133- Failure

Episode 133 Failure
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[00:00:00] Welcome back to MaYapinion. This is a podcast where I share my opinions and thoughts on entrepreneurship and leadership for women. My name is Maya and I'm your host and I'm excited to be back for another episode. And today we're talking about a topic that every single entrepreneur faces. Failure.

Failure is something that not a lot of us like to discuss or talk about. We really just like to talk about our wins. We like to talk about when we win, we like to talk about what's working when we succeed. Talking about failure can be quite uncomfortable sometimes, but it is the foundation for entrepreneurship.

Failure is. Something that I think a lot of people think like, we wanna avoid it, we wanna stay away from it. But in my opinion, it is truly the foundation for entrepreneurship, leadership, and [00:01:00] success. You cannot be afraid to fail in order to succeed, in order to try, in order to be a leader, be an entrepreneur, and something along my personal journey I.

Coming from the corporate space, I was so afraid to fail because I don't know that we're really taught when we go into the corporate world to fail. I don't know if we're really taught to fail. I don't know if we're really taught that it's okay to fail. I think when you work in. A certain type of culture, it can be encouraged.

I know personally when I moved away from more of the large Fortune 500 or Fortune 100 type of company and started working for more of the startup environment, that's when I got my first taste of. Being encouraged to fail and being [00:02:00] encouraged to fail feels very uncomfortable and very odd when you come from more of a stringent, structured corporate world that I came from that I'm sure a lot of you are from.

And so when I entered more of this startup world and started working in these, in these kind of up and coming companies, very young. You are encouraged to try things, you're encouraged to take a leap, and if it doesn't work, like we learned from it, we say, okay, why did this work? Or why didn't this work?

And what did work about it? And like if we just fell flat on our face, like what did we learn from this? That was really refreshing for me personally, and in my opinion, it is absolutely. Essential. And I think it's something that's really missing from these companies that have been around for a really, really long time.

I do see the culture shifting a little bit. I do see kind of that startup, that [00:03:00] mighty, you know, like, let's fail fast and fail forward, um, happening in some of these larger organizations now. But it, it wasn't that way 15, 16 years ago when I started in the corporate world. You were afraid to fail and it was.

It was a thing like you didn't wanna mess up on your spreadsheet, or you didn't wanna mess up on your PowerPoint, and then, you know, you definitely didn't wanna make a budget failure. You didn't wanna make a hiring mistake. These were all things that I had such great deep seated fear, especially being 22 years old in corporate America and feeling like everything I did was under a microscope, which I'm sure so many of you can connect with.

That was something that freaked me out. I didn't wanna make a mistake. But it's actually quite counterintuitive because making a mistake and failing forward is crucial. It's absolutely crucial, and I think it's something that held me back in the beginning of my entrepreneurial [00:04:00] journey because I was afraid of failure.

And I look back now on my career thus far and I look back. Just at my life in general and my life failures as well. And I've learned so much from every single failure, whether it has been a corporate failure, whether it's been a personal failure. I think again, failure is the true foundation of entrepreneurship.

It's the true foundation of leadership. You're not afraid to fail, and you're not afraid to fail forward. So let me talk about that and I'm gonna share some more failures with you, but let me talk about what failing forward means. I remember when I was working for one of the last companies I worked for before I really went out on my own and I had a boss at the time, and I've talked about this before in previous episodes, but it's been a while since I've talked about it, so I wanna share again.

I remember him telling me, he was talking about different things that he was concerned about with different team members, [00:05:00] and I remember asking him because I was less afraid of failure at that time, which is fitting because I was doing contract work. Little did I know I was about to build these businesses, but I wanted to know.

I said, well, what's concerning about me? What, what are you concerned about with me? And he's like, I think you're gonna fail forward. And I had never really heard that before. I didn't really know what that meant. And I was like, okay, what does that mean? And why is that bad? And he goes, no, I, it's good.

Failing forward is good. And I said, well, why is that concerning? He's like, because I gotta keep up with you. I gotta keep up with you as you're failing forward. And I was like. Okay, but explain that to me. So failing forward is when you have someone on your team or if this is you, even better. You can't be afraid to fail forward.

It means that you move fast. You're not frozen by decisions. You're not afraid to take chances. You're not afraid to try. Throw out an event or throw out, I'm using myself as an example. Or throw out a [00:06:00] social media reel and see if it works. If it doesn't work, who cares? Kind of fearless in, in trying things and failing forward means you might fall on your face, but it can, it's easier to push yourself back up again versus failing backwards.

