What if I fail?
Intro
I've launched weekly newsletter.
This newsletter is for people who run a business or want to run a business. I’ll be addressing all of the main questions you will come up against when you launch a business and during the running of your business.
Alongside a deep dive into these important questions. I’ll be journaling the growth and ups and downs of my own agency, Bottled Imagination. These updates will always contain the highlighted version (the LinkedIn friendly version) and then the version of what really happened that week.
This won’t be fortune cookie advice from someone who has already ‘made it’.
These will be practical, real time thoughts and learnings from someone who is doing it right now
Weekly journal 16/02/2024
The LinkedIn version
The Real Version
There’s been a lot of chat about Steven Bartlett this week on social media. I’m not ashamed to admit I used to love his original vlog at Social Chain, everyday Steve. There was still some propaganda in it sure, but it was real time what was going on at a rapidly growing agency. It made me want to launch my own. The guy himself has transcended our industry. The talking point for me is about self awareness. Steven Bartlett didn’t want to just become wealthy he wanted to become famous. And now he is. And now the self awareness blind spot is larger than ever.
Can you do all of this without losing self awareness? Perhaps I want success but I don’t take myself seriously enough?
And to be honest, that’s why I now use Huel…as a serial entrepreneur it’s great for me when I’m on the move