The winding road of freedom & entrepreneurship

Podcast Transcript:

Victoria Ashley Werner (00:01.878)

Welcome to the Pattern Breaking podcast. Today I want to get into a nuanced conversation, a conversation that might get a little sticky, a conversation that might include some contradictions, and a conversation that is like so relevant to my lived experience right now, what I’m living in this moment, and a conversation

that is so relevant to so many of my students that work with me with the goal of creating a business that creates more freedom in their life. So I think one of the biggest things that draws people to creating digital sewing pattern businesses is not only that

they are creative, right? And like life giving because you’re creating a business that is creative, that is an expression of yourself and your style. But also because of the real opportunity that I never want to like play down.

I never want to dismiss and I never want to forget the real opportunity that it is to sell digital files, to do the work, to publish something once and be able to sell it over and over again, wherever you are in the world, whatever is happening in your life, that thing exists out there and can be sold.

Victoria Ashley Werner (01:55.744)

It’s, we live in unprecedented times where we have more resources than ever to be able to publish our art with print on demand for both like artists prints and publishing books. Print and distribution of ideas, of our creativity, of the things that we make has never been easier. I...

I’m gonna get right into it, that the starving artist narrative used to be a very real thing. And now, it’s only that, it’s only that, it’s only a reality for you if you choose to overlook all of the opportunities. Now, all of the opportunities require you to step into an identity as an entrepreneur.

And that is so not easy. It’s so not easy. It will test you at every step. Being an entrepreneur is constantly asking you to take risk and to experiment and to not know whether what you’re doing is going to work out. It’s a test in faith, both in the wider universe, in the wider world, but it’s also a test in faith in yourself that you trust.

that regardless of what happens, regardless of what hard things come along with you employing yourself, you trust that you can figure it out. And what’s on the other side of that constant expansion, constant experimentation is everything is like a life beyond your vision board. And

What I mean is like, I years ago, before going back to school for pattern making, I was running my own business as an organic farmer. So I ran an organic vegetable farm. We also had animals. had sheep and chickens, and I had yarn made from their wool. I was making felted things and selling them at craft markets in the winter time.

Victoria Ashley Werner (04:21.646)

I was doing natural dye classes with indigo that I was growing on the farm and I would invite people onto the farm to harvest the indigo and dye things together. We had chicken eggs that we’d bring to the farmer’s market and we would do the farmer’s market every week, every Saturday of the season in Missoula, Montana. And my life was so beautiful. It just was full of community and connection to the place and...

beautiful, delicious food. I... It was hard to leave, but there was a theme in that phase of my life, in that era of who I am, that I needed to learn some lessons about. And that was that during that time, despite all of the beautiful things about that life, I felt really trapped. I felt really...

I didn’t feel free. I felt this longing to be able to travel and I felt the heaviness of the farm, of the responsibility of the farm on me as if it was something that would keep me from really realizing my potential and really keep me from exploring the world and having all of the experiences that I wanted to experience. It’s real, right? if you...

start a farm business, there’s a momentum to it where you can’t leave in the middle of the growing season, where the sheep need you to feed them every day if there’s not, well, in the winter. And if you have sheep in the winter and they need you there every day in the winter, then in the summer you’re growing things and the plants need you to water them, weed them, harvest them like you have to be available.

And there’s just this momentum that carries you through season after season and it can be really hard. And really my experience was that it felt impossible to get out of that. And I have this strong memory of sitting there in my house in Camas Prairie, Montana and looking out over the beautiful place that I lived and feeling this just like longing that there was something more. Like I have multiple like moments of like really

Victoria Ashley Werner (06:42.718)

strong moments in my mind’s eye that I’ll never forget of seeing how beautiful that place is, but feeling so trapped and wanting to get out. And where my mind went in all those years was my mind went to Italy. I had done like so many Americans do and studied abroad in college and spent a semester in Florence, Italy. And that time was like something that really shaped my trajectory because

I got back to the United States after spending four months in Florence, and I had shopped at the farmers markets in Florence and learned how to cook with fresh vegetables. And when I got back to the United States and that wasn’t available, And like whatever that was, 2008, I realized that if I wanted to eat dinosaur kale or black kale,

If I wanted to eat that, I had to grow it. And so I started to like explore this idea. And I’d always liked gardening and herbs and stuff. So I started to explore this idea of like, what would it look like for me to garden? And I just have this entrepreneurial spirit that, you know, anytime I do something, seems to like just balloon and snowball into a business. So that’s how that happened. Like, honestly, that was like what led me to start a farm.

