A Little Failure Goes a Long Way

What is failure anyway? In this episode, we talk about our failures and how we reframe them into opportunities to grow. 

Learn more about Sarah here: www.knotanotherhat.com

Learn more about Marie here: www.oliveknits.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to We Tried to Tell You, a podcast full of unsolicited opinions about life, fiber, and everything in between.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

I'm Marie Green.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

And I am Sarah Keller. And today we are talking about our first failures. Dun dun dun. Dun dun dun.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Failure. What a fun topic, Sarah.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Thanks. Oh, yes, I know. Let's let's get deep in it and feel real good about ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

I love it. I mean, just not everybody wants to talk about.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Well, I'm gonna kick us off with something full of levity. You know, I figured it would be fun to start with something that's uh a bit humorous. We're gonna go all the way back to 14 years old. Sarah. Okay. Yeah. Let's hear it. First major failure. Okay. Do you remember Sun In?

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Oh my gosh, yes, I do. I also had some Sun in failures. Love it. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

So here I am. I am a dark brunette, brown eyes, dark brows, and I decide I need to be blonde. And the only way I know of to go about doing that is to head on down to my local payless drugstore, buy a bottle of sun in.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

And put that stuff all over my hair.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

All over.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Yeah. And then I somehow hear, because there was no internet. It was in the days of yours. 1989. Um there's somehow I hear that you can improve the outcome by A, laying out in the sun after you've put the sun in in your hair. Maybe this was even on the bottle. And then B, I feel like it was. Um, squirting lemon juice in your hair.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

I was just about to mention the lemon juice. Girl, yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

I'm telling you, I wasn't pleased enough with how slow the results were going. It was like every I went through a bottle so fast. Every day that I showered and washed my hair, more and more and more was going in. I bought several bottles. My hair, by the time so I started this in the summer during break, and by by my birthday, which is September 12th, there is a picture of me blowing out candles on a cake, and my hair is the most unholy shade of orange.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

It was horrible. Horrible. That was a massive failure.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

That well, I mean, your heart was in the right place. I get what you were I get what you're going for. I too have had some orange hair episodes. I also remember being on a vacation, it was kind of along that same vein, and being told that rubbing baby oil all over your body and laying out at the pool is a great idea. And I will say that while you're laying out, it looks amazing, especially if you're like 14 years old. But the problem is uh in a few hours of bright summer sun, you find out very quickly what heat stroke feels like and also what having blisters all over your body feels like. And I remember laying in the hotel sheets with just the feeling of fabric touching me, hurting, everything hurt. I could not leave the room, I could not do anything else. I don't even remember where the trip was or what I missed out on, but it was very unpleasant. So if only we'd had the internet back then and we could have gotten things, but we didn't because it was the olden days.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

That's okay. If we'd had the internet, TikTok would have told us some other cockaminy way to get our hair blonde and layer. Other failures. Let's talk about other failures. Okay. First off, true confessions. I picked this pot this topic, and then I immediately had a hard time. Like, what have I failed at?

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Thank you. That's how I felt. I almost messaged you last night to say, uh, can you give me an example of one of your failures? Because I'm having a hard time thinking of any. And then I was like, I can't even say that out loud. That makes me sound like a real turd. I don't think so. I don't think so. I've I've got a theory about this.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Okay, let's hear it. Okay. My theory is that it's our mindset. So we have failed plenty. Right. It's just that we have failed in an effort to do something. And anytime we have failed, we have just considered that a step on the way to doing what we want to do. Yeah.

unknown 4:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

That's so um I think it's our mindset that doesn't really, we're not like filing these in our Rolodex internally as let's put that in the failure pile. Right. It's just like that was just another step where I learned X, Y, Z about what I need to do.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Two, and you saying that makes me think part of it is also that if that one thing makes you stop dead in your tracks and you don't keep going, then it probably feels more like a failure. But because we consider it a step towards something, I love that you're framing it that way because that feels very true. It's like it didn't stop anything, it just helped me figure out okay, that one doesn't work. Let's try this, and you keep going. Yes, maybe that's part of it.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

I think so. I think in my mind, what I would have probably called, well, not necessarily called, but what might be the failures I've thought of as mistakes or missteps.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

