#39 Why Not Go Gold? with Jeanette K. Caines

 In this episode of The Jeweler's View, Courtney Gray introduces master goldsmith Jeanette Kaines as they demystify working with gold. They discuss overcoming the emotional barriers many jewelers face, like the fear of making mistakes with this precious material. Jeanette shares her insights on why gold, despite its high value, is delightful and not significantly more difficult to work with than silver. They emphasize the importance of persistence, sharing knowledge, and learning from mistakes. They also touch on Jeanette's exciting new project, 'Dr. Goldsmith,' aimed at solving jewelry-making problems and sharing expertise through an online membership program. This episode is packed with practical advice, inspiring stories, and a reminder that with the right mindset, any jeweler can begin working with gold. 

Connect with Jeanette Caines

Follow Jeanette and explore the world of ancient goldsmithing through her work at Jewelry Arts Inc., where she serves as Director and master instructor.

 Jewelry Arts Inc.
https://www.jewelryarts.com

Instagram
@jewelryarts

If you’ve been curious about working with gold—or want to learn traditional techniques from one of the best—this is where to start.

Transcript

# 39- Why not Go gold

[00:00:00] 

Welcome to The Jeweler's View. I'm Courtney Gray, metalsmith educator and creative business strategist. After 25 years in the jewelry industry, running one of the country's top metalsmithing schools, coaching artists, advising companies and organizations, and hosting interviews with some of the best in the craft.

I finally created the kind of support I wish I'd had from the start. This podcast is a part of that. Each week I share the lessons I had to learn the hard way so you can build a rhythm that supports your creative work, your values, and the life and business you actually want. Find tools, coaching and my transform course@courtneygrayarts.com and let's get to work.

**Courtney Gray:** hey friends. Welcome back to the Jewelers View. This one's for anyone who's been dancing around the idea of working in [00:01:00] gold maybe for years. Gold has this kind of mystique. It feels precious, expensive, even intimidating.

A lot of us wait to use it. We tell ourselves we'll try it once we're more confident or once we deserve it, or when we can afford to mess something up. I've been there, but today I'm talking with someone who helps us see it differently. Jeanette Kaines is a master goldsmith, a brilliant teacher, a badass woman all around, and one of the most generous, no BS voices in the field.

In this episode, we're talking about why gold matters, what makes it different, and how you can start working with it. Without waiting until you feel ready. Let's jump in. Welcome, Jeanette Caines

**Jeanette K Caines:** Yay. Thank you for having me and my favorite topic, gold.

**Courtney Gray:** Gold Baby. So excited to have you and just hang out with you.

I know from my students and from my [00:02:00] clients that it can be one of those things that we don't feel like we deserve to get into or that we are ready for.

Let's start at the bench. What is it about gold that makes it behave so differently in your eyes, Jeanette, from silver or other materials?

**Jeanette K Caines:** The interesting thing is that feel like that's what everybody thinks. It's so different. And to me, like precious metals, like when you're talking about gold or silver or whatever, to me, they're all like first cousins. They have a lot of similarities. They just have eh, like little differences. Like, brass is like the cousin that you can't invite to the get together 'cause they'll just get drunk and make a fool of themselves. But it's honestly very similar. And that's the funny thing, the first thing that I always say to people I was like, but I learned in silver first, and all I did was then tweak that like by 0.5% and that's gold. Soldering in silver, soldering in gold. I'm like, [00:03:00] them exactly the same when I solder. And they love it. The end, like it, it's things are actually more simple than you think. But working in really high car, like I work in 22 karat gold, there's no more delightful substance on the planet.

I always tell people, like whenever they take one of my like ancient gold course or whatever, I'm like, look, your life is ruined now. 'cause I can tell you right now that nothing else will ever seem as, as that gold will. And look, to this day I pick up gold. I'm like, oh.

I mean, It's just,

**Courtney Gray:** Delicious.

**Jeanette K Caines:** Is it is magical. It's not of this planet, it causes an emotional reaction in us but it's something you feel like when I'm like doing something and I'll give a talk or something and I'm got my big long gold necklace, and I'll hand it and say, here, put it on. Not a single person I've ever handed it to, didn't do this.

**Courtney Gray:** Sitting upright. With a new posture.

**Jeanette K Caines:** Feel

It feels right. It feels special. So [00:04:00] like I said, people can talk about all its properties and whatever, and I guess that's all true, but the fact of the matter is it's an emotional reaction.

**Courtney Gray:** It is an emotional reaction. I actually started in golden platinum and then worked in silver, which was really backwards, for how many people start, it does have a different flow. Silver, right? You're heating the whole piece.

The heat ratio is a little bit different. Like you said, there's slight differences here, and there's, so there's a tiny learning curve.

**Jeanette K Caines:** Most of the difference though, 'cause I actually do treat them both, even though it is true that gold and silver treat heat a little bit differently in, how much they radiate outward or keep it to themselves. I actually treat them both the same and they both love it.

Feel different. And that's why I always think like it's something that you almost can't explain because it's something that you feel, it's not of this earth

**Courtney Gray:** so a lot of makers I know, they feel like gold is this next level thing, like it's unreachable , and they're not allowed to touch it yet. Is there a permission slip that they need to get from you?

