22. Start Ugly

Hey you - yeah you

That idea you have? Go for it. What if it doesn’t work out? Who cares. More importantly -

What if it does work out?

About 8 years ago, I was working a legal contracting job for hourly pay, next to no benefits, or even paid time off.

There were some perks to the job, namely that I got to space out and listen to podcasts or audiobooks all day. The work was not challenging and was certainly not the courtroom drama filled with obscure legal arguments I had spent three years of my life learning.¹ It was a job you worked for straight cash and few people there pretended otherwise. Less “The Good Wife” and more “The Office” - if The Office was cast entirely of the Island of Misfit Toys and Parrotheads wearing court-mandated ankle monitors.

All of this is to say that my legal career did not turn out the way I envisioned lo those many years ago when I was applying for law schools and prepping for the LSAT.

Some of you have probably heard the Fascinating Story of How Jen Blair Got Into the Beer Industry /s but here is a summary for those who don’t. I decided I wanted to work in the beer industry (hey, it was circa 2014, “99% asshole-free,” and any homebrewer could open a brewery and maybe be the next Sam Calagione.²) because it looked fun. I had been homebrewing for a couple of years but wasn’t interested in brewing or sales jobs, which were most of the job openings I saw.

I decided to start my beer blog in 2016, a little after I started down my Cicerone path. I wanted to have a place to document what I was learning about beer and a place for people to come to learn about beer. I took several SkillPop classes on topics such as social media marketing, how to create content, and how to build a successful blog. I spent nights and weekends building my website, learning how to do basic things like inserting hyperlinks and less basic things like inserting an API. I carefully planned out what my content calendar looked like and created lists of topics to write about.

I figured that trying to jump from the legal world to the beer world wouldn’t be easy, particularly because the beer industry was just starting to be leery of people wanting to work in beer because it looked fun. Especially when you were trying to come from an industry that is made to look glamorous and thrilling and lucrative. Although let’s take a moment here to acknowledge the leeriness from craft beer at the time was rooted in hypocrisy and gatekeeping - so it’s okay for you to cash in your 401(k) to stop working in IT but you’ll make sure to pull the ladder up behind you to prevent others from doing the same? Coolcoolcool got it.

For me, the blog was a way to show that I was passionate about beer and brewing, that I was willing to put my learning experience into the world, and that I could consistently create something around a hobby that I hoped to turn into a profession. I really enjoyed working on the blog, from researching and scheduling posts to learning how to customize my website. It assisted me in getting my first paid beer job as a part-time bartender³ at a local beer bar.

Little Beer Baby Jen’s professional headshot for beer and law

A few years later, I was frustrated by the lack of representation in homebrew competition awards ceremonies. I knew I became much more confident and pragmatic about entering competitions as a brewer when I started judging and saw the range of quality in the beers I was judging. Working backward, I decided that if I could get more women and nonbinary individuals interested in judging, then perhaps more of them would feel confident in entering homebrew competitions and maybe even winning awards. At the very least, there would be more diversity at judging tables, which also made me happy as I was frequently “the only” at most judging tables.

The idea rolled around in my head for a few months. Finally, I sat down and wrote an outline of what I had in mind. I shared the outline with a few trusted friends and loved ones and solicited feedback. I brainstormed with them about the resources I already had and the resources I would need. I realized that I already had a bunch of resources at my fingertips to make the idea a reality, such as my own website and training in things like email marketing. And, most importantly, the empathy needed to create a fun, safe, and doable approach to becoming a beer judge while being an only.

With both the beer blog and the judge training, I didn’t have everything lined up and a lot of ideas either fell apart or by the wayside. In preparing for both, there came a point where I couldn’t just talk about it anymore. I couldn’t just plan for it anymore. I had to make the leap.

I had to start ugly. You have to start ugly, too.

What do I mean when I say to start ugly? Stop waiting for everything to fall into place and be perfect because that’s a handy way of ensuring it will never happen and that you will not have to be vulnerable. Most of the time, no one will know that things didn’t go as planned, or that there were some ideas that didn’t make it to the final version, or that maybe plans changed once your idea was out in the world.

