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Jessica Meyrowitz: Crafting Curiosity into Success · The Bold Lounge

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge Podcast.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: My name is Lee Burgess and I will be your host.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: If you're anything like me, you love hearing inspiring stories of people who have gone on bold journeys and made a positive impact in the world.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: This podcast is all about those kinds of stories.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Every week, we'll hear from someone who has taken a leap or embarked on an extraordinary journey.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: In addition to hearing their stories, we'll also learn about their bold growth mindset that they use to make things happen.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Whether they face challenges or douse along the way, they persisted and ultimately achieved their goals.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: These impactful stories will leave you feeling motivated and inspired to pursue your own bold journey.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I believe everyone has a bold story waiting to be freed.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Tune in and get ready to be inspired.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: I'm excited this morning to have Jessica Myrowitz.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: She is the founder of.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: It's a Yummy Welcome, jessica.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Happy to be here.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: So maybe we first start off by what is it's a Yummy, it's a Yummy is a hand knit knitwear company.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: We manufacture a custom-made, oversized, 100% merino wool yarn.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: The yarn is something that we sell in addition to selling finished products using that yarn.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: So hats, scarves, blankets, baby blankets, belts we have an endless amount of products pillows, and then we also sell do-it-yourself knitting kits.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: It has everything that you need Knitting needles, pattern.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: The yarn comes in a great little tote so you can make it yourself.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: And then we also have knitting and crochet tools.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: So we sell all of that on.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: It's a Yummycom.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: And then, in addition to that, I travel all over the country and I teach mindful knitting workshops at spas and resorts all over the country.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: In addition to I teach it at various corporations.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: They use it for team building, happy hour events all different ways of incorporating knitting into the lives of their employees.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Nice.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: This gives everyone a visual.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Who's listening?
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: If you've ever seen like the pottery barn or you know, primary, that's one that comes to mind, the really chunky row.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: That's the type of yarn.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: So it's that chunky yarn.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Yes, everything is a little super sized over it.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: It's a yummy.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: So, yes, the needles are very, very large, the crochet hooks are very, very large, so very different, which is actually really good for people who maybe don't have as great fine motor skills.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: So you can use larger needles and it's a fun change of pace for someone who's an experienced knitter and it's a great way to learn how to knit for a novice knitter.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you get done quicker, I would think, because it's yes, I do.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: Yes, you do.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: So I always say there's two types of knitters.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: There's a project knitter and there's a process knitter.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Process knitter is somebody who loves the active knitting.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: They find it mindful and meditate, relaxing, they really zone out.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: They love the process, the way of knitting.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Then there's project knitters.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: They're somebody who loves what they've created to, whether they gift it to themselves or they gift it to somebody else, and I find with it's a yummy.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: You know oversized yarn and knitting needles.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: You can be both.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: You get the best of both worlds.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: You get the whole process of knitting but you also get to complete a project pretty quickly and in my classes that I teach we literally in an hour you will learn how to knit and you will have made a scarf.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: So you get the benefits and the best of both worlds.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: I'm probably both, and the sense you see where I went was like, and it would be done faster.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: So right.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Exactly, there's a lot of half done things you know like from the sense of how you know if I've sewn or started something or done cross stitch, like oh yeah, I wanted to get that done, but it took too long, so I love that.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Yes, everybody has a pile of works in progress.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Well, let's jump into being bold.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: I'd love to hear what your definition of bold is.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: What does it look like to Jessica so?
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: bold to me is taking a risk that is safe in the sense that you're not going into it unknowing or blind.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: So bold is taking a calculated risk that you have put thought, life experience and a dream behind, taking the chance and going outside of your comfort zone and making it happen.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's not thoughtless, it's not real, it's actually thought filled, yes, and it doesn't always mean fearless.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: It could be right, still go anyway, but you, you have all the data, or at least the all the data that you can have.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: I think it's hard to have all the data.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: There's always the unknown, which is part of what makes it bold.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Right, right.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: So in your definition, when was the first time you remember being bold?
