Transcript

Gayle Johnson

For me, values are principles or guiding lights for your life, really. They're the foundations of everything. And it doesn't matter what your values are, and it doesn't matter what you then build up out of them- if you're kind of strong in what you believe in and what you stand for, you can then work with that to turn your hand to anything.

So I spend a lot of time thinking about what were the most important things for me. And I did lots of reflective exercises to get to grips with that. And for me, values came down to things like connection and compassion, and I built my business around those sort of brand values, if you like.

There's lots of different ways to be in business. And with copywriting, which is what I do, there's lots of different ways to do that. And I could see other people doing it very, very differently. And at first, I got really daunted by that and I thought couldn't possibly-- I'm not a slick hipster marketing type of person. And to try and pretend to be that, firstly, would've just felt really difficult. I would have spent all of my energy trying to be someone I wasn't. And I just wouldn't have been as good as those people.

So what I decided to do instead was be very clear about what I stood for. So the way I see it, it's about being kind to yourself. And tuning into your values is a way to be kind to yourself because you're working with yourself, not against it. So by doing that, I then built my website being very clear about my values, being very clear that I wanted to work with values-driven people which meant that I didn't say I was only going to work with people from a particular industry, it was people who were driven by something deeper. And it's meant that I've attracted people who I love to work with, and we understand each other.

So it's really helped me having the values as a kind of breadcrumb trail through the woods really. And then if something goes wrong because those values are still strong, it doesn't matter. Mistakes happen. Sometimes things don't go perfectly, but you can always come back to your values, recenter a bit, and and go off again.

So I found them anchor points, really. And they've certainly been helpful in me attracting the sorts of clients that I really enjoy working with and then in turn who value me because it's almost like magnets, I guess.