Is there like a [00:05:00] timeline? Can you write 'em a doctor's note? Jeanette? Why do you think there's so much hesitation? There's obvious reasons. There's hesitation. It's expensive, right?

**Jeanette K Caines:** Is but it's really the emotional problem. So many times in the studio, we always laugh and say, look, we don't have jewelry problems. We have emotional problems. Gold is no harder to work with than silver. all, no more difficult. as soon as someone is working in gold because of the value or the perceived value, or whatever you wanna call it, people are instantly like terrified to make a mistake, which is understandable, but you can't work that way.

You know what I'm saying? So the main problem is we usually like just tell people that, work in silver, develop some basic skills, and then when you want to, we can work in gold. We just won't do anything in gold. Much more complicated than you've already made in another metal. Do you know what I'm saying?

So you're just getting to know it a little bit without adding like 50 or 60 new skills, on [00:06:00] top of it. Like when I was an apprentice, we had this long list of things that we had to do first. These projects that we had to achieve. I don't really do it like that because honestly, it doesn't really matter.

You can make very simple things with very simple skills in gold, and they're beautiful and gorgeous. Most of it is just about giving yourself the permission, that whole like, I'm not worthy is shit. You know what I mean? And deal with that as an emotional problem and not as an actual, this is a real thing

**Courtney Gray:** That holds you back from, yeah. Our thoughts are so powerful.

**Jeanette K Caines:** And we're pretty stupid really. Most of the time. I say that with love to myself and to everyone else. Most of the stuff going on in our brain, it's that's, that fear kicks in and all that stuff it's telling you is not true. It's not helpful. It's not even pertinent half the time.

**Courtney Gray:** Yeah, it's not true. Just because their thoughts, doesn't make them true. I love, this approach of, [00:07:00] and I appreciate that because I, a lot of your approach is that you don't make people feel like they have to dive straight into 22 karat, right? Or 24 karat gold.

It's what are some ways that jewelers can ease in here, so maybe they can't afford it. Let's talk about the practicality here and then we'll definitely, I wanna dig into more of the emotional side here because Absolutely agree with you.

I'm like, sprinkle some gold on there, slap some diamonds, just because it adds such a value to the work and it's a great way to tiptoe in without a ton of extra costs. So you're not looking at thousands of dollars, you're looking at hundreds or tens, to tiptoe in.

**Jeanette K Caines:** value in from the client's point of view is enormous. And I think I'm not like a business wizard, but I think most people in the industry would say, if you wanna get the most bang for your buck, you just work in silver and include a little bit of gold because you can get a much better price point,

the reason that all my colleagues and I work in gold. Don't get me wrong, we [00:08:00] love gold. Like we love it, okay? Fair. But we do very labor intensive work. we worked in silver, there's no way we would ever get a fair price for something we made. So if you're gonna do that kind of work, you have to work really in the higher price materials eventually because like I said, if a piece is in silver, if I put, 300 master hours, into a piece of work and it's silver, guess what?

One's ever, no one's ever gonna buy that. Now that's not my only concern when I'm making jewelry, I live in late stage capitalism like everybody else and I gotta eat and, all that kind of thing. So really the most efficient thing to do is just incorporate a little tiny bit of gold.

And guess what? Soldering gold and silver together is no trouble at all. You use silver solder and flux your normal methods is easy to do. It's no big deal. Do you know what I'm saying? People get all stressed out, which it's not that I don't understand that. But it's really not any harder.

I've got lots of videos on it. It's not a big deal. [00:09:00] You could literally solder one gold granule on an earring, and It's a whole different ball game.

Obviously gold right now is, at a lifetime high, which sucks and nobody likes that. But I will say being an old timer, gold's always been expensive. None of us ever went to buy gold. It's only $400.

**Courtney Gray:** Right.

**Jeanette K Caines:** get a lot. No, you were always like, oh. So the weird thing is it doesn't even really seem that different to me, to be honest with you but you can use very small amounts of gold and get a gorgeous impact. Like we're teaching 24 gold powder in the studio

You can literally buy like a little bit of 24 karat pure gold powder, apply it to silver like you would with Keumboo, and it looks fucking amazing.

Comparatively speaking, the price point is, like for an entire gram, which is enough for like dozens and dozens of people, it's I don't know, $260, and I'm not saying $260 is nothing. [00:10:00] $260 averaged over a whole lot of pieces actually extremely affordable. Nothing's inexpensive basically at this point.

There's a lot you can do with a small amount of gold your client feels differently about it and is that fair? No, it's not. You know what I mean? The love, the effort that you put into it is just the same, but perceived value does matter. So I always feel like there's a lot of things in life like gravity and calories that suck, that I don't control. So we may as well at least try to get them to work for us. And I feel like perceived value with gold is one of those things, you

change that, 

**Courtney Gray:** . Absolutely. It's such a timeless material too.

**Jeanette K Caines:** Yeah.

**Courtney Gray:** There's a lot of proof in this pudding. If this has been going on for a long time, that perceived value . Hopefully it's not shifting. I don't think it's going anywhere.

