For the full show notes and access to resources mentioned in this episode visit https://www.easyscaling.com/blog/episode24
This episode is part of our mini-series all about failure. Tune in as we discuss how our guests approach failure, the biggest fails they’ve experienced, what they learned, the support they tap into to get through failure and more…
In this episode, we’re talking with Carol Hampshire. Carol is a brand + web design designer and brand strategist with over 25 years experience. She is the name behind the brands of some of the world’s top female coaches. Her passion is to support female entrepreneurs to elevate their unique Soul Aligned Brand™ so they can transform lives while living a life of freedom and abundance.
What comes to mind when Carol hears the word failure:
An opportunity to reset, revise and relaunch. Absolutely everything in business is a process of learning and revising.
Topics discussed:
Connect with Jordan Schanda King:
Connect with this week’s guest, Carol Hampshire
Love what you heard? Reviews really help us out! As a thank you, you can get my 90-Day Planning Formula ($97 Value) by submitting a screenshot of your 5-star review at easyscaling.com/podcastreview
For the full show notes and access to resources mentioned in this episode visit https://www.easyscaling.com/blog/episode24
This episode is part of our mini-series all about failure. Tune in as we discuss how our guests approach failure, the biggest fails they’ve experienced, what they learned, the support they tap into to get through failure and more…
In this episode, we’re talking with Carol Hampshire. Carol is a brand + web design designer and brand strategist with over 25 years experience. She is the name behind the brands of some of the world’s top female coaches. Her passion is to support female entrepreneurs to elevate their unique Soul Aligned Brand™ so they can transform lives while living a life of freedom and abundance.
What comes to mind when Carol hears the word failure:
An opportunity to reset, revise and relaunch. Absolutely everything in business is a process of learning and revising.
Topics discussed:
Connect with Jordan Schanda King:
Connect with this week’s guest, Carol Hampshire
Love what you heard? Reviews really help us out! As a thank you, you can get my 90-Day Planning Formula ($97 Value) by submitting a screenshot of your 5-star review at easyscaling.com/podcastreview
Mini Series - Failure | Deciding to reset, revise, and relaunch with Carol Hampshire
Jordan: Hello. Hello. You are listening to our mini series all about failure. We're diving into how folks approach failure, the failures that they have experienced, what they've learned from them, how they've gotten support through them, and all kinds of other juicy topics.
So let's get to it.
Alrighty. In this episode we're chatting with Carol Hampshire. She is a brand and web designer and brand strategist with over 25 years of experience, which we get into. She's the name behind the brands of some of the world's top female coaches, which is insanely cool. And her passion is to support female entrepreneurs to elevate their unique soul aligned brand so that they can transform lives while living a life of freedom and abundance.
So, Carol's got all kinds of stories about failure that we're gonna dive into, and she's just got such a great, calm, wise energy to her. I need to steal a little bit of that to like balance me out. So this was a ton of fun. I love her approach to failure. I love her really like poised perspective, and welcome attitude to experience failure.
So I hope you really enjoy this conversation
Welcome. Welcome everyone, and welcome Carol. I'm excited for this.
Carol: Me too. Thank you so much for having me.
Jordan: Yeah, of course. I don't know why I say I'm excited, cuz I probably shouldn't be as excited about talking about failure this much, but I am excited. This is like a fun topic to dive into.
Carol: I, I like the topic because people don't seem to talk about it and.
I think it's very relevant in anyone who's wanting to become a successful coach or entrepreneur.
Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. There's, no avoiding it, that's for sure. So , let's start with, let's just like dive right in and start with what you think of when you think about failure, like your biggest failure, the first failure that comes to mind, something like that.
What do you think of? It's
Carol: a great question. So, Failure to me is an expectation that didn't go according to plan, right? We have an expectation of how things should turn out, and it just didn't go the way we wanted to. So that to me means failure. And I remembered something when I first started my business 25 years.