That then I would course corrected. And even sometimes if that meant leaving something, which I do have an example, like ending something, yeah, you know, it was a course correction ultimately.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Well, and you learn something. And I kind of feel like every misstep that I make, I learn something, and then I course correct.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Although when you first suggested this topic, and I was trying to think through my life at my earliest failures, and the one really obvious failure that came into my mind was a spelling bee in grade school. I think I was maybe second or third grade, and the word was lonely. It's terrible. And I was so crushed and devastated because I thought of myself as a word person, which I still do, although now I realize many talented writers and and educated people misspell things all the time. Um but at the time it was soul crushing. I know. I don't think I did another spelling bee after that, so that really did feel like a failure. Yes. It ended my career as a spelling bee champion.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

As a spelling bee champion.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Yeah. Early on.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

Oh, okay. So in business specifically, I do have a few things that I I again calling them failures is a little bit of a mental hurdle for me. But yeah, I think one of the biggest ones is m is the fiber festival. So not everyone may know, but I used to, um, I took over a fiber festival from its founder, and it happened here in our in our area. It had started in Hood River, which is a pretty small town. We don't have a lot of venues. Um, I ran it one time here in Hood River, and then I moved it to a bigger venue, um, still in the gorge, kind of expanded the offerings, really tried to bring in big name teachers. Um, and we even actually ended up adding a second venue um in the valley, like um a few hours away from here at a nice little place. Anyways, it didn't last, and there's a lot of reasons why it didn't.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

But that was this festival. I thought it was amazing. I had a I vended at it, I taught for it, I loved it.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

But I I still have vendors who say they they miss that festival.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

I miss walking around with a little Dixie cup full of wine that you so graciously brought to me, knowing that I would just walk around and buy yarn with reckless abandon. It was amazing. I loved it so much. But I also knew the behind the scenes. I knew what you were dealing with. So, what about that felt like a failure if you frame it that way? How did you come to it?

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Um well, and this is one of the things where I it's hard for me to say that it was a failure. I think it's a failure as an endeavor, period. I came to realize that there are no margins in running an event at that size. You can't charge enough to make the money you need to be make it worthwhile to put on. Even if you are just trying to cover your time and not have it be a profit-making venture, I still couldn't do that. Like it is just not feasible. People will not pay what would be required to either attend classes or attend a marketplace. Um, and there's reasons, there's good reasons that they won't. Like, there is a line where it becomes too expensive. And that line, I I don't know how in well, you know, at the time I was like, I'm not sure how any of these festivals are making any money. And what what's happened? Most of them have gone away. Yeah, you're ahead of the curve. So, in addition to paying people and compensating them accordingly, you know, for their time, like the teachers and people who worked at the festival for me, etc. So I think the whole enterprise is kind of set up to fail. And I really wanted it to work. I really wanted it to be successful, and then ultimately it just wasn't.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

And I think if anyone could have, it's you. You're really business savvy. So I I think that you gave it all the right juice, and it just is not a really feasible business model. Yeah. Yeah.

unknown 9:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

It's super tough. That's a really good one. That in thinking about business failures, or, you know, like you said, it's hard to use the word failure because I just I just think of it as something I learned. For me, that would be two things in particular. One is shipping product. Oh. I just, you know, over the years, and it's really been hard to accept this because people want to buy physical products. And during my slow seasons, there's just no revenue coming in. And it I started selling physical products because it was a way to keep revenue coming in during the seasons where nobody was really buying anything else. And for several years, I had employees, up to at 1.5 employees, which was such an enormous uh responsibility. And I had people to pay and like I had to keep paying them regardless. Right. And I feel like I kind of got in over my head before I before I even had time to really think through it. I was just in survival mode, like, okay, take the next step, take the next step. And it got to the point where it was just so unsustainable. And I was spending so many hours by myself packing and shipping orders that was the reason that you got into this line of work.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