**Jeanette K Caines:** Truly. Also, I think sometimes people, sometimes artists will say to me, and this is a legitimate life choice as far as their own art goes, but they'll say I don't wanna work in gold. I don't wanna work in like traditionally [00:11:00] valuable materials because. It's like a statement, which, like I said, totally legitimate, but I always tell them, but you have to remember, people didn't work in gold because it was valuable. People worked in gold 'cause it was delightful and therefore we value it. Like a chicken in an egg kind of thing. No, gold was fucking beautiful and people dug it outta the ground. Were like, I'm gonna do some stuff with this. Woo.

Oh, gold is valuable. Maybe we should make jewelry out of it. So always remember that maybe they have that a little reversed with the chicken and the egg there, 

**Courtney Gray:** that's an interesting point. So you're saying that it came because it's lovely to work with, like this is why it was used more.

**Jeanette K Caines:** Yes, gold has amazing qualities, and it's eternal. Literally, the gold that we're wearing today that we're using today could have been used thousands and thousands of times already.

**Courtney Gray:** Yeah,

**Jeanette K Caines:** like once gold is melted down, there's no way to know where it came from, and literally, unless someone has just mined [00:12:00] it and you are witnessing it from that moment, through blockchain or something.

**Courtney Gray:** sure.

**Jeanette K Caines:** gold in the world has been recycled many times, just feel like really with me, gold and I are just hanging out. I don't get to keep it, I get to spend a little time with it, which I love and I hope it likes hanging out with me too. But the truth is, gold gets melted down and it happens again and again.

The gold you're wearing, the gold, anybody out there's wearing could have been worn by Cleopatra. There's literally no way to know that. And for me, I think that's actually pretty magical. And it's just, it's that whole, this is my little time on stage with the sound and the fury, and I enjoy it. And then it's somebody else's turn. And that's why I think people should not worry about, do I deserve gold? Like first of all, of course you fucking do that out right now. And second of all, you are really just visiting with it. And if you make a mistake and you don't like it and you sell it to the refiner, that's just [00:13:00] one cycle in literally potentially millions of cycles.

So what you're participating, 

**Courtney Gray:** yeah.

**Jeanette K Caines:** get in there. You know what I mean?

**Courtney Gray:** Yeah. I love this. Like you're just leaving your touch on it. It's your time with it.

**Jeanette K Caines:** Then it's somebody else's turn and somebody else's turn and somebody else's turn. To me that's amazing.

Most, jewelry materials are expensive, which, that sucks, but they're also not really consumed. They don't really disappear.

They just change form. metals just get melted down and used again and melted down and used again. So how can you waste it? It's impossible.

**Courtney Gray:** The permanent idea of what we're doing and what we're touching. It's not permanent, it's a hard material and it's got longevity and it can last a lifetime and it can last a few generations. You could pass it down and down, but eventually, you're right.

This is going to return to its natural state at some point.

**Jeanette K Caines:** exactly.

**Courtney Gray:** Even if it's, 30, 25 and they're digging us up as humans and finding and refining our gold, [00:14:00] like what a trip.

**Jeanette K Caines:** Like the sun is supposed to expand in I don't know how many million years and engulf the earth and blah, blah, blah.

**Courtney Gray:** Yeah. It's all gonna be melted down anyway. It's a giant refinery.

**Jeanette K Caines:** yeah, it'll all be melted down. So, i just think people look at it the wrong way, or

that I look at it, which is obviously the right way to look at everything.

**Courtney Gray:** Okay, we gotta talk about the time. Jeanette told me this story and I have to share it with you guys , what were you moving studios and you pulled up the floorboards and there was gold dust. Like speaking of how it comes back around. Tell us a story.

**Jeanette K Caines:** yeah. And the moral of this story for everybody is save everything. Save your sweepings, save your filings, save your pieces of sandpaper. Save your paper towels that you wiped your hands on. Okay. That was the moral of the story. So we were on the Upper West Side for many years and they were gonna tear our building down, which was very justified 'cause it was an absolute rat trap. And everyone was very upset, except for me. And I'm like, listen, this building is crappy. We're gonna move to a new building and all of the [00:15:00] love and all the people and all the fun is gonna go with us. It's not in the building. But because I knew they were tearing the building down. The, because normally landlords don't really enjoy too much.

If you're like, listen, I'm gonna rip the floor out when I go that's cool, right? But we had an old wood floor, like a real wood floor, like old crappy splintery. So

was very obvious if you really got down there and looked, people drop a gold granule and then it gets stepped on and it gets squished into the wood.

There's filings. We would sweep and everything and, so I'm like this is a ha golden opportunity. They're tearing the building down. Anyway I absolutely tore that entire floor out and we had it burned and at the time, we were getting ready to move and the whole staff, we were all helping and, this is probably, I don't know, 2007, 2008. In gold prices back then, we got about $10,000 worth of gold, which was enough to give every single one of my coworkers an ounce of [00:16:00] gold as a. you for helping. 

