A Student of Her Craft
Team Letter | Happy 1st Alpaca Anniversary, Claire Edwards!
July 23, 2026
Dear Alpaca,
Have you ever made an entire piece of clothing using only yarn, a stick, and your own two hands? Me neither. But if you have, you know that needle crafts like knitting and crocheting require completing and repeating literally thousands of stitches by hand with rudimentary tools.
In crocheting, mistakes will be made! And when they happen, it requires going back, undoing what you did, figuring out how to fix it, and then doing the work again.
If you are patient, curious, and willing to do the work, the result is that you’ve crafted something uniquely yours that didn’t exist before. Plus, you have greater skill and mastery than you had before. That’s becoming a “student of the craft,” someone willing to endeavor, fail, retry, and win.
At Alpaca, I believe the greatest thing each of us can be is a student of our craft. To understand deeply how your job works, get very real with yourself about where you can improve, and then do the work that gets you there is to find not only success for our customers and company, but also personal growth.
And if you were to ask me to summarize Claire Edwards’ first year at Alpaca, I’d tell you: Claire is a student of her craft.
Claire came to Alpaca a year ago today, as Alpaca’s first true outbound sales hire. To be honest, we really didn’t know what the role would look like at our company. We didn’t know exactly who we were calling, what we would say, or how they’d respond.
But we knew that in order to grow our customer base, we’d have to pick up the phone and ask for more opportunities for a conversation. Hello, Claire!
Claire came in as an experienced sales professional, but from a totally different background and customer base. We had no onboarding, training, or process to speak of. Oh and also, for her first two weeks, we asked Claire to support Alpaca’s back-to-school packout operation in our fulfillment center, nowhere near the role she was hired for.
To call it a challenging start would be an understatement. And yet! Claire knew what to do, because Claire is a student of whatever craft she chooses. She dove in, accepted the challenge, and whenever it didn’t work (for any reason), she asked for feedback and coaching, so that she could get better.
I honestly don’t know of another person I’ve worked with who requests as much feedback, coaching, and clear advice as Claire does.
That’s not a comfortable thing to do, and the answer is often not easy to hear, and Claire keeps coming back, because Claire wants to win more than she wants to be comfortable.
To date, Claire has opened up the door for more than 476 opportunities to connect with new customers. She’s fearless, driven, and goal-oriented at an education conference. She can (and does!) make more phone calls in a day than I could in a week. And in the moments where she’s behind on a goal she’ll ask “How can I change what I’m doing to win more?”
This year was a lot of firsts for Claire. Her first business trip ever. Her first presentation at a conference. Her first team retreat. Her first lightning talk. Lots of firsts — and for every single one, she simply asked “Okay, how do I do it?” and then after some practice, “How do I get better at this?” She takes the advice, does the work, and levels up. And then she does it again.
This spring, Claire was ready for the opportunity to expand her work to include our full cycle sales process, spent hours learning our product and our value to customers, and now rings the bell for Alpaca every week. After every demo, I hear her ask “where could I have done a little better?”or “How could I make that part more clear?” Then she takes the advice, does the work, and levels up again.
It would be one thing if Claire was simply out there to level herself up, but what I think is most remarkable, and the thing I am most excited about for her second year, is how Claire is ready to help those around her get better, too.
We have a lot of new team members in the sales organization now, and it takes some hard work to get up to speed. Claire is always quick to offer her support, find the right answer, and point new folks to the right mentors. Most importantly, Claire leads by example by continuing to improve her craft — finding the right messages, building connections to customers, and creating opportunities for everyone to improve. Claire wants us all to win together, and she wants to help each person find their place here in pursuit of their craft. And she’s willing to do it with thousands of little stitches of connection, improvement, and hard work.
Claire, welcome to Year Two! Thank you for always asking “how can we get better?” You are patient, curious, and willing to do the work — now let’s build something to marvel at!
Happy Anniversary!
KB
PS: And yes, in case you were wondering, Claire is also an incredibly accomplished crocheter and makes things a person can actually wear with her own two hands. This dress (that she MADE!) has more than 10,000 stitches!