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: The first time I have.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: I want to know.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: It's so funny.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: I have a lot of firsts for being bold, okay, and I feel like you can be, you know, because you're so bold, hopefully many times in your life, exactly.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: So I have a lot of firsts, okay.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: Sometimes it's a first where you're doing something physical that you may not have done before, maybe you're doing a crazy hike or you're taking an adventure.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: So I have bold that way.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: I also have business bold and I personal bold, emotional bold.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: So the first time I was business bold was when I was starting.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: I owned an advertising agency prior to having Itziyami, okay, and that was very bold.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: When I started my advertising agency, so, I had worked for a company and I found out that that company was going to go through some transition.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: And I found out on a Thursday.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: On that Friday, one day later, I started getting phone calls from other companies who had heard about my company that I worked for was going to go through transition, and other companies started calling me and asking me to come aboard and do kind of what I did for this other company, which was I had very strong relationships with arts groups in the Washington DC area, okay, and they wanted me to come up aboard and bring the skill set of having relationships with arts groups to their companies.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: After I started getting a number of phone calls, I remember going outside of my home.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: My husband was sitting on the porch of our house.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: It was Friday afternoon and I said you know, I think I'm going to start my own advertising agency.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: And he said what, where's this coming from?
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: And I said I'm going to get the benefits of these relationships.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: Other companies see the value in this.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: So, thoughtfully, I also knew the value of this.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: I strategically quickly did some research on how do you start an agency, how do you LLC yourself, what do you need to do, what are the steps.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: And then I calculatingly thought of the groups that I had strong relationships with.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: How many of them would I need to make a sustainable business?
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: And that afternoon I made a couple of phone calls and I said I'm gonna start my own agency.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: It's gonna take me about a week to be LLC.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: It's gonna take.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: So I had the knowledge, but I boldly called companies that I had an existing relationship with to introduce them to an idea that we'd never even discussed before, an idea that I hadn't thought about more than a day.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: But I saw an opportunity and the boldness of this was seizing the opportunity.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: I saw a door was opening, based on the desires of others to bring aboard my skill set, which was my relationships and my relationship building, and I said I can do this.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: I can figure this out.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: I asked them to join me.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: I said take the weekend to think about it.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna start my agency.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna leave where I am and start my agency on Monday.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: I hope you come aboard.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: And all four companies that I had contacted came aboard.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: I was LLC'd by the next week.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: We signed the contracts and they were with me for 15 years till I closed my agency.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: That's a whole lot of bold, very quick bold.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what I loved about a couple pieces and let's kind of rewind a little bit.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: So moment was happening, transition within the company that you're in can rock your world.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Yes, because it feels a bit out of control.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: It feels unexpected, it was unplanned, and none of those unexpected, unplanned and out of control are not good things to feel right.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: It felt like you had the ability which you've probably done a lot of your life.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: It sounds like, well, I'm not gonna mire in it.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: I'm either gonna wait and be patient, see what happens and what the facts become, Because sometimes we hear things that never happen or don't happen as if we had heard Totally agree with that the first thing you did was you were patient and didn't react.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: So that's something I want people to hear.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: And then you've got a call from other people which maybe validated that, yes, this is happening.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Maybe more information was coming into you.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: And then you're like I don't have to just wait, I could actually act.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: And I think that's one of the things within my framework is owned, so like owning the action of figuring it out, of being patient or of like what are the possibilities?
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: So when you walk out on that porch and told your husband, I'm gonna start my own ad agency somewhere in you that had been percolating for a little bit, right.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Well, I will tell you so.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: I had this opportunity because my personal belief is always super serve wherever you are, go above and beyond, figure out what the needs are and make yourself valuable.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: So I had been working with these arts groups for many years and I ended up becoming an advisor almost to them.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: As we were developing a personal relationship, I was able to use experience as skill sets, thoughts and became a helper.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: But I didn't look for the monetary.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: I wasn't saying, well, I'm doing this, I want that.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: I was doing it because I believe the value that you bring to whatever company you're at, whatever clients you're working for, go the extra step.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: It may not be recognized immediately, but you're not doing it necessarily for recognition.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: You're doing it to make yourself invaluable.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I value whatever you do, right, exactly.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: I always believe that you always take that extra step because most people will not Correct Then that personal thank you note.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: Be there, stay a little bit extra, come a little bit early, whatever it is, always add a little bit something.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: Put the sprinkles on the Sunday, then put the cherry on the side, add a little something extra.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: So I was lucky enough that, because I had been working with them so deeply for so long.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: It was a very natural transition.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: So I wasn't super serving with the idea of doing this one day, but because I had super served for so long, I was able to seize an opportunity when it presented itself.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was more natural.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: It was a more natural next step, exactly yeah, because I get asked did I plan what I'm doing now?