I, I had my first taste of failure by my, with my very first client, and I'd forgotten about it. So knowing I was on this podcast, I just was reminded of it. So very first client, I was hit with a failure and it shook me up. I can tell you now, it shook me up. And I think it was great in a sense that it made me very, it gave me those boundaries that I.
It gave me the sense of purpose and my, and belief in myself. So what I perceived as being a failure actually turned into such a gift when I was just starting out and I was very wet behind the ears. I didn't have any kind of mentorship. I didn't know what to do. And of course, people are gonna take advantage of me, right?
Because it, it happens. I think you can't of unavoiding,
Jordan: you can't avoid. . Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Yeah. This, this concept that on the other side of failure is always something that's kind of a gift. I feel very, very deeply. I mean, it shows up every single time, and that's coming from me who. I despise failure, , I hate it so much, but I also like understand that there's always like something really great that comes of it.
So tell us exactly what happened with this client. I'm curious.
Carol: So this client, I was designing brochures back in the day. I mean, if you're telling a long time ago, and I created this brochure for him. It was a guest house in Cape Town, South Africa, and he wanted to print the brochure on recycled. And it didn't come out white.
White. It's got a texture to it. And he, after the project was completed, the bro, the, printed brochures were supplied to him. He said he wasn't paying for any of it because the pictures were not white. Oh. So this was, I mean, it, I was distraught because I had invested the money in the printing and. To recover the money as a fresh designer, I didn't know that you need to get the money first.
And I was just doing it how I thought it should be done, and it shook me because he requested that paper. But there's no paper trail, there was no emails, there was just a verbal,agreement. And yeah. So that is what happens.
Jordan: There's a lot of lessons rolled up into that. Huge,
Carol: huge, right. So, what happened was that I kind of got the confidence and I said to him, look, you ask for that paper.
if you choose not to pay, then I'm more than happy to on my side, to take this further and, you know, hire a lawyer and we can take it that way, that route. And he. As soon as I said that, not out of a threats, not out of, the way I said it was very respectful and kind. I think every dealing I have with any client, no matter what the situation has always done with respect and professionalism, and he knew in my voice that I was serious without me ranting and raving.
Carol: It was very firm and my boundaries were up if he didn't pay. . I was gonna seek lawyer. Seek a lawyer, and he did. He paid me and that was it. Wow. So I then many, many lessons in that many lessons. One of them being,
Jordan: yeah, I, I wasn't even expecting you to say that you actually got paid. I was expecting the lesson to be like, okay, well I was out the money, so then I learned I had to pay in advance or had to get paid in advance and I had to, you know, have a paper trail for everything.
And I had all of these lessons that you learned. But the fact that you also learned the holding the boundaries piece, because I see my clients struggling with this a lot. and, and these, all of my clients are like, for the most part, very successful making multiple six figures. and they still struggle with boundaries and, and I get it.
It is, it is difficult, but being able to kind of, I dunno, stand your ground, maybe sounds a little like aggressive, but just kind of hold your clients to what they have agreed to. Mm-hmm. , it can be difficult. Mm-hmm. ,
Carol: I was surprised. Even now I'm surprised that he agreed and, Yeah, it was a big lesson that's, I can still remember the emotion because it's not the failure so much as the emotion attached to that failure, and that in turn has a voice and that is the voice that we need to watch out for.
You're not good enough. You dunno what you're doing. Why are you doing this? Are you
Jordan: crazy? Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. .
Carol: Mm-hmm. . So there's a lot of that negative self talk that I think in that space. It's really important as an entrepreneur and someone who is at that stage, I didn't even know what a multiple six figure entrepreneur was.
I was just doing it because I needed to pay the bills.
Jordan: Yeah, I, I love, I call this, these emotions that negative self, self-talk, that all of that stuff, I call that the spiral. That's like, I, I see that happening all the time in myself, in particular, not calling my clients out here. I'm totally calling myself out here that when bad things like that happen, it's so easy to spiral and to like, go straight to like questioning everything.
