the creative industry. How would you ever learn how to piece your personal brand together, let alone figure out how to shout about it. It was with this observation that I saw a huge gap in support that F*ck Being Humble can fill. Learning how to self-promote shouldnt just be for TV hosts, or musicians, or artists, it should be accessible for people in every industry, worldwide. Since launching the platform I have delivered workshops to a variety of brands such as Unilever, The British Red Cross, Google, Warner Music, Smartworks, Bumble, General Assembly and many more, highlighting that the demands for alternative professional development practices are high across a variety of sectors.

The beautiful thing about the sharing economy lifestyle that were in means that its not just houses and cars were sharing, peer-to-peer coaching is becoming more accessible too. As Sapphire Bates from the Coven Girl Gang an online community of female founders and freelancers would say, were the community over competition generation. (Hell yes to that.) The old-school idea of what makes a role model is fading out, and new icons like Gina Martin, Jameela Jamil, Malala Yousafzai and Toni Harris are rolling in. I could have waited for my career to pan out and write this book in 20 years, but this problem needs solving and it needs solving fast. Your incredible talents shouldnt slip through the cracks just because you havent been taught how to make them visible to the world.