**Courtney Gray:** Amazing.

**Jeanette K Caines:** gold got used by them, and then they created fi like, do you see what I'm saying?

It's like gold just can't be lost. It just, it can be lost by you, but it can't be lost. It still exists. It can always be found and melted down and reused. So yeah, you darn right, we tore that whole floor up and had it burned and there was a ton of gold in it.

**Courtney Gray:** That's crazy.

What else are you guys doing in the studio to first, let's make sure everybody knows she's the the head honcho, or the queen at Ja, New York, which is jewelry arts.

**Jeanette K Caines:** It's the school that I started at. It was the most fun I ever had, so I never left. And we specialize in handmade one of a kind in silver and gold, and we definitely have a specialty in high carrot gold 'cause we teach ancient techniques so that, that all goes together. We're now on 49th, which is a very convenient location. And now we have a laminate floor, but you better darn believe when the day [00:17:00] comes that we're leaving there, I will rip that floor out too and have it burned.

Every night we sweep and we have a sweeps barrel and any used sandpaper, but that's why you don't throw that stuff in the garbage because you can recycle it and you will get a shocking amount of money for it.

**Courtney Gray:** I remember when I was a casting technician, that was my very first job in metals. I remember our boss was adamant about we had a basin that would collect like even the plaster from casting, the investment breakdown, right?

**Jeanette K Caines:** percent.

**Courtney Gray:** Refine everything because it's amazing. How much material. I cannot believe you got so much from the floor. That's insane.

**Jeanette K Caines:** Oh yeah. And we were all like, I won't fully do the dance. 'Cause nobody needs to see that. But yeah, we were pretty excited.

**Courtney Gray:** We might need to see that.

**Jeanette K Caines:** And I had just said with the landlord oh, I feel like we dropped some stuff down there. And you're just tearing the building down anyway. 

Wanna be like, oh yeah, it's super valuable, so can I have it?

You try to like, 

**Courtney Gray:** yeah.

**Jeanette K Caines:** oh [00:18:00] yeah, I don't know.

**Courtney Gray:** Yeah.

**Jeanette K Caines:** we dropped some stuff down there, so

**Courtney Gray:** Or we're helping you with demo. Yeah. This is part of the demo. Oh my God. I'm so glad you did that. I cannot believe you got 10 freaking ounces from the floorboards that's in Awesome. When I met Jeanette, she was doing a lot of research.

You were traveling a lot and doing a lot of historical research on ancient techniques and going to China and Japan talk to me a little bit about that

**Jeanette K Caines:** basically my school is dedicated to the preservation of ancient jewelry making techniques. But part of that is figuring out those techniques, that's what the, founder of jewelry arts did. Bob Culik. He figured out how granulation was done and taught it to everyone, and, something that I'm very passionate about is knowledge and sharing it so we still do that. We go on, like my whole die forming project with the Queen Puabi dies is I was like, I wanna be able to die form like the ancients did because they made the most beautiful jewelry the world's ever seen.

So ha, I wanna do that. And that whole research project was based on figuring out how it [00:19:00] was done. and it's not just to figure out how they did it, it's to figure out how we can do it because I want it, that's always know my greed and avarice is behind every research project 'cause I don't wanna just know how they did it.

I want to do it.

That took a good, you know, four or five years and now like. a lot and we have Queen Puabi, so we can make jewelry like the ancients did in those beautiful light hollow forms. And you don't have to use a hydraulic press or anything. Like the China trip for example, we were studying ancient filigree methods.

So I went to Beijing twice and we were doing a research project with the University of Beijing studying their ancient pieces because basically they're having the same at the time, I'm sure that's the same now. They were having the same problems that America was having in the sense that less and less of the kids of masters wanted to follow in their footsteps. The masters didn't wanna teach strangers, so then you have knowledge just dying out, like really quickly.

I went there to advise them on what to do [00:20:00] about that, you know, which, the answers are relatively simple, obviously. It's document everything you possibly can.

And basically you need to start matchmaking. You need to start bringing together kids that wanna learn this and any masters or anybody with any jewelry making skill that's willing to teach someone that isn't a relative. The

**Courtney Gray:** Yeah.

**Jeanette K Caines:** you match make, the better off you are and then

basically you have to switch over to some kind of a university type system so that you can be bringing in kids that wanna learn

them up with the knowledge and documenting as much as possible. And will things be lost? Maybe some, but. I always feel like maybe I can't figure out exactly how someone did it, but I can figure out how it can be done.

If you can figure out how something can be done, people can learn it and then new masters can evolve. So I feel like we just, we do the best we can, figure things out and transmit it. 'cause the biggest thing that leads to [00:21:00] knowledge loss is people not practicing. If an art isn't being practiced, new masters aren't gonna form. knowledge is gonna be lost, et cetera, et cetera. That's what Bob Kulick at Jewelry Arts did with Granulation. He taught everyone who came through there, everything he knew about it. So then it was practiced more and more.

And now, I'm not saying like every jeweler does the granulation, but it's a known thing. Tons of people have done it. Tons of people teach it. We still teach it, that's how knowledge stays alive, is it's used, not just put in a book, so

**Courtney Gray:** Right.

**Jeanette K Caines:** of My whole mission as well, is to teach and learn and transmit as much as humanly possible.

**Courtney Gray:** What a noble effort too. And Jeanette and I both share a deep passion. There's no gatekeeping here, right? There's no gatekeeping.