It's tough.
Carol: I look for myself. I can only speak for myself, but there's been several times within my career that I, that this is something like this has happened. Not often, but I do tend to need a bit of reflection time. It does affect me. There'll be a thousand clients will tell you they love your service, they'll pay you money.
They'll, they'll be a waiting list, and it's that one client out of like a hundred, 200, 300, a thousand, and that's the one that you don't forget. And that's the one that's attached to those emotions that are raw emotions. Yeah. So that is a lesson that I've had to learn several times. But like I
Jordan: said, yeah, and I love, yeah, sorry.
I love that you're like, oh yeah, I'm like 25 years in business and this is like still the thing, right? . Like it does not go away,
Carol: Well, there was a quote today that I saw on Instagram. It says, you can't be a great coach if you are afraid to fail. Mm. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . And I think it's the fear of failure as well that stops us from doing the thing.
No matter what it is, whether it's speaking up for yourself, whether it's trying something new in your business, and I know that a lot of your listeners are probably always restructuring their business, kneeing down, changing things up, and they're taking a risk, and that's where failure comes into play.
There's a calculated risk, but will it pay off? Yeah. Will it pay off? Yeah. And some, sometimes it doesn't. Even the best. Have will tell you the ones that are making seven figures, eight figures. They've had launches that have failed. They've had situations where team members haven't worked out. They've had those relationship fail failures, for example.
All those kinds of failures have been a part of their journey, and that's what makes it so sweeter when they do finally hit that golden, You know, item that they are sharing to the world. It's, it makes them even more beautiful.
Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's all, it's all gonna happen for sure. Yeah. Good and bad.
You can't avoid it. So tell us, tell us a little bit more about, like, I love that you've set the scene here with your very first failure, but tell us how you navigate failure now. How often it happens, like what type of support you look for, things like that. So
Carol: there was, I took a risk in creating a group program, and it was something that I'd been thinking about doing for quite a long time, and it was definitely in my field of expertise.
I had an incredible. Launch I had, I brought on someone to support me and she was fantastic. everything that I delivered was actually top notch cuz I'm a designer. So I was able to do all the beautiful graphics and sales page and everything was synced up beautifully. But the launch didn't go according to my expectation and I'm very clear on why that happened.
I still got the. The clients, they went into another program of mine. They didn't buy into the one that the group program, they wanted me to work with them one on one, and they didn't want the group's experience for this specific, package that I was offering. So it was really interesting. Part of me was really bummed because I had spent so much time and energy into doing this and it.
A lot of fun, but a lot of time and a lot of weekend work, which was maybe not what I should have done, but I did put in a lot of effort and I was expecting, expecting choosing my words for it to come out the same way.
Jordan: Right. And it wasn't quite what I expected. Yeah. Yeah. I think. For me that like wasted time when you launch something and you know you how much time you've spent on it and the, the like energy and I mean that hurts me more than like anything.
Yeah. I think when I feel like I didn't hit the goal, like wow, I could have done so many other things instead of that, you know,
Carol: that has to be one of my biggest pain points is wasting. Like that is for me that number one, I'd rather waste money than waste time, believe
Jordan: it or not. Yeah. And it's tough because, I mean, talking broadly about failure, nothing is ever for sure like with With these launch, especially with launching, but with, with offers in general and, and anything marketing and sales.
I mean, there is no for sure, for sure. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And I think that can be the frustrating thing. is, as entrepreneurs, we are very limited with our time, but also in order to be successful, it really requires us. To blindly invest our time into things that we don't know are going to work out, which is like a really weird catch 22 that we have to just do it and experiment and try the things and probably waste the time to find the one thing that is gonna work, or to then like, look back at the failure and be like, okay, what did I learn from that?
Okay, I'm gonna do that differently now. Yeah. but again, like you can't, you can't get around that step. Mm-hmm. , which is frustrating. You
Carol: can't preempted. , that's the beauty in it as well. It's like a bit of a gamble, but if you think about it, we didn't get to multiple six figures, by doing nothing. So there is a trust, there's a self-trust.
