Meet Hank Failing

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Hank Failing a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hank , first a big thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and insights with us today. I’m sure many of our readers will benefit from your wisdom, and one of the areas where we think your insight might be most helpful is related to imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is holding so many people back from reaching their true and highest potential and so we’d love to hear about your journey and how you overcame imposter syndrome.

I feel like I have imposter syndrome all the time, so in some ways I have never overcome it, but I feel like because I feel like I have imposter syndrome all the time, acknowledge it all the time, and think about it, it’s my way of getting over it.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

My name is Hank Failing, and I own Hank’s Music Exchange, a music shop in Portland, Oregon. I’m 48 and have been doing music retail since 1997 when I was 20, so selling music gear has been central to my life all of my adult life. Doing sales has always been fun for me, ever since I learned at a young age that I could buy something for one price and then sell it for more for a profit. I started by selling popsicles, sodas, and fireworks door to door when I when I was a kid, and this got me used to interacting with new people and selling to them.
When I was in preschool my older cousin got into drums, and I really wanted a guitar, so got one at a yard sale, and never really learned how to play it, but it was always in my room, and would goof off with it.
In the early 90’s, I got into music when all the Seattle bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden started to become more popular, and started getting into local bands, and going to all ages shows. I tried playing guitar, trying to emulate all the musicians I was seeing live and listening to on CD, and bought an electric guitar. I got somewhat playable on guitar, but wasn’t confidence enough to being in a band, but started getting captivated by all the interesting gear. There was so much fun music gear out there! You could turn it up and make it loud, or turn up the distortion or reverb and make it sound completely different. I started going into different music shops in the 90’s, looking at all the fun music toys, and occasionally buying things when I had a few bucks.
There was one shop that all the local musicians seemed to go to, that became my favorite shop to go to, Denny’s Music, or Denny’s Music Exchange. Denny’s was a small, used guitar shop, that was staffed by local musicians, at the time music was transitioning from the more hair metal bands like Poison and Ratt, to what was called alternative or grunge like Nirvana and other Pacific Northwest bands. The music shops in town that were more 80’s and hair metal style where always assholes to us teenagers, trying to make fun of when we’d come in, or try to rip us off somehow when we’d buy things, but the people at Denny’s would sit and talk to us about what was up gear or how the music syne was about. Denny’s Music was awesome shop in town, and I tried to go there when ever I could.
In 1995 Denny’s sold and the name changed to Old Town Music, I kept going in, things stayed pretty much the same, and at some point in 1997 I talked the owner into hiring me, working one day a week for free, with him paying for my lunch and parking. I went to college, and worked another job all while working more at Old Town Music, eventually I became the manager, and was pretty much the main person that a customer would be dealing with. At Old Town Music I got to control how the feel of the shop was for people, I could see how my effect was on the business, and I liked it.
Eventually, after 22 years, in 2020 the pandemic happened and I left Old Town Music. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do for work, my whole life had been rapped around being the guy who worked at that music shop. I had a wife and a 1.5 year old son, and needed to do something that made sense both emotionally and economically. I went back and forth with ideas, but it always came back to me opening my own music shop, and I did in 2021, out of my basement and garage, in the middle of the pandemic and we called it Hank’s Music Exchange.

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?

1. The world is not against you
If you feel like things are hard, or that you are not getting anywhere, remember the world is not against you. If you feel like you keep running into roadblocks, maybe you need to rethink things or learn something new?

2. Nobody knows what they’re doing
We’re all just trying to make life happen, no one knows what up, and we’re all just trying to do the best we can with what our world is, so don’t be surprised if you don’t know what you’re doing. Because nobody knows what you’re doing, when you get the clarity every once in a while for something you think you want to do, just go for it, you’ll probably be fine if you just keep fallowing what ever that is.

3. You are who you want to be
You get to define who you are. No one is actually watching what you do, and is too involved with their own thing, so focus on you, and you’ll be fine

How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?

We moved Hank’s Music Exchange from a very small location, 300 ft of retail to 1500 ft of retail, and we have higher rent, employee costs, and we’re investing a lot into building up the new location. New customers are coming in everyday, and I can see a time in the future where be really busy, and tons of business, but right now I have to try to balance the expenses with the cost associated with everything I want to do.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://hanksmusicexchange.com
• Instagram: @hanksmusicexchange

Image Credits

Photos by Sarah Nienaber