Heart and Hustle

In fact, I put those summers of work experience on my CV, which helped me to get my first ‘real’ job, in retail. I had just turned sixteen and was at sixth form when a shopping mall opened up nearby in Croydon. It was new and shiny with a super posh department store called House of Fraser. I remember writing up my CV, listing out my skills and of course jazzing up my work experience. All that knocking on doors had to count for something! It had helped me to develop my ‘customer service’ skills, I wrote. Packing up orders honed my ‘organisational skills’, while taking door-to-door cash payments was my ‘financial management’ experience. And just like that, I had myself a job. I’d leave school on a Thursday in my work uniform – occasion wear by Coast, the store I worked at in House of Fraser – so I’d be on the bus in my shiny satin skirt. It really was a look! My working hours were 6 p.m. till 10 p.m. every Thursday, all day Saturday, and occasionally a Sunday.

For the next four years, including part of my time at university, that was my routine. In all honesty, sometimes I hated it. Late-night Thursdays could drag, while in retail the customers are always right (even when they’re not! That’s just how it goes). Being on fitting-room duty wasn’t exactly stimulating, and I often found myself clock-watching. But despite not enjoying it much, it was my hustle at the time, and the company looked after me when I went to university in Manchester. There, I was transferred to Selfridges and when I needed to move again, they transferred me into their new sister store, Oasis. In all, I worked within that company for almost four years. It paid for a whole lot, and kept me busy and potentially out of trouble.

While I was at university in Manchester, I also went back to my secondary-school side hustle. Rather than the playground, my halls of residence and student accommodation were now my shop floor. By that point, I’d taught myself how to do weaves, extensions and even chemical relaxers. I wasn’t a trained salon professional (and I would never advise doing this; people should go to salons to have chemical treatments), but at-home relaxer kits were available and, growing up, I’d never gone to a professional salon to have my treatments. At university there were plenty of students who wanted their hair done, and I took full advantage of this. I had a set rate, the proper kit, and soon a new list of regular clients, some of who would even travel from other cities to see me. For every relaxer, weave or braids I did, I was earning £30, £40, £50 a time, matching what I could make at my part-time job in retail. Growing up, I’d had no idea that not having the money to go to the salon would turn out to be an advantage, forcing me to learn skills that would later help me earn money.

My first business failure

Mind you, my ventures didn’t always work out, because that’s the reality of life and business. Another side hustle I set up was a beauty community. I wanted to bring girls together who loved makeup but couldn’t afford the typical retail prices. I’d found a distributor online that sold MAC makeup and other well-known brands, and I honestly couldn’t believe the prices. While store prices were anywhere between £12 and £15 per eye shadow or lipstick, this guy had these same products on sale for £3. By anyone’s calculation it was a bargain. Even if I sold them for £9 each, I was going to make a profit, right?

So I spent my money on stock, investing a few hundred pounds, which was a lot for me at the time. I printed out flyers and organised a space at the student union for my event. Then, my stock came in. It looked great from afar, but on closer inspection all was not as it seemed. For a start, the spelling on the packaging was wrong: ‘MAC’ was spelt ‘NAC’. That wasn’t all. The labels on the backs of the items didn’t look like the labels on the products you could buy in store, and the colours were all off. I realised I had been ripped off. The products were trash and very, very fake. I learned that day, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. I’d got burned, but I was also growing. Slowly but surely I was developing my skills as a ‘multi-hustler’ – someone with multiple sources of income.

Real-world expectations

I’d already been working, in one way or another, for years when I finished university. But that didn’t mean I was relaxed about the future. I want to take a moment to talk about my university experience – what I was doing when I wasn’t busy with all my jobs and side hustles! So let’s rewind for a second.