No.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

And I I decided that I was going to give that up, which also allowed me to no longer need employees, which also was kind of a lesson learned because I realized I don't want to manage people all day long. And it got to the point where my business was no longer at all about knitting or writing or anything that I came into it for. It was just managing people, shipping orders. And it it was miserable, honestly. It made me so unhappy and I wanted to burn it all down. And making that change has been really good. However, now there are just long stretches without revenue. And that's really stressful. It's hard to run a business that way. So you so yeah, I learned what doesn't work, but also I understand why I tried it and it was effective. It's just not what I want to do with my time.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

So you know, and you learned you learned something out of it, you know, it wasn't it wasn't a waste.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

No, I learned what I don't want to do.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

And I'm much happier having just me and just having more of that time to think through what I'm doing and my approach to things and not be juggling the responsibility of employees all day, but also, you know, I just have to get creative and and try other things because now I know I don't want to be shipping orders. That's something I've learned. I would rather not another hat ship the orders.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

Write it in permanent ink.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Yeah, it was uh it was a very good lesson to learn. So probably not my most successful idea though, but yeah, it served a purpose.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

Exactly. Exactly. And for a little while it did give you, you know, it gave it give you that um bump that you were looking for. So it was helping during those times. And I have no doubts that you in the way you turn out ideas, you're gonna have other ideas that are gonna come about regarding filling the the um slumps, you know, yeah in in sales times. Yeah. Um, one of my big ones, like when I very first started the store, and this took a long time for me to learn, was over-ordering.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

It's that makes so much sense.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

And I I just think about new shop owners all the time, and I just think, I hope you're not making the mistakes I made, but it's just so easy. And the pressure of seeing sales reps in your store is tough, unless you are just a super, super direct, blunt, strong world personality. Having somebody who's visit driven out to your place, shown you all the stuff, you see stuff you like, it's really hard not to just place an order. Really, really hard.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

To say, okay, now I've made my notes. I'm gonna go, thank you for coming. I'm gonna think about all of this and do some planning. And so for years, I would just be like, Yeah, let's order this.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Because they want you to place the order while they're there.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

Yeah, I've been I've sat through some of those uh yarn rep meetings, and it's so tempting. I mean, they've got the color cards and they've got the samples. Yes, let's just fill this order out right now.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

And it there's a not there's a obligatory feeling, you know, to needing to compensate them for the work they've put. I mean, it's just it's just crazy. It took a long time for me to figure that out. And even now, I still have a few times where I just get swept up and I'm like, What the hell just happened? I just placed the biggest order. I was not gonna do that.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

It's tempting. Well, yeah, I I think you're also reflecting what customers feel because we go, you know, there'll be times where we go into something saying, I'm not gonna buy anything, and then everything is shiny and fabulous, and we can't resist. So I think this is a problem we can all relate to. But as a shop owner, like there's a difference because you have to keep the lights on and exactly the employees pay, you know, so you do have to be a lot more careful than we, the the lowly people who just stock our stash.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Yes, absolutely. And it's definitely something if you don't have an innate ability to do that, to be firm, etc., you have to work at it. You have to practice, practice that kind of uh assertiveness to be like, thank you so much. I have taken in so much great information. I will think on this and send you my order when I'm ready.

unknown 15:32

Bye. Love you bye.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Right. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Yeah, that's tricky. I think that would be really hard for me. I have the same problem when people ask me to come teach at their place or at their event, especially if they catch me in person. This is not a permission for anyone listening to try and person.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

I just gave away my.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

I know. No, don't do it. Uh and I've really had to, you know, crack down on that. And part of it too is just realizing that travel takes a toll and it makes it hard to do your other work, you know. So you have to really factor that in. But I've said yes to a lot of things that I went into it saying, don't say yes to anything, tell them you'll think about it. And then you say yes and you think, why did I do that to myself?

SPEAKER_01 16:17

That's the next thing here that I wrote down. People pleasing.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

Oh, I know. People pleasing makes me think about the time. I mean, that's basically my whole life, as you know, because you know me very well. It makes me think of the time when I was 12, 13, 14, 15 years old, and I was really tall. And so everyone at school, all the coaches always assumed that I would be athletic. And I see you laughing. I know.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

It's it's troubling that this is You just had this image of 15 14-year-old Marie dribbling a basketball.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

Oh, girl, I know. And I got roped into track and or not track and field. Uh, what's the running? Cross country. Cross country. What's the running thing that they do?

