F ck Being Humble

282 Pages·2021·4.36 MB·English

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
52–54 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 couldn’t have done it without you all.

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT PAGE

INTRODUCTION

1. SELF-PROMOTION IS NOT A DIRTY WORD
(it’s the defining factor of your success)

2. KNOWING WHAT YOU STAND FOR
(working out what you want and crafting your profile
towards it)

3. DON’T BE IN HIDING
(make sure you’re present in all the right places)

4. THE POWER OF NETWORKING
(and why it’s a game-changer when growing your
career)

5. KNOWING YOUR SELF-WORTH
(how to recognise and demonstrate what you bring to
the table)

6. GETTING THE MONEY YOU WANT
(how to get what you deserve)

7. CALM THE F*CK DOWN
(why emotional intelligence is the secret component)

8. FAILURES MAKE YOU FUNNY
(we all do it, here’s how to handle it when it happens)

9. DON’T LET LABELS LIMIT YOU
(keep striving until you find what makes you truly
happy)

READING LIST

N

ot a saying you hear a lot, is it?

Of course not. Until this very moment, you’ve

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 it’s not quite that
straightforward. You see, you can be the humblest
person in the world, but if you’re 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 we’re really scared of?

An acronym I’ve 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 you’re busy obsessing over
how the rest of the world perceives you (by the way,
everyone else is doing exactly the same thing and isn’t
thinking about you anyway), the real problem you
should be facing is FOBG (Fear Of Being Generic).
Now, I know that doesn’t 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,
you’re modest, and you definitely don’t send a weekly
roundup of your latest work. Instead, you sit in ‘Camp
Generic’ with your Nando’s medium chicken and piri-
piri salted chips.

Don’t worry – it’s normal; we all do it. In fact, it’s 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 don’t 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 you’re 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 who’s 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 LinkedIn’s 2019
Global Talent Trends report, with automation and AI
reshaping the future of the workplace, it’s 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, I’d wave goodbye to any thoughts
you’ve 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 don’t give people enough
reason to provide them … and then we complain when
all our stars don’t perfectly align.

The good news is, you’re reading this book because
you’ve finally recognised the importance of sorting