We know that we are going to be able to come back strongly, figure out what it is that our clients really do want, and give that to them and do something. And I think this is a big one here. . Maybe we see other people doing things and we think, oh, that looks nice. Let's try that. I know I can do that.
Versus giving it a bit of time and reflecting and thinking, is this something that I want to do? It might make me the money, and it might be on brand and it might be this niche, but is it something that I really am committed to doing? Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's the big learning. .
Jordan: Yeah. What's, what's really freaking hard about this, I think, is that.
Not always are the things that make money and the things you wanna do. The same things, which is where, that's where it like starts to get really murky for me because it's not like, oh, well I'll just lean into doing the things that I wanna do and then. Those are the things that are gonna sell Well, not always.
Not always. And it can also be the opposite. It could be like, oh shit, like everybody wants me to do this thing and I don't wanna freaking do that. And that's what people keep asking me to do. You know, like that is difficult to navigate too, and isn't necessarily like right in there with failure, except that I think failure can come into play if you keep leaning into doing the things that you don't wanna do, just because they're the easy things to sell.
Like saying no to that stuff. So hard, but I think saying yes to it can can really lead you down the path of failure just in a different sense. Not monetary failure necessarily, but failure in other realms of your business or your life.
Carol: I can totally relate to that because I've been doing a lot of things that people are wanting from me, so I know that part of this launch experiment, I'll call it experiment, I'll reframe it.
It's really taught me what I wanna. and I think I just need to bring in some more of that into my, into my product suite. I've got a lot of things that I'm offering because I'm so diverse. I've got a lot of, you know, coaching and design and templates, and I, there's almost three businesses in one. Yeah. How can I incorporate more of like me in there, something that I haven't tried, I wanna like explore, I wanna try something.
And hence I think this experiment has made me realize, okay, if I could choose without any money, let's just say it was, I got nothing from this, what would I do? And it's the question we should have asked ourselves five years ago. Right. , we knew about it, but we kind of still did the thing that we knew was gonna be a little easier.
Yeah. But I also believe that we have self trust, like we wouldn't have got here and had the success we had gotten if we didn't succeed in other areas. So there have been a lot of success stories, people that we've chosen to hire, things that we've done in our business, products that we've created from nothing.
I think that shows a lot of self-confidence and self-trust, and that goes a long way when it comes to running. Because ultimately you'll have your mentors, you'll have your Mastermind people that you can skip support from, but ultimately you are the one that's choosing to spend time on something. It's ultimately your decision.
Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. I love this reminder because I think that, I think this can get forgotten, especially like I obviously talk a lot about outsourcing and. . Even I get caught up in this sometimes where it's like, oh, I just wish someone would like tell me what to do, . And then I'm like, oh, well an element of that I think is really helpful, but it can be taken too far.
And the cool thing about it being your business is that you get to decide, like that doesn't mean that you don't need support or help or a sounding board. Someone to show you the way if they've come before you. Like there's all kinds of ways to get help in decision making for sure, but it still has to come from you and be the thing that you wanna do with your business.
And this like thinking about this path, like really gets me going, thinking about something that I also don't think that we talk about enough. Like I don't think it's talked about enough that having a business and making. No matter how much money that you're making is like unfreaking believable. Like that is, if you really think about it.
We are creating money from nothing and value from like nothing and impact. Mm-hmm. and like all of these things that we're creating from literally nothing.
I don't know. I wish I could keep that front of mind because that would be really helpful to like get me through the failure and the hard times. But it is, even if it's not going perfectly, it is like unbelievably impressive. It is. To run a business.
Carol: Yeah. It's, it's my biggest joy. It has been my biggest joy and, Yeah, I agree.
