Interviewee Name: Delane Cooper, Goldsmith
Company Name: Delane
Website: http://www.delane.ca
Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Delane Cooper: I am a goldsmith and jewellery designer. I used to be in technology for a couple of decades helping build datacentres. I started off in California, lived in New York, got married and moved here to Toronto.
Avil Beckford: What’s a typical day like for you?
Delane Cooper: Workout, meditate when I can, have a great breakfast, then prepare for client meetings or work at my jewellery bench.
Avil Beckford: How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?
Delane Cooper: I have a dream of being a philanthropist and in doing so it drives me to do well at my business so I may be able to contribute to society and help other children. That keeps me motivated.
Avil Beckford: If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?
Delane Cooper: I’m going to interpret this question regarding my career change. So it would be having the courage to do it sooner.
Avil Beckford: What's the most important business or other discovery you've made in the past year?
Delane Cooper: It is a discovery about myself. There used to be a disconnect between my age and the sound of my voice. I sounded like I was 16 years old apparently, and what it took was going on a climb on Mt. Kilimanjaro, and at the top, one of the ladies I climbed with said, “Delane, why is it that you’re 39 years old, but you sound like a little girl?” And that gave me pause to reflect. So when I returned home to Toronto, I sought out a voice coach, and as a result, my life has changed immensely. There is a better connection between my voice and my age, which has resulted in acceptance and the development of new friends.
Avil Beckford: What’s one of the biggest advances in your industry over the past five years?
Delane Cooper: I would have to say the use of computers especially with computer aided design, being able to take away some of the design aspect from drawing on paper to putting it on to computers.
Avil Beckford: What are the three threats to your business, your success, and how are you handling them?
Delane Cooper:
- Being boring: It’s about making time to be creative.
- Complacency: Making sure that every day is a new day and reinterpreting myself and asking myself every day, “What will I do to reinvent Delane today?”
- Paying attention to running my business: I sought out a business coach that I meet with once a month and we discuss all facets of my business – from financial to marketing, and she keeps me on track and makes sure that I am running my business and not forgetting that this is a business and not just a creative venture.
Avil Beckford: What’s unique about the service that you provide?
Delane Cooper: Listening to a client’s dream or aspiration, and sometimes the symbolism of what a piece of jewellery is supposed to mean to them, and then taking that story and interpreting it into a visual piece of wearable art.
Avil Beckford: What do you observe most people in your field doing badly that you think you do well?
Delane Cooper: Listen….Listen…..and…Listen!
Avil Beckford: Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it. What kind of lessons did you learn in the process?
Delane Cooper: Financing my business without a full-time job, which meant that I had to find clients. And fortunately, finding clients I did. What was holding me back was my fear, and it was taking that leap in believing in myself and being able to say, “I’m going to take on this career as being a jewellery designer and goldsmith full-time, accepting it and owning it.
My fear was holding me back, and that was the lesson, knowing everybody has fear, but being able to face it, say it’s okay and moving forward with it.
Avil Beckford: Tell me about your big break and who gave you.
Delane Cooper: A friend’s husband commissioned me to make their 42nd wedding anniversary ring and this was the biggest compliment, especially since this gentleman is known amongst a group of friends to have excellent taste in jewellery. This to me was the ultimate compliment to be asked to make a ring for his wife. His name is Bruce Vachon and I will always be eternally grateful for the opportunity, and Mary wears this ring every day. It’s such a joy to know that friends wanted me to make something to be part of their lives for the rest of their lives.
Avil Beckford: Describe one of your biggest failures. What lessons did you learn, and how did it contribute to a greater success?
Delane Cooper: I will go back to the fear of being an entrepreneur. The lesson is that everyone who is an entrepreneur experiences fear. It’s about how one deals with it. Feeling the fear is acceptable, and living behind it is not acceptable. I feel the fear every day, but it’s that joy of waking up and saying, “Hey, it’s okay. I’m doing what I love though.”
Avil Beckford: What has been your biggest disappointment in your life – and what are you doing to prevent its reoccurrence?
Delane Cooper: Letting the fear of being an entrepreneur hold me back, recognizing that failure is possible but it’s not inevitable. What I do is have a lot of positive quotations in my designing journal, and my studio that remind me that fear is okay, failure is okay because sometime in order to get the design I was looking for it’s failing many times at the same design to have the right design.
Avil Beckford: What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?
Delane Cooper: Letting go of the full-time job which had the full-time paycheque, and how it impacted me is that I was not able to go out and buy the cute shoes that I wanted. There is something to be said about drive and being driven to be in a position to get back to what a paycheque could have been like. But this time it is a business that I am running and I can make those types of purchases because I earned it and did it on my own.
Avil Beckford: What are three events that helped to shape your life?
Delane Cooper:
Delane Cooper:
- Being adopted when I was 15 ½ years old.
- Getting married
- Being a jewellery designer/goldsmith.
Avil Beckford: What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?
Delane Cooper: Running my business Delane.
Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?
Delane Cooper: There are so many mentors. I would say there are two key lessons. One is listen, listen and listen again, and the second is always to ask both of these questions – ask why and why not?
Avil Beckford: What’s one core message you received from your mentors?
Delane Cooper: Teach yourself to see what others do not see so you will know what others do not know.
Avil Beckford: An invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn things from by observing them from afar, in the capacity of an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?
Delane Cooper: Everyone experiences fear, just go out and live your passion, just do it.
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