When I was at school, it had always been expected that I’d go to university, and, grades-wise, I did OK. In sixth form I studied biology, chemistry, psychology, business studies – all academic subjects, but when it came to applying any of these to real life, I didn’t want to. I wanted to study fashion! After all, it was my passion, right? I found a fashion and marketing university course, which got me super-excited. Initially my parents were a bit unsure about it: ‘Fashion? You don’t want to be a doctor or a lawyer?’ But I wasn’t deterred. It was full steam ahead (well, for a season at least!).

But early on in that course, I realised it wasn’t for me. I was hating it! My passion was fashion, but not in that context. I didn’t connect with the people on my course and, more importantly, I didn’t warm to the subject matter in the university setting. My expectations simply didn’t match reality. In one class, a group of us designed a single shirt with four seams. I thought, What the hell is this? I didn’t want to make clothes or cut out patterns. At the same time, I found out the graduate salary in the fashion industry at the time was around £10,000 to £12,000 a year – for a starter role at a huge sports brand, for example. I thought, Hold on, can that really be the salary after all these years, not to mention the cost, of university? Hell, no! I had a reality check: it was hard to understand how the salary could be that low, considering the effort and commitment I was going to put in. I remember thinking, This is not enough, especially for what I want to achieve for my future. I couldn’t risk continuing as a fashion student when I wasn’t sure if it would support me or my future family. I needed more security.

Some people are fortunate enough to have parents fund them when they’re getting started. I didn’t have that option. I wasn’t resentful, but I knew that I was going to regret it if I didn’t make a more financially stable choice for my future. In hindsight, my past-life experiences likely contributed to my craving for security. As it happened, one part of the fashion course I did enjoy and found fairly easy was the accounting module. The cogs were turning … I said to myself, You know what? I’m going to do accounting and finance.

The way I see it, life goes in seasons. I figured that if I stuck with the fashion course, it wasn’t going to set me up in the way that I wanted. So I switched, believing that afterwards I’d be able to get a better job, earn more money, and that would provide me with more freedom and opportunities. I wasn’t necessarily going to be an accountant all my life – and, I was right, that’s not what happened – but I wanted to give myself options. I didn’t necessarily love my new course, but I realised my mind really connected with the subject matter. I liked the spreadsheets and crunching numbers – I’m analytical. Changing my path was right for me.

I learned an important lesson through that. When you’re starting off, it’s important to find that sweet spot between your passion, your ability and what’s practical. You don’t have to start off in your dream job or career – most of us have got to pay the bills somehow, right? In the US, young workers now switch jobs on average four times in their first ten years after graduation.1 My approach is to think big, and take small steps.

LIFE LESSON: When it comes to life, it’s never a straight line – it’s more like a zigzag! Think of every experience, good and bad, as a stepping stone to the next opportunity.

But Patricia, what should I do?

The short and honest answer is: I don’t know, the answer is different for everybody! But I will tell you something: where you start off doesn’t matter as much as you think. For example, the thing about studying is that it’s not just about the subject you choose. The skills that you pick up and the people you meet along the way can be even more valuable. Some degrees, like medicine and dentistry, are vocational, of course, but otherwise much of the experience is about learning the skills to equip you for life in general, rather than for a particular job. Things like understanding how to think critically, analyse, research independently, and even just how to be someone who can show up, sit down and meet deadlines on time. Of course, not everybody wants to carry on studying after school, and often for those people university can be an expensive waste of three years! The days where having any degree was considered highly prestigious and a guaranteed ticket to a life of comfort and good income are long gone.

The problem is, when you’re younger, you don’t really know what career options are out there. It all seems very rigid – lawyer, accountant, doctor, nurse – but there are so many more options that you have no idea about, and what’s available changes as the world changes. You can even write your own job role aligned to your strengths, bring it to a company and say, ‘I will do this for you’, and they might agree – and pay you a salary to do that!

No wrong jobs

In the same way, we have a tendency to get really connected to our first job, thinking it’s a lot more important than it actually is; we believe that we’ll be ‘stuck there for life’ and it’s nothing like the area we want to work in. Sometimes you’ll hear people say, ‘There’s certain things I wouldn’t do,’ or ‘I can’t do that, I’ve got a degree!’ But pretty much any job is better than sitting around holding out for the perfect starter role.