And so I remember so many of those moments of sitting in Montana, dreaming of Italy, wishing I could go and feeling so trapped. eventually things changed and there was a way out. And I ended up leaving my farm behind with this kind of knowing that if I really wanted to go back, I could, but this...

like soul calling that I need to go out and explore and find what was calling me. And so much has unfolded since then. And this has all been a journey towards finding freedom. Like after I would, like my relationship with my farm business partner and ex-boyfriend that I was running that farm business with when that ended and I had

Victoria Ashley Werner (09:07.416)

basically an opportunity to leave. I asked myself, what do you want to do? And it just was, I was being called back to Italy. in through all of that, I’ve held onto like this core value of freedom of like, I want to be able to do whatever I want, whenever I want. I want to have a strong business that supports my lifestyle so that I don’t feel constrained.

in terms of location, terms of finances, in terms of creativity, I want to be able to move and constantly pivot, however my soul is being called. Am I, you know?

beautiful as the experience of the farm was, that’s what it taught me was that freedom needed to be built into everything I did. And so I’m sitting here now.

Victoria Ashley Werner (10:03.628)

Well, since I left the farm, it’s been about eight years. I just had a really hard thing happen where my husband, so I’m in Ohio with my family in Ohio. My mom had a stroke last month, as you know from episode one. And we just got news that Andrea’s dad in Rome is sick. So my husband’s dad is sick.

As much as my body wanted to throw a fit about not going back and not disrupting the stability, the closeness I feel to my family here, I have weighed all of the things, all of the considerations that go into something like this and decided that we’ll be going back to Rome tomorrow, temporarily, but you know.

that will be uprooting everything and doing that.

Victoria Ashley Werner (11:09.096)

what, you know, at first felt so contracting. At first it felt like, I’m gonna lose all the momentum that I had going. I’m gonna risk the, you know, I thought that I was gonna get to plant a garden here this summer and I still am, but I risk that, you know, stepping away from that feels like a risk. It feels like that was a thing that I was wanting to create, but I’m being...

thwarted in that process. So at first I felt contracted, but then once I stepped back and really saw what was happening, I realized that I have created and I’m living the freaking dream that my dream way back then, which I didn’t know where I was headed, I didn’t know that I was gonna become a pattern maker. I had ideas that there were...

that I wanted to, that was something I wanted to explore, but I had no idea that I would end up teaching pattern making and having an online school and all this stuff, right? That was something I didn’t know, but what what grew out of that, what I’ve carried all the way through, and what I’m fully experiencing and living now is freedom. That my business fully financially supports me and...

and creatively supports me and can come with me on a moment’s notice.

to another part of the world. I remember how dreamy that felt and I do not want to take advantage or I don’t want to ignore, I don’t want to forget how important that is, how huge it is that I’ve arrived here and how grateful I am.

Victoria Ashley Werner (13:46.328)

The other thing that I’m noticing as I reflect on the trajectory, the long journey and how it kind of feels like it all culminates in this moment.

Victoria Ashley Werner (14:00.41)

I reflect on how back then my mindset was such that I felt trapped and that I could really only see one way out. It was like, I will feel trapped until I’m able to leave this farm, until I’m able to go to Italy like my dream was, you know? And what I’ve learned in the time since then, as I’ve developed as an entrepreneur and a leader, and even just leading myself.

I have realized that that’s never the case. That there’s literally never only one path. That there are always things that we don’t see from our narrow point of view. And when you’re at least aware of that, that you might be seeing things like there’s only one possible path forward.

Or even just a few, know, even if you can only see a few and you’re like I was yesterday, feeling like I feel like none of these choices is right. You know, we were weighing things like, will Andrea go to Rome by himself? Will I stay here without him? Like weighing that against uprooting our lives again and going across all the way back to Italy with my daughter and pulling her out of her school here now and like, you know, weighing what felt like, it was like I had three impossible options.

Right? And what I realize is that...

There are always more options than you can see, and there’s always a different way that you can live inside each of those options that changes what those options, like changes your experience of those options. And this is really what it means to be an entrepreneur. This is really what entrepreneurship has opened up for me.

Victoria Ashley Werner (16:02.634)

the way that it’s shaped how I lead myself because here’s the thing, when you’re an entrepreneur, what it comes down to is that entrepreneurship requires experimentation.

Entrepreneurship is about finding a need in the world and then creating a product or a service that fills that need. And then it’s not static. You don’t create that product once and then you’re good.

where businesses fail, where entrepreneurs fail, is where they stay static and they don’t continue to experiment and pivot.

Victoria Ashley Werner (17:29.752)

The only way to fail as an entrepreneur is to give up, to let things go stagnant, to not keep going. And what keeping going requires, because you are always going to meet friction, you’re always going to have challenges along the path, whether that be the market changing or a bad review of your product.

or a difficult customer or...

tariffs and taxes changing, suppliers going out of business, whatever it is in business that, that of the literally infinite things that could go wrong, you don’t fail unless you give up, truly. And that’s okay, right? Like sometimes giving up is,

what we want to do. It’s the aligned thing. It’s like I’ve had it, like you just have had enough of it and you want to do something else. And in a way, I don’t even think that that’s giving up. In a way, I think that’s like pivoting and keeping going.