What is this an ego thing, it's like, well, that's mine and it belongs to me. And it's like, whoa, you're not the first person to do this.

, You know? 

**Jeanette K Caines:** Be the last,

also I just feel a if that's your [00:22:00] attitude, you shouldn't teach. Because if you wanna keep it to yourself, that's your prerogative. I don't think it's cool, live

**Courtney Gray:** Yeah.

**Jeanette K Caines:** do your thing. It's just if you are really that afraid of your students surpassing you, then maybe you should get your shit together and keep raising your own bar

**Courtney Gray:** microphone drop.

**Jeanette K Caines:** Yeah. 

But that is how I feel. If you are afraid that if you share people will surpass you, then obviously you don't think you're that good.

Will, my attitude in general is go ahead and copy me. Enjoy your new life. That's how I feel about it.

On to new things and getting better and whatever. And besides like, how proud would that make me if a lot of people I taught eventually kicked my ass? How

**Courtney Gray:** Yeah.

**Jeanette K Caines:** would I be? It's,

**Courtney Gray:** their success is your success as a teacher, right? Yeah. Essentially.

**Jeanette K Caines:** It just makes us all dumber.

I always feel like, look, honestly, like people can do whatever they do. They do what they think is right. But this is what I think is I want people to grow and when I exit the stage, I wanna be able to feel like [00:23:00] I shared, I did, I swore that I covered, I drank, I fucked up.

I feel okay. I can go like, all right,

**Courtney Gray:** That was a full life with gold. With, yeah, with gold every day.

**Jeanette K Caines:** Is really a big part of that, 

**Courtney Gray:** yeah, it is. It is passing it on. It's also, I don't know, there's this idea for me of service, like finding how I'm meant to serve, and I know that sounds a little bit heavy and weird, but it's true. I've never been as happy as when I'm serving well or doing something that's, I can see others growing or taking something away.

Even if it's a tiny thing. That, to me is very important.

**Jeanette K Caines:** Incredibly fun. Also, I think people just don't realize excuse me,

**Courtney Gray:** yeah.

**Jeanette K Caines:** my life this way 'cause this is the most fun way I can possibly think of to do things

it's not like it's a chore or a responsibility. I guess it is a responsibility, but this is amazing.

I get to do what I love and share it with people like a big nerd all the time. Like how could it get better than that? 

**Courtney Gray:** Yeah. [00:24:00] Inspiring the masses and getting to play with the most delicious material in the world. Yes. So you've mentored a lot of people over the years, and when you're working with an apprentice, I know you have an apprentice who's actually taking my course right now, she's amazing. What do you look,

**Jeanette K Caines:** amazing.

**Courtney Gray:** she's awesome.

And I have to say, I'm teaching Transform and Jeanette's students have been joining because, one, I think that you're amazing at sharing the word, and I appreciate you so much for doing that.

But I see your students and I see the caliber of the work that they're bringing in, and oh my God. I can see it. I'm like, oh, you're a Jeanette Kane's. You're a JA student.

There's a high caliber of work there that's happening and you can see the craftsmanship and you can see that ancient touch,, so what do you look for when , when someone comes to you and they're like I would love to apprentice, how do you know when they're ready to step deeper?

**Jeanette K Caines:** The funny thing is that, 'cause I have at this point, ha God, I'm old. I've taught thousands and thousands of students, like thousands and thousands and thousands. Oh God. Okay. So what makes a [00:25:00] person a great metalsmith or and a great coworker? But the truth is it's just loving it and tenacity. Let me tell you, I teach people every day who out of the gate, had better hands than I did every day.

Do you know what I'm saying? More natural ability, more just like they're better at it than I was, when I was at that same stage. It's the people who love it and stick with it, that's the people, because it just doesn't matter. It's nice to have good hand skills. The fact of the matter is most people don't have good hand skills to start because they haven't done the kind of things where you build those kind of hand skills.

Maybe they grew up doing woodworking or this or that, and then they have that little extra, practice, and that's amazing. But the fact of the matter is most people in modern life don't have that.

It's not what it takes. You love it and you wanna get better.

That's what it takes. That's it. And that's what I look for in an apprentice. And [00:26:00] it doesn't mean that you're not gonna get mad and you're not gonna get frustrated

One of my teachers, Louise used to always say to me, and I'd roll my eyes so hard, she'd say, you don't need patience. You don't need patience to make jewelry. You learn patience for making jewelry.

**Courtney Gray:** right.

**Jeanette K Caines:** would walk away, we would all be like, I hate that so much. And of course she was 1000000000% right.

And now I say it to my students and no doubt they mime vomiting when I walk away. The circle of life.

But it's just the people that just keep at it. You know what I mean? And it's not about never being satisfied. 'cause I'm like, be satisfied. When I used to finish a piece, that thing will be held together with duct tape and spit and hope.

And then you just try to do it better next time.

'Cause people are like, oh, never be satisfied. I'm like, oh, great.