I also wish someone would just tell me what to do. Yeah. Just tell me. Yeah. . but this exercise has really helped solidify like what? Like restructuring my business model. Because it's shown me that I have this big need to do more, like I want to impact more. I know that there's a knowledge that, I mean, I have knowledge that people really want, and if anything it's made me even more clear.
It's like I am determined to have an successful group program that's gonna have a lot of people in there. Why not for fame, not for fortune, not for anything. Cause I know that I have this. And I think that is the desire that's made me even more committed to relaunching and revising and re-imagining, and that passion is gonna be even more deeper as
Jordan: well.
I love it. Tell me, tell me a little bit, like, I'm gonna get down into the weeds here, but. After you've done a launch that hasn't gone as you expected it to go, but you're still committed to the the overall concept of what you were trying to create with that offer, what has your approach been to try to, like you said, reimagine, revise, and relaunch?
This idea? How are you approaching that?
Carol: I'm approaching it from a bird's eye view. I'm approaching it as in a year's time from now, a year to 16 months, where do I wanna be? How much money do I wanna be earning? Who I'm gonna be impacting? What is my, more importantly, what is my day to day looking like?
Because if it's anything that's told me, I don't wanna work on weekends, I do wanna live a life of freedom, which I know that you are committed to doing as well. I wanna be able to travel. I wanna scale and travel and support other people. So keeping that in mind, how can I create a business model and next level business model?
Because I think certain times in our business, we hit these plateaus, we hit these desires, and we have to break them down because our business model will get us so, and we have to break it down, take a risk, and do the next thing. So maybe take away, you know, part of it is taking away some of those products, adding some more things like you would, okay, well now I'm time for a podcast.
You know, early, Jordan wasn't interested in doing a podcast. You was doing something else, and
Jordan: then, no, I didn't have time for a podcast. .
Carol: And then, and then you hit a certain, something happened. You were like, hold on. And maybe that was the failure. Maybe there was a failure for you and you decided, hold on.
Like, I'm hitting my head against a wall. What if there's another war, another road? Like, what can I do? So there's a pause in between, I think, and then those brilliant ideas come, come. Mm-hmm. . I think if there's anything that I've learned is in that pause, in that moment where we can just take some time out and not be pressurized.
pressurized ourselves cuz we hard on ourselves, right? Did pressurize ourselves to make a decision. Just let it sink in for a bit and then rebuild that business. It doesn't have to be from the bottom up, but we can certainly take that next step and that next risk and do something. I love this, that's gonna be even more amazing and more impactful.
So that's what failure to me is about. I think taking that time and, and building,
Jordan: I, I've been thinking a lot about this, about pausing and about stillness and things like this because they do not come naturally to me. But I know that there's a major lesson here in that approach to my business. And it's funny because usually.
Really good things happen in my business. It's because I've been forced to take a pause, and have some stillness, and I'm trying to get better at just doing that myself. it's still very much work in progress. I'm not even gonna say that I'm like doing it at all. It's still very much I'm doing it when I'm forced to do it or something happens where it's like, oh, clearly this is the lesson, so I'm gonna like take a pause.
and not just continue to push, cuz that's just like my personality and that has worked for me. But at some point like things have to change. and so this is interesting to hear you talk about this because I feel like you're mostly just talking to me. I'm sure other people will relate, but I'm like taking this very personally and I love it.
Something that you, you mentioned there that I think is interesting is, you know, when you're talking. Potentially how I wasn't doing a podcast and then evolved to doing a podcast makes me think about a different kind of failure that also doesn't get talked about a lot, which is not this like, oh, I took action.
and I had this expectation and then it didn't work out, and so that's a failure. I think there's other types of failure, and one that comes up for me when I was hearing you talk about that was this like failure to do something. And that's exactly how I evolved to doing my podcast, is that I kept saying, I want to create content.
I want to create content, I want to create content, like I need to be putting out emails, I need to be doing social posts. And it, it never. Like I would try and I would say this is a priority and then I would still never do it. And eventually after like, I don't know, six months of being like I'm gonna create content and then never seeming to actually do it.
