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Welcome to the Gilt Trips podcast. I'm your host, Kendra Lockhart. As a goldsmith and

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gemologist, I'll be speaking 24 carat on all things jewelry, metals, and gems. Join

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me plus a few friends to demystify both materials and designs as your private jeweler. Let's

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tune in on these topics and get golden. Hello. Today's episode is the first of a season of

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storytelling. How do jewelers enter a world of beauty plus value plus luxury plus business?

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If you ask people in my career, what got you into jewelry, you're going to hear the full

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spectrum of answers. A few legacies into this. Some had to plan B it and others were

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minding their own business and the quote unquote invitation arrived. But the common denominator

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is that we didn't just pick jewelry somewhere over the adventure. It picked us as well. For

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me, I did not call this in. It called me. Today, I'm going to share the subtle and obvious clues

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that happened that were placed upon my path that took me from my youth all the way into

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a robust career in self employment as a private jeweler. Spoiler alert. This was half planned,

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half organic opportunity, a beautiful co-mingling of both strategy and surrender.

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The first thing I'll admit when I'm asked about my industry is that it started in my

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formative years. Firstly, I always saw magic from being a toddler and reinventing my toys

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into accessories or getting mesmerized by the way a train headlights broke across my

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bedroom walls. I always had a dose of that Walter Middie brain that entered a separate

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world and that was part of my original design. Secondly, I always did art. I drew on anything.

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Myself, the sidewalk, unfortunately, my childhood bedroom walls. Or I was cutting my own hair

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before school picture day. Which by the way, I had mastered a straight line at an early

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age so I'm not the one who needs to apologize for that. Thirdly, metal was always both sound

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and shine to me for as long as I could remember. It was the clinking of coins, the clanging

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of pots, the crashing of steel beams at construction sites. The endless image and the sporadic

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noise captured my senses very early on. What did all this lead to? Alchemy of course. I

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learned all of my inner abilities and all of my external interests to somehow fuse together

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just like an alloy. And that was the long and winding road of my self discovery or monomyth

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if you like the hero's journey that led me up the mountain to steal the fire from my

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mentors, experience trial and error, honor, education, and call in both clients and colleagues.

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You name it, it went into the forge. Now, well, I can't capture every single ingredient

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that went into my career. And I also can't recall absolutely every experience. I am able

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to say with my awareness the highlights and the moments that had me both being and becoming

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the jeweler that I am today. As a child, I noticed certain metals, the aluminum of the

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kitchen pots, the copper came onto my radar when my dad brought back a Native American bracelet

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from a business trip. Silver was special to me because of a vacation to New Mexico. And

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I saw rows and rows of smiths that were indigenous creating in this alloy. And of course gold.

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My father was a dental tech and going to his lab watching him melt it down, witnessing

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his wax carvings and his final crafting of someone's replacement tooth or crown or bridge

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showed me my first glimpses into a future of metamorphosis using metals. The trajectory

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that I was on in my teenage years had absolutely nothing to do with jewelry. However, as part

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of my high school curriculum, we had a selection of art classes that we could take and not

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too many interested me more than the jewelry one. While the teacher of this class was on

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the verge of retiring and had very little emotional investment in what we were able

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to learn, one of the assignments had me approach a classmate and ask for a little bit of design

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direction. Unbeknownst to me, she would offer cash if I would make it come to life. And

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so as a part of my homework, I made that ring for her. We both went to Dave's Rock Shop

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in Evanston, Illinois and picked out the gem. This was like Dorothy landing in Oz. I had

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no idea that there was an entire store devoted to gems and jewels for amateurs. Needless

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to say, it was the easiest A I got in high school. Fast forward to college, I repeated

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this trick. One of my elective classes was metals. It just so happened that the professor

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was the president of the Society of Silversmiths. And she passionately impressed upon me that

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while I was taking a class that could be a throwaway for most people, I had something

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special or extra. The funny thing about youth is that you don't know how to contextualize

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comments like that. When I graduated, another magic breadcrumb appeared on my path. My father

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came down with something and couldn't attend a fundraiser and wanted to send me in his

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place. When I figured out I'd be sitting at a dinner table with a bunch of older men

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in suits, I promptly declined. This angered him greatly and he said, if you don't go,

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I'll charge you for the ticket. And at the time, I was living with him after school.

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So I begrudgingly went. Fate showed up for a third time and I was seated next to somebody

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who asked me, what do you do? As a recent graduate, my answer wasn't great. I said,

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well, I just finished college. My favorite class was jewelry. And I got this commission,

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but I didn't get a deposit. And I think they're backing out. So now I'm on the hook. And he

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asked, what does it look like? Well, I grabbed a cocktail napkin and sketched it out for

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him. I can only remember my half of that experience. But somewhere in this, he had to have been

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enchanted as well. Because the next thing I know, I got his business card. And he said,

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come see me at the office as soon as you can. The next thing I know, I'm taking a trip down

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to the Diamond District and he's encouraging me to finish this failed commission. So we

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can submit it into a design competition. Oh, and meanwhile, I should meet this gem broker

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and this wax carver and this caster and this polisher. Spoiler alert, I would win a handful

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of awards with him. If you're going to have a career in jewelry, you need a mentor early

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and often. My first job was at a store called Illusions. It was a franchise, simulant gems

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in a gold alloy that were reproductions of famous jewelry. It was 1995. So the big deal

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was the Princess Diana ring. It was quite the education because I got to learn under

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somebody who knew nothing about jewelry. The owner was a lawyer who decided to leave her

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industry and do something that she said she really loved, except there's not a lot of

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correlation between going to court and selling beautiful objects and handling client expectations

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and taking returns and navigating repairs. So it was a crash course in customer service

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and handling objections while learning to support somebody who was terrible at sales.

