My business is multifaceted, but our core competency is manufacturing an artisan handmade product. I’ve operated this business for over ten years and one of my primary roles is the first and most challenging step of the manufacturing process.

For the past month or so, I’ve felt like a total novice; despite designing the products and the process, and having thousands and thousands of hours worth of practice I’ve been really struggling to execute my own processes. Almost feels like I woke up one day in a body without all of that experience. My mind still knows all it needs to, but my hands are having as much trouble executing as ever and it’s now taking a serious toll on my confidence.

Thus far, I’ve been able to push through without sacrificing the quality of the product by tweaking my process, adding extra quality control measures/steps, and recently even having some custom tools manufactured to ensure consistency of the more challenging steps. These are working, but significantly slow down production for my whole team since their work is based around putting the finishes on the pieces I create. Perhaps most importantly, these changes and the overall confidence hit of needing to make these changes is starting to make me fall out of love with my craft and dread doing the part of my business that I originally loved enough to make me turn it into a business in the first place.

Has anyone else ever experienced something like this? Any advice on how to push through or ideas about root causes that might need to be addressed? Any/all relevant advice (or condolences😭) welcome and appreciated.

Ps, for context: • I’m in my early 30’s, so age/cognitive decline isn’t the cause (I don’t think 😅) • My craft typically takes 5+ years to develop any real competency and is generally considered a “dead art”, so training other staff or hiring someone to take my place doesn’t feel very realistic at the moment