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: And I kind of giggle because I don't think I literally had a plan this year I'll do this this year, I'll do this.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: I'll add that I'll do this.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: I think what was always inside of me was just one like you, I always want to be supportive and serving, because I think that's why we're here.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: We're here to help others, and if we're not doing that, then I don't know what we're here for.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Totally agree, yeah, and you can do that in so many ways as a founder, as an corporate world, in a nonprofit, like there's just so many ways.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: And volunteering, like, just do it.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: I think what happened when I had the opportunity to just kind of pivot or think differently was how can I do this?
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: What does that look like?
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: What's a new way to do what I do?
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: Or to scale right, to scale my impact.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: And it sounds like you had that opportunity too.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Sounds like you had almost a way of doing things, a way of working with individuals, particularly in the arts community.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: That was niche, yes, very, and you knew how to do it, jessica.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: And so they're like yes, she's the one that knows us, gets us, and so you didn't have to be everything to everyone either.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: No, and you don't want that because you can't be everything to everyone, Right say that again.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: You can't be everything to everyone Exactly and I believe that.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: And even so, here the transition from owning an agency and my agency was always niche.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: It was always working with arts groups.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: That was always my strength and because of my background, even before I was at the company, I figured out what language could I speak, what did I understand, what could I hear, how could I be of service and what are my strengths.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: I figured out something very specific.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: Even when you go to Itziyami, it's very specific.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: I have one type of yarn I'm not everything to everyone and I can't be, but I can be in my zone, in my lane, and I can be that as a strength, I can be that as an expert-ish, I can be that for growth.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: That's really what I found from my agency in terms of growing a business, scalability.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: All of that Do what you do well, people will find you and you will find opportunity.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think in the world today particularly, I think it's just natural and human a sense of like I'm not doing enough, or look at what they're doing, or the social media is a whole nother world of being in, and I think people have to realize that social media at times is not real.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: For sure.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Being real, being with others, why you're knitting, why you're connected, why you're being mindful.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: I think there's a connectedness there too that I think also brings through kind of the value of what you do.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: So when we're serving others, when we're helping others, I think it's also really good for people to get out there and to potentially put themselves out there.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: So when you did this transition from your, you are now the founder of your company.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: It's very successful.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: What's the transition that you take when you say I'm gonna go all in on Itzy, yummy.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: It was so interesting what you just said.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: It really resonated with me because I thought to myself what really is bold is authenticity.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: Being authentic is hard.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: When you were talking about the social media and how it's not real, and to put your real self, not even just in social media but just outside of it, in everyday life, to be who you are, to put that out there, that's truly bold.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: And when you're talking about switching over to the knitting and to the yarn, I just said, oh, I really just resonated with me.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: So thank you for even bringing that to my mind.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: But switching over to the yarn company, how did I even make that?
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: change?
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Did you knit all your life?
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: Did you know?
