We recently connected with Abigail Melton and have shared our conversation below.
Abigail , so great to have you sharing your thoughts and wisdom with our readers and so let’s jump right into one of our favorite topics – empathy. We think a lack of empathy is at the heart of so many issues the world is struggling with and so our hope is to contribute to an environment that fosters the development of empathy. Along those lines, we’d love to hear your thoughts around where your empathy comes from?
Empathy is a hard one for a lot of us to get a handle on I think, not because we don’t see its importance, but because it can easily be confused for sympathy or pity. No one likes to have someone act like they know the pain they are walking through when in fact the person has no idea what that particular road feels like, nor do most like to feel pitied for the plight that they are in. Empathy, however, is a beautiful thing that, for me, has been born out of the darkest and most painful chapters in my own story. Empathy, unlike sympathy or pity, is not an emotion fueled from knowing all the details or understanding all of the particulars. To me, empathy is about caring about people’s stories. It’s about creating space and being a person who believes in giving room for growth, leading with love, and allowing for grace.
I’ve known loss, heartache, broken dreams, changed plans, life fall-outs, lost love, broken relationships, moves, trauma, and anxiety, but it’s from the messiest chapters of my story that empathy for people’s experiences has really taken root. Something happens when you go through situations that bring you to your knees, and if you let them, they can transform your heart into a kinder, softer, and more understanding one. Everyone is given the same opportunity when they are met with hardship; you can let it refine you or you can let it define you. And for me, I’ve tried really hard to allow the trials of life to bring refinement and mold me into a more empathic human.
When I opened up my business in 2021 for my first season, I was married. I closed for the season in September of 2021 and entered into one of the hardest and lowest mental, physical, and emotional seasons of my life. In the spring of 2022 when I opened for the season, I was in a completely different chapter in life that I had never anticipated being in. As I navigated through the loss, practical changes, and unexpected spots I had found myself in as a business owner, I really started to see empathy grow. I had countless conversations over coffee at Redemption listening to people share their own stories of heartache and sharing some of my own. It was through this vulnerability that I started to really experience the beauty of empathy and the powerful impact it could have on someone’s day, myself included.
To me, empathy is just seeing someone’s story and valuing it. Empathy allows for healthy boundaries, healthy privacy and space, and yet it validates the difficulty that this life can throw at us. I would never wish a lot of the experiences I’ve had on anyone, nor would I wish to go through them again myself, however, I can’t say that I would have written a different story, because if it was through these experiences that I would start learning how to having an empathic heart for other’s stories I’d say it was worth it.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I am the owner and operator of Redemption Coffeehouse & Roastery in Spooner, Wisconsin. Redemption is a shipping container turned coffee shop. We operate seasonally currently, which typically looks like sometime in May to sometime in September. We are quickly approaching the end of our third season, which feels so insanely crazy to say! Our mission statement at Redemption is “cultivating community through coffee and conversation”, which is genuinely the heartbeat of all that we are about. As we looked at different ways to continue to carry out that mission, we launched something new at Redemption this year called “cultivate events”. Cultivate events this season have looked like a community game night, a speciality woman’s event, and, coming on Sunday, September 10th, a family festival and fundraiser to raise money for a non-profit called The Restored House. The heart behind all of these events has been the same, to cultivate community and be about actively building community and fostering relationships. A couple of things we are more known for would be a unique shipping container set up and something we call Flight Fridays. Flight Fridays are something we launched back in our 2022 season at Redemption, but essentially, every Friday we offer two different flight options, a coffee flight and a non-coffee flight. These sample boards both feature four different six ounce sample drinks and each week we change both menus. Flights have become a fan favorite way to try a variety of different drinks and discover new combinations.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I am still very much on the journey to “becoming” an entrepreneur, but I don’t believe that we ever “arrive” at any role in life. I would say that three things that really impacted my journey as I started was the tactical skill set that I came into the business with. There is a really fantastic book that had been given to me by a friend called “The E-Myth” by Michael E. Gerber, and in that book he talks about different types of small business owners. I was very much a tactical expert in my field since I had spent all of my years of working in coffee shops. This really helped me as I set up business operations simply because I knew what it took to practically operate the business I was starting. Another thing that really impacted the beginning of my journey would just be the fact that I’m a very independent person by nature. I couldn’t really articulate this at the time if you would have asked me, but since then I’ve really come to see that I’m sort of wired for challenges and for being extremely independently driven, which has played in as a strength and weakness both personally and professionally when I started growing a business. Which leads me to my third point which would be that I think continuing to learn and become self-aware is an extremely necessary skill in building a successful business.
This would probably be my biggest piece of advice to someone thinking about starting down the journey of entrepreneurship as well. Prepare to look at yourself harder than you ever have before. Don’t be afraid to learn about your strengths and weaknesses, get a coach, ask for help, learn about what you don’t know. Honestly, just never stop learning, growing, and changing. It’s really helpful to start building a community of people who can help encourage you, challenge you, invest in you, and help point out your weaknesses. You can’t work on something if you don’t know that it’s an area of weakness, so learn to get really comfortable about confronting your weaknesses and mistakes, because I’m convinced that if you aren’t learning you aren’t growing.
There are a ton of books, podcasts, YouTube videos, etc. on pretty much any topic on the planet, so dive in, do your research and invest in learning. Find a mentor, or mentors, and be really picky about the voices you let speak into your life. Not all voices are helpful, some are just noise. So I’d encourage you to seek people who share similar life values, goals, and priorities which can help prevent you getting confused and off course yourself. I’m still very much learning how to build a good community when it comes to entrepreneurship and business, but I’ve gotten pretty good at community in other areas of my life, so I fully believe in the benefits of a healthy community.
Looking back over the past 12 months or so, what do you think has been your biggest area of improvement or growth?
I’ve gone through an insane amount of changes in my life in the last 12 months in a very practical sense so that’s been a lot to navigate. I’d say that the biggest area of growth over the last 12 months has really just been learning how to embrace the “in-betweens.” I’ve always been an all in or all out kind of girl my entire life, which can be a strength, but a lot of times it’s been a huge hang-up for growth in my life. And honestly, a lot of life is the “in-betweens” and journey so learning how to flourish where you are at, be okay with your best effort, and with imperfect progress has been a beautiful new thing for me. Sadly it took me experiencing a lot of loss, heartache, and trauma before I laid down my stubbornness long enough to realize the value and importance of embracing the season you are in, the good, bad, ugly, hard, and beautiful. I’ve been labeling my recent/current stage of life as hard and holy and I think it describes it beautifully. The last 12 months have been filled with a lot of change, growth, learning, humbling myself, admitting mistakes, dealing with weaknesses, working hard towards dreams, and learning how to embrace the now.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.redemptioncoffeehouseroastery.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/redemptioncoffeehouse.roastery/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/redemptioncoffeehouse.roastery
Image Credits
Abigail Melton Kaylee Meyer