I was like, okay, I need to approach this differently because this is clearly a failure cuz I'm saying I wanna do it and I'm not doing it. Mm-hmm. that that is also a failure if you're not able to do the thing that you say you wanna do. Yeah, and for me it was just stepping back, like you said, and being like, If this were easy, what would that look like?
And if it were easy, all I would do was just talk and then somebody else would create the content for me. Fantastic. That's a thing, like that's a thing that you could pay somebody to do . So different types of failures for sure.
Carol: It definitely can be easy, and I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves because when we are growing our business to the first 10 K, 20 k, It is a lot of work, right?
It's backbreaking work. So we assume that going to 30 k to 50 k to a hundred k a a month is gonna be double, triple, quadruple the work. So our minds haven't, our mindsets haven't, grown to the extent yet where I do believe, like you had that moment. Hold on. Maybe it does get to be. Maybe I can figure out a way that's gonna be more spacious, easier, and I get that thing done and it brings me joy without breaking my
Jordan: back.
Yeah, exactly. And I think this really goes into Product Suite a lot because typically the product suite that's gonna get people from. Zero to 10 K months or zero to 20 K months, or even zero to 30 K months is like not gonna be the product suite that's gonna carry you through to like a hundred K months.
It's just, it's not, typically because when we're getting started, the business model that we land on, like we were talking about at the beginning, the, the, the things that are easy to sell aren't necessarily the things that are gonna be massively scalable. And that's okay. That's just like part of the process.
And, and that's where the experimentation, like you're gonna be forced to do it because, as we have talked about, just because you have an idea of the thing that you think is gonna be the scalable thing doesn't mean that that's what people are gonna want. Or it doesn't mean that that's what people are gonna want at that moment in time.
Like it may come back around and look different or just be different timing or be different people or whatever it is. but I do think that that's really interesting and. And it does require a shift in our mindset because it's, it's way more comfy to just be like, oh, well I'll just double the amount of clients and that'll double the amount of revenue.
Well, maybe, but that actually might be a really hard path to follow ,
Carol: and that's where failure is. So intertwined with scaling. I know that you're all about the scaling, right? Easy scaling. So failure I think is inter intertwined. We have to hit that. that failure bump. And in that place, we are forced to think another way.
Yeah. Because yeah, it, it's, it's just not gonna, it's not gonna work. It's not gonna work. And I'm in that place. Now, you a little bit further. You've, you've, you've done a thing, you've hired the team, you launched your podcast. It's extremely successful. And for the viewers and listeners, You know, I'm still in that process of coming up with my, and it's a beautiful space.
I have so much confidence in myself that it's gonna happen. I'm just pausing completely. I'm just taking some time and I've got my little book right next to my office, my in my office and my desk here, and I'm literally scribbling and I'm mind mapping and I'm revising, and I'm playing and I'm just exp you know, just expanding myself because.
I know it's possible for me to, like, I know that it's possible. Yeah. And if I had done the thing and it, and it was okay to be successful and it got me 10 K or 20 K, it would've kept me smaller because I wouldn't have thought something else that could get me there quicker. Mm-hmm. and
Jordan: get me more. Or be more sustained.
Yeah. More
Carol: sustainable. More. And the thing for me now is sustain. , I know that my energy levels can't be compromised as much as I did on that launch. It's, it's just
Jordan: a, it's a no-go. Yeah. Yeah. I love this and I, there's like a million things I wanna talk about on this, but I'm gonna save it for like a deep dive behind the scenes retrospective on a launch that we just did, because this failure does not end.
I mean, we have had massive success, but , I am still an experimenter and I am trying new things all of the time, and we're kind of starting to get out of that phase a little bit just because of the revenue that we've hit as fast as we've hit it is now we need to shift our, not just my mindset, but like the business mindset and the business approach, and how we're gonna scale and this next year.
