Why reflecting on your business journey is so important

When you are in the middle of a failure, or when you're at a point where you're really struggling for your business to take off, or you're really stuck and you don't know how to get to that next step, it's really hard to step back and look at the bigger perspective of why everything is happening and unfolding the way that it is. So today, I'm talking about why everything in my business journey had to happen the way that it did, because guys like spoiler alert, it wasn't linear. I haven't found it any easier than any of you guys have. I know it might look from the outside, it might look like it was really easy to grow my business to the point where I have, but let me tell you, it was definitely not.

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Your business journey had to happen that way

I used to think that the pathway to business success would be pretty linear, right. I thought that it would be a case of work hard, grow my business, scale it up, and it would all be successful. I thought that it would just be like my corporate career, like everything in my career had been up to the point where I started a business where the harder I worked, the more successful I was. That's how I'd been conditioned ever since I was little. You work hard at school, you get good grades, you can go to university where you can work hard, get good grades, you can get a good job where you can work hard, get good performance reviews, so you can get promotion and a bonus, and on, and on and on. That was basically how I'd been conditioned. But, the thing is that business success is not linear.

 

How my setbacks led me to where I am

If I had known, just how many setbacks I would face along the way, I'm not sure that I would even have quit my corporate job. Isn't that crazy? Like, in hindsight, now that they're all in the rear-view mirror, I'm sure I've got many ahead of me still, but now that I can look back on these setbacks, I'm like, “Wow, I can't believe I overcame those.” But, if they were in front of me and I knew what I was going to have to face, I wouldn't have the belief in myself that I would be able to overcome those. Looking back now though, I know that these setbacks had to happen. I know that everything had to happen this way. The first one was quitting my corporate job too early, running out of savings, and having to go and work for a startup part-time while I side hustled on my main business, that was the first setback.

But, that setback led to me meeting two of my biggest mentors, it led to me getting introduced to the world of podcasting, and it ultimately led to me starting a podcast. The other setback was closing down my first business. That was a big setback, because I had become so emotionally involved in this business, and I didn't want to close it down. It felt really scary to close it down, but it had to be done. Pivoting from the agency model, or wanting to grow an agency to realizing I didn't want to have any clients, that had to happen. That was a big thing for my own resilience, and for realizing that actually, I value my freedom. I realized I needed to build a business that was more aligned with what I personally wanted out of life. Running out of money then, so after I pivoted from the agency model, I niched down into online marketing. It wasn't really a niche. It was such a broad niche.

I was the online marketing girl who taught everything from Facebook Ads to Instagram, to email marketing. I had a great podcast that lots of people listened to, but nobody wanted to pay for my products, because I wasn't an expert in anything in particular. And, because nobody was paying for my products, I ran out of money. And because I ran out of money, I realized, “Okay, I need to niche down.” And, that was the point where I niched into launch strategy, launch marketing, because I needed to figure out what a), I loved doing, which for me was launching. And b), I needed to realize what my area of expertise was, because there's only so long you can be the generalist before people will start to come to you for the free content, but then go to the specialists for the paid stuff.

I had a failed webinar launch. I had a webinar that crashed on me. That needed to happen because if that hadn't happened, I wouldn't have run out of money, and I wouldn't have had any incentive to finally niche down. I had a failed group program launch, which… So, I was trying to launch a group program, teaching people how to launch a podcast. And, I sold two out of 10 places. That needed to happen, because if that hadn't happened, I wouldn't have spoken to my audience, found out that the reason they didn't buy was that they wanted to learn how to DIY their podcasts by themselves on their own schedule, not in a group program setting. If that hadn't happened, I wouldn't have created my podcast launch plan product, and I wouldn't be sitting on a million-dollar business.

So, see how all of these different failures, low points, how they've led me to exactly where I am right now. And also, if they hadn't happened, if these setbacks hadn't happened, there is no way I would have been mentally prepared for the rapid growth that happened this year. I also think that if I'd been successful straightaway, if my first business had worked out the first time, I wouldn't have appreciated success as much as I did when it finally happened. Everything along the journey, everything along the way had to happen this way. This is exactly how it had to unfold. And, if I can just leave you guys with one thought, just remember when something crappy is happening, when you're in a low point, when you're feeling stuck, when you failed at something, just remember everything is happening this way for a reason, everything is as it should be.

You might not see the bigger picture right now when you're in that failure, when I was curled up in bed at 11:00 AM drinking wine after my webinar launch had crashed, I could not see the bigger picture. You can't see the bigger picture right now, but with time and with patience, it will unfold, it will reveal itself, and you will understand why everything had to happen this way.

 

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