**Courtney Gray:** yeah.

**Jeanette K Caines:** Please give me advice on how to be miserable every minute of every day for the rest of my life.

**Courtney Gray:** Celebrate those wins, man. Come on.

**Jeanette K Caines:** the win. And then be like, but next time it's gonna be even better because I'm smarter now. Suffering [00:27:00] makes you smarter. That's why we go through it.

**Courtney Gray:** I know. I wish there was a way around that one when you let me know when, if you figure that out.

**Jeanette K Caines:** me. haven't found it yet. If I find it, I'll be the first to inform everybody,

it's attention to detail. It's not things that you already necessarily have built in oh, I'm already good at this and I already have good hands and whatever. I started when I was 21. The only experience I had in life, basically was growing up in a small, shitty town and working as a cocktail waitress in New Jersey. I did not come in with, shall we say, a large tool bag of emotional intelligence or anything else really. You can build that from doing this. You don't need it.

You just need sort of the like, but I'm gonna keep doing it. I'm gonna mess this the fuck up, and if I get mad and I step on it, fine. Come back tomorrow when you feel better. You know what I'm saying?

**Courtney Gray:** Right.

**Jeanette K Caines:** at it again. And that's a quality that I really look for. And Amy [00:28:00] has in spades, she's very determined. She loves it. And her pieces get better and better, and they're gonna keep getting better. And what I like to think, if it took me, oh God, 34 years to get as good as I am now, which I hope to get much better as time goes on. Maybe I can get Amy there in 10 years

**Courtney Gray:** Right.

**Jeanette K Caines:** years, by sharing all of those hard one lessons with her openly, which is not really was the vibe when I was learning., Don't get me wrong, I had great teachers, maybe I can get Amy there sooner. And the

**Courtney Gray:** Yeah.

**Jeanette K Caines:** after that, and the apprentice after that, and maybe we can all be better, 

**Courtney Gray:** yep. That's exactly why I'm teaching what I teach now. , I went through 25 years of just what felt like some of it was just torturous learning curves, and just. Yeah, I freaking was, and I didn't have a business degree. I didn't, there was no school for this.

It's just like being a parent. There's no school for this. They don't teach you how to deal with all of the things.

So I went, you just go through it and you just keep, you keep trudging [00:29:00] through it, and then you come out the other side with a giant lesson and hoping that you remember the lesson so you don't make the same freaking mistake again.

But yeah, taking all of that and being able to like, channel it into something that you can share and then pass on and what a gift. What a freaking gift, Jeanette. If you can cut out some of that guesswork, even just a little bit of it. A little bit of the suffering. Suffering.

**Jeanette K Caines:** Yeah,

have a joke in the studio where I'll be like, oh, okay, but listen, you gotta watch out for this because blah, blah, blah. And then we always go, ha, ask me how I know.

I mean?

**Courtney Gray:** Yep. Been there, been through it. Yes.. 

**Jeanette K Caines:** And it's not get them there faster because the goal is like fast, fast. It's just but why not? Why not cut out some of the suffering and and who knows what Amy is gonna accomplish?

**Courtney Gray:** Yeah.

**Jeanette K Caines:** she

**Courtney Gray:** Yeah. 

**Jeanette K Caines:** Like we all do in our way.

If we decide we do

can, that we're just gonna try and keep throwing that spaghetti at the wall. So that is exactly. What I look for is someone that just, that keeps at it, that has that sort of oh yeah, that sucked. [00:30:00] You can get mad, whatever, but it doesn't mean you're gonna quit,

**Courtney Gray:** tenacity. Yeah, that's a good word for it.

**Jeanette K Caines:** yeah.

**Courtney Gray:** Willing to, to stumble and fall and then get up and just laugh and move forward, jeanette, you've built such an amazing learning environment at Ja. I love your open technique approach and just come in and we'll show you, wherever you're at, we'll show you what you need to know to get to that next level.

Jeanette has come up with something new that's gonna help a lot more people in such a more broad term. Thank God for, the arch nemesis of online teaching and all the things. It's a double-edged sword a little bit. 'cause it's different, but there is a lot, it's a lot more expansive as well.

And a lot more people that are gonna get to learn from you that can't come to New York. So tell us about this. What are you cooking?

**Jeanette K Caines:** I think I came up with this idea during doing your transform course, because part of the reason that I took the course, even though I'm not like a beginner who's just oh, I'm gonna start my business now. , For all of you out there, whatever you've been doing your business you're in it, you're working on it.

And [00:31:00] then, but you need to try to look at it with fresh eyes now and then, what am I doing? What, what works, what doesn't work? Maybe I should shift, blah, blah, blah. So I was doing that with Courtney 'cause she's a fucking wizard, and I had this idea, which I'm gonna call Dr.

Goldsmith.

**Courtney Gray:** Dr. Gold Baby.

**Jeanette K Caines:** Goldsmith, the whole point is that I get so many questions. People are always emailing questions and I love to solve problems. That's my favorite thing to do. But time just becomes too difficult, like I can't just answer a million different emails. . So then I'm like, okay, what if I had a membership program, where like people could join and you could submit questions and then we'd have a zoom once a month and we could just go through this is the problem.

