Being Geek Chic is a blog about one woman navigating the male-dominated industries of production and tech. It's written by Elizabeth Giorgi, Founder, CEO and Director of Mighteor - one of the world's first internet video production companies. Learn more about Mighteor here.
My world is full of amazing women. I am so grateful to know each one of them. And while I’m usually all about gifting experiences like my dear friend Megan - sometimes badass women are also crazy busy women. In those cases, this list of awesome gifts will let them get back to taking over the world.
Clear Membership ($179 Per Year)
If a strong woman in your life is a frequent flyer, then a Clear Membership will be a huge time saver. Fly through security and then even go through to the front of the TSA PreCheck line. It’s truly the best. It saved me HOURS this year.
Tile Slim Tracker ($49 for 2)
This is my whole life: Where are my headphones? Where’s my phone? Where’s my Kindle? That is why Tile is like an extra brain. It always knows where my things are - and shows me the way.
Physician’s Formula Boosting Serum ($11.99)
Let me tell you what I need in life - makeup that lasts from 7AM to 7PM. This is the one and only liquid eyeliner that I’ve found which can withstand 12 hours of hot or cold. It’s a winner in every way.
Any of These Books (Up to $20)
It’s easy to lose enthusiasm for business books after you have read more than 3. They are all meant to teach and rarely do they get you pumped up to do the work. These non-business books for bitches who mean business are the east right thing.
Old School Desk Nameplate ($28)
I can’t think of anything more silly or funny or true than these nameplates. They would charm any girl boss and certainly give them something fun to talk about with their team before getting down to work.
Chatbook’s 2016 Book ($15)
I’m obsessed with this service. Get your instagram photos and ANY photos from your awesome year in one beautiful little printed book. And here’s a great bonus: Rifle Paper Co partnered with Chapbooks to offer some gorgeous designs.
Sugar Paper Business Card Holder ($5.99)
I love this. It’s cute. It’s easy. It does what it is supposed to do. And it’s stylish and wonderful. And it’s super affordable.
When I started my business, I had a simple goal for achieving work/life balance: I was going to make sure I took time out to blog every week. (On this here, blog, no less.) It would be a way to ensure that I didn’t lose sight of myself. It was a promise to stay focused on things that made me happy so I didn’t only focus on things that made me money. I’ve failed.
When you start a company, people give you this look. I call it the “good luck, kid” look. It’s part pride, part fear, part hope and part skepticism. The funny thing is that their face is the physical manifestation of your insides. You are feeling all those things. Do they really feel that way or is it a projection? Is that that why you see what you see on their face?
Fast forward to today when I have five people on payroll, a new office, plans for expansion and an actual business with actual revenue. Now, people ask a different question: “how’s business?” And I give them a look that I call, “Can you tell I’m silently drowning in the confusingly endless ocean that is running a small business?” face. You feel this because things are going well. But invariably, if things are going well - that also means that things are very, very busy.
Which brings me to not writing. The other day in between the madness of finishing one project and trying to get to a meeting and make sure I got to the bank and achieved one of the other 100 things on my list, I realized that I was feeling unhappy. The amount of stress, people management and planning that had become my day to day life was overwhelming me. And all I wanted to do was sit down and do nothing.
This is because people management is not why I started my business.
Project coordination is not why I started my business.
Financial planning is not why I started my business.
But all these things were now my job. And since my job is so tightly interwoven with how I see myself and think about my place in the world, I suddenly felt totally out of place inside my own company. I can tell you first hand: that’s a bizarre feeling. For a few weeks, I’ve charged ahead, acknowledging that sometimes having a business that does what you love means you gotta do a lot more business than the thing that you love to make it survive.
However, that can only last so long before a total identity crisis sets in.
I’ve known a lot of overachievers in my life. In business. In corporate careers. In college. We all have this really big thing in common: we equate achievement with our personal value. If we’re not doing well, our value to the world plummets. When we’re killing it, well, our value to our employers and our friends and our partners is at its peak. Actions are everything. Proving to yourself and others that you can take on a challenge is the drug. And you want to experience the high.
