Perseverance Pays

This week, I want to take you down a rabbit hole. It’s about a jumper. Well, at the surface, it’s about a jumper, but it’s also about so much more than that. It’s about perseverance.

You probably don’t know this about me, but I love buying secondhand clothes, especially vintage “they don’t make them like they used to” pieces. The more unusual and ridiculous, the better.

Several years ago, I saw someone wearing a jumper that depicted sheep in a field with a cottage. It’s as ridiculous as it sounds – I enclose photographic evidence.

This is where we begin to see my crossover skills — how my ridiculous research skills and perseverance jump from being something I do not only in my professional life but also in my personal life.

It’s a habit that I just can't kick.

When I was employed, one of my favourite things to do was research tasks. I still do it sometimes for clients that I work with freelance. In fact, a couple of months ago, someone sent me a picture of sunglasses they wanted a replica of but didn’t know where they came from. Needless to say I found them.

For me, ridiculous research tasks really tick my dopamine box. The more difficult, the better. The harder the challenge, the more enthusiastic I am.

When I worked on construction projects, this meant finding the vendor that would deliver the impossible when I was asking for the ridiculous. It was a very carefully choreographed dance that I would perform (metaphorically, of course) to get them to agree to things they most definitely didn’t want to do.

By that, I mean usually they were top-notch craftspeople who had no reason to work with me on a project where I was asking for something outside their norm because they had a dozen other jobs they could safely do, which were their norm, and carried no risk.

However, time and time again, that’s what I managed to do: deliver the impossible when asking for the ridiculous. It took rapport, but most of all, perseverance.

My passion for really, really wanting to solve the problem helped too! It's infectious.

As I’ve covered in my How to Cold Pitch video , one thing that matters is mathematics. If you ask 100 people the same question, you might get 95 people who say no, but you’ll usually get 5 yeses. It’s the five yeses that you want to focus on when you’re trying to solve something.

Anyway, back to the sheep jumper.

I saw the jumper, fell in love with it, and thought, “I have to find out where this is from and how I get one.” I looked online, found it was made in the USA, though designed in England in the 1980s, and was no longer in production. It also seemed to retail for hundreds of dollars in the USA when it became available for sale. I wasn’t going to justify spending that kind of budget on a jumper, so I decided to employ a fantastic technique my talented friend Taylor taught me.

Hope you’re listening, because I don’t know why more people don’t do this. Especially people like me who love buying different things from the same vintage company or buying the same item of clothing again and again. The latter is really hard when every season, brands often change the design or quality of something.

So, what did Taylor teach me?

She taught me that if you really want something, you should set alerts on selling sites. You bide your time. In the UK, my favourites are eBay and Vinted.

At this point, I had reverse image searched the jumper, found out who made it, and set that eBay alert to notify me if any products were listed with the brand name (it’s Samantha Taylor if anyone else is in the market for a sheep jumper).

I would get an email or two every week. Every time I would open the email and find some boring, plain blue merino wool jumper listed on eBay.

This went on for about eight months, and then finally, the magical moment happened. I opened the email, and there it was—my sheep jumper! Not only that, but someone had listed it on eBay for $50 (at least $100 lower than market value).

I have never moved faster to purchase something on the internet, with the help of my other friend in America, Nora. We secured the jumper in record time, and I didn’t really believe it was true until it arrived at Nora’s in the USA.

Never could I have anticipated—the design wraps around 360 degrees, including unique designs on each sleeve. This is literally the best jumper I’ve ever seen in my life. I know this is pure facts because the reality of every time I wear it, people stop me on the street to comment because it is such an incredible piece of knitwear.

I didn’t really think much about the story until I was telling it to another friend, and they looked at me like I was completely bonkers.

It was in that moment I realised that it’s not really normal to go to these lengths to find a piece of knitwear that you happened to see and fall in love with, but it really is the embodiment of everything I do with everyone I work with.

I am obsessive when it comes to problem-solving and going to the ends of the earth to make something happen.

For me, the sheep jumper was just another day in the office. In fact, it was quite easy in comparison to many other things I’ve done in my work history or life.

I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that the sheep now have two fellow comrades in the wardrobe by the same designer. At the moment, I’m currently wearing the ice-skating design, which bridges the gap nicely between autumn and Christmas.

When Christmas arrives, I’ll be wearing the Christmas design, which involves Santa, his sleigh, reindeer, and a Christmas tree.

And as we enter the New Year, it’s time to start wearing the sheep again - the OG legend.

How far would you go to find a solution to a problem?

In my career, it has been something that has set me apart and I have been repeatedly commended for it.

So, I really recommend it — that and Google reverse image search, which can solve so many complicated problems when I’m looking for something.

I’d never be without it. Just click the little camera icon next time you're on the Google homepage, and go wild.