10 Ways to Learn From Failure
Three years ago my husband was presented with a job opportunity in Australia. Despite our Minnesota roots, the fact that we owned a home and that I had a great job - we decided it was something we couldn’t pass up.
For the past ten years, I’ve been working in the advertising industry. I’ve always held a full-time, salaried job. When we were making the decision to move, I decided to take advantage of my network here in Minnesota and see who had connections in Australia. Little by little, I started getting connected in a continent over 9,000 miles away from what I knew as “home”.
We arrived in Australia on January 30, 2017, and my husband started his new job on February 1st. Before we moved, I had landed a three-month contract position at an experiential agency in Sydney, that I began seven days after we arrived. This was my first taste of the freelance life. I had never been in a position where I wasn’t tied down to one company. I had never experienced just going to work, meeting new people, doing my job as best as I could, and at the end of the day, leaving work at the office. I didn’t know it then, but this was the beginning of a whole new world for me.
Freelance Life
Living in Australia and working as a freelancer was a totally different life than I had ever experienced. It also came with its downsides. Many times when you sign on for a project, it truly is project-based with no opportunity to extend. Which meant that I didn’t always have consistent work. As my network grew there, it was easier to make connections and find work - but there certainly were times I would get nervous when I wasn’t finding my next project.
When I was presented with this newfound downtime, I honestly didn’t know what to do with myself. My husband was often traveling for work, leaving me with extended periods of free time to fill. You might be thinking “wow, that would be nice”. Yes, sometimes it was nice; being able to make my own schedule and take a long walk by the ocean. However the majority of the time, I was left feeling guilty that I wasn’t working. For our entire lives, it’s drilled into our heads that in order to be successful, we need to graduate from college, maybe get our Master’s degree, get a job straight out of college, and start climbing the ladder. The higher you climb and the more money you make, often equates to the amount of success you’re perceived to have. Naturally, I would spend some of my free-time on LinkedIn scrolling through my feed, seeing everyone’s promotions and successes, leaving me feeling like a pile of crap.
During this free time, I started to get the itch that I wanted to start my own business. I started listening to podcasts, reading books, and writing ideas down. I came up with the idea of Don’t Blink Events, an event planning business.
Why my failed business doesn’t make me a failure
Growing up, I had always wanted to be an event planner, so it seemed natural that this would be the type of business I started. What I’m here to tell you right now, is that Don’t Blink Events was a massive failure, if that’s a word in your vocabulary. The company failed for a plethora of reasons such as - I didn’t have a niche or differentiator, I didn’t do enough market research, I didn’t set up my foundation correctly, I didn’t have enough passion behind it and last but most definitely not least, we wanted to spend our time in Australia traveling, which meant I needed to make money - which meant I needed to focus more time and energy on freelance work making money, not spending it on starting a new business.
Do you want to know something else? Just because this business was not deemed successful by monetary standards, I do not consider myself a failure. I actually needed this to happen in order to learn and to get where I am today.
Fast-forward to a few years later, when we started talking about the possibility of moving back to Minnesota. My husband had a call scheduled with a company he had been keeping in touch with, and during that call, they offered him a position back in Minnesota. From the time of that call, we had about five months to prepare for our move back to the States. It was at this point in time, I realized I needed a big goal for when we moved back. I didn’t want to go back to the exact same way we were living before we moved. We had made this big leap, we had both grown individually, as a couple and professionally - and I wanted my next career move to reflect that.
This is when I decided I need to make an investment in a “less-traditional” form of continued education, and start working with a business and life coach. During the few months I was working with her, I made the mental decision that I no longer wanted to hold a full-time job where I was working for someone else, but I truly wanted to make the leap into entrepreneurship, which is when I came up with the idea of Balanced Roots Retreats. That leads me right here, right now - sitting at my kitchen table in my apartment wrapped in a blanket because it’s -20F outside, writing this blog post.
What I really want to share with you today, and why I’m writing this blog post, are the lessons I learned from my so-called failed business, and how I’ve applied them to starting my new business.
Hire someone to do your branding
I have the capability to design a logo and create brand guidelines. After all, I’ve worked in the advertising industry for ten years. So, I did that. And then I decided I should get some outside design perspective. I was scrolling through Instagram one day and came across Kyla Branding Studio, located in Minneapolis. I contacted them, and after our first call, I knew that these girls were the perfect people for the job.
Getting a professional from the outside, who do this for their career, who have a passion for creating beautiful brands, was the absolute right choice for me. They made sure my branding communicated the right message, that it felt good to me, and it was 100% the right choice. I can tell you it’s a heck of a lot better than the branding I had originally created on my own.
Gather your professional team
My life/business coach had mentioned there were Universities around Minnesota that offered small business courses. I did a little googling, and found one through St. Thomas’ Opus College of Business. Despite my background as a Bennie, I decided to sign up for the one-night, three-hour course. This course takes you through the high-level basics of starting your own business (e.g. how to get a loan, what you need to do for your taxes, how to calculate your profit margin, etc.).