In running my business, I’ve realized that no matter how much money you are making, no matter how happy your clients are, no matter how talented your team is becoming and no matter how successful you have become - exhaustion kills the joy. Without proper rest, nutrition, time off and just general balance, you will completely kill any and all of the high.
I won’t say I don’t love Mighteor. Or production. Or what we are doing as a team. Or the projects we are working on. I do. I love this business and all the people that make it a thing.
But, I am so tired.
And that’s confusing. Because identity is something we all struggle with, but for someone like me, pushing myself into what I do for my work is how I always manage those ups and downs. Now my work IS the ups and downs.
This weekend, I’m going to take my first real days off that I’ve had in 2.5 months. I’ve worked every weekend for 8 weeks straight. And to make myself step away, I had to book a damn flight and buy concert tickets. Otherwise, it was never gonna happen. But I also hope to reconnect with the part of myself that finds happiness and hope outside of the business.
Who knows, maybe I’ll even start a journal again.
Because the thing about identities is that we can always change them.
I only do laundry once every 60 to 90 days. For some people, that may seem totally insane. Maybe even gross. Quite honestly, I feel a little embarrassed that I know this about myself. But ever since I started my business, my life has become all about efficiency and reducing the amount of shit I do in my life that is totally and completely time consuming for no good reason at all. Laundry and dry cleaning was one of those things.
It all started when I went to go pick up my “go-to” suit jackets and sheath dress from the dry cleaner and the bill was $89. For three damn items. In case you didn’t know this already: there is a lady-penalty at the dry cleaner. A men’s shirt will get the steam and press for anywhere between $3.99 to $9.99. My silk shirts? The absolutely absurd price of $19.99. It’s the opposite of economical. And it just caused me a lot of stress always trying to figure out when I was gonna pick up my wardrobe.
And then I discovered this big secret: what if I didn’t even need to own nice clothes? Besides the basics, of course. What if I could avoid understanding trends and just let someone else do that for me?
Well now that is exactly what I do. I rent roughly 75% of my work week wardrobe and it’s awesome. No laundry. No dry cleaning. No unexpected dry cleaning bills. And no worrying about what to wear. New clothes just show up at my front door. Then, after I wear them, I send them back. I don’t have to wash them. I don’t have to steam them. I just wear and return.
This is how I do it:
From Monday - Wednesday, I wear my Rent the Runway Unlimited items. These tend to be my most busy “meeting” days, so it’s a lot of high end Diane Von Furstenberg dresses and Vince and Theory jackets and blazers. These things going extremely well with my existing accessories, so it’s super simple to just throw on a DVF sheath dress with a pair of heels and nice earrings and that’s that.
Then, on Thursday morning, the UPS guy picks up my RTR items and I pick my items on Friday for the next week. The nice thing about RTR is that you don’t have to send everything back at once, so you can hold onto that romper that makes you feel like a badass and send back the other items and just get two more items that week.
For Thursday and Friday (and the occasional Monday when UPS fails to deliver on time) I wear the items from my Le Tote. Le Tote is a funny thing. It allows you to rent the whole gamut of wardrobe items from gym attire to dressy dresses. Because you get five items at a time, I tend to be a little more adventurous with my Le Tote and have even bought one of the sweaters I had in one of my first Totes. The types of items I generally get from Le Tote are things like a sassy French Connection sweater or a Free People blouse. They tend to be my Friday items, when I’m not as likely to have a bunch of meetings but still want to look good just in case something does come up.
Le Tote does require you to send everything back at once, so I do have to plan a little better and there have been a few times when I did send something back without wearing it because the fit was bizarre or I just didn’t like the item on me. But I figure, in the big picture, it’s not a big deal.
The other really unexpected bonus of this system is how much simpler traveling for work has become. These days, I pack my LeTote and RTR items on every trip I go on, wear them for the work excursion, and then have my hotel ship the items back for me. I go home with a super light bag, which means I usually just fold it up into my laptop purse, and within a few days of being home, a new wardrobe is on the way.