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I can look back on that job and feel charmed by it because it did open a door to me responding

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to an ad in a newspaper. That's how jobs used to be found that an unnamed store was

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looking for a designer. I threw my hat in the ring and the next thing you know, I am

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the designer. I walked in, put my resume on the desk, we went to the counter. He gave

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me a ring and said draw this. Little did I know that his biggest blind spot was not

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being able to sketch clients' ideas. So at first, I basically played the role of court

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stenographer and captured everything that a client was sharing and saying in a picture.

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And that picture would help my boss ask for the commission. I would outgrow the dynamic

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that I had with the manager there. And my next step was to go from designer into a bench

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jeweler. I took my portfolio of my sketches and the pieces I had made for competition

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in design and approached goldsmithing showrooms. I landed myself an apprenticeship. The glamour

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ended by day two. It was rough. It was rigorous. It was a test of my confidence and my spirit.

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I'll share more about my apprenticeship in a future episode. But what springboarded me

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from that chapter was a desire to go back to school and learn gemology and surprise myself

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because I not only signed up for how to understand gems and jewels, but also to become a master

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jeweler. Little did I know that finishing up my gemology studies would plant seeds for

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self employment. After my apprenticeship, I could cut the costs of having my creations

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made because now I had certain skills. The pay there had been terrible and the conditions

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were even worse. So I was already cultivating a clientele after hours. After my degree,

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I got a few jobs that would give me revenue for my future. I recycled my athletics from

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my formative years and being a teenager into a few fitness jobs and I eventually landed

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at a training firm and then Chicago's crown jewel, the East Bank Club, which is an elite

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multiplex. There was the paycheck. I executed a few collections in a handful of styles and

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I began to reach out to stores and galleries as well as affordable art shows. One of my

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best opportunities was getting referred to ancient echoes gallery. I remember being nervous

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to show my work and at the time I felt pretty green. Ivy, the owner, was incredibly silent

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when she looked over my samples in my portfolio. She then asked, where have you been? What

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I heard was, justify yourself. So I started giving her a recap of my highlights and my

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adventures and she said, no, no, no, where have you been? You're a perfect fit for us.

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We need a house designer. So I became that and my work was on the showroom floor. But

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the best part is Ivy was a PR genius and I ended up getting featured in a newspaper

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article and now had copy or as the kids call it an asset for my media kit. Now let's

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fast forward to 2009. Oh joy, the recession. Ivy closed her gallery not long after and

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I had to reinvent my relationship to my industry. I began going to work for other stores. One

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of my better adventures was in manufacturing. I landed myself an opportunity at a casting

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house, which happened to be the largest independent manufacturer in the nation, meaning it created

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for large and small stores across the country so that they could have their designs made

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for their clients. What I didn't see coming is how much it would expose me to what was

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new on the horizon, computer aided drafting or CAD designing. The second thing that was

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rising up was the secondary market. In a simple twist of fate, my undergrad college roommate

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went through a loss. Her mother, a world traveler, had passed and she was absolutely overwhelmed

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with the amount of collectibles and jewelry that her parent possessed. I stepped up and

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brokered my first estate liquidation. Let's jump another 10 years. And now I'm in a situation

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a few years before COVID where jewelry is starting to plateau for me. And so I've applied

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to the Midwest's largest independent showroom for the world of watches. There were 12 authorized

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dealerships under one roof. And I could scratch that itch from my childhood growing up as a

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military kid, where timepieces were the ultimate prize. From there, COVID would happen and

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it was time to take my skills in manufacturing and make them portable. I went into transportation

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and transportation. The designing with CAD, the execution in steel instead of gold, the

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manufacturing of CNC, all of it was incredibly congruent with everything that I'd been doing

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up until this point. And I'm grateful that I was able to have a job in metal while working

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in a lockdown situation. After that, a family owned business had gone e-commerce right before

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COVID. And it was an obvious yes to return to my first love, gold and jewels. What do

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you know? I'm back in the secondary market. This time, instead of being independent, I'm

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working for one of the big guys, the real real. And it was here I was asked to train

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the new hires. And instead of doing an unpaid and thankless job, I birthed the idea of this

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podcast. Where am I going with this? Aside from a podcast that educates and entertains

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my peers, my colleagues, my friends, my clients around the world. It also sets up a springboard

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for the next generation. It reminds me that once upon a time, I had a springboard. And

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now I am one.

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Thank you for listening and learning with me. I would love you to share this project

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with people finding rare beauty in today's world and throughout our times. Until the

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next episode, keep your own stories sparkling.