How I learn so much by welcoming "failure" & business-building as a creative practice 🍒
How I learn so much by welcoming "failure" & business-building as a creative practice 🍒
Learning by doing, also pls vote.
High Thought is an intimate infusion of (high) thoughts that are a mixture of frivolous and (sometimes) profound if I’m lucky. Written with consideration for those interested in the creative process or personal peek behind the curtain into a particularly chaotic (fun) brain room.
(The best experience is on the website, in my opinion!)
🌸 Good morning/afternoon/evening, depending on where you are in the world. : )
Failure = Learning A Lot *Really* Fast
It’s been a little over a year since I founded my company, FLOWERS. The journey has been honestly transformative for me and my practice as an artist. I’ve taken on all responsibilities in the company, including areas where the learning curve was steep and frustrating but invaluable to know inside and out. The experience has been incredibly eye-opening because it’s accelerated my understanding of my strengths and weaknesses.
I’ve come to see business-building as a creative act. Entrepreneurship is, at its core, creative work in that it involves experimentation and learning through doing. When I make art and find some pieces more successful than others, it isn’t seen as failing over and over— it’s work evolving with each iteration. When you finally achieve what you’ve been aspiring to, it’s a nuanced accomplishment, just like completing a piece of art. This is learning, not failing over and over.
One of the most valuable lessons I’ve embraced is viewing challenges and pivots not as failures but as learning opportunities. It sounds trite to me as a say it, but I learn by screwing up again and again until I really understand it. When things don’t go as planned, I see them as lessons that contribute to my growth. These moments, while sometimes (very, very) painful, have led to significant growth and expanded thinking—proving that the harder the lesson, the greater the learning.
Building a business solo can be lonely. Despite thriving in a fully independent environment, there are moments when a sounding board would be helpful—someone to affirm, “This is a good idea, right?”
Every morning, at about 6:15, I start my day with podcasts from business-builders, entrepreneurs, and creatives I admire and can learn from, listening to their journeys, lessons, wisdom. For me, it’s like taking myself back to school on my own terms (higher education is often a scam in America, in my opinion!) by giving myself a (free) MBA in my apartment, learning what it takes to build and grow FLOWERS bit by bit while filling in my knowledge gaps and doing the actual work as it comes.
I’m really, really excited about what’s to come with FLOWERS, especially because of the amazing people from all kinds of different backgrounds and skillsets who I’ve been able to work with this past year on the most varied set of projects to date.
I’ve also been reflecting a ton about my own journey, which has been unusual and winding. What are the questions I’d have liked to ask someone? What are the murky industry things that feel unexplained or taboo? What seems really hard to me but I see other people do it seemingly effortlessly? It would be kind of fun to have some convos around those ideas. Lately I’ve been having a ton of interesting conversations with other creatives about sharing useful knowledge. I somehow still don’t see any resources I would have used if I were coming up that feel relevant to me. If you receive this email in your inbox, reply and send a couple of ideas. The creative industry is also changing day by day, which is scary for a lot of us. I like to talk about this stuff. Seriously email me and I’ll collect some topics to dig into.
Anyway thank you all for reading as always.
ONE MORE THING.
To my fellow Americans out there:
Please vote.
Next Tuesday, nothing else matters. Just vote, get your family to vote, get everyone you know to vote. Politics can be a really tricky game but we do have to play this particular one if we ever want the game to have rules again. (fr)
And while you’re at it check out this great post by my friend,
, about Election Vibes.
A pick-me-up. : )
Thank you all for reading as always.
Cait 🌸
What is High Thought?
📸 High Thought is written by Cait Oppermann, a creative laborer in the world of art, advertising, & what falls between.
@flowersfullservice & @caitoppermann
📑 General idea behind High Thought here.
*or*
📚 Past editions in the (small) archive.
Ride or Die vibe
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