Why I Needed A Husky To Make A Change

Hello, and welcome to the Crochet Business School podcast. I'm Kelly Thomas, and this week I'm going to tell you my story of when I was selling what I made, how I ended up trapped and frustrated, and how I got myself out of it, and it took a husky to make it happen. So let's get stuck into it So at the time, it felt like I had all the pieces in place. My crochet business was up and running.

I had a niche. I sold kind of practical home wares like shower puffs, reusable, um Reusable cotton pads for makeup removal, hot pads, uh, baskets, storage baskets, things like that. Practical household items. I use cotton.

That was my fiber of choice, and it all felt like it was all pulled together. I'd learnt how to take my photos. I'd learnt how to write my Etsy listings. I had social media that I was posting on every day.

I was doing networking and crocheting every hour I could find. The orders were coming in, but my bank account didn't look good enough. I had plenty of orders, but never enough time. I didn't have time for anything else.

When my son went down for his nap, I was crocheting. When he was happily playing by himself, I would go and pick up my crochet hook and instantly felt guilty because that was what I was doing instead of playing with him. Even though he was happily playing by himself, it's That guilt was still there. But I just kept telling myself, "It's for our future.

I'm building a better future. I'm building a better life. It's just gonna take hard work in the meantime." But I was so tired.

You know, the house wasn't getting looked after. I had no time for me. As soon as my son was in bed in the evening, I was back with my crochet hook or on social media. Everything just felt like go, go, go.

There was never any time just to relax and enjoy life around me. I was definitely missing out because I was just too tired to enjoy what was happening around me, and that time does feel like a bit of a blur. I kind of, I feel it rather than remember it, if that makes sense. It's really wasn't the best, but I had this dream of making my crochet business pay the bills and give us this better life, and I was gonna do it.

I was determined, so I was learning all the things. And then a series event started to happen. I was stuck in this place where I had too many orders for the time I had but yet not enough to see, uh, the proper money going into my bank account, and I'd been trapped in this place for a while, searching for the answer as to how to get myself out of it. And then this series of events started.

The first one was a shawl. So I'd been looking for opportunities on Facebook for commissions and orders to come in, and this bloke was looking for someone to make a shawl for his wife as an anniversary present. I jumped at the chance. It would be my most expensive commission at that point, and I really, really wanted it.

And he gave me the job. Great. But here's the thing, when you are stuck in a place where you're feeling rather desperate, you make stupid decisions. It's really hard to think straight.

And what I did was I didn't ask enough questions. I felt if I asked too many questions, he'd think I didn't know what I was doing and go and hire somebody else. So I made the shawl that I thought she wanted, not the one that she actually wanted. And in the end, that shawl ended up coming back to me.

I had to refund. I spent so much time on it. I lost all that time, wasted. The shawl came back, and I never managed to resell it.

It's still somewhere upstairs in the back of a cupboard, just abandoned there. Um, but it was a harsh lesson. Because just that not asking enough questions cost me that, that money that was very much needed, and it's a combination of tiredness and the desperate need to want to make it work made that happen. It was a hard lesson.

I felt so embarrassed. It was I felt like a complete failure for, for that happening. But that was event number one. The next thing was a craft fair.

So I'd recently moved house, and three days after I moved, I had booked myself in for a craft fair. I'd chosen it carefully. It was the a really good craft fair for, for me. It was really well advertised, and it was for makers.

It was for crafters. There were plenty of people coming into the fair, having a good look around. Lots of people were buying. The stall next to me sold out, and yet I went home with most of my crochet.

I barely sold a thing. I think I managed to cover the table fee and not much else. I was so despondent. I'd spent hours the night before surrounded by moving boxes trying to get everything prepped and ready, and all that prep for nothing.

My crochet just didn't appeal, even though I was surrounded by other makers, which was awful. That drive home was a very long drive home. It's like, what did I have to show for all this effort? So that was event number two And even though I had that failure, I didn't stop.

I had something nagging the back of my head that something wasn't right. Um, in the last episode, I talked about self-sabotage and how I was- stopped posting on social media. I was mentally checking out, but I wasn't done. I was still determined to make it work and still determined that there was just a missing piece of the puzzle.

If I found it, it would work I, so I kept going. Even though I'd had these two things that really hit me hard, I kept going. Wasn't ready to stop, wasn't willing to stop, and then Beau arrived. We got a new dog.