Victoria Ashley Werner (18:53.016)

but entrepreneurship, but being a business owner requires you to lead yourself, requires you to constantly be analyzing how what you’re doing could be optimized, improved, shifted.

Victoria Ashley Werner (19:18.444)

And it all comes down to us as the leader of the business. Like there is no business without the person that leads it. And so while I know so much in the online world, it can feel like there’s so much discussion of like kind of creating automated businesses, businesses that are separated from ourselves.

And those are powerful, right? Like I even talking to you about that, I’m talking about you creating a somewhat passive business where you design a sewing pattern, release it on the internet and then you make passive sales from it, quote unquote. But.

Victoria Ashley Werner (19:57.538)

But that only goes so far.

if you’re not there with it, if you’re not there growing it, if you’re not there putting your energy into it and directing it.

Victoria Ashley Werner (20:33.39)

And that’s thing, having a business requires us to have availability for it. And that is so much bigger. Having the ability, having the capacity to be there for your business is one of the greatest challenges when, one, you’re a complex human being with a lot of interests. Two, you...

become a parent like I did two and a half years ago. Or three, when you have other responsibilities like family or a job that you’re just, you you need for your own security. And so if you’re feeling called to take an entrepreneurial path, to like move your life towards

this path towards freedom, this path of freedom.

If you are wanting to live this life that feels experimental, that feels like you can constantly pivot, that feels like you can just constantly pivot and have an infinite number of ways that you can get paid, which is really what an entrepreneurship can offer you, you’re taking a road less traveled, right? And so if you’re really just starting out now,

you may not even know where to begin.

Victoria Ashley Werner (22:09.004)

And especially if you’re feeling like your current life is not even making that possible, that’s where we need to start. The first step is not to just leap into something wildly. The first step is to build security for yourself. And some of us are gonna be able to create more of that and some of us are gonna be able to create less of that. But your entrepreneurial journey, your entrepreneurial path starts now.

the pivoting, the experience of challenge and friction, the experience of needing to find creative solutions, the experience of thinking outside the box and solving problems and finding ways for things to work out that you never saw when you first looked at the situation, that starts now. That starts now, right? That’s not something that comes down the road that you’re

you’re there if this is something that’s interesting to you. So let’s talk about that first step, like that first resistance, that first challenge of creating security so that you even have enough space, time, capacity to spend on a business.

Victoria Ashley Werner (23:44.024)

Because what we don’t want is we don’t want for you to be in a place where your security is threatened because that is not a safe, that is not a place that inspires creativity. If your safety and security is threatened financially, physically.

Like if you’re working so hard that you’re burning out, if you’re fitting your new business operation into the wee hours of the night and not getting enough sleep.

If you’re straining yourself to build the business, that’s not safety and security. That’s not building capacity.

So.

Victoria Ashley Werner (24:37.422)

you’re going to have to look at your own life and your own situation because we all have, it’s different for all of us. But some things that you might consider doing, things that I want you to start rolling around in your mind and looking at from as many angles as possible, things that I want you to consider and hold in your mind and say, gosh, I can’t see a way to solve this problem, but I sure would like the universe.

to show me that maybe there’s another way. You might even invite in a conversation with somebody or like something that you come across on the internet that is like, whoa, that, I didn’t even consider that that is a way that I could look at this, you know? And so things that you might roll around in your mind, things that you might kind of try to look at from a different angle are things like lowering your cost of living. For me, that was a huge thing at the beginning so that I had...

time, space, security to run a business when it wasn’t making a lot of money, build a business when it wasn’t earning so much that I could pay rent on a full house, for example. So I was younger then, so this made more sense, but you may find a different version of this for yourself where...

what does it look like to lower your cost of living, to make that strain of what your business needs to cover for you more achievable. And I don’t, I mean, I even believe that you can start a business that pays for expensive rent. Like, I don’t want you to feel like you’re limited, but I do want you to start rolling around these limitations in your mind to figure out what you can do.

how you can work with them or work around them. So then the other thing is building highly employable skills that when you do take the leap, when you do start becoming self-employed, when you do try to create your own products and services, when you have highly employable skills that you can lean on, if you end up in a bind, you have that to fall back on. I’m particularly enthusiastic

Victoria Ashley Werner (27:01.812)

about highly employable skills that allow you to work from anywhere. Digital pattern making is one of them. Digital pattern grading is one of them. But there are so many. consider that. That if you don’t have a highly employable skill that allows you to work from anywhere, maybe look at that. Look at what you could train in, what you could start to learn about, what you could start to, yeah.

get some experience in to give you that thing to fall back on. And for some of us, that means going back and getting a job, right? Like that is the worst case, quote unquote, worst case scenario for a lot of people. But what is that job? Is that job gonna cover your bills? Like what if you’re taking a leap and you’re making more space?

