I am grateful to my longtime mentor, Neil Bainton, for his perpetual nudges toward clarity.

We’d meet for a meal where I’d talk about my plans for my business or whatever, sharing the various options and possibilities I was considering.

Neil would never get mired in the details. He always brought the conversation back to one simple question: “What do you want?”

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When the brilliant Jennifer Acker first took over as director of Eclectic Music, I probably did a lot of annoying things I wasn’t even aware of.

However, one thing I was aware of and had to really try to tamp down was a tendency to meet any idea with, “Yeah, we tried that back in [year] and it didn’t work.”

I had to get my head around two things:

One, maybe Jen could accomplish something I couldn’t; and

Two, maybe now we had the resources to be successful with something that had once failed.

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Working with fellow business owners, I see patterns arise in the concerns and insecurities we share.

It is common for these leaders, be they entrepreneurs or freelancers, to believe that they aren’t real business owners for one reason or another.

Their website still needs work. Their social media accounts are placeholders. They haven’t figured out how to file their quarterly taxes. They’re just winging it when it comes to sales.

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Watching over the shoulders of gamer friends and relatives as they choose their avatars for the journey ahead, I’ve learned about the tradeoffs involved.

You can have strength, agility, stamina, or cunning — but not all four to the same degree. Each option has its vulnerabilities and advantages. You’ve got to make decisions about what will be most useful to you, based on your own unique playing style and preferences.

Kinda like life, right? Except in life, some of us get the idea somewhere that we’re supposed to be good at everything and that there shouldn’t be any tradeoffs.

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When I knit my first hat, I used bamboo needles.

These were affordable and lightweight, and solved my early problem of stitches slipping off of the slick aluminum needles I had inherited from my grandmother.

But as I improved as a knitter, I found the bamboo needles to be a little slow and draggy. That’s when I tried nickel-plated needles, and that’s what I’ve been using ever since. That’s what gives me the “slicing into warm butter” feeling.

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