366: How to Stop Feeling Like a Failure as a Business Owner

Welcome And Free Resources

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello friends, it's Kimblet. It's episode 3006. And I'm so glad you are here today because we're talking about why so many business owners feel like failures and what to do about it. I have just found that business owners are so hard on themselves. I've been hard on myself all these years. I started my first business with a friend in year 2000, and I think there are many times that I felt like a failure. I wasn't good enough. And I think that many of you feel this way too. So we're going to talk all about it. And if you are new here, welcome. I'm so glad that you found this podcast. I have no doubt it's going to help you along your business journey, whether you're in the idea stage starting or growing, there's something here for you. I do have some free resources down in the show notes below. So if you scroll down right now, like if you're an Apple Podcast or Spotify, look in the show notes because there is a link that will take you over to a page on she's just getting started.com that has the downloads for the free tools that you can take advantage of right now and use as you're starting and building your business. I've now consolidated them. So if you're new here, usually you had to sign up one by one for each and every resource. Now it's just enter your email one time and you get access to all the resources. So that's exciting. Plus, you get a 15% off coupon to use at the She's Just Getting Started shop. And in case you haven't heard, I have recently just created 52 truth cards for business owners. So not only do you get the lessons and all the important messages from your AirPods or whatever you're listening to this podcast on, but you can also have me cheering you on and giving you guidance through these 52 truth cards that sit on your desk every day. I created these just for you. Each card has an important message on the front, and on the back, it's got some deeper questions and a reference to a podcast episode. So, y'all, this podcast isn't just for listening to. You can actually learn by by, you know, observing and reading these beautiful cards on your desk every day as a reminder of how amazing and brave and awesome you are. So I hope you'll check out everything down below. And I'm so excited for you. I'm so glad you're here.

Why Entrepreneurs Feel Like Failures

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Okay, on to the episode. Well, hello, friends. I am just so happy you're here to talk about this topic. I think so many business owners are so hard on themselves, myself included. And we kind of, you know, go through that emotional roller coaster. Y'all are probably shaking your head. Yes, we are all on an emotional roller coaster with our businesses, right? And I've had four types of businesses. I've had online boutiques, I've had a photography business, I've had a coaching business, and I, you know, have had group programs. And so I get it. I get what this is like for you. And I understand this ride that we're on. But a lot of times many of you are super hard on yourself and feel like a failure. And that breaks my heart because you should never feel like a failure. Um, you're the one who courageously pursued this business dream while there's other people out there who have dreamed and dreamed about doing this. And they have said for years, I meet people all the time that have said, Oh, I've always wanted to start my own business. I'm like, why don't you? It's super easy. You could do it part-time. You can do it on the cheap if money is an issue. You there is no excuse. You have no excuse. You can start your business and you can get it started in a way that fits this season of your life. You don't have to go like total gangbusters and take out a home loan, you know, yet that's like, you know what I'm saying? Like I've heard that people will take out huge loans against their mortgage or have to go to the bank. And that's wonderful if you've got a great business plan and you're opening a store and you know what you're doing. But I think a lot of new business owners don't have to do that. And you're just selling some products or some services and you don't need to do all that. And so I just don't want people to think that there's only one way. There's a way to fit this season of your life for your objectives, what kind of business you're starting. It all depends, right? So don't think that there's one way. There is not. You get to fit it your way for this season of your life and what you want to get out of it.

