As I was nearing the end of my college time in the middle of 2020, I started looking for what was next in my future. Many businesses were closing up shop, going fully remote, or just not hiring as they braced for the economic shitstorm that was about to unfold.
I was currently working for Fred Meyer in the produce department, something I had done successfully when I was in my 20s. I was sure that I was still able to do the work and was hired in my first interview as a journeyman since I had worked in the industry before.
I was not.
The slower community store that I had worked at in West Seattle was nowhere near the volume of what this store did every day, and I quickly realized I was going to need to shift it up a notch in order to keep up with all of the younglings that were kicking my ass every day.
After about eight months, just after graduation, I received a call from Palo Alto Software, a local software company I had applied to that was looking to hire remote staff during lockdown. I interviewed twice, and then with the CEO and CFO, and was hired within the next week. This was amazing news to me, as my left shoulder began to show signs of damage from putting full banana boxes in stacks to finish ripening.
Then I received a call from Roger Wong at the Lane Small Business Development Center. Roger encouraged me to apply for an open position as a business advisor. I had just finished getting my associate degree in Business Management from Lane Community College and had no advising experience. What I did have was a short internship at the SBDC prior to graduation, where I was able to enact some changes and provide an entry-level communication style that impressed the advisors, allowing me to earn a place among those stars.
Then, they asked me to teach.
I remember smiling and saying something along the lines of, “Yeah, right…” and laughing.
The director at the time told me, “We all have to start somewhere. You sound confident in how you speak, so if you make a mistake, we’ll help you correct it.”
After learning that I had the backing of a team of people, and hearing that I sounded confident to those listening, I looked deep inside myself and found that I did have what it took: the willingness to fail and continue. I started by teaching some of the basic classes, teamed up with another advisor to co-teach another class, and then started teaching a brand new class to help launch what was called a child care accelerator for our county.
As I finished up my time at the SBDC due to funding cuts to the College in February of 2026, my co-teacher and I had successfully helped to launch about 40 new businesses, resulting in $200,000 in grants collectively and opening up about 300 new childcare opportunities in Lane County alone. This did my heart good, knowing that I helped many women (and a few men) start their businesses and help others.
When I started teaching, I was competent. I was not confident. I could never have reached the level of confidence without actually doing it. I had to try to find out if I was going to fail, and I did not fail.
Searching for motivation for this post, I found this saying somewhere:
Confidence is having failed enough times to realize failure usually isn’t fatal.
I have screwed things up before, made wrong decisions, walked into situations unprepared, and I have definitely learned some things after I probably should have known them. I have even changed careers. I have also had to rebuild parts of my life I never expected to have to rebuild.
And yet, I am still here.
For me, confidence comes after I’ve started doing something – not before. I was not confident at photography until people started saying they liked it. I was not confident at business advising until I received positive feedback on the classes I taught. I was not confident that I was helping by teaching a course that had never been taught before until it became successful and started making the news.
There is also a difference between looking confident and feeling confident. I am sure in the first few classes it may have appeared that I was composed and collected, while inside I was frantically searching through textbooks and teaching manuals trying to figure this stuff out as I went along.
What did I learn? That you don’t need to know everything to be useful. In my counseling, the value wasn’t always having the immediate answer. I learned how to say, “I don’t know yet, but I can figure it out.” Instead of just passing along the answer, I would show the people I advised how I found it so they could do the same thing themselves the next time. There is much more confidence in saying that you don’t know everything than pretending you always have the answer.
Also, my definition of failure has changed. Earlier in life, getting something wrong felt like proof that I wasn’t good at it. I now have enough life experience to know that most mistakes are information, something to be added to a mental file folder. Some are expensive, some embarrassing, and some will make for some good stories/posts later. Most importantly, they were all survivable.
In my younger years, being confident meant more about feeling like I could do anything. In my 50s, it means knowing there are plenty of things I can’t do yet and not being intimidated by them anymore.
I still walk into situations where I don’t exactly know what I am doing. These days, I am less bothered by not knowing than I used to be in my youth. I’ve learned to ask questions, learn, adapt, screw up, recover, and keep going.
I have a lot more confidence these days that I’ll eventually figure things out.
Except maybe those fucking banana boxes. The 20-year-olds can have those.