We were lucky to catch up with Portia Shaw recently and have shared our conversation below.
Portia, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
Resilience is a great word – for me personally this comes from being knocked over and being adamant to get back up. Owning a business is my biggest joy, it is also the biggest pain in my ass. I try to keep a routine in my life to give me some structure and guidance, I don’t have a manager breathing down my neck, so it’s up to me to make sure I get through my to do list. Resilience for me comes from thinking about the result, and having tunnel vision to get there, don’t look left or right, just plough on like a train.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I’m the founder of The POP Group, a fashion PR and events company which pivoted in the last couple of years I became a co-founder at IN-HOUSE, the fastest growing platform within the fashion community across the UK and US. I personally love nothing more than seeing independent fashion brands winning and whatever I can do in that journey for them I try to do to my best ability. Essentially brands come to me or I might scout them, and they want to have their designs on celebrities and in magazines, I connect the dots and make that happen. Outside of the office I sit on the executive board of a 501c in Texas called Magpies + Peacocks, which is an organization that helps underserved creatives in the area learn a craft within fashion, providing them with tools, skills and a safe space to grow and develop their talents. The wiser I get in my years the more holes I see in our social systems where individuals sadly fall through and are not given the help they need. I also volunteer at my local LGBTQ center in Hollywood with events.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
If I had to choose 3 skills or qualities which were impactful to my journey, then I would start with the quality of having thick skin and never giving up. Even in the pandemic when I was down to my last dime I still pushed ahead with a vision. With that another skill is self-belief, if you don’t believe in what you are doing then nobody else will and that’s a recipe for disaster. Finally learning to listen and not be so reactive … in my 20’s I was a machine, but that machine made many knee jerk decisions which didn’t always go as planned and then involved fixing. Time might not stop but you can, think about you are doing and what you want the result to be.
All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?
So many good questions to choose from in this interview – I’m running with this one as the challenge I am facing with my business is growth. Every day I try and pull several new levers to help turn the dial. New marketing strategies, new software, better office equipment, listening to pod casts to further educate myself. Our goal with IN-HOUSE is to open a third showroom in 2024. Right now our business is boot strapped, meaning it doesn’t happen if we don’t make money as neither my business partner or I come from wealthy families to bank roll our business. Thankfully we make a profit, however we do need to get a board of advisors as well as an investor to make this happen. The financial aspect would give us the flexibility to secure the right location and team to run the location, the advisors would be amazing to bounce ideas off and to learn from. We’ve never done this before so it’s a whole new language and skill set we’re developing as put together our deck to present to prospective investors.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://in-house.group/showcase
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/in_house.group/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/portiashaw/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=aNxQnCiH-yg9zUbU&v=Yaml5m9WJ5E&feature=youtu.be
- Other: www.thepop.group
Image Credits
Photos are our own.