SPEAKER_01 17:06

Where your legs go at a faster pace than walking.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

Yeah. Well, I feel like this really illustrates the problem we have here. But they tried to get me into basketball, volleyball, anything, you know, all the way back to dodgeball in elementary school, which how hateful was that? Like, why did they do that to us anyway?

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

So bad. And it was never good. And I did finally get to the point where the humiliation, the the few coming humiliation, the guaranteed 100% certain humiliation was enough to help me say no. But it took several humiliating like I signed up for softball once. Can you see me playing softball?

SPEAKER_01 17:51

Girl, I used to sit down in the outfield.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

That would be me. It was so embarrassing. And do you know how many people said things to me like, all you have to do is you just have to swing at it. I'm like, listen, I don't swing at things, or I do, but they don't hit anything. I mean, I can't even swing a hammer and hit a nail with it. So I don't think that I am your person for this. But I did do one summer of softball to do somebody a favor and they were sorry they asked me, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

I have a softball trauma story. Let's hear it. I don't know why my parents made me play softball, but it was probably like fifth grade. I'm in like my uncle, these sweatpants. It's just so god-awful. This is the same time that I was I was an outfielder and I would literally sit down.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

I love this.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Um, no one's hitting a ball in the outfield in elementary aged softball, but I had this asshole coach, excuse my language, and I got up to bat. It was my turn, and I struck out, and he was like, nope, keep pitching to her, pitching to her till she hits it. What? So yeah, in a game. So he just made the other team's pitcher serve balls up to me that I repeatedly missed. That is horrifying. Horrible.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

I'm having anxiety in my chest just thinking about this because that is.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

I never thought about like what the heck were my parents thinking watching this. I mean, I didn't play after that year, so maybe this they were finally like, okay, we shouldn't do this.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

They were like, this was a terrible mistake.

SPEAKER_01 19:25

God, that was so awful. I still know who that coach was and I know his name, and you'll never forget it. Uh-uh. Oh, it was so humiliating.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, that's terrible.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Okay, that was a that's a that's a downer failure.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Yeah, it's all right. We have those. Yeah, that's I mean, that's just as troubling about the coach, also. Like, just have a jerk.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

That was the 80s for you too, though, you know.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

Well, okay, well, so we've talked about some missteps that we may have taken. Inevitably, we learn from those. So, do you have any nuggets of wisdom or advice for people that find themselves maybe making these kinds of missteps, but they're thinking of them as failures. What would you say to somebody, you know, like a young Marie getting started in her design business or, you know, whatever it might be?

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Well, I think that failure is something that we think, like there's not a definitive guide to what failure is, right? So there's not a it's not like math where one plus one equals two. So failure is just a thing that we think about it, and just because we think it doesn't make it true. So I really like that. I think that my attitude about it really is to give yourself permission to reframe it and don't give up if you want to do it. I mean, there are things I failed at that I thought, okay, it was worth a try, and I'm actually not that interested in doing this, but I just wanted to see and I'm happy to walk away from it. But then there are other things, like I think when I learned pottery, I imagined myself being amazing at pottery. I love handmade pottery, and I just thought I'm gonna be so good at this. And then I signed up for a class and it was like this culmination of this life dream to finally become a potter. And then I sucked at it and it was so embarrassing. You're gonna have a hard time imagining that. It was destabilizing to my sense of self because in my mind, I was like, I'm gonna be so good at pottery. I felt like I would be a natural. I thought I'm gonna sit at this wheel and it is gonna flow through me. I'm gonna be one with the clay. And I was not one with the clay for a long time, but I didn't give up. It was embarrassing, and I felt like I was picking it up the slowest of all eight people in my class. And this one guy that was in the class who acted like he didn't even care was somehow really good at it, and it was so infuriating. But I got there. I I mean, I wouldn't say I'm an excellent potter if if our friends at Jam PDX are listening. I'm not coming for your jobs, that's for dang sure. But I did get You're not gonna be their next intern. I don't think they're gonna have me as an intern, although it would be a fun job, but it would be. That's gonna happen. But I at least got to the point where I could make bowls and I could, you know, I could actually do what I wanted to do. And I realized, okay, maybe my life's calling isn't pottery. But I think the takeaway is that if you try something and you fail at it, that doesn't mean it's over and you can't keep going. That's really just, okay, I learned that it's harder than I thought, or I learned that it's gonna take more time than I thought, or this just isn't the way I'm gonna go about it. And that's really true in writing. A lot of people who, because you know, my my other side of my life is writing. And a lot of people who write and get a rejection can feel so crushed, like my story's no good. My I'm not a good writer. And honestly, some of the best books have had tons of rejections. So I think of failure really just as a learning experience or just not even a learning experience, but like a like just an opportunity to try again. You know, it's just like an invitation to step back for a minute and go, all right, what what am I gonna take from this? And and also it tests your metal to Yes.

