WRITTEN BY CHERYL WELLS
I have learned to laugh at myself and see my mistakes as opportunities to grow and do differently. Many times lately in the midst of busyness, we have had to redo or begin again. The stories are real and some of them are in real time! We just finished a project in Le Mars in the old newspaper building called the Sentinel. We were redoing it and making a nice space for events that people could rent. We were on a deadline and pressure was there for both of us. One day when we were shopping for some furnishings for the space, we got a call from one of our contractors asking a few questions about the space.
As I heard Mike speaking to him it hit me that they were finishing up something that probably wasn’t going to be a good idea for the space. It included a couple of big changes that would be needed. Mike had them cut holes in the back wall on the alley and put in windows and as I was thinking about it, I didn’t think it was the best plan. I knew I had to say it and my reasoning. Right there in the middle of the furniture store we had to stop and discuss it. It went well and he understood and agreed and called back Vaughn and told him to take them out. Also, we have a big kitchen that we put in for this event space so people can serve food there and we were going to put a pass-through window for the food. Again, I thought it wasn’t the best plan because we wanted to have the back walls to put some comfortable seating with leather couches and some chairs with lamps also. With a window like that in the kitchen and when you have people preparing to serve food it could be hard to keep the noise from coming through during an event. These were all last-minute thoughts for me that I was sharing when some of the work had already been done.
Yes, we had to undo some things that were already done, but we caught it in time to get it right. We say all the time that we learn by doing. One other thing that happened after the fact was that we had our first event there the weekend after the project was finished and it was a marriage retreat with about 100 people Friday evening and then all day Saturday. We sat in the event space in our new chairs all day Saturday, like over 7 hours. The chairs were super uncomfortable and too small. They were really good-looking chairs and looked beautiful in the space though. We decided the morning after, that we needed to give away the chairs, maybe for children to sit on, and get new ones. We realized that it was way too important and ordered new ones immediately.
Why am I telling you all this? I am making myself look silly, and maybe a little unorganized and irresponsible. But it is ok and even good to recognize and accept that I/we make mistakes and learn from them. John Maxwell says sometimes we win, sometimes we learn. Many times, people get paralyzed when making decisions because they are afraid of making mistakes. I probably struggled a little bit with that years ago before I opened Habitué. I’m really grateful for learning pretty early that there would be things along the way that would need to be changed to be able to achieve success. We as people will never be able to make all the right decisions every time.
Why would we think that it was even a possibility? It’s all part of doing something new and having an entrepreneurial spirit. It’s always risky and we have to lean into the risk as we create new ideas, as well as enjoy the opportunities that accompany it all. It’s so fun to dream and see things come together, although we know along the way that there will be hiccups. It’s good to walk in humility and be willing to accept those challenges and sometimes start over or tear out windows and buy new chairs. We have made lots of mistakes along the way and we will be the first to talk about it. I have changed the name of Habitué two times over the past 15 years and in 2023 we repurposed some of the space that we built for it. We built a separate drive through building in 2017, and we closed that down in 2023 also, and we are really glad that we did. It has been repurposed and is being used for good, and it has been the best thing for our business. I have learned so much through the years and things that I didn’t think were possible in the first few years, are really happening. But I had to learn a lot and make really scary decisions. When we do that, many times people don’t understand that don’t have the perspective that we do. We will continue to learn as we do things which actually is how we all started in life. I guess it makes sense that it will always be that way.
