Last week I wrote about the winding journey of getting the womenswear tailoring and manufacturing apprenticeship going. This week more delays, more curve balls. There is nothing more I want to say here than to share an anthem, a rallying cry for those who are trying to do something, anything (!) during Covid.
If you have a business, you depend on people and other businesses. So your people may be struggling. Or maybe you can’t figure out where all the people you need to hire have gone to. Your supply chains may be barely functioning. The government office that needs to give you certification to do something, may be backed up. You find yourself staggering around after the end of the week (though still standing!) after you have been battered by one thing after the next. Anybody with me here? You declare that you are launching on x day only to again come upon a delay. You now say it will happen “God willing on this day” knowing that only God knows what will happen tomorrow let alone in 2 WEEKS. You painstakingly make a budget, make a plan, schedule it all out in the calendar – only to watch it scatter the next day like a ripe dandelion.
OK you get it. So now – to the things I am grateful for. I am grateful for the friend who says – I am working with you to make this made to measure project great because I want to help you, I want to see your project succeed. I am grateful for my champion in the Department of Labor who won’t put the pen down until we’ve succeeded in launching our apprenticeship program. I am grateful for a whole arsenal of business coaches who bring a special skill to this project and pull me out of my estranged corner of the universe to unstick me from the stuck places that hold me back. I am grateful to you, who keeps opening these and reading these years into this project, who sends me little notes of encouragement. I am grateful to my partner who still believes in this project and my ability to pull it off after years of work, tears, excited chatter about victories, blouses and fabric and endless monologues about where it is heading or what problem we are facing. To my parents who read every freakin one of these blogs.
So if I find you somewhere stuck, ready to throw in the towel on whatever it is you are doing – I support you. You are not alone. Your tears on the kitchen floor or desired to break something after another delay are shared by millions of other entrepreneurs. We just need to keep showing up, keep making space for the things about it we love, keep supporting each other, keep digging down to be patient with each other as we watch our fellow businesses struggle through a new day. To relish in those corners where we can work and create no matter what is happening around us. And yet – alongside all of this – we need to find those vast open spaces in our mind to release the expectation that things will continue to be this hard. To see, under the peeling paint of a rough and weathered couple of years, a world expanding painting of what could be, what will be if we keep showing up.
There is my anthem. I hope it has helped you.
Go, fight, win.
Reid