This is what went wrong. This is how you can fix it. This is how you can never let that shit happen to you again. Because that way people can learn the way I learned. I didn't just learn from my own mistakes. I learned in the studio with everybody's mistakes. So I got so much more data a lot of other people.

[00:32:00] And that's what helped me really grow. And that's why I am good at solving problems. 'cause I've seen it before . If that works really well for me. Then why don't we apply that same thing so everybody can come together and have access to that.

Because even if you're not having that problem right this second, you're going to,

you'll come up across it and go, oh shit. You just have access to all that knowledge and, it's gonna be fun for me. 'cause like I said, I love to solve problems.

That's like my favorite thing to

**Courtney Gray:** Yeah.

**Jeanette K Caines:** be like, dang.

**Courtney Gray:** Uhhuh, we can figure this out. We're gonna figure it out.

**Jeanette K Caines:** I really love doing that and I love sharing knowledge. So again, happy for me. 'cause believe me, I like to help people, but I'm looking for a happy life. I do what I enjoy because I wanna enjoy my life.

So I want it to be good for them and good for me. And I'm like, oh, how much more fun could it be than that? I think it's gonna be really fun and I really can't wait. There's a lot of other great programs out there, but no one is doing this. And I think I am uniquely suited to this. This

**Courtney Gray:** Oh yeah.

**Jeanette K Caines:** [00:33:00] jam.

**Courtney Gray:** Yeah.

**Jeanette K Caines:** so I feel good about it.

**Courtney Gray:** Excellent. . Having you inside transform was so much fun. When I built this course, I wasn't quite sure who was gonna show up. I think I had an idea.

I was like I used to run a big school. I had a feeling there'll be some teachers in there, but I had no idea that, people been in the industry longer than me would be looking at this. And I think it really validated the importance of the work.

Like for me to put all of that effort into building out this six week course and presenting it in a way that is accessible to any level, and then Jeanette's like, well, I wanna take it. And I was like, oh hell yeah. You've only been in the industry 30 years, but like you said, we always need a refresh.

It's never a bad time to zoom out and to look at the business and

**Jeanette K Caines:** in a way, if you've been in business a long time, you need that even more.

What I'm doing working? Is there a better way to do it? Because you do just get, day to day we're all really busy and you just get stuck in paddling away. And so for me it was super valuable.

And I came up with this Dr. Goldsmith idea because [00:34:00] I was in your course and it was making me look at everything and one of the things that I, that in my head I was like what isn't working is I feel overwhelmed by all these questions I wanna help people. But I can only do so much. And no matter how much I do, I feel like I haven't done it. In a weird way that was not working, I, so I

**Courtney Gray:** Right.

**Jeanette K Caines:** what can I do different about that without just being like, oh, go to hell everybody. 'cause obviously that

**Courtney Gray:** That's not your style,

**Jeanette K Caines:** That's not what I wanna

**Courtney Gray:** right?

**Jeanette K Caines:** And then, so examining what's working and what isn't working led me to this idea

**Courtney Gray:** . 

You get to teach how you like to teach and and assist people and actually be able to budget the time for it , without feeling pulled in so many directions. 'cause this is what happens. We get squirreled, we get pulled in too many directions and then something has to drop, but what you've done is beautiful. You're converting that instead of dropping it, you're actually gonna make it work. Find a way to, to fit it in. That makes sense now because things change. They change.

**Jeanette K Caines:** Yes.

**Courtney Gray:** Yeah. I'm so glad. Okay, so you've got, before we [00:35:00] wrap up, I have to ask you to share at least one, 'cause you're right by the Diamond District right.

In New York. And I think we're all a little curious, those of us who don't walk the streets of New York and that's not a normal thing. I think of New York as is almost its own planet a little bit because I've been there, I've walked it, but it functions a little bit differently.,

**Jeanette K Caines:** Used to it, but yes. Yes.

One of the reasons we picked the location right where we are is we're literally like two blocks from the Diamond District. And the Diamond District is a fascinating place, and I think people don't realize in a way that it really is like a ton of factories, so to speak.

There's a ton of specialists there and jewelry makers tend to specialize, 

so, if I need a bunch of pave done. how to do pave. but do I do it every day? No, it's not my jam. So I go and take it to somebody that's what they do all day and I do what I do best all day. A lot of times we'll send students to buy gold and I'll always give them the talk, which is okay, this is a complete drug deal. You go with a wad of cash, you know you are gonna go in [00:36:00] there and they're gonna give you your little baggy of goodies. And you're gonna tuck it away.

And you have to be prepared for that because

**Courtney Gray:** it in your bra. Yeah,

**Jeanette K Caines:** Yeah.

**Courtney Gray:** Uhhuh. Put it somewhere safe.

**Jeanette K Caines:** Then the next thing is people are always really freaked out. 'cause most people, unless they're like a baller are not used to just walking around with thousands of dollars worth of cash on them, they're like, oh my God.

Oh my God. Oh my God. And then I'm always like, okay, let me explain to you about the jewelry district. gives a fuck the $3,000 you have in your bra because the guy next to you has $10 million worth of diamonds.