Three Drivers Of Failure Feelings

SPEAKER_00 4:28

So let's talk about first why so many business owners feel like failures. Like, let's just kind of set the stage here. And again, this is sad to me because we feel this way and we shouldn't. Okay. The first reason why a lot of business owners feel like a failure is because they go through a real learning process and it's hard. They are making maybe, I want to say mistakes, because sometimes we make mistakes. I've done that. I've overbought inventory for my online businesses plenty of times over the years and ended up with so much extra inventory. Like we make mistakes and we feel like a failure. Maybe we don't do as good a job as we wanted to do. If you offer a service, right? Or you're some type of coach and you just like know that that wasn't your best. You can feel like a failure, right? Or maybe that you realize you weren't charging enough for what you were offering. That's happened to me with products. I realized, oh my gosh, I was not charging enough when I had to add in the product and then the embroidery fee, and then the shipping, and then the gift wrap. I'm like, I made like $2 on that order. What was I thinking? Right. We then feel like a failure because we're like, we weren't getting control of this. I know other business owners have told me, like, paying for apps and tools and monthly subscriptions has gotten out of control and they just kind of feared looking at their credit card bill. Are y'all like that? I know I've been like that, where you're just like, I don't even want to look at the bill because I know it's so high. And um feel like a failure because you're like, wait, I'm losing money on this stuff. Like, what just happened? I've heard clients say with Facebook ads, they've lost money. I know I lost money years ago I was doing Facebook ads and I thought I'd turn them off and I had not. And I wasn't like actively looking at my bills all the time, like, like, you know, every week. I wasn't looking. I would look every month or two because my business was just going gangbusters and it was crazy. And I, you know, we were not in the time where all the software is online where it was so easy now to you can look at any second. I don't even know if I could look at my credit card bill online. Like, I just didn't. And then I realized that like thousands of dollars were going to Facebook ads that weren't even working. So that's happened. Um, and and I didn't even do Facebook ads that long, but a whole bunch of money went out the window because I thought I'd stopped it and I had it. So that is something that did happen to me. I thought of that the other day. I was like, forgot all about that, right? I tried to do ads, turned it off. I thought I turned it off, but I didn't. Anyways, um, that didn't work out. So we have to realize as business owners that there are real learning processes going on. And you are not a failure because you've learned a lesson that that is not a failure. What that is, is learning. So right now, whatever's going on in your business, I don't know what you're quote, learning, let's just change it to learning. Let's just not even change it to something bad happened. Let's just say, I'm learning. Like I learned that you have to double check your Facebook ads and make sure they're off. Um, and actually, now that I think about it, was it Facebook ads that I was doing or was it Google ads? I don't remember. Now I'm now I'm getting mixed up because the time has gone by. But whatever it is, you know, we learn from it, right? If you buy too much inventory, you learn. It's not because you're a failure, you learn how to bet it better manage your business. I think so many people think that when you start a business and you're building it, like that because you're smart and you're like, I'm gonna do this right, sometimes you don't. Sometimes you overestimate, underestimate. It's just a fact of life. We're not perfect humans in real life, and we're not perfect business owners either. So I think this is why a lot of business owners feel like failures because things will go wrong and they don't realize that that's part of the process. That's the learning, right? Uh, the second reason why I think business owners feel like failures is because of all the marketing that is thrown at us. Y'all, there is so much marketing thrown at us all day long. It knows, Meta knows, all of it knows, AI knows, the world knows that we are business owners and it's pinging us with ads, with stories, with success stories, with get rich quick schemes, with this is the tool that made me millions. Just do this on social to make me millions. Uh, just do this type of business. It made me millions. Use this software, use this whatever. I'm seeing it all day long. All day long. And this is how I made a million dollars. Just joined my program. I made a bazillion dollars. And I think that part of that makes us feel like a failure because we're like, well, I'm not making a gazillion dollars. And why didn't I get rich quick? You know, it's kind of like what teenagers feel when looking at Instagram and all of that. And I know that my daughter, now who's 27, so shout out to Lexi, she was in her like, was it junior high, early high school, when Instagram was really starting to get popular. And we had given her a phone. And I remember her sitting on the couch and like she would just be like scrolling, and it it was only like her friends at the time. The way Meta was set up and Instagram was set up, it would just show you the people that you followed. And so she would see everything her friends were doing, and so would I. So I'm I'm not immune either. I'm just saying I remember observing this as a different person, right? And seeing her go through this. And it can feel weird because then you're like, oh, wait, um, you know, so-and-so is doing this, so-and-so is traveling here, so-and-so went to this party. And we're all victim to that. Well, the same thing goes for us as business owners. We are going to be seeing all the things, and it may not even be people that we know, most likely it's ads that are being, you know, thrown in front of us telling us, you know, this is this is how you make a bazillion dollars. Like this is it. It's this simple. And I think it can make us feel like a failure because we have small businesses. We may have something that we're super passionate about, and it may not be a $10 million idea. It just may not be. It may be something we love that we can make an income on, and it's great. Uh, but it's not a $10 million business. And so we feel like a failure. And I want you to realize that that's not the case. You again, if you have a business and you're doing it and you're making sales, you're more successful than a lot of people. Okay. So that's another reason why we feel like failure. So, number one, we we feel like a failure because we do have missteps or learnings, and we just feel like a failure and don't take it as learning. Okay. We need to take it as learning because that's a process. Number two, it's because of marketing that's being thrown at us. And number three, because we have unmet expectations of ourselves, right? We have unmet expectations of ourselves. We expect that we should be at this threshold, that we should be making this amount of money, or that we should, you know, only be working this amount of hours, or we are expecting because we work more hours that we should have more money, or that we're doing marketing and it should be working. I'm here to tell you, not all marketing works. And you know what? A lot of marketing doesn't work. It has to be what you finally figure out that actually works. It's a whole process of figuring out this puzzle of what the best marketing is. I know I've done a ton of marketing, even for my new she's just getting started shop. A lot of the marketing I'm doing is not working. And y'all are like, wait, what? You've been in a business owner this long and you're doing marketing that isn't working, who am I listening to? Um, you're listening to an honest business owner telling you that a lot of the marketing doesn't work. But when you find that right marketing for your right people, it works, right? Like me talking about things here on this podcast. This is marketing, right? If I talk about my 52 truth cards or my journal that's coming out, or my cute little I'm just getting started mugs and and all of that stuff. When I talk about that, that's marketing here, right? That's how people find out about my stuff. And hopefully you don't feel like it's salesy. It's part of my business. Like this is what it is, right? And I think you have to realize that this is all a game of figuring out what marketing works, right? And so we may have expectations that I'm doing marketing and I should be making a ton more money. And the fact is that we have to realize that expectations won't always be met in the time that we expect them. Just like with our spouses or our kids, whatever it is, or fitness goals, right? You're like, wait, I should have more muscle than that, or I should have lost weight by now. Like we have unmet expectations of ourselves, of ourselves, and it makes us feel like a failure. And so what we have to do is not tie in our self-worth, right, with our business so that we can have things that don't meet our expectations or like our goals, and that's okay. That's part of the process, right? So this is what happens. This is what happens to our brains is that we feel less than, we feel like a failure, we haven't reached the goals, we're not making 10 gazillion dollars, um, all the things aren't working. And so we feel like a failure. And yeah, when you're hearing this, you're like, whoa, wait, is it actually working? Like, are we actually building a successful business? And the answer is, well, we are in process. And so here is what we do.

