We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Mary Plummer. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Mary below.
Mary, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?
When I am asked to describe myself I use one word… resilient. Resilience has been ingrained in me since birth. I am one of eight children in my family. Being a middle child demands resilience. I also grew up in poverty. My parents are hardworking people. My father had a white collar job, but in rural Oregon with a big family those dollars don’t go nearly far enough.
As a teen I left home early, at 16. We can call it philosophical differences with my Mormon parents. That move was one of the hardest of my life. It demanded that I be resilient really because I had nowhere to land. I spent much of my life learning resilience out of brutal necessity. What are you going to do, give up? I have the words pivot, change, recreate and reinvent in my vocabulary, the word quit I don’t have.
The best way I know how to describe resilience is in layers. The most inner, protective layer is your need to survive. I became resilient because I needed to survive the environment I was in. That layer for me was never a choice. It has always felt instinctual. The next layer is the one is flexible, It’s always shifting and changing to manage the changing world around us. This layer of resilience is the one that I have worked the hardest to control and create. I am a former control-freak. I say that with meaning. I had a very hard time allowing things in my life beyond my control. This was because of my lack of this second layer of resilience. Living in constant survival mood, just wrapped in the tightest layer is so uncomfortable. Creating an environment I completely controlled allowed me to expand beyond that, but in an unhealthy way. I never really got out survival mode, it’s just became surviving to avoid survival mode. It’s a vicious cycle.
Developing the ability to flex and bend came from necessity beyond my control. When that happened I chose to flex instead of break. My middle child Tyler, was diagnosed with autism at 2 years old. Tyler has mountains to climb in his life. From communication to self-regulation he has needed a lot of support through has life. Being a special needs parent demands that you bend. You never know what the day will hold. I love my children with my whole being. They are wanted and loved. That doesn’t mean learning to bend to his needs was easy. It has been a journey. It changed everything about how I live and eventually it even changed how I view life. Seeing the world through the eyes of Tyler’s advocate allowed me to see how I could be firm, strong, unbreakable and still flexible, movable and most importantly how to accept things beyond my control.
I have always had a high-level of self-awareness. I have not always had the ability to have really tough, honest conversations with myself. It was when I developed the skill to tell myself the truth to its fullest that I developed the third layer of resilience. That’s the outer layer that in my mind exists like an aura. It’s that layer of resilience that looks to the future. Part of the reason I can flex and bend so well is years of learning to have plan A, B, C, D and being confident that I can adapt those plans. That sounds terrifying, I know! I don’t have perfect plans or adaptations, things go wrong in my life. Planning for the future, even just one day at a time, helps build my confidence and that keeps that outer layer of resilience intact.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
Maine Micro Artisans is the essence of who I am. It’s so much more than just a business. My life very much led me to this moment. Maine Micro Artisans is where and how I push back against a world that I feel like did not meet my needs. There are so many times in my life that I knew I could have changed my trajectory if someone just had an opportunity that fit me. If they could just flex a little. If they could cater to me even just a little. We have this sense of being unmovable as being a strength and I’ve never viewed it that way. I don’t know where in life I learned that asking to be catered to was ‘too much’ but we have to buck that notion. We all have something to offer and having someone cater an opportunity to us isn’t selfish, it’s asking someone to meet you halfway so you can give what you have to offer. This philosophy was born out of, or at least cemented through Tyler’s autism journey. To me when someone offers to share their talent, their world with you, it’s a big deal. Meet them where they are.
When I started making soap I knew I had found my hobby. I needed something that was just mine. I was six years deep into being a stay-at-home mom. I felt like I was losing touch with my own personal growth. Then the pandemic hit. I was so focused on my family I could close my eyes and feel myself falling away. Soap making brought me back to focusing on other things for a period of time each day. It was when I realized that I also needed this career. I needed a challenge that didn’t revolve around my family. Something that allowed me to feel like Mary again and not Mom. Soap does that. Needless to say, I made a lot of soap. LOL I still make a lot of soap. Selling bars was a natural transition. I looked all over the state of Maine and found I was hitting the same walls I felt like I hit in my life previously. Opportunities that don’t bend or flex. This store only wants you if you can create 200 each week. This store only wants you if you’re certified this or that. This one only wants for XYZ. Let me just take a moment, to say I love these other shops. I respect them and appreciate what they offer the community. That doesn’t change the fact that as a potential client, they didn’t really work for me.