SPEAKER_01 23:07

I was just gonna say it's you can, it's a chance to say to yourself, I can do hard things.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

Yeah, I love that. What about you? I mean, I kind of gabbed for a while. So did I leave you anything to say?

SPEAKER_01 23:17

No, I just totally, I totally um agree with everything you said. I really liked how you framed it. Um, that just because we think we failed doesn't mean that's true. I was just gonna say, like, you know, obviously I didn't give up when I had a problem with over-ordering, or else the shop wouldn't still be here today. But I did learn that I need help in that department. And it started out as a very low threshold help where I thought, okay, this is easier if Jill or Julia are here at this meeting with me to not over-order. And then oh, it's actually easier if I have a retail coach who's telling me you have exactly this many dollars to spend. So these are steps that I took along the way, learning from those first failures. And they are what I like to call growth. Oh, like basically, that's what it is. It's it's a step on your path to growth, whether it's personal growth or business growth, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

I love that you brought the coaching into it because it's I've had that same experience as a book coach working with writers because it's just that much easier to have somebody who isn't in the trenches and can actually see the whole journey and knows how to help guide you. It's just so powerful. And like you said, it's growth. I mean, we just we have to start somewhere. And yeah, we can't necessarily be awesome at everything the minute we try it. In fact, I would say most of the things that we are really good at today, it took a long time to get where we are. You know, our first thing that we knit, the first business decisions we made. Like all those things were not perfect right out of the gate. But I think sometimes people who maybe are at that early point feel those early decisions really intensely and can't see that whole path ahead. And so they can't tell that it's gonna be okay and that you are gonna live through this thing that feels like a big failure.

SPEAKER_01 25:13

In terms of uh just wanting people to feel better out there. Let me just tell you, when I first opened this yarn store, I didn't really know what alpaca was.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

That's amazing. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

Like I knew what the animal was, but someone walked in in that first week and they're like, Do you have alpaca? And I was like, blink, blink. Um, do I?

SPEAKER_00 25:38

I don't know if I do. I love that you said that because I so often tell people, you know, we have to kind of be empowered with our own knitting knowledge and yarn knowledge because just because you go into a yarn store doesn't mean that person knows. You know, they can be working there and just new to the experience or just excited to open a store doesn't mean they have all the knowledge in their brain because we have to learn that over time. I bet you know what alpaca is now, though. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 26:03

Uh well, so that person left and right quick, I was on the uh the computer and I was like alpaca difference between whoa, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. Yes. And then I and then I was like, okay, I better start educating myself a little bit more because I was like, whoa, cotton.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

Mm-hmm. I same, same, basically. It's all the same, it's all just yarn.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

Right? Yes. Well, this has been a really fun chat. I think there's a lot of good takeaways here. And there's, I mean, I think there was takeaways for me. And me too. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

I like talking about this in a way that reframes it because I think we all try and try and try at things that maybe don't work out initially, but I love sending everyone that message that it's okay to try something and not be good at it. It's okay to make some mistakes. Doesn't mean it's okay.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

Is just one more step on your way to growth.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

It sure is. I love that. Oh gosh, I love this. Thank you so much, Sarah, for a great topic this week and another fun chat. And for those of you out there who are listening, if you are trying something new and it feels like a struggle bus sometimes, just remember.

SPEAKER_01 27:16

We tried to tell you.

SPEAKER_00 27:18

We did. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.