Once upon a typo…
It’s the 1950s. A single mother named Bette Nesmith Graham is sitting at her typewriter in Dallas, Texas …click clack click clack…
She’s a secretary.
Sharp.
Precise.
But also human.
And humans make mistakes.
Back then, if you mistyped even one letter, there was no “backspace” or “undo.”
You’d have to rip out the paper, roll in a new sheet, and start all over again.
That’s like writing a whole email…
and deleting it because of one typo in the subject line.
But Bette wasn’t just a typist. She was a problem-solver.
And one day, while painting Christmas decorations, she had a nerdy thought:
“Painters don’t erase their mistakes… they just paint over them.”
So she took a bottle of white tempera paint, a tiny brush, and went to work.
She started painting over her typing errors. Smooth. Simple. Smart.
Her co-workers noticed.
They wanted some.
Soon, Bette was mixing bottles in her kitchen, labeling them “Mistake Out.”
A homegrown side hustle before Etsy, before Shopify, before the internet itself.
Her product spread through office networks faster than gossip at a water cooler.
Every secretary wanted it.
Every manager approved it.
Every perfectionist needed it.
Then the moment of truth…
She pitched it to IBM.
They rejected her.
She could’ve stopped.
She could’ve believed the “no.”
But she didn’t.
She doubled down.
Perfected her formula.
Built demand.
And a few years later, Gillette came calling.
They bought her tiny invention for $47.5 million.
(That’s over $200 million today.)
The Nerdy Lesson:
Bette didn’t invent a billion-dollar idea…
She just solved a billion small problems.
She didn’t code an app.
She didn’t raise venture capital.
She took one daily frustration ..:and fixed it with creativity and courage.
That’s how innovation happens.
Not in Silicon Valley.
But in the space between a mistake… and the decision to fix it.
Moral of the story:
When life gives you typos…
Don’t hit delete.
Grab your brush, and paint your way to your breakthrough.