Turn Missteps Into Data

SPEAKER_00 14:53

I want you to remember these two things, leaving today, these two things. Okay. Number one is to realize when you feel like a failure, when you're down on yourself, is that this is the process. Welcome to business ownership and to entrepreneurship. This is it. You have arrived. This is the process of you becoming the business owner that you need to be and that you want to be and that you've dreamed of being, right? It's the person who's resilient, who is being smart, who is studying her business, is looking at the data and being objective and looking at it from, you know, a faraway position instead of like right in it where we feel less worthy. Like it's not personal. It's like, this is the business. What do we need to do? I think we have to do that. This is the process. The process is that a lot of the things that we do will not work. They will not work. Products that we start offering, services that we start offering, marketing that we're doing, outreach that we're doing, whatever, a lot of it will not work. But then some things will start gaining momentum and they work. And you're like, oh my goodness, something is working. Do y'all know that feeling when you're like, what? It's working. Like I'm posting in a Facebook group and it's working. Like I even see my son doing this. Y'all know this for years. He's had a fence stain business and power washing business. He was doing on the side and totally has gone head, you know, headfirst into it and like really trying to be a very smart business owner, right? And I've seen him find marketing angles that he's like, oh my gosh, this is working. Like one of his best tools, like he's done Facebook ads, he's done all that. It's posting in the neighborhood weekly, like like Facebook group posts where they allow businesses to post. Like that's one of his best things. And when that works, he's like freaking out. Or he paid someone to go around and hang door hangers on people's, you know, doors and even go knock on doors. And he's like, it's working, right? So I'm seeing it firsthand, even with his kind of business, right? This is not going to be the business for the rest of his life, but something he does to make really good money and he's built a great um customer base with it and something that he's been able to do, right? At certain seasons and times of the year, right? So my point to you is this is the process. It's trial and error of everything. And you learn and you keep going. And it doesn't mean you fail, it means you learn. Right. So whatever you're trying, if you're trying to figure out products, services, you're you're testing everything, everything all the time. It's a test. So when you look at what you're doing, approach it as a test. Okay, I'm gonna try this marketing, I'm gonna try to do reels, or I'm gonna knock on doors, or you know, I'm not saying y'all are probably none of y'all are knocking knocking on doors, but you know, my son hires people to go do that. Anyways, you see what I'm saying? But it's all a test to see. You order flyers, you send out postcards, you go speak at an event. How does that pan out? What's the result? It's all data. We want data. So look at it as a test to get data. And when you get data, you start making better decisions. But if you don't have any data, how do you make any decisions? And the reason you don't have any data is because you're not either doing anything or you're doing stuff and you're not actually pulling it forward and bringing it as data. You're just looking at it as passfail, and you need to be looking at it as data. Okay, I could talk about this forever. I won't, but this is the point that this is the process. It's a testing process, it's a trial and error, and you have to learn from everything that is going on and all the data that you have. So that's the first thing you can do to be mature, realize it's the process, and everything is a test, and you're learning, and then you're gonna do more of what works. The second thing is actually a quote here I have from one of the 52 truth

