In today’s inspiration video I want to tell you a story about failure…
…and how failure can actually be one of the greatest things that can ever happen to you.
If you’ve ever run an event that didn’t fill up, or put out an offering that didn’t sell like you thought it would, this video is for you:
Around 10 or 12 years ago, when my business was called Client Attraction, I used to run a quarterly bootcamp that taught people how to fill their practices quickly.
I’d been doing it for a couple of years and honestly I was getting a little complacent with my marketing, and just kind of “rinsing and repeating” what I had done the first few times.
One fateful day I launched the bootcamp and instead of having anywhere between 14 and 20 people in the program, I signed up only eight.
This derailed me.
I was really disappointed.
I looked at it as a failure.
It made me question myself as a marketer (especially since I teach marketing).
It made me question my manifestation skills (since I teach the Law of Attraction for business).
I went into a whole story in my head that said, “They don’t want it anymore, I’m not good at what I do anymore!”
And I really spiraled in my faith, around my abilities.
I decided, “I’m never offering this bootcamp, ever again!” (In a melodramatic way.) ;)
And I didn’t offer that bootcamp again for quite a few years, even though it had been a significant part of my income at the time. Teaching that bootcamp was (initially) the thing that had gotten me to six figures and into multiple six figures, in addition to my private coaching.
I share this story because a few years later, I started reframing this significant event in my mind and thinking that maybe it wasn’t a failure after all. I started to think that maybe there was something that I could learn from the experience I called a failure. Maybe it was the Universe’s way of saying…
“Okay, Girl, you got lazy there for a bit, let’s amp up your marketing. OR, Hey, you don’t have to limit your work at one time to 14 or 20 people. Perhaps you can also choose to work with hundreds at the same time. So maybe you should stop doing it the way you’re doing it now.”
(Not verbatim, but that’s the hunch I got from the Universe.) ;)
So I started looking at what HAD worked about that bootcamp at the time and how I was marketing it. And then I looked at what had NOT worked about the program AND about the way I had marketed it.
I really spent time asking myself…
“Okay, strategically speaking, what could I have done differently? How can I use this learning experience as fertilizer for the next thing I do?”
With that newfound clarity, I relaunched it in a new format, and marketed it in a much bigger way.
I prayed that it would work and hoped that we could get a hundred people in the program (it was a stretch for sure!) because I wanted to help more self-employed women and have a greater impact on their financial security and sense of certainty in business.
We ended up getting more than 300 members in the bootcamp!
I had tears of joy, thinking, “Oh my gosh, I haven’t lost my mojo, after all!”
But here’s the lesson that I learned…
…no failure is truly a failure.
Things that don’t go well are not necessarily things you need to throw away forever. There’s always a lesson to be learned in every failure or experience that didn’t work well. There’s richness there.
There is richness in failure if you can just move your ego to the side.
(As in the story I shared with you.)
This is how you create success in your life, whether it’s personally or professionally.
So my inspiration for you for today is to look at your business and your life and ask yourself, “Where have I labeled something as a failure and never want to do again?”
Let’s pick that up again and see what we can learn from that, and then strategically relaunch whatever it was for success.
Listen, I know how hard it can be to look at failures objectively when you don’t have the business know-how or marketing experience to analyze effectively.
That’s what we’re here for. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us for a free exploratory conversation.
You might look at your results and have no idea how to improve, and that’s where we can help.
Our innovative blueprint for business growth gets self-employed women to $10K a month consistently, and then from six figures to seven figures.
Reach out so we can chat at no charge, okay?
You deserve to be financially secure and have certainty as a woman in business.