Victoria Ashley Werner (27:58.392)

Do you even want that to be your fallback, going back to a job where you’re trapped, where you’re stuck, I don’t wanna say trapped, but where you’re, not in this case at least, where you’re working on somebody else’s schedule? Other things that you can do that I did in this process, in this early process of starting my own business was save money. There was one month in particular before I left and went to Rome to go to pattern making school.

where I worked four jobs, I was working all day. Some of those jobs were online. Some of those jobs were in person, but I was working as much as I could because that’s all I knew how to do back then. I didn’t have that highly employable skill yet. So, you you do what you have to do, right? So as long as that’s for something like that where you work four jobs, as long as that’s for like a finite period of time.

That kind of thing can really, really help, really help. But I know that’s not available to everybody. So, you know, what’s your version of that?

And then this one, for some reason I feel like...

a little like weird about saying this, but it has been so powerful for me, so I have to say it. And that is building strong credit. I’m not gonna teach you, I’m not gonna give you any financial advice, but you have the access to the internet and you can learn how to build really strong credit so that you can always absorb a large expense. Like I just.

Victoria Ashley Werner (29:43.926)

I know that that might be something that makes people very uncomfortable, that might make you very uncomfortable, the idea of using credit. But again, like, what are the resources at your disposal? For me, that one has been indispensable. and as long as, you know, as long as you can learn how to use credit safely, healthily, in a manageable way.

For me, it’s indispensable having that as a tool. These are all powerful things that you can do for your practical safety and stability. But then, more than that, it’s really about that internal conversation that you have with yourself to really build an identity, to really anchor it in like, I am a person that always figures things out.

I’m a person that can always find a solution. I’m a person that’s always thinking creatively. I’m a person that doesn’t give up. Like that feels so much better than the alternative. And that is what you need to anchor into and carry.

and carry into the future.

Victoria Ashley Werner (31:18.156)

Now, there’s one more layer of this that I want to speak to briefly, and that is...

the friction from people that you may experience on the way.

And this again is going to be something that you have to navigate. we’re all going to have our own experiences with it. you may be experiencing that right away where your partner, your family, your current workplace, the people in your immediate, in your life may not want you to leave and do something different.

Victoria Ashley Werner (32:03.992)

God, I was running my farm business successfully for years and my dad would still send me job announcements in my email. Like, I would never call to ask for money or support or anything like that, but he would send me those like, kind of like, when you’re ready to get a real job, you know? Like, that is, they’ve always been supportive, but you know, why would you do that if you thought your daughter was fully...

Fully employed. anyway. and I’ll just say that those jobs that he wanted me to work in, they were always like weird CIA, like government jobs and stuff. He like, I think he really had this vision of me being like scully from the X-Files or something. I just feel like that’s kind of how he imagined I would turn out.

Victoria Ashley Werner (33:01.649)

Yeah, so you may experience your family not wanting you to do that. And so that is going to be something real that you have to navigate. And what I want to remind you that you’re probably aware of is that the reason that they do that, that family, friends, whatever discourage you from taking a risk is because they’re worried about your safety and security. And they want the best for you. And what you need to keep in mind when that’s happening is that

The best thing for you is to work towards the life of freedom. That if you’re feeling called toward and you’re feeling trapped, the best thing for you is to do something different.

Victoria Ashley Werner (33:44.418)

And then there’s one more layer of this, and that is that it’s farther down the road, and maybe this is something for another episode at some point, but when you go for it and you succeed, especially at doing something creative, especially at doing, like when you succeed at building a business that other people would never have even imagined would be possible, it triggers people. It triggers people. And people...

will choose to not like you, sheerly for the fact that you have succeeded doing something that I think deep in their hearts they wish they could do too. And it’s not that they can’t, it’s that they feel trapped and they, instead of, they choose to play the victim in that sense.

Victoria Ashley Werner (34:39.95)

And you may experience that right away. You may even feeling that. Like, who do I think I am to take this risk? Who am I to take this risk and go on this path that I don’t know where it’s gonna lead, that I don’t know if it’s actually gonna hold?

gonna hold opportunities for me. And what I’ll let you know is that the thing about the unknown is, about stepping into the unknown, is that inside of the unknown, that vast concept of the unknown that you would be stepping into if you did something completely new and different, all potential possibilities that are different from your current one live in that unknown. And so the only way

to get a different outcome, have a future that’s different from what you live right now is to step into that unknown.

Victoria Ashley Werner (35:49.698)

And that’s where we’re gonna leave things today.