From my perspective is gonna be all about stability. Like that's gonna be the next phase that we're jumping into is like, okay, we have tried almost everything. We have a lot of data about what works or what doesn't and what we enjoy. Now, let's like. Optimize and dial it all in and stabilize this in a way that doesn't take as much energy and doesn't take these like massive launches.
And it doesn't, it doesn't require that as much. Like we can really start to hone in on making things just more stable and more sustainable and just easier across the board, which is also, we're about scaling, we're also about ease. Like that's a pretty important thing. huge that we're about, so. So even though yes, we've seen some, some success, quite a bit of success here, very, very fast, I, I think that that's mostly due to the amount of like, Risk and failure that we've been able to be okay with over the last year and a half as we, as we've grown.
And it's, it takes a toll. Like I'll, I'll just be like honest with everyone. Like that takes a massive energetic, mental, emotional, physical toll on me as the business owner, to hold that, to hold that risk like, It's a lot. Oh my God. I gave myself goosebumps. Like, it's a lot, it's a lot. It's like a lot of risk.
Carol: I mean, I've heard coaches, behind the scenes talking about being bedridden after a launch, you know, being a hospital after a launch because it's so physically and emotionally taxing. and I have definitely physically needed some time off. Like I'm, I'm just recovering because it's the pressure that I put on myself as well.
So when you talk about something like scaling and ease and sustainability and all of these things, I'm like, that is music to my ears. Like seriously. Yeah.
Jordan: That is, that's the dream. That's
Carol: the dream. And I, everyone who is in the hundred K a month kind of mark. They found that formula, they found that team, they've, they've scaled, there's a lot of ease and flow, a lot of spaciousness around them.
So I think it's possible. I've seen it. Yeah,
Jordan: it's totally possible. Totally possible. It's, I think it's also possible to be at those levels and like not have found that ease. I think there's definitely people who have like strong armed their way to that mark. and at some point, like if, if the ease is.
is a priority. Like things have to shift and things have to change. And that's the hard part is figuring that all out. You know,
Carol: I think one of the big things for me was asking myself, why am I doing this? Like, what am I, why am I doing this? Is it for the money? Money? Is it for the recognition? Pat on the back?
Like, it's interesting because it's an interesting question to ask. , if you are in that phase of doing things too much and too hard and pushing, which I'm, I do like, this is, this is my makeup. I've been doing it for a long time. And as you don't have, I don't believe that you need to do that. I don't need, yeah, I don't need to do that.
But in all transparency, it's how I've run my business. Yeah. Put in too much work, too hard.
. I think what's important there too is like there are different types of people. There are different desires, there are different like outcomes that we're looking for in our businesses or what we enjoy. And there are also just different seasons of life.
Jordan: And this is, I think, is really important. And again, like there is no, there is no right answer at any given time, which is hard for me to say because I, for the most part, feel like there's a right answer to everything, or at least I want there to be, but it's just not the case. My goals change and my approach changes and my bandwidth changes and all kinds of things change and evolve all of the time.
And that's just kind of like the nature of business and the nature of life. and I saw, I saw a post the other day that I have like really mixed feelings about, because on the one hand I'm like, yeah, I totally get it. On the other hand I'm like, gosh, I just don't know if that sets a good expectation.
But it was something along the lines of like, in my first year in business, I. 12 hour days every single day, you know, for a year. And, and that has resulted in a million dollar business, mostly from passive income. And I was like, damn, that's crazy. And, and, and I think a lot of business owners can relate to that type of like approach and even.
Even if, even if you do that, it doesn't mean you're gonna build a million dollar business. And that's like kind of the crazy thing to think about is just because you're working 12 hour days for an entire year doesn't mean that you're gonna end up with something that's wildly successful. But what I thought was interesting in her post was she was like something along the lines of like, if I had to go back, I would do it again.