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: No, no no, I can't.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: It's about recognizing.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: It was another opportunity.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: I saw that the window was open or the door was open and I took a chance For both of these businesses that I owned.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: I didn't know all the ins and outs of it, I just believed that I could figure it out, that I didn't need to know it all right away, but I did have a belief that I could do it.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: Like the little engine that cut, I'm like I can do it.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: I can do it, I can do it.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the B in the bold framework is belief.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a very, very important part, and you really can't own, learn or design your future unless you understand, unpack, address, accept your beliefs or don't accept them.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: And as we get older, I think we need to continually do the belief audit, and you had very strong beliefs.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, totally.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sometimes we don't always have that and you gotta work on that, you know where it comes from when my kids were little.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: I have two sons who are not so little anymore, but when they were younger they both took a class and it was like a gym class and the instructor would have, and they were they're three years apart so she was still using this mantra the whole time when they were little.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: She would have the kids almost chant while they were doing it.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: I am brave and I can do it, I am brave and I can do it.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: So I would sit outside the gym class and I'd watch and I'd hear my kids I am brave and I can do it.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: I am brave and I can do it, and I've used that personally and every time I'm in something when I literally was starting, it's a yummy and I was just like I'm like I am brave and I can do it, and I still use that from when they were little.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: But so when I was transitioning over no, I wasn't a knitter all my life it wasn't even in my frame of reference to open up a yarn company I had transitioned my life, moved up to the New York area, which we are in right now.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: We were in the DC area before, which is where my company was.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: I was commuting back and forth to run my company out of DC, but it was becoming very difficult because, as I mentioned before, I had two sons and it was hard to go back and forth and I decided, december of 2015, that I was going to transition out of the agency and not keep going back and forth.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: I didn't know what I wanted to do next.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: All I had in mind and I said I don't know, I'd been doing this for so many years.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: I'd been working with the clients for 15 years at my agency, for six and a half years at the company I was prior.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: This was all I knew for a big chunk of my you know working career.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: And I said you know, I'm just gonna be creative, I'm gonna try something different.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: I'm just gonna I'm not gonna think about work, I am going to just take some classes in my town, in my community, meet some people, expand my world and just be open to possibilities.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: That's what I had decided.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: So I closed mid-December, january 4th of 2016.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: So two weeks after I closed my agency, pretty much, I signed up for two classes in my town I signed up for a pottery class and I signed up for a knitting class.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: About a week into my pottery class, my pottery teacher said go online and look for things to make in pottery class.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: And after about 10 minutes I had more than two years worth of pottery I was gonna make.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: I didn't have the kitchen cabinets for all the pottery I was gonna make in my class.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: So I said I better go online and look for something to knit.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: And I came across what's called extreme knitting, which is knitting with very large needles and very large yarn.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, I love that.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: Look, I'm gonna make a throw for my family room.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: But I couldn't find the exact type of yarn that I wanted to knit with.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: For each place that I looked, for various reasons, it just wasn't exactly what I wanted it to be.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: So I started contacting small women-owned mills all around and I said I'm looking to make a throw.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: I want the yarn to look like this, feel like this, and I went into a whole bunch of details I could barely cast on, which is the start of knitting.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: I certainly didn't know how to do any stitches at this point.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: I just had the ambition and the desire to make this throw.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: Samples of yarn started coming to me from various mills and I looked at the yarn, and this is about mid to end of January of 2016.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: So just a few weeks after I started my classes and I'm like, oh, this yarn is so fabulous, I can't be the only one who wants to knit with this.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: It's so great and different and I said, well, I know how to brand a company.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: I've been doing it for so many years, so I had a belief in myself that I could brand it.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: I had a knowledge of how to.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: I didn't have a full knowledge about the yarn and wool and sheep and knitting community yet, so I said, well, I need to get that, I need to learn more about that.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: So I looked.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: I said what do I know?
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: What don't I know?
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: What are some things that I can do?