So we'd had a collie before, lovely little Meg. She had sadly passed away a few months before, and my then husband wanted another dog. He- the house was too quiet, it was weird without a dog, he wanted another one. Said, "Okay."

He came home with Beau, and he's a husky. Still got him, he's still here. Um, he's sleeping somewhere there bes- behind me. But I'd never had a husky before.

I hadn't known anyone who had one. I didn't realize just how much fur was involved. I mean, I'd heard about the fur. I'd heard how much they shed their coats.

I was not prepared for the reality of it. It was unbelievable. The stuff got everywhere, and I couldn't keep it out of my crochet. I couldn't keep it away from my yarn.

I just couldn't do it. The most powerful lint brush in the world was not good enough to get rid of all this fur, and that was when I had to stop. I couldn't sell crochet that had dog fur tangled in it. I had no spare room that I could shut off to keep the fur out.

I had my f- uh, yarn shut away in drawers. It still got in. This stuff's unbelievable. It's, it's like glitter, it just gets everywhere.

There's a reason why it's called husky glitter, because the fur just gets everywhere, even if you think you've got everything contained. I had to stop. It forced me to stop, and the day I realized that, the day I accepted that, it felt like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. I was relieved that something had forced me to stop.

But I wasn't saying, "Right, this is it. It's done. It's gone. I'm shutting up shop."

My next question was, "What now?" 'Cause I still wasn't willing to give up on the dream. It was just a case of, "Well, how do I do this now? What's my next path?

What do I try next?" The dream wasn't dead, but the weight was lifted. It was a relief to be forced to stop, and knowing that I now couldn't sell what I made, it got me thinking, and it started opening doors. I started looking at the real answer, and when I was doing that, I realized once I got my head out of the weeds and could, you know, focus properly, I wasn't as tired anymore, I wasn't acting on desperation and survival instincts anymore, and I could see the truth, and that was that my crochet business was selling what I made was never going to work.

The numbers just didn't make sense. For what I was selling, who I was selling to, and at the price I was selling at, I couldn't make it work. It wasn't me. It wasn't my failing.

It wasn't lack of hard work. It wasn't lack of knowledge. It wasn't lack of trying. It was simply that the whole model, the whole strategy that my business was based on was never going to work, and that realization came over time afterwards.

But at the time when I was forced to stop, it was a relief, even though I didn't know yet what my next path was And honestly ask yourself, if you could stop going through this exhausted cycle, stop having to create these orders that you don't really want to make and that you know you don't have time for, and you know aren't bring- isn't bringing enough money in, if you could stop right now, how would that make you feel? Would it ma- make you feel like a total failure? Would it be a relief?

It's going to feel like all that work was wasted, and honestly, it wasn't wasted. All that work I had done, all that time I put into it, it, I needed that. All that base work, it came in for my next path. The d- change of direction, I used all of what I'd already learned.

It wasn't wasted. It did feel like it at the time, but looking back now, it was just the foundations of what came next. And in next week's episode, I'm going to talk about the signs that you've been avoiding th- this very issue. What have you just been shoving to one side and saying, "No, no, it's fine.

I just need to keep on going"? Because we can get so caught up in that feeling of, "Just keep going. Just keep going." You know, it's like Dory out of Finding Nemo, "Just keep swimming.

Just keep swimming. We'll get there." And you sort of just carry on regardless. You've got blinkers on, and no matter how many kind of gauntlets are thrown down, you are determined to brush them out the way and just carry on But these are signs that something's wrong.

These are signs that something isn't quite right, and that maybe you should be pulling up and taking a harder look and asking yourself some honest questions. You know, over the last couple of episodes, I've asked you to make some lists, and your moments are in there. But next week we will talk more about those signs that you've been avoiding, m- that you should be taking a sharper look at, that it's time to take those blinkers on, just pull up and think through a bit more carefully.

This is not an easy process. When you've put so much hard work and effort and all that learning into this dream, into this business to make it work, it's really, really hard to confront a reality that you've been trying to avoid. But only by confronting it do we get to the solution. Because there is a solution.

You can make this work, it's just going to look a bit different from what you thought it would, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just It's not the end, it's just the start. You just don't know what you're starting yet. So come back next week.

We will talk more about those signs that you've been avoiding. Otherwise, have a good think, be honest with yourself and, you know, what would it really feel like to be able to just relax for a while without those orders coming in? So thank you for listening, and I shall see you next week for the next episode.