What does this cost me? Altogether, I spend $200 per month on these two services combined. I don’t shop anymore. I do less laundry. And I’ve eradicated my twice monthly dry cleaning bill. I am pretty confident when I look at the numbers, I’m saving money.
Of course, most of my friends are baffled by this. But here’s the thing: there are SO many things I have spent a hundred bucks or more on in my closet that I’ve worn once and then I felt tremendously guilty forever because I never wore it again. You know what items most commonly suffer that ending? Yeah, they are the things that are colors. The blue dresses. And green skirts. And that one pink blazer I bought because I was losing my freaking mind. And while I don’t think this is for everyone, I do think it’s for people who like to dress up and want to look chic and polished for their job, but just don’t have the capacity to actually pull it off.
To put it in concrete terms, these are the things I most commonly rent: Really bold patterned shirts and rompers, sheath dresses in all kinds of colors, special event dresses for parties, networking events and big deal sort of activities, blazers and skirts.
And these are things that I don’t rent: Bras and underwear, accessories and jeans or my black skinnies. Socks, obviously. Shoes or footwear. Also, my purses usually last the whole year or two, so those I skip too.
The last, and perhaps, the most emotional reason why I just can’t imagine stopping this lifestyle switch any time soon is because fashion is so, so wasteful. When I think about how many crappy items I have purchased from Forever 21 and H&M over the years, only to donate those items one season later, it makes my stomach hurt. While wasting money sucks, ultimately, it’s the fact that most of that clothing winds up in a landfill somewhere that really gets to me. I literally can’t handle it. So while some people might be weirded out that I’m essentially “sharing” a wardrobe with hundreds of other women - that doesn’t bother me one bit. The way I see it, we share our cars, our homes and now, we share our closets.
Never in one million years did I think this would be a topic on this blog, but it’s turned out to be this great thing in my life. I love how it simplifies my life. And I love how it gives me space to free my brain of wardrobe questions and instead look at how to spend my energy on my business every week.
If you want to try one of these services, I’ve got coupons, because why the hell not ask, right?
Le Tote will give you $25 off your first tote (50% off) if you use THIS LINK HERE . OR the first three people to email me with the subject line GIVE ME A TOTE at elizabeth(at)beinggeekchic(dot)com - I will send a free tote to you!
Rent the Runway will give you $30 off your first rental or $30 off your first month of Unlimited if you use THIS LINK HERE.
Share economy, FTW.
It’s Saturday morning and I’ve been working for a few hours. Trying to write up new proposals, review legal and make sure I have a solid shot list for my shoots next week. And it doesn’t bother me. In all of my career, work ethic has never been a problem. I sort of get a high from knowing that I have maximized every hour of the week. The problem is that when you own your own business, you discover really quickly: Working does NOT always equal Winning.
This is perhaps the hardest part of being a CEO and business owner. When you have a normal job, the relationship between working hard and feeling a sense of achieving wins are connected:
You work extra hours for your company, maybe you get paid overtime.
You finish a project early, you celebrate with your team.
You land a new piece of business, you get an incentive or a bonus.
You put in extra efforts to improve a system or project, you get a promotion.
You make a great hire, you get kudos from HR or the boss.
When you own your business, working extra hours is part of the job description. You finish a project early and all that means is you have to go onto the next project. When you land a new piece of business, you are just doing the job you’ve decided to take. You put in extra efforts because you know that it’s the point of deciding to go on this adventure. And when you put in the extra time, it’s because you absolutely have to put in the time if you have hope of finishing all the projects you’ve got on your to do list.
So what do you do? You start wishing for wins. Wins that come out of the clear blue sky. Little bits of luck and serendipity that swoop in at a random moment to remind you that your business has a little bit of life of it’s own. A moment when the clouds break at just the right moment so you can get that lens flare on the shot that will make it really special. A client referring you to a perfect piece of business. A thank you gesture from a client to brighten up your day and your office so you can keep going.
But you know what’s crazy?
