The business mistakes and lessons I have learnt so you don’t have to!

In today’s episode of the podcast I talk about the things I did in my business that failed! Often we don’t like to admit failures or talk about them, but it’s important to look back on these failures so we can take lessons from them. I tell you some of the failures I have experienced in my business and what I learnt from them.   KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST   When you don’t know who your perfect customer is or what you offer you will end up saying yes to things or working with people who are not a good fit for you. You have to get clear – this is who I work with, this is what I do and this is what I’m really good at. Don’t be afraid to say no if something doesn’t align with you. Don’t let your mindset and the fear of failing stop you from starting or launching something – just go for it! Don’t just build your email list and then not email them. When it comes to launching – look at what happened last time and what went well and review/duplicate it. Focus on your mindset and work on it.   THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…   You don’t need to re-invent the wheel every single time.   HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS   The things that failed in my business and what I learnt from them   RESOURCES MENTIONED   Build My List Course Dream Business Club Free download – Mindset hacks for small business owners   TRANSCRIPT   Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are things? So today for me is podcast batching day. I am now getting super organized again. Oh, it feels so good, so, so good to get ahead and batch. My earnest light problem is I've been doing a detox as I record today. And it's affected my voice because I don't know about you. I know someone else's like this whenever I do anything, or if I ever get ill, always go straight to my voice. And I think it's because I use it so much, uh, much to my husband's dismay probably, but it always goes to my voice. So I'm a little bit croaky, but I'm way better than I was. For these next couple of episodes. If you hear me a bit croaky, this might be why. So today we have a solo episode and I've decided that today I'm going to talk about the things that I did in my business that failed. Because I think lots of us don't like to talk about failing. We don't like the idea of failing. We don't want to fail. It doesn't feel nice. It's a bit embarrassing, to be honest, when you fail or I find it a bit embarrassing. But it is so part of our business journey, it's unbelievable. I don't know a single business owner that hasn't failed at something. And there are a million amazing quotes out there that talk about the fact of, you know, if you're not failing, you're not trying, you know, that failing's better than doing nothing, you know? I can literally like give you a million if I tried. So I want to talk about some of the places I failed, but the most important bit about this episode and generally about failing is the fact of what you learned from it or what came from it. So there's always that thing of, you know, you didn't fail, you just learned, you know, you either win or you learn and that's it. And I think it doesn't always feel that good. It doesn't always think, you know, I don't always fail and go, "Woo, brilliant. Look what I learned." Like, I don't always feel like that. However, I think they're not wrong. I think, you know, the fact is you do learn when you fail and failing means that you've at least done something. So you've at least got a conversation you can have about it. So that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to look at the places that I felt that I failed in my business and what I learned and what sort of came from that failure. So let's go right back to the beginning of starting my business. So I think, I mean, there's loads of things I did wrong when I started, but I wouldn't necessarily call them failures. I think one of the biggest failures I had when I had the agency, which wasn't like a one thing, and then I went, "Oh, I failed." It was like an over a period of time thing. I didn't get clear on A who I wanted to work with B what I was good at and C what I wanted to actually do. And I think that was the big problem for my business in the first kind of year or two was, well not maybe the first year was that I was so concerned with the money side of it, that, and, and good reason I was a single parent and I had a mortgage to pay, child to feed and a car to run. So it wasn't like I'm saying, you know, I shouldn't have concentrated on the money. I absolutely needed to. But the problem was, I wasn't clear on who I wanted to work, then what I want to do and what I was good at, which meant I took anything and everything. It meant that someone would come to me and go, "Do you know, Google ad words?" And I'll go, "Yep." Like I think I can learn it. And I did, and I hated it. But. There were many different things that I probably signed up to. There were things that I priced myself wrong because I wasn't giving myself the confidence of going, this is what I'm brilliant at. So I think for me, the very first failure in my business was that it wasn't getting clear on who I liked to work with, what I do and what I like to do. So I spent many a day learning things wasting way too much time learning things and trying to spread my knowledge even wider than it was. I spent many a day working with people that I didn't like, or that they didn't fit with me or their expectations were not the same expectations as mine. And I spent far too many days not enjoying and liking what I did. So that one, the thing I kind of learned from that was that you've got to get really clear and there is a real strength in going "This is who I worked with. This is what I like to do. And this is what I'm really flipping good at." Like, those for me are such strong things to go into business with. And I think in the early days I didn't have the confidence and I think lots of people don't have the confidence to do that because they don't want to niche down, they don't want to like minimize their market. They want to do everything for everyone who'll pay them. But actually it was one of the worst things I could have done. So if you're sat there at the moment and you feel this is you and your sat nodding, I feel for you, first off, cause that sucks and it sucked for me and it didn't feel great, but the good thing is, and the positive thing is that you are doing things and now, you know what you don't like. You know, sort of people you don't like to work with and you know, the sort of stuff that you aren't great at doing. So now is the chance to either start to change and tweak a little bit in terms of what you offer. To start say no to people when they ask you, "Can you do Google ad words?" If you don't do Google ad words and various different things. So that's, you're learning, you're learning is when you do that thing, when you go into that part of your business and you realize you hate it, then you're learning. You know, if you didn't have any clients, then you wouldn't know, would you. Well done, pat yourself on the back for getting the clients. That's awesome. Now you can start to tweak and start to understand who you want to work with, what you like to do and what you are brilliant at. Okay. So the second place I thought I failed in my business and I've talked about this before, but it's a big failure is the fact of creating something for online and sitting on it for like a year. That was like now I look back and think I'd have just gone back and slap myself in the face and gone, "Just get on with it. Don't be ridiculous." And I think there are, there are lots of times I wish I could have done that, but actually again, when I think about the learnings, there are lots to take from it. So. I would say that this, this period in my business is probably one of the biggest learning points. Because I got everything I needed to launch. And this was the point where I learned about mindset, where I learned about personal development, where I learned about the power of having your mind in the right place. So up until then, I'd done a little bit of kind of the, you know, the mindset stuff. And I dabbled the had, had a coach, but I don't think I had quite realized or put two and two together, but how much the business and me go together, which I know sounds ridiculous, but I really didn't. So I obviously put together this course, it was a course on How to create content for social media. And I've told this story many times, if you're new to it, then great. If you're not, I'm sorry, you can hear it again. But I had signed up to do a mastermind over in Irvine with James Wedmore and I went over there and I was at an event and he asked me. I didn't want to answer any questions cause it didn't want to be called out in front of everybody because I was in a room full of what I felt were really, you know, amazing business owners. They...