After this course, you have the option to meet 1:1 with an advisor from their Small Business Center, who will give you personalized advice on your new business. Through this, my advisor emphasized the importance of establishing my professional team: my attorney, insurance agency and CPA. I’ve managed to establish most of these connections - and I can tell you that I have so much more confidence in the foundation of this business than I did for the last.
Get your systems in place
I’m a big systems guy. I like to make sure things are running like a well-oiled machine. I like templates, spreadsheets, folders, and when all of my documents have the same title format. I knew for this business I wanted to have a few systems in place in order to help me out when I started to get busy.
After asking some creative communities what works best for them, I signed up for Dubsado, a business management solution. This allows me to: create contracts, develop my retreat packages, create surveys, automate emails and so much more. While I’m definitely not considered an expert yet, I do know that once I get the hang of it, Dubsado will allow me to free up time I would have spent searching for files and sending emails and focus on other pieces of my business; because let’s be honest - I’d rather spend that time planning and creating.
Use social media scheduling tool(s)
During my “failed business endeavor,” I didn’t take advantage of the social media scheduling tools that were available. I was naive enough to think that I would have the time and mind space every day to find a photo, post a caption, and respond to people that interacted with those posts. I was seriously wrong.
When I was spending my time freelancing or traveling, my social media was the first thing I neglected. I would go weeks without posting, and weeks posting too much. Now, while I’m just at the beginning of this new business, and only on my first month of using a scheduling tool - I can already see the benefits. There’s something to be said about sitting down for one day per month, coming up with all of your posts and scheduling them. With that focus, you’re able to fully be present and attentive to your social media, - vs. spreading your attention so thin. So, I’ll report back on how Planoly and the Facebook scheduling tools are working for me.
Lean on your network
When you’ve been working in one industry for ten years, you’ve most likely built up a bit of a professional network. Heck, when you’ve been in any industry for one year, I would hope that you’ve made some connections. I’m a BIG people-person. I love making connections and I love building and maintaining relationships. It gives me fulfillment to talk to people, relate to them, help them and make new friends. Do you know that most people in your network probably have a specialty or something that they’re really good at?
When I was in the process of building, I reached out to different people in my network to see if they would meet with me, give me some feedback and help me with different areas of my business. I didn’t feel sleazy when I did this, because I’m not just a taker. I make sure that I’m not always just asking people for things - but that I’m giving some of my time and talents, too.
Always network
Semi-similar to my last point, networking is so important to success. I think it’s essential to dedicate time each month for networking. Whatever that looks like for you; 1:1 coffees or larger networking groups. It’s so beneficial to stay connected to people in your industry, and some people outside of it.
Get feedback
When you’re building your business, there are many times it can feel like you’re on a deserted island, party of one. There’s nobody to bounce ideas off or to give you the positive affirmation you might need. So again, utilize your network and reach out to them for feedback. This might even be a time you could use your social platforms for feedback; whether it’s an idea, a name or a website. It’s also important to keep in mind that you will need to use a bit of the “take it or leave it’ approach. Just because you received a piece of feedback, doesn’t mean you need to use it if it doesn’t align with your values, goals or the foundation of your business.
Surround yourself with other entrepreneurs
Similar to the point above, the deserted island, party of one can feel really hard some days. It’s really easy to get into the black hole spiral of negativity and self-doubt. There’s nothing like talking yourself out of what you’re passionate about in T-10 minutes. Surround yourself with other groups of entrepreneurs that you can lean on during these times. It’s amazing how inspiring, and how much you can fill up your tank by surrounding yourself with other people, going through a similar phase of life to you.
Create a routine
Routine can be really boring, it can also be really important. I’ve found that when I’m working from home, or from coffee shops building my business - I’m the most successful when I create a bit of a routine for myself. In my routine, there have been a few things that have helped me immensely; such as time-blocking, planning ahead, journaling and exercising. But, I’ll blog about that another time.
Continue evolving
I think the biggest mistake we can make as humans and as small business entrepreneurs is to have the mindset that we or our businesses are going to start one way and stay that way. It’s so important to have the flexibility to evolve with your personal growth, your business growth and with the world around you. Evolution is exciting too. It’s a little bit exciting not knowing what your business today will look like in ten years.
I could go on and on about other things I’ve learned, but I think today I’ll leave you with these ten things. I’m not claiming to know everything, I only know what I know. What I’ve learned through my personal experience, and what works for me.
Whatever season of life you’re in currently - if you’re a struggling small business owner, if you’re working for a large corporation or if you have a seed of an idea that you want to nourish and grow, I encourage you to listen to what you have within and do what works best for you. Not what’s best for your mom or your boss or your best friend. Follow your dreams, goals, and intuition. Stop comparing yourself to others. You do you, go be you.
Xo,
Katie