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: And I do believe and I believe this with my ad agency you have to know, if you own a company, how to do everything.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: You don't know how to do it well and you don't have to be the expert in it.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: You just have to have a base knowledge of all the different parts, because that's how you can bring in the people who do really know everything.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: So know what you're looking for.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: Start.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you gotta be able to start with the idea of I know I can't do it all, going back to what we talked about at the beginning, exactly, but I have to get it going.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: I can do the basics.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, you have to go back to believe in yourself of, like, I can figure it out.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: So there is a way to figure out some of these things.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: If you want to start your own business or you partner with someone, you don't have to be able to do it all long term, but you just have to be able to get started, exactly exactly.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: So I really looked at what do I know, what don't I know, and I'm like well, I know how to LLC or start a business in Maryland.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: Let me look and see what I need to do for New York.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: And there's places in every state you can call and people will help you.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: And I started doing all of that and started searching.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: I knew that eventually there would be a website involved, so I was looking for domain names, everything I needed.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: I LLC'd myself February 4th, one month after I started taking the class.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: As I said, I didn't really know much about the sheep yarn and wool community, so I started volunteering on sheep farms.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: I really immersed myself in the sheep yarn and wool community.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: I went to knitting circles.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: I spoke to knitters.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: I went to yarn stores.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: I really just tried to meet as many people as I could and then, as I grew more confident and more aware of things, I started trying to improve my knitting skills.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: A lot of trial and error.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: I wrote patterns that summer and then I launched, october 23rd of 2016, on Facebook.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: I chose to launch on Facebook because one thing I did know was I'm the only knitter at that time in the company.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: I knew how fast I could knit.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: I needed to control every order at customer expectations so I could say here's how quickly I could deliver.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: I needed to speak to everybody, so I knew I couldn't launch on e-commerce yet.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: I needed more personal touch.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: I was really learning along the way.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: I incorporated things I knew from advertising.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: I incorporated things I knew just from life, even when I designed the baby blanket.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: That's in my line I was a mother.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: I knew what I wanted in a baby blanket.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: I knew things that were important.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: So I took life experience, I took new experiences and I sort of put it all together.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: One of the things that I think you know we need to demystify.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: There's a myth that being bold is doing something big or doing something.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: You know that's loud, but there's boldness and curiosity.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: There's boldness in researching.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: There's boldness in talking to knitters, you know, and you know going to sheet farms and volunteering.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: There's no downside to like let me learn more.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: And that's being bold.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: So I think that's one thing that wants to hear from your story is I wasn't sure what I was going to do.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: I didn't have a plan.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, you ran a company.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: You were very successful in the company before that and before that you ran in a very rootinized, like I have a routine, I know what I do, I know who I serve To.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: Now I'm not sure.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: But let me even wait a minute.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Let me see this, let me figure this out.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: I tried pottery but man, I'm gonna need a bigger house.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: If I could have bought this this, you could put like three throws on a couch, you know.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, it's like you were curious in there.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: So I wanna talk about the curiosity piece to that.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: And what was your greatest learning in all those different layers of curiosity?
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: It's not only the yarn, it's where does it come from?
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Who makes it?
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Tell me what some of your learnings in that.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: Well, I wanna tell you one thing that you said that is so true about I didn't know where things would take me.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: I just wanna go back to that pottery class for a second, because that was something that popped into my life.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: If there was a personal boldness and the pottery class, one thing that I had said was I didn't know what I wanted to do next, didn't know what my path would be, but I wanted to open my community, meet people, expand my life and, as I can speak for myself, as you get older, you're meeting me and meeting new people sometimes becomes harder, and it's harder just to make friends.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: You're not starting school together, You're not raising your children together.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: There's different phases in your life where it's maybe a little bit easier to meet people.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: So joining this class was an opportunity to expand my community and put myself out there in a personal way which was bold.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: And I will tell you, I started that class right when I started my knitting class and that class never became obviously a pottery business, but I still go to that class every single Friday.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: It is in years now and I found that community that I wanted in that pottery class and we're women from all different walks of life, who all just sort of met each other.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: So that's something that also came out of putting myself out there and trying something new.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: I found community through one of the creative outlets, and then I ended up finding a business through the other.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sometimes you find your boldness through that because even going to the class like I don't know anyone, I'm trying to try something.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: There's just all certain ways, just like when you started, you're like, do you want to hear my first physical being bold, my first adventure, my first?
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: I know right how bold, my emotional bold, like there's all different flavors of that as well.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: So I think you're kind of like shedding light on, I think, important aspects of what bold is.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: It really is defined by you.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Yes, it's not defined by me, because I have my own bold story, you have your bold story and they're all important.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: So you go through this curiosity phase and I think another thing is you can use your curiosity to also maybe heal a little bit.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's something I did when I was burnt out, and trying to figure out what to do next is, like I just said, time out.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: I cannot jump straight back into the business world.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: I got to refresh, like shut down and come back on, like you do, your computer, and one of the things I did was just literally explore things, like you were doing, but in a more way of like, how do I actually take care of myself better, how do I get outside more.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: How do I just explore the things I like?