Most entrepreneurs I know aren’t wishers and waiters. They’re logical strategists. Always making connections and seeing lines where other people only see air. So those wins? They aren’t luck at all.
They are seeds that you’ve planted just finally reaching the topsoil after years of growing below the surface. You thought they’d bloom seasons ago, but in fact, they just needed a little more patience. And that’s not luck. And I hope you don’t need to be a gardener to understand this metaphor.
So instead, I’m trying to change my frame of mind on wishing and winning. Instead, I’m trying to think about planting. Planting more. Planting often. And being more patient.
Less wishing on wins.
And more patience on plantings.
When I decided to start my company, I had already spent a lot of time on the traditional path. I had been working in different parts of media, marketing and communications for 8 years before the glimmer of entrepreneurship even caught my eye and I can still remember thinking: “Really? Me?” So imagine being four years into your college experience and already knowing that the path we’re sold and told to follow isn’t for you. That’s what happened to Erin Winik, Founder and CEO of Sci Chic and our guest blogger for today.
From day one of college as an engineering student, you are told repeatedly to get leadership experience, hands-on practice in engineering, and internships as soon as possible. Get your resume in tip-top shape for recruiters. Network with large engineering firms at career showcase. Get leadership titles. Inundate your resume.
I have always been someone who has striven to please the teachers and people around me, and therefore I dove into my classes and my school’s chapter of the Society of Women Engineers headfirst to work to fill up my resume with exactly what these companies wanted. I worked my way up through the organization and took any opportunity someone would give me.
As I entered my 4th year of college, I was struggling to find the exact company that fit me and my personality. My resume was full to the brim of what everyone else thought I should be, not what I wanted to be. I can now easily get offers for jobs, but they are not the ones I want. I have passions for writing, photography, business, making, sewing, and so much more past the technical experience that I can fit on the front side of one sheet of paper.
At this moment I had a thought, why I am I following this path? Sure, it is the path that college most easily funnels you towards, but forget company name recognition. Forget stable jobs. Forget the normal path. Is this my dream?
Why not make the company for which I am so longing to work?
If the company is not out there, I could be filling a gap both in the market and in my life by creating it. Thomas Edison once said, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work”. I decided that the work was worth it, and what better time to take a chance than my senior year of college. This led me to creating Sci Chic in October 2015.
The biggest lesson I have learned in college is that you do not have to wait for someone else to deem you worthy to get experience. You can make those situations yourself.
At Sci Chic we used advanced technologies like 3D printing and laser cutting to create customizable science inspired jewelry. I am able to get experience learning about finances, business, manufacturing technologies, marketing, and so many more things that would have taken years for me to get a chance to experience waiting for someone else to give me the opportunity.
However, starting your own company does not come without risks or difficulties, and the difficulties of a senior year of college compounded with this caused some issues. Company deadlines and group project deadlines can often interfere. Needing to study for a midterm can get in the way of the ten emails you really need to send. Add this onto the fact that I am already a minority in mechanical engineering as a woman, and a now a minority as a female entrepreneur/business owner. I somehow seem to always pick the paths where I am a minority, but am happy to do so. I am proud to represent women in an area where we are still so underrepresented.
Strangely though, the thing I have struggled with the most is publicly selling myself as an entrepreneur. Up until starting my own company I have stayed on a traditional college leadership path that didn’t draw any attention for being different. Breaking into entrepreneurship has had to be very public for me since I am trying to draw on many of my college and social media connections to support my business. This makes both my successes and failures within the business very public and open judgement of my choices is not something to which I am accustomed.
But then I hear a story of a little girl wearing our jewelry every day to school. I 3D print a new jewelry design. I go out and meet people who are excited about what we are creating and realize I could not get this experience anywhere but with what I have created and I am grateful for making myself balance classes with this company. I realize that this is where I am meant to be and that all the struggles that come with it are worth it.
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Erin Winick is a 4th year mechanical engineering student at the University of Florida and the founder of Sci Chic. Erin can be found on Twitter @bcofengineering.