Or like, I'm so glad that I did it. , I get that. Like, I mean, if I had, if I was presented with the option of like, would you work 12 hour days for a year, if you could build a million dollar business that was actually gonna be sustainable? Like hell yeah. I would do that. And that's kind of like where I've felt like I've been in the thick of it with this business is.
is, my approach wasn't necessarily on sustainability in the short term. even though it kind of, it was like I was pregnant and I was on the turn. Like I, I like, haven't been working 12 hour days for a year. Okay. Like, let's be real. I haven't, but, yeah, I don't know. Like, how do you feel about that, that messaging?
I'm like torn between, Feeling like understand, like I understand it. And then on the other hand I'm like, I just don't know if we should be telling people ,
Carol: but I do understand now how your business is based on easy scaling because that is what you don't want people to go through what you've gone through.
I wouldn't want to advise people that are out to do what I did because I also was just, I worked so hard and there is almost an addiction to my work because I. I love getting lost in my designs. I, it's a form of escapism and I really love it. Mm-hmm. , the flip side is obviously you get money for it and you get recognition.
Yeah. So, and at the same time, I do think the more we can scale our business in a way that is sustainable. Yeah. Like we can have it all like you can. , the life that you could, you know, traveling and you can have kids and a healthy relationship, a stable relationship, and a multimillion dollar business. Like why not?
Yeah. Like why not have it all?
Jordan: Yeah. I think what, like, the thing that comes up for me with all of this when I really think about it, is that, I think we can have it all. I just don't think we can necessarily have it all, all the time. Like starting at the beginning, right? Like it's, it's a process and like I said, we, we have seasons in our life and I have a client who has four kids who are all like five and under, like, she's obviously not in the thick of scaling her business.
She's been in sustained mode. And that recognizing that capacity and, and like the priority in the moment I think is so important. And for other people the priority, like for us, the priority has been scaling very, very fast. And, and that's okay. And just not making yourself wrong for wherever you are in, like maybe you're, you feel like you're working too hard.
Okay, great. Like, that is what it is. Do you wanna change it? If you wanna change it. Okay, great. If you don't wanna change it. Okay, great. Like there is no right or wrong, and I think that's, that's the thing. that needs to be, what we're paying more attention to is like in the moment, do we want something to change or are we okay with what we're doing right now because it justifies some something else, you know?
and just kind of keeping an eye on that and, and, you know, adapting to that in real time as needed. Mm-hmm. as things change.
Carol: Yeah, I agree. Totally. I do. I think that there are seasons and you feel. You just feel that there is a time that you need to take a step back, reprioritize. And you know, in my business now I'm taking a step back, but I am going to go full force the new year, not as in working, but s strategically, like this is where it comes in.
I'm going to be strategic in how I devote my time and into what, and that obviously includes growing. My team and making sure that I have the right people around me as well to, to help me with that. Because I think as woman, generally, we can like do it ourselves, right? I can do it better . So
Jordan: I can do everything.
I can do everything. That's how I
Carol: feel. And, and as you start your business, you do everything. You, yeah. Updating the website, you're doing the finals, you send the emails, you, you're doing everything and we can. , there is a huge shift that needs to happen. Mm-hmm. , huge shift that needs to happen and strategically to scale, like scale.
Scale with, in a clever sense, a scale that's gonna support and nourish you and nourish your team and nourish the people whose lives you wanna impact. Ultimately, that's what you're doing. Yeah.
Jordan: Yeah. I. Okay. Well man, we hit a lot . I love this. this is like one of my favorite things to talk about. we will of course have all of your information in the show notes so people can find you.
Is there anything else you wanna leave us with specifically on failure? I
Carol: wanna say for me it was such a beautiful gift. I know that's a cliche. So maybe Hu Evers listening has got to hear it again. It is a gift. If you are in that phase right now and you've stumbled across this podcast, please know that there is something incredible waiting for you.
Just
Jordan: don't give up hope. Yeah, I love it. Beautiful. It's a cliche for a reason, right? Cliche for a reason. Failure is a gift. There's a lesson there, so, Go forth and fail. All right, thank you. This is great. Thank you,
Carol: Jordan.