Like in an inner pocket.

It is literally I believe one of the safest places in the world. are so many cameras. And in all my years of going to the jewelry District, which like 34 years, I've only heard one time of a robbery. And let me tell you, they had that block. Closed off in seconds and they had snipers up on [00:37:00] the roofs,

**Courtney Gray:** Wow.

**Jeanette K Caines:** Snipers,

**Courtney Gray:** Yeah.

**Jeanette K Caines:** by the way, where were those snipers? I've never seen a sniper.

Do you

**Courtney Gray:** Wow. And then all of a sudden, really,

**Jeanette K Caines:** It was like,

the gates came down.

So I always tell people, believe me, nobody is gonna mess with you in the jewelry district. I have literally, never even heard of somebody being messed with in the jewelry district.

**Courtney Gray:** Unbelievable. See, I didn't know this till you informed me and I find it fascinating.

**Jeanette K Caines:** Yeah.

**Courtney Gray:** think like new, it's the streets in New York. I'm not gonna walk around with a bunch of diamonds in my pocket. So wait, when you leave the district though, what happens? Like you definitely need,

**Jeanette K Caines:** You just blend in.

**Courtney Gray:** yeah 

**Jeanette K Caines:** the real thing that. That we do most jewelers is, we just don't carry real expensive handbags or wear very expensive shoes. You know what I mean? I got my $50 bag, and guess what, nobody ever looks at me twice.

**Courtney Gray:** I love my bag. Yes.

**Jeanette K Caines:** It's super tough,

**Courtney Gray:** cross body.

**Jeanette K Caines:** Not [00:38:00] that I would waste money on a fancy handbag anyway.

'cause believe me, all my money goes to

**Courtney Gray:** Where's your Louis Vuitton? What do you mean? No, Louis Vuitton. Okay.

**Jeanette K Caines:** Bag baby.

**Courtney Gray:** Not our style.

**Jeanette K Caines:** I do love them. I'm really not trying to make fun of them. I carry one, they're great, I love them. But

**Courtney Gray:** Yeah,

**Jeanette K Caines:** not like a status symbol bag.

I have literally in all my years, and I know a lot of people in the jewelry industry, I have never heard of anyone having a problem ever once.

I just think people just don't fuck with it because it's not worth it.

If someone was known to be trying to mug people that were just in the jewelry districts, I think something would be done.

**Courtney Gray:** Yeah.

**Jeanette K Caines:** Just not a thing,

**Courtney Gray:** Pretty wild.

**Jeanette K Caines:** Not a thing, period.

**Courtney Gray:** I love hearing these stories. We're gonna have Jeanette back next week 'cause Jeanette and I could talk forever and there's so much to know. There's just so much for for us to absorb from your beautiful brain, Jeanette and your bagi and the floorboards of the, come on.

So many great tips here. Tell us where to find [00:39:00] you and how to stay in touch so we know when Dr. Gold is live and ready.

**Jeanette K Caines:** you mean Dr. Goldsmith?

**Courtney Gray:** Dr. Goldsmith,

**Jeanette K Caines:** Goldsmith?

**Courtney Gray:** At first we were gonna call it one 800 gold.

**Jeanette K Caines:** We were workshopping

**Courtney Gray:** we were workshopping ideas.

**Jeanette K Caines:** hotline, which

**Courtney Gray:** Yes.

**Jeanette K Caines:** a lot too. But Dr. Goldsmith,

believe me, if you follow me on Instagram I will be shouting about it to a ridiculous amount. There's no way to escape, you can always just go to the jewelry arts website and make sure you're on our mailing list and I

**Courtney Gray:** Perfect.

**Jeanette K Caines:** make sure everyone knows about it.

**Courtney Gray:** We'll pop a link in the show notes so you guys don't miss that opportunity. And definitely check out Jeanette and Ja on Instagram. Talk about eye candy. I love your whole feed is just delicious to look at every day. All right. You guys Working with gold might feel like a big leap, but it's not outta reach.

You don't have to have all the answers or a perfect plan like we always say. You just have to start. Just begin somewhere. If you've been waiting for the permission slip, [00:40:00] consider this it. Jeanette has written you the note, and and I have co-signed big thanks to Jeanette for making this material feel human, doable, accessible, and rich in every sense of the word.

Next week, we're gonna go one step further into what happens when things go wrong, because let's be honest, you're gonna mess it up at some point, but that's where the real growth happens. We'll talk about mistakes, meltdowns, and how to actually build mastery through failure.

In the meantime, keep in touch with me an Jeanette, and we'll see you then. Keep throwing darts, you guys. All right, onward and upward. Thanks, Jeanette.

**Jeanette K Caines:** Thank you.

Thanks for listening to The 

Jeweler's View. If today's episode gave you something to think about, consider sending it to a friend or share it on social and tag me at Courtney Gray Arts. You'll find tools, coaching resources, and the transform course@courtneygrayarts.com. [00:41:00] And if no one's told you this lately, remember you're not behind.

You're becoming exactly the kind of maker your business needs and that kind of depth. It takes time. I'll be back next week, same time, same tough love, onward and upward. I.