One morning about 3 a.m. scrolling social media I saw this adorable little shop, downtown in my hometown going out of business. I thought about how far I had come in life. Where I had been – a single mom, living in a motel with my kids, working two jobs, to happily married, financially stable and with time to spare. I honestly thought about all the women I had known in the section 8 housing complex where I had lived. These women had seen tough times. They were also brilliant, motivated and hardworking. I thought about all the times in my life that I had talked to someone who could have changed their trajectory if they had something, someway to make that happen. When I tell you it felt like a calling, I’m not exaggerating. I felt this intense moment that I don’t really know how to describe. I saw moments in my life flash in front of me. Hard times that I did not understand and maybe hadn’t even processed. Moments and hard lessons life taught me. Then came this intense peacefulness in where I was in my life. I looked at my sleeping husband, my comfortable home and my heart was absolutely full. The vision took form and shortly thereafter I woke my husband. By 6 a.m. I was messaging the building tenant and then the owner. Two months later, to the day, I opened MMA.
The first year almost broke me. I tried so hard to provide opportunity we didn’t take enough back and that almost wrecked it before we got a chance to really see the vision as a whole. Those layers of resilience exist for a business too. When we broke through to that survival layer, it became uncomfortable. I had to find my balance between providing opportunity and creating a financially viable and stable business. When I did that, it was life-changing. I lost about 50% of my clients. Then I took on four times as many. No joke, we quadrupled in size when I made these changes.
Maine Micro Artisans has grown from one little gift shop featuring the work of about 100 people, to three retail stores, huge events and a maker community of hundreds. We have the work of over 250 makers in the store and each month we feature another 100+ makers in our events. I LOVE putting the spotlight on others. If there is any one thing I could tell other small business owners, it’s pass the mic! We scream our digital heads off about how awesome our makers are. We create new pathways for them to promote and to sell. We encourage them to just partake in the opportunities that work for them. We offer volunteerism opportunities in lieu of fees. We bend, we flex, we meet makers where they are. If you only make one of something, if you only make when you’re inspired, if you’re financially tapped, if all you have to give is time, if you have no time to give, we meet people where they are. This is the aspect of MMA that I am most proud of and that’s been the hardest to balance. Now that we’ve found that balance I can feel MMA become what it was always meant to be.
We’re expanding our Bangor location this month and our first Night Markets kick-off this week!!!
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
My early journey advice is don’t listen to convention. The system was not built to suit us! Don’t try to build a business that fits in the small business box. That box is an illusion and you don’t have to even acknowledge it. Build what’s authentic to you in the way that works for you.
To make that happen the skills that suited me best are:
1. Having hard conversation with yourself is so important. Being truthful and honest with yourself is the most freeing thing in the world.
2,. Get comfortable making others uncomfortable. Especially if you’re a woman. Confident women building things outside the box makes people uncomfortable. They will lash out. There will be rumors, unkind words, circles who don’t want you. Be ok with that.
3. Pivot. If an idea doesn’t work, if a plan fails, it’s not time to quit, it’s time to pivot. Don’t be afraid to say this isn’t working and change it. Even if others don’t like it. Pivoting without giving up is how you build confidence that becomes resilience.
Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
We always face the same problem…. Money. When you choose to build outside the lines you have to be prepared to not qualify for traditional methods of funding. I’m 10000% ok with not taking huge loans to start our business. Even now we hold very little debt. Mostly by choice now, but believe me in the beginning, before I found my confidence I would have taken that $100,000 loan and we never would have made it.
The money obstacle is also the one I am most proud of dismantling.
We’ve grown to three retail locations in three years by thinking outside the financial box. Through our clients we crowd source to create these opportunities. I can’t tell you how much work that is! It’s hard, easily the hardest part of it. I’ve learned that by being transparent about our costs and how we use funds from our clients that they are beginning to really see the vision. As we begin to have that communal vision we become a real community. Now, with so many of us, if we all throw down $100 we can create HUGE small business moves. It’s amazing to see how as the community builds we don’t find a way over the obstacle or around it, we dismantle it. We remove it, creating a clear path for those who come next.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mainemicroartisans.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mainemicroartisans/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mainemicroartisans
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barsoapcompany/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@mainemicroartisans
- Other: www.handmesoap.com is my soap website also!
Image Credits
These are all taken by my husband: Mike Lerley