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: I thought it was an interesting story.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: I read Yesterday about lingua franca.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: Which you're wearing right now.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: I'm wearing.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I really love cashmere, so it's the win-win.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Yes, she actually started knitting or doing you know these types of sweaters because of her postpartum depression.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Her doctor said start something with your hands that gets your mind off of how you're feeling, like get a distraction.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: And this became a distraction, which now has become a very, very successful business, which was just an interesting story to read about, because using your hands, like in knitting or sewing, is a way to be mindful.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: So can we dig it into that a little bit, because you actually have a mindful knitting class that you do.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: So what is the connection between our hands and being able to create that?
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: Lets us be mindful, be in the moment and be present.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I actually call knitting forced meditation.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: So even if you don't want to meditate, you can't meditate.
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: You're not a meditator.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: I need to come to your class, right?
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: You will get the same health benefits from knitting as you do for meditation, and I call it forced meditation, because the rote-ness of using your hands in that way settles your mind, slows your breathing, allows you to relax, even if you don't want to.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: Just by using your hands in that way, it brings it all down.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: It really helps you get into that space.
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: Obviously, when you first start knitting, if you've never knit before, you're not gonna feel that way, because any new thing that you learn, any new thing that you try, there's always tension.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I can do this, I don't understand it, I can't figure it out, but once you get past it it becomes almost mindless.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: So you don't need to think about it, it just happens.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: All the health benefits that you get from meditation you'll get from knitting.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: So that's why it's forced meditation.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: You don't have to wanna meditate.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: You don't even have to know how to, but you'll get health benefits.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that you can't hold your cell phone while you're knitting too, so you have to be all in and both hands are working and your mind is trying to figure out, kind of, the next move that you may make it and those types of things.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: And I think the other thing that you said is really important because I think you can extrapolate it to other things in your life.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: As you said, there's always tension when you start off like I don't know what I'm doing and no one's gonna judge you in a knitting class, but for some reason we may think, oh, like we're behind or we're not ahead, or you know, I always wanna be good at what I'm doing, and I think it's the beginner's mindset and that's really something that you can use in different parts of your life.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: So funny.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: You say that because in my class, when everybody's sitting around, when we're first starting, I'll say everybody's starting with the same knitting needles and the same yarn.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: But if you look to the left and you look to the right, everybody's is gonna look different.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: We're all doing the same thing, but everybody has their own way of doing things, their own tension, their own lack of tension, their own style, and everybody's is great.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: But don't look to the right and look to the left and compare yourself, because everybody is an individual.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: So everybody is going to create something unique to themselves, and that's where the beauty is.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: But I always say that because when you're starting you're like, oh my goodness, that person's knitting faster, or am I not fast enough?
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: Or that one that person's is much looser than mine.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: That's fine, as much type.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: There's no right or wrong, because everybody's an individual.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: So it's what works for you.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: And I always tell everybody the interesting thing also I tell everybody your scarf is a journey.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: The scarf that you're making with me over this next hour is a journey, and at the end you'll see what I mean, because where you begin your scarf and where you end your scarf is gonna look like two different scarves Because when you're starting and you're really not sure what you're doing and you're more cautious and you might be tighter or you might be looser, you won't find your personal rhythm.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: Midway through you're like I've got this.
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: You start to find your personal rhythm and that's where your individuality really starts to show the beauty in who you are and what you do.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: And then at the end you found your personal rhythm.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: You see aesthetically what you like because you're a little more confident in how you do it and that's your finished piece.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: But the whole journey is beautiful because you really learned a lot from beginning to end.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: And people always look at their scarves.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: They're like, oh my God, you're so right when I started and where I ended.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: It almost looks like two different scarves.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: I go, but look how much you learned along the way.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: You needed every one of those steps and then everybody is happy at the end.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: They take pictures.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: So look what I've done, look what I've accomplished.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: And I always tell everybody wear your scarf proudly because look what you've done.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: You walked in not thinking you could do this and you did it and you discovered things along the way.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, multiple things in there I want to touch on Because I think it does, in parallel, connect with being bold.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: So, in a way, your boldness, your bold journey, it is yours and it is everybody turn up their knob right now.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: It's imperfect, it is not going to be a straight line, it's going to zig, it's going to zag, it's going to go up, there's going to be downs, like it's literally.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: Like your scarf looks like, oh, where I'm finding my way at the beginning, right, absolutely, and somebody can click in and maybe, ok, this is the path.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: Oh, I have a fork in the road.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go this way.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: Should I tighten up my knitting?
