Something I was Wrong About
When I was first starting Cut Clover, I asked some advice from a very experienced businesswoman. I was being strongly encouraged to hire crew, but I didn’t want to. I was still learning so much-surviving a firehose of new information as I scaled up the farm-and I was terrified that if I brought someone on board they would catch all my mistakes. I wanted to fail in private. She basically said I couldn’t afford to do that, because I would not only miss out on labor to get everything done, but I’d miss out on the intellectual input of another person. It would be another point of view that would benefit the farm most when I inevitably failed at something.
I ignored this advice and soldiered on alone for a while. Well, not totally alone. I was also trying to be the idyllic stay-at-home-mom I saw on the internet so I also had two toddlers in tow. This was the absolute hardest way to try to start a business. At one point I burst into tears in front of the entire Maryland Cut Flower Growers Association while my kids ground snacks into the carpet behind me. Several of the farmers that day reached out with so much love and compassion and the validation that the job I was doing was real and I deserved childcare. The farm also deserved experienced help. Lucky for me, Lalania was willing to come on board. I could give you a million examples of the ways she’s helped when things went wrong but I still like to stumble in relative secrecy.
Last year when it came time to order Ranunculus, Lalania strongly suggested we add butterfly ranunculus to our repertoire. I wasn’t convinced. They seemed like a fad to me and the design photos I saw on the internet were…fine. But I had come across one bloom in a design workshop a week prior that made me think, well, maybe…But really it was Lalania. She has a great eye for shape and color. She’s an amazing designer. Above all, she almost never hints that I might be wrong about something. However this time she was very gently but firmly letting me know that I was making the wrong call if I didn’t at least try them.
Spoiler alert: she was SO right. From the minute the corms arrived (giant!) and started to sprout (glossy! healthy! huge!) to the very first blooms (breathtaking! abundant!) I’ve been in love.
If I had allowed my fear of letting someone see my mistakes win, I would have missed out on untold benefits of relying on another person. I could have so easily burned myself out trying to do it all, be it all, know it all. We wouldn’t have Butterfly Ranunculus! Yes, Lalania does see me fail all the time. And she’s very kind about it. More than ever these days we, every single one of us, need each other. Not in spite of, but especially because we might not see everything the exact same way. Even if it’s scary, it’s what makes us stronger and better. I thought it would be better to do things alone until I got it perfect. I was wrong about that. Sometimes it’s really, really good to be wrong.