Stop Waiting To Be Bigger

SPEAKER_00 19:12

cards. I have it here. You can have one on your desk too. It says, the world isn't waiting on a bigger version of you. It's waiting on this one. This one. I think we think as business owners that we already have to be the most amazing CEO, the most amazing, smart, successful business owner right away. And that's the only face that we want to put forward when we're out and about and when we're marketing. And what you don't realize is the people don't need that version of you yet because you're not there yet. They need the version of you right now. They're waiting on this one, this version of you, this version who's learning, who's taking steps, who's maybe new, who's saying she's new, who's being vulnerable about that, who's being honest about that and saying, we're going. I'm excited, we're kicking this off. Whatever it is, that this version of you is enough because people don't even know this other version that you're dreaming of. It reminds me of the pillows on my couch. Y'all, I bought some really cute new pillows for my couch. And my daughter was having a party, like a homecoming after event thing, uh, very nice kids, all very respectable. But I remember I was going back and forth on the pillows on the couch, y'all, because I had happened to have just gotten some. And I'm like, but these aren't exactly what I was looking for. Like these are really cute, but I need to add a couple more. And I was sad about it. I'm like, I'm just sad because they're gonna come in. And the pillows aren't the best yet. The some of them are really cute, but I don't have the full set, and it's not exactly. And I realized that that was the stupidest thing I was ever. Teenagers don't care. Number one. Number two, nobody knows this version of the pillows that I was thinking of. Y'all, I know I'm weird. I'm weird, but can you admit that you do this sometimes with things in your home? Okay, please. Or like your hair or your clothes, so that you can just tell me that you do this too. So I'm not the only one, or maybe I'm just the freak. I don't know. But the pillows, I was thinking like nobody knows the version that I was thinking of of the pillows. Not one person has any idea what was going on in my brain that I wanted a little more green over here and some pink and cream over here on my pillows. I have a great couch. And nobody knows that. They only know the version that they're seeing right now. And they didn't care number one because they're teenagers. But if it was like my friends or something, they'd probably would have come in and said, those are really cute pillows. And then I would have been sitting there thinking, thank you. And then in my mind, be thinking, but these aren't good enough yet. These this isn't the full ensemble that I that I wanted on my couch. This is not it. Do you realize how dumb that is? And we do that with our businesses. We think that everyone is like, yeah, I'll listen to her, but she's just not there yet. And maybe they do. Maybe they do. But that's not really why they're buying from you. They're buying from you because you're offering something that they need. Or you should be offering something that they need, or it's gonna be hard to sell them. That's what they're thinking. What does she have that I need? Does she have something I need? And yes, I want to buy. They're not thinking about the future version of you that you keep thinking of when you show up. Yo, this goes deep here. This this could be a really good episode in itself talking about that. But how we show up is important because if we are self-conscious thinking, I'm not the version that I want to be yet. I haven't graduated. I haven't gotten there yet. And that's how you're showing up. It's going to come out. Like you're going to look like you lack confidence. And then they are not going to have confidence in you. You show up the best way you can for who you are today. My pillows had to show up on the couch on the best version that they were today. Nobody in the world knows what was going on in my brain about my pillows. And nobody in the world knows what was going on in your brain about the future you that you're not at yet. The world isn't waiting on a bigger version of you. It's waiting on this one. This one today. It's on the card. If you get the deck, you'll have this on your desk as a reminder because I think it's so important. They are waiting on this one that is here in front of them today. So I believe these two things will help you not bash yourself, not demean yourself, not criticize yourself and make you realize that you are amazing and that you have something very special to offer. And to prevent yourself from feeling like a failure, remember number one. And if I can say failure, that's kind of a hard word. Failure. I don't know why I say it weird. Um, to prevent yourself from feeling like a failure, remember that this is a process. This is a process of you, of your business, it's data, it's learning, it's testing. So stop taking it personally. Okay. This is the process. And number two, the world is not waiting on some bigger version of you that you've conjured up in your mind. They want the person that you are today. They like you, and they're interested in what you offer. So help them get the help that they need.

Key Takeaways And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 24:52

I hope this helps you today. You are not a failure. You are someone working toward her dream. And for that, I respect you so much. And I think it's amazing. So excited you're here. Again, check all the links down below. Grab the cards, get the free resources. I'm so happy for you. And that is it. Until next time, bye now.

Keep Learning Beyond The Episode

SPEAKER_00 25:19

Now, this episode may be over, but our relationship does not have to end here. Head on over to Kimberlybrock.com, and yes, you can get more valuable information for your journey. And you know what? You don't need to go through this alone. I would love to help. Thank you so much and have a great day. Bye.