Failing backwards is when you hold yourself back. So I learned this quite quickly once this particular individual shared this with me failing, and then he shared some people on the team, he was concerned about failing. Backwards. Feeling backwards is when you hold yourself back and falling back on your back.

Injury happens a lot more. It's, it's like a whole concept. So I understood what he meant. Like it's good to go fast, it's good to go fast, but he's like, sometimes I'm gonna have to catch up with you. So I need to just kind of get my mindset around that. Failing forward is essential to entrepreneurship.

Failing forward is essential to leadership. So. I can tell typically if somebody is going to be successful in certain types of roles as well. Now, because of this great boss that I had, because he [00:07:00] identified that in me because he now runs his own business as well. But he identified that in me because he saw it in himself too, and we both ended up starting businesses in two totally different types of, we don't have the same type of businesses.

I have an event business, I have a tech startup and I have these podcasts, but. He does something totally different, but we can see that as leaders in each other, we could identify that in each other, which I think is really powerful and it's, it was no surprise to me when he started his own company. No surprise to him when I started my own.

And it's because failing forward means you're not afraid to take risks. You're not afraid to fall down on your face because you can push yourself back up and you can learn from it. That's the other part of failing forward and not being afraid to fail. Is that you learn so much more from failure than you do from winning.

Every time I win, it's great, but I don't learn as much. It just feels good to win. It feels good financially to win. It feels good because [00:08:00] your concept is working or your business is working, or your product is working for you. But from a learning perspective, you don't learn as much when you win. You don't.

When you fail it, it forces you to push yourself back up and really analyze, why did this happen? Why didn't this work? How can I get better? As an entrepreneur, as a leader, how can my systems get better? How can my services get better? How can my product get better? That's. A big learning curve. When you win, you don't analyze as much.

You don't look at everything that you're doing as much because it worked. It worked. Why would you? But it's something that I've challenged myself and I would challenge all of you to do this as well. Even when you're winning, analyze it. Why did I win? We're just, we're more excited about the win because it's like, okay, we won.[00:09:00] 

Fabulous. Take, take the paycheck, take the, you know, take the win for the business. Let's keep doing more of that. But I, I would challenge you to also analyze when you win, why did we win? Why did this work? Will this work again in the future? But that's winning. We'll do an episode on winning as well, but with failure, the reason you learn more with failure is because you are forced to analyze it.

You are forced to sit there and really think about why. You failed. So I'll use some examples of my own. When I first left corporate America, I failed many, many times. I didn't realize that I was going to build these businesses, and these were not the first things that I built. I started this show. The My Opinion Podcast in 2017, the show had a totally different theme.

I had a co-host with me. Um, we were talking really just about my life. We were talking about loss. We were [00:10:00] talking about my experience on reality television. It was very general. That wasn't going to do anything for my career, my business. At least that wasn't what I wanted to do. For some people, it works for them, but that wasn't my focus.

I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a career oriented person, and I knew that So did the show do very well in the beginning? Yes, but I, I, I felt like it was a failure in a lot of ways. Even though we had thousands of downloads, it felt like a failure because. Where was it going? It wasn't going to generate any revenue for me in the future.

The first iteration of this podcast, I don't look back anymore and look at it as a failure. It was a stepping stone, but that's what failure is. I felt like I was failing because I was like, what am I, I don't wanna talk about this stuff forever. This isn't a passion for of mine, but. It led me to my passions.

It led me to things that could become [00:11:00] profitable it led me to things that I could do to create a business and drive revenue. There were other failures that happened. So when I really tuned into my opinion and started talking about my corporate experience and started talking about entrepreneurship and that path for me.

I was dabbling in different things. I had started my event logistics company, 'cause I had been doing events for 16 years. It was quite natural for me to start that. So that was natural to begin that consulting work and evolving into that. And I'm gonna do an episode just on how I built my consulting business into an event company because I think there's a big, big thing for me, in my opinion out there that.

Bothers me. I don't like the gatekeeping that happens in how to do things, like how to build things. I think that's a massive failure. As we're talking about failure. I think that's a massive failure out there in the women's entrepreneur, like [00:12:00] entrepreneurial community. So trust me, I'll be diving into all of that.

But to stay on failure, I did many things. In addition to the event company, the tech startup, and these two podcasts. I was helping people with their branding. I was helping people with launching a podcast because I knew how to do it, and I knew how to create a successful show, but I wasn't super successful in helping people launch their podcasts.

Let me put it this way. I've had quite a bit of success helping people. I've had incredible clients, but I wasn't booking tons and tons of clients like I was with my event business. Like that was really taking off, so it forced me to look and go, why isn't this working? My messaging was way off. I wasn't truly passionate about it.