As I’ve tried to show you by explaining my own first jobs and hustles, I’ve come to learn that all experience is valuable and can be a springboard to greater things in the future. Working in a kitchen, for example, will teach you time management, teamwork and how to cope under pressure. Data entry will teach you how to stay focused and, at a basic level, to turn up and get the work done even when it bores you! You just have to remember that if you’re doing something you don’t like, you don’t have to do it for ever – but you may have to do it for now. I’ve had people work for me who studied at Oxford University alongside those who have left school at eighteen and worked jobs some would consider ‘menial’. But what I’ve learned is that ultimately it doesn’t matter whether someone’s got a degree or not. It’s all about whether someone can apply themselves to a task, even if it isn’t the most glamorous thing to do, and deliver results. Success lies in the ability to learn and consistently execute.

LIFE LESSON: Sometimes you have to do the lower-paying job or the role you’re not so keen on, to build up the experience that will put you where you want to be.

So by all means have a plan – but keep your options open. You don’t want to close yourself off to opportunity. You never know where your next break might come from. In my own case, after university, I ended up in the City, in the high-flying world of big investment banks. It wasn’t an industry I knew or where I had family that could get me an ‘in’, and I really didn’t have a clue how it all worked. So how did I do it? Let me explain …

Use your network

I’ve always had that overriding sense that I’ll be fine, a mentality I picked up from my mum. I felt somehow I’d be successful, but how – or even what my definition of success was – I really didn’t know. But, as I neared the end of my university course, I did have a wonderful friend from college, Emeka, who was doing a computer science degree at Manchester University. He was a bright guy, going places, and I would confide in him because he inspired me and his door was always open. I would ask him a ton of questions about everything – love, life, careers. Nearing the end of our courses, I happened to ask him what he was doing after uni and whether he’d heard about any opportunities. I was worried. I had no idea what I was going to do next. He shared with me that his friend had just got offered work at an investment bank called Merrill Lynch and was getting paid £30,000 for his first job. Emeka himself was about to do a summer internship there. I was shocked: that seemed a lot of money and a great opportunity. I wanted in. Emeka encouraged me to apply for an internship. He gave me the recruiter’s email, I got in touch with her and she told me there was a Women in Technology dinner taking place, aimed at female students interested in going into the City. Women who had senior roles in technology at Merrill Lynch – directors and heads of departments – would be attending. I wasn’t a tech girl and I knew nothing about the City, so I got my friend to give me the lowdown. In fact, I prepared for this ‘networking dinner’ like it was an exam (although it was super-casual). When the evening arrived, I was ready with my note pad, pen and article clippings to stand out.

The night of the dinner, I quickly noticed the other students were chit-chatting among themselves and not talking to the women who had come from the business. I’m not sure if nerves or hunger were to blame, but I decided to take it upon myself to work the room, dropping in references to all the research I’d done. When it came to the sit-down part of the evening, I was that annoying person with my hand up to ask questions related to the industry: ‘What’s it like being a woman in the business?’, ‘Where do you see the financial markets going?’ The women from the bank seemed slightly taken aback, to be honest – Why is she asking these questions? – but they were intrigued. And I wanted to stand out: I was hustling. That didn’t mean I wasn’t perfectly nice to everyone there. You can be nice – and totally shameless! But I was focused on what I wanted from that encounter, whereas the others were a bit more laid back about connecting with the executives from the bank. I’d gone prepared, and the executives remembered me.

Preparation is key in a situation where you want to impress. You don’t have to think of clever questions off the cuff. If you’re shy or unsure, put together a mental ‘cheat sheet’ for the conversation ahead. In my case, I’d spoken to my friend Emeka, picking his brains about what I could ask, and I knew what subjects I hoped to talk about.

While I was never going to be exactly like my friend, I could learn from him. He even read my statements for my internship application – ‘you could put this in’, ‘watch out, that looks wrong’ – and mentioned ‘my friend Patricia’ to the recruiters, so they looked out for me. Some people suggest seeking out mentors, even people you might respect that you’ve never met before. Go for it if it feels right for you, but you don’t have to do it that way. My friend was my mentor – even if he didn’t know that (till now!).

LIFE LESSON: Associate with people who are doing what you want to do, but who are doing it better than you. Don’t be threatened – you can climb together. I knew my friend was more informed than me, I knew he was on a really good trajectory, so my attitude was: Mate – hook me up! And that’s exactly what he did.

Acing the interview

Soon I learned that I’d passed the first hurdle: I’d been selected for the interview process. But how do you get that great job or secure that fantastic internship when you’ve no experience? It’s the classic frustrating catch-22 situation for a lot of graduates, school-leavers and career-switchers. Again, it’s all about preparation and accumulating a working knowledge of the industry you want to enter. But, at the same time, when you’re starting off no one’s expecting you to be an absolute expert in, say, financial markets. You’ll learn everything when you’re on the job. The key thing is just to demonstrate what skill sets you have. Now, when I was chasing this Merrill Lynch internship, I hadn’t done a placement in the City already and therefore couldn’t draw on experiences I hadn’t had. So I talked about what I did know: I’d always worked in retail, and I had my hair business. I wove narratives – told compelling stories about my experiences – to show the recruiters that I had experience in something.

In my case, I had what seemed like endless interviews. There was a woman quite close to me in age who was in HR – the gatekeeper. Then, there were a panel of men in suits. But my approach was the same: charm, share, talk! You don’t have to be embarrassed about your past experience – draw on it to show, for example, how you dealt with difficult situations or how you took the initiative. So much of work and business is firefighting: share how you put out flames, what you learned, and showcase your ability to come up with solutions. This is exactly what I look for today in my team members: that story about the tricky customer you managed to deliver for really can serve you well.

I’d also done lots of unpaid activities that packed my CV. I’d been a mentor to school-age kids and shared with them what it was like being a university student. And I was involved with Young Enterprise, a scheme helping young people set up their own businesses. I was able to draw from both experiences. So get involved in real-life activities! If you’re at home twiddling your thumbs or always staring at a screen you’ll have nothing to draw from. Your experiences can help you get that role, though they might seem unrelated to the job. Sometimes recruiters simply want to know that you’re a well-rounded person.

LIFE LESSON: Business is about people working with people. You want to connect with the interviewer. Preparation is important of course, but once you’re in there don’t be afraid to let go of the pressure to remember every tiny detail. You don’t need to remember to ask what happened to the company’s tech division in the last quarter. Try to be a little more personal and find common ground.

Break the rules

I know a lot of people can feel scared about applying for jobs. The list of requirements can seem so daunting! And this lack of confidence in our abilities seems to affect women in particular. You might have heard this statistic before: men will apply for a job when they meet just 60 per cent of the requirements, but women only apply if they meet 100 per cent of them.1 It’s been called the ‘gender confidence gap’ – we can be hesitant about taking action to push ourselves forward.

My thinking is: just do it – even if you’re not sure of the outcome, try it and see what happens. When I applied for the internship, the odds were stacked against me. I knew I didn’t have the grades they wanted. I wasn’t in my second year of university, like most applicants, but in my final year. The bank required 360 UCAS points to apply, but because I had dropped an A-level (chemistry – I hated it!) I only had 280 points. That, in normal circumstances, would have automatically taken me out of the running for most of the graduate schemes I was interested in. But I completed the application form, despite my situation. Some people would have thought to themselves, ‘I don’t have the right grades so I’m not going to apply’ – to be honest, that’s what I thought at first! I had never submitted any other similar applications because I was scared of rejection. But, encouraged by my friend Emeka, I did it despite my fear, explaining honestly why I didn’t have the UCAS points, and why it wasn’t an issue. In that way, I set the ball rolling for my future.

Later, as part of that process to get an internship, I failed one of the maths tests. I cried straight after taking it, as I knew it hadn’t gone well. With thousands of people applying for the internship programme, I knew that if you failed one of the tests, you didn’t get in – that was the general rule. But because I had tried to build those relationships at the dinner, and connected with a few of the right people – because they’d seen my drive and determination first-hand and considered my potential to be more important than my ability – they gave me the opportunity to come in and retake the test. This time I made sure I was ready. The questions were mainly algebra (my nemesis!), so I spent a few weeks improving my knowledge of the principles, doing practice test after practice test, night after night. When it was time to do the real test again, I smashed it and got the internship.

LIFE LESSON: Your limits are based on how you perceive yourself. Challenge your perception and you might be surprised. Every time I hit a stumbling block, I might have been momentarily disheartened, but I pushed through and the results were better than I could ever have imagined. Sometimes that’s all you have to do: push through.

The upshot was, I graduated, did my three-month internship in London, then was offered a job at the bank! I couldn’t believe it. My starting salary was £35,000, with a £5,000 sign-on bonus. For a twenty-one-year-old, that’s a lot of money. I’d done it! I thought to myself, I’m rich! I’ve made it in life.

Of course, I didn’t know then but this was just the beginning. And we’ll get into my time as a full-time employee. But I want to stress that as much as I talk about ‘doing your own thing’ and being an entrepreneur, I 100 per cent appreciate the values I picked up in the workplace. The skills I gained from all of my collective experiences and side hustles brought me to where I am today, providing me with valuable knowledge and experience that university could never have given me.

Nail that interview

It can be difficult to get that crucial first role and the dreaded interview can be a major stumbling block. But a good interview can also be the most impactful thing you do. So I’m going to share my cheats to make it a little less painful:

> You do not have to know everything – what you want to show is that you are willing to learn everything.

> Draw on your experiences to give specific examples of what you would do in the role. For example, ‘If scenario X happened I would do Y, because when I dealt with situation A I applied B and XYZ was the result.’

> There are a lot of cookie-cutter questions (some of which I’ve listed below) you can be asked, so prep a response for each one that has a little more fire than, ‘I’ve always wanted to work for this company because [insert what you read on their online bio].’

> Practise your interview technique out loud. Yes, it could be embarrassing but it makes a difference. Find a friend to ask you questions and practise your response. Alternatively, you can find a mirror and practise with yourself.

> INHALE. EXHALE. SMILE!

The old chestnuts

Think of strong responses to the following before you walk into the interview room (and keep them safe for future use):

> Why do you want this job/internship?

> Why should I hire you?

> What can you bring to the role or the organisation?

> What relevant experience do you have?

> What relevant skills to you have?

> Where do you see yourself in five years’? (Progressing within that company, of course!)

> What are your strengths?

> What are your weaknesses? (Talk about areas in which you’re already improving and what strategy you’re applying to do this. You want to be honest but not too honest.)

> And if you’re thrown a curveball? Don’t panic. Take a moment to think, then take a stab at the most sensible, thoughtful answer you can reach for. So much of this is about delivery. Be enthusiastic, respectful, and make eye contact – you’ll have them eating out of your hand in no time!

2 | Yes, I work for myself on the internet!

I do sometimes get tired of answering the ‘What is it you do?’ question I hear time and time again, coupled with the ‘Is that even a job?’ remark IRL. But in the digital space, people like me get a different reaction. I see a lot of #GIRLBOSS, #HUSTLE and #Buildingmyempire hashtags, sprinkled with copious amounts of praise in the comments. It can make it look like going it alone is the most exciting thing in the world – the one thing everyone should be aiming for. In 2017, it’s estimated that nearly 660,000 companies were started in the UK, a new record – and that figure is expected to be broken year-on-year.1 So what’s the truth?