Take the leap. Do it anyway. And you’ll probably learn a lot of ways not to do things and even more ways to make things happen, even if they don’t always look like how you thought they would. If it doesn’t work, now you know.

BUT WHAT IF IT DOES WORK?

What if it turns out even better than you imagined?

I’ve actually had this newsletter sitting in my drafts for several months. It’s making its debut now because I have a couple of projects that have been rolling around in my head for a few months - one has been rolling around for a couple of years. A couple of weekends ago, I had a breakthrough about how to make one of them a reality. That breakthrough led to me typing out the outline of how it would work. That led to a spreadsheet to estimate costs. That led to me sitting on our bed while my husband was folding his laundry to tell him about the idea and ask whether he thought people would find it valuable. That conversation led me to ask some friends to look at the outline and give me their feedback. That feedback led to me ordering supplies and meeting with a graphic designer. In a few weeks, that will lead to me starting ugly and releasing my idea into the world.

If you are going to put an idea out into the world for public consumption, I can promise you there are people out there already with misplaced confidence doing it way worse than you can ever imagine. More importantly, there are also people out there opting out of whatever you’re doing. They’re opting out because they don’t see themselves represented or feel safe being vulnerable with the people who are visible.⁴ Those people may opt-in when they see someone with lived experiences similar to theirs doing the damn thing. When they see you doing it and inviting them to do the same.

Pour your idea out onto paper. It doesn’t need to be organized cohesively, nor do you need to have the final idea in mind. It’s fine not to know exactly where the idea ends because the end product isn’t going to look like what you thought it would when you started. Neuroscience backs up why you need to write down your goals.

Brainstorm what resources you think you need, how you can leverage the resources you already have, and what resources you can access for free. For instance, it’s free to create a YouTube channel, use Google Forms for sign-ups and surveys, request books from your local library, etc. Who in your network can help you? Solicit feedback from people you trust and put your ego aside when receiving that feedback.

One thing I want to make very clear is that I am not girlbossing you. I’m not saying that there’s only value in what you want to do if there’s an audience for it or a way to monetize it. I’m saying the cerebral equivalent of “If you want a bikini body, put a bikini on your body.” If you look around and see an opportunity you like, fucking take it, start ugly, and figure it out along the way. I promise you will not be sorry that you started ugly because it’s way better than never starting at all.

I’ll wrap this up with a quote from Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson that I think about a lot, especially when faced with the vulnerability of putting my ideas out into the world:

“Tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.”

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And finally…

Before we leave each other, here are a few things I am up to these days:

1. Working on my newest venture, which I hope to release into the world in September, but more than likely it will be in October. It naturally involves sensory and I’m super excited to tell you all about it. If you’d like to receive email updates about it, you can sign up here (using this Google form I created for free 😉)

2. Listening to Ambition Monster: A Memoir by Jennifer Romolini. I’m actually re-listening to it for a third time because it struck such a chord with me. While I’ve always absolutely loved reading, there are only a couple of books I would say that have truly changed my life because I read them exactly when I needed to. This is one of those books.

3. Reading The Chiffon Trenches, a memoir by Andre Leon Talley. Fun and possibly surprising fact about me given my Untappd Aunt wardrobe of free beer t-shirts and leggings or shorts, but I love fashion and fashion history. Like many xennials, I first learned of Andre Leon Talley through watching America’s Next Top Model, so I’m excited to learn more about his life.

1. However, if you ever need someone to explain the rule against perpetuities …jkjkjkjk no one knows what that is.

2. By “any homebrewer” I, of course, mean any cishet white man between the ages of 23 and 55 with access to generational wealth, traditional financing options, and/or Citra hops.

3. There are few words I despise more than bEeRTenDeR and I refuse to use it.

4. Another reason I was compelled to start my beer judge training is that I firsthand witnessed two women (same competition, different years) who were judging for the first time being spoken down to by openly hostile male judges. Both women left their judging experiences vowing never to judge again. Years later, one woman agreed to judge again, but only if she was paired with another woman.