I love podcasting, I was not fitting into the part of podcasting that worked for me. Like what was I truly passionate about Working with [00:13:00] clients one-on-one is something I'm good at, but I wasn't necessarily passionate about it. So when you're, when those are not coming together and you're not feeling that and it's, you're not fueling it and marrying it together, you'll fail.

And I was failing at that. It doesn't mean I wasn't good at it. Sure. But I wasn't scaling my event. Logistics business was scaling. Why? I didn't spend a lot of time like I talked about earlier, really analyzing why that was working. But now I have spent time 'cause I'm challenging myself to do what I'm challenging you to do.

Even when you're winning. Ask yourself why? It's because I'm good at it. I have great expertise in it and I enjoy it and it's a passion of. With podcasting, I had to really look at this when I had these podcasting academies and I was helping people one-on-one. I was booking people, but it was never really scaling.

Like my event business scaled and my podcasting scaled. I had to ask myself why. And in the [00:14:00] failure it's because I'm not super passionate about editing podcasts or teaching people this. I, I wasn't, but I was passionate about podcasting and that out of that failure. Out of realizing this is not for me, this isn't scaling, instead of getting super frustrated about it, one night I woke up, it was COVID times and I thought about Find a co-host, and that's when I bought the domain and started to create that particular website and that startup, which I'll do an episode strictly on that so you guys can hear my journey on that as well.

But through failure. Through realizing that some parts of podcasting for were for me and some were not, I really found my lane and I realized what I wanted to do, and it helped me niche down to my passion. Failure will give you so much more. [00:15:00] Than winning. If I had continued to win with like my podcast academy and helping women launch all of that, I wouldn't be happy.

I wasn't really happy focusing on that aspect. I have great partners to help me with that. I am most passionate about helping women. Find their passion and become an entrepreneur themselves, or start a business. I am super passionate about podcasting, but I'm quite techie, and I realized I kind of wanted to get in that space and help other people.

And I absolutely love what I've done for 16 years with events, and I will continue to do that and innovate in that space. And so tapping into my passions through failure is such a win. It's a win. So in the end. It became a win. So I want you to know if you are in a failure season, 'cause I was in a failure season and it's, it is absolutely essential to be in a failure season as an entrepreneur.

We all [00:16:00] have 'em. I'm gonna have 20 million more. I'm gonna fail many more times, but I'm gonna fail forward. I'm gonna push myself up and I'm gonna think about why it didn't work and I'm gonna learn from it. But if you are currently in a failure season. You are not behind. I want you to know that you're not broken.

You are being refined just like I was being refined. You are being refined and you're getting prepared for something so much bigger because you might also wanna think about this. In my opinion, we often fail because we're also playing too small. I was playing way too small. I had bigger things in store for me, and I was failing because I kept thinking, oh, if I can just get one more client for this, or if I get one more client for that and I can coach them here and coach, I was meant to do bigger things, bigger events, [00:17:00] build a bigger company to help podcasting and reach more people through my podcasting and build this incredible brand to help women out there just like you.

So I was failing when I was playing it small. So just know that your failures are a foundation that are going to build you higher and higher for your bigger purpose. It's okay to fail, but fail forward. Fail fast. Fail forward and try things. Don't be afraid to try things because failure is gonna teach you so much faster than these little small wins.

Fail. Fail fast. Fail forward. Push yourself back up. Analyze why you failed. Learn from it. Ask yourself if you like what you're doing and if you don't pivot, and I'll cover that on the next episode. How do you pivot when you are failing? Or maybe when you're not aligning and you're not passionate about what you're doing, but don't be afraid to fail.

This is the foundation [00:18:00] that's going to build you for success, and you're gonna fail a million times more, but this will lead you further into the direction that you need to be going. As an entrepreneur, as a leader, as someone who's doing something that they're really, really passionate about. So if you're walking through failure right now, you got this.

Fail forward, fail fast, learn from it. And in my opinion, that means that you're just one step closer to the biggest success and win that you could possibly have as an entrepreneur. Over the next week after you listen to this, I want you to reach out to me, send me a DM at my Opinion podcast, or at Maya ruffler on Instagram or on TikTok, and let me know your biggest failure.

Let me know how you failed forward. You fell flat on your face, pushed yourself back up again and tell me what you learned from it. I would love to hear from you. So in the meantime, don't forget to follow me at Maya ler [00:19:00] and at My Opinion Podcast on all. Major social media platforms. Until next time. I'm Maya ler and that's just my opinion about entrepreneurship and leadership for now.