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: Should I loosen it up?
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: But no matter what, you're going back to what you said it's your journey, it's your scarf, it's your bold move, it's your boldness, like it doesn't have to be defined by anyone else but you.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: And then just going all the way to the end, in that you get to your rhythm, you get all the way to the end.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: And you said wear your scarf proudly, like your journey you should be proud of.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: Wear it proudly, you know, like all the bumps, all the bruises, all the successes, all the things that went well, like all of it, and so I love that analogy because I do think that sometimes people think things are supposed to be a straight line and we all potentially have a little bit of perfectionism in us, that we want things to go as smoothly as possible, of course, but I think being able to wear your journey, wear your scarf proudly and know that it's yours and that you can start a new one, right?
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: Exactly, and your new one is going to be different than this one, and then the one that you started after that will be a little bit different again.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: And I would say it's where you are in that moment, where you're sitting, how you're feeling all of it, and you just have to acknowledge it and go with it.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: So what is your advice, as we close out, of someone who just wants to get started?
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: They just want to get in that curiosity phase.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: You know what you did when you started your successful business that you have and the life you're living and continue to live.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: What's the advice for someone to like just take that first step of whether it be researching or curiosity or just trying to figure out their next step?
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: Well, I think it depends on where you are in your life to see what does that mean for you, Because I believe there's opportunities all through your life, transitional moments, where you can embrace and reinvent yourself.
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: Embracing reinvention is great.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: I've reinvented myself career-wise at least three times and I've reinvented myself in various things.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: Whatever labels that you give yourself, and all of that, I think first you sort of assess where you are and what's your transition from.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: Are you transitioning from one job to another, one life chapter to another?
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: So you've got to see where you are and then you can really decide who do you want to be?
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: Not necessarily what that takes a shape of, but what are qualities that you embrace.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, even if it's as simple as I wanna bring more boldness into my life.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: What does that mean?
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: I wanna be more bold, and that means something different for each person, but you could say what do you want more in your life?
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: Even I wanted more community.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: I signed up for a couple of creative classes, but I never knew what was gonna come from it.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: I just knew what was something that I wanted to embrace.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: At this moment, I think that you have to decide what it is that you feel like you want more of or less of.
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: Keep it small, because that in itself, like you know, it's like when you have a bunch of dominoes if you knock one domino down, they're all gonna go.
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: You know those dominoes where people set them up.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: And you hit one domino in it, the next one goes, the next one goes, the next one goes and it creates something new and different.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: I think it's the same thing.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: You don't have to make a zillion life choices at once.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: You don't even have to know where it's gonna go when you hit the first domino.
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: You might not even see where the dominoes are gonna end, but sometimes you gotta hit that first domino to see.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: And that first domino could be I wanna try something new, I wanna challenge myself, I wanna meet more people, I wanna try a new skill.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: I wanna learn to knit.
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: I want.
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: It could be a bunch of different things.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: You don't necessarily have to know where it's gonna lead you.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: You just have to be brave enough and bold enough to take that first step.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: So what I would say to anybody who is looking to make a change in their life or try something new or start a business or whatever it could mean to them you have to have an authentic look at yourself, what you really want.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: You have to not necessarily know how to get it and how to do it, but you have to say what is it, what's something that's important to me right now?
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: And then just look what are some first steps, and it could mean everything.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: It's something different for everybody.
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: When I was starting my knitting company, I didn't know I was starting a knitting company.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: I knew I wanted to expand my community.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: Somebody else might say well, I'm gonna go do.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna meet people, throw a meetup to go hike, or I'm gonna take a cooking class, or I'm just gonna walk in my neighborhood and say hi to more people.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: Mine was I'm gonna take a couple of creative classes and that led to something else.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: Hitting that first domino will always lead to something else.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: It's a chain reaction.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: It's just being bold enough and brave enough to take that first step.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: And it might sound a little Pollyanna-ish because like, oh, that's great, take a first step, when is that gonna lead you?
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: But you don't know where it's gonna lead you.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: And that's like the exciting part of it, because it may open up a door that you never even knew was there.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: And I didn't know when I started my agency that that was something I was going to do.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: I started the yarn company.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: I didn't know that that was something that I was going to do.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: I think that there's like a beauty in that, because it could have led to so many different things.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: I knew I wanted to go from A to B, but I didn't know how to get there.
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: But I sort of saw where I was going.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: I knew B to C, C to D.
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: I knew that there was steps along the way, but I embraced the journey along the way.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: So from a practical standpoint though a little less ethereal and more, what steps can you take?
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: I would tell somebody, grab a pen and paper.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: Write down what do you do well, what do you like to do?
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: What are some things that you want more of in your life?
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: What's something that you want less of in your life?
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: What is something that you want to change in your life?
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: Start writing it down under all of those headaches and you'll probably get a lot under each heading and then look at it, because when it's on the paper, it's not just fleeting thoughts in your mind, it's there, it's concrete and you could really look at that.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: And then maybe there's some things that connect and maybe there's some things that you're like well, if I do this, then I'm gonna bring more of that in my life and I don't want that and you start narrowing it down.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: But when it's on that paper, you can really look at it, you can really see you could even make it as simple as strengths and weaknesses and really start looking at that and you can sort of then from there frame a little bit more of what you want, a little bit less.
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: It's goal setting.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: It's really looking at it and saying, okay, I see this, and now I'm going to do something as simple as I'm gonna look at my adult education catalog for my town and I'm gonna take one new class.
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: That's in that catalog and it's something that I'm kind of interested in and I wanna learn more about it.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: And it doesn't have to make a new career, it doesn't even have to be a new hobby that it turns into.
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: But you never know what's gonna happen when you take that first step.
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: So I would encourage everybody to look for your inner boldness to take that first step, but put it down on paper so you can really look at it, because it's really easy to have thoughts in your head and then an hour later you don't even remember what you were thinking about.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: I think people need to understand that the first steps of boldness could be the first five, could be the first 500, are quiet steps.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: They're not loud, they're not on social media usually.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: So, like you said several things in there that are important, like it could be a quiet step of I'm just gonna walk around my neighbor and say hi to people.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: It doesn't cost you anything, it doesn't, there isn't an expense to it.
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: But, like you're taking a bullseye, if you're putting yourself out there, I'm gonna get to meet people, I'm gonna go to that event, I'm going to sign up for that class, I'm going to move myself towards learning more, understanding myself more or doing something different.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: And it could mean, I think, an important piece in there.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Being bold doesn't always mean doing more.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: It could be I want less of, I want less stress, I want less office time, I want less alone time, I want less carbs.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: Whatever it may be, it's not always more, and sometimes it's easier to start saying I'm going to reduce something, I'm going to do more of something Absolutely, and so I want to hear that oh, I went from eating 100 carbs a day to now I've cut that in half.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: Wow, that feels like an accomplishment where it's like oh, I need to lose five pounds by next Friday.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: That's another level.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: Total.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: And one of the important things, though, is accountability, in that when you write it down or you work with somebody who can help you with accountability, all of that really helps, and I agree with you because to know that, well, if I cut that carbs in half, if you see it written down, you see it there.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: If you have all these things written down, while you want less of more of then, when you're maybe not so clear headed or not in the best state of mind, you have that accountability.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: You have that paper to help remind you it.
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: Where you work with somebody who helps you with that, who helps coach and guide and all of that.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't have to go it alone, you don't have to be more, you can do less, and your first steps can absolutely be quiet ones.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: So just remember those things as we kind of end out today.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, jessica, for being on the Bold Lounge.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: All the information about Jessica or company giving some yarn, having a class yourself, are in the episode's notes.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate you having me as a guest.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Bold Lounge podcast.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: Through the continuum of bold stories vulnerability to taking a leap you will meet more extraordinary people making a positive impact for others through their unique and important story.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: By highlighting these stories, we hope to inspire others and share the journey of those with a bold mindset.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: We hope you've enjoyed this podcast and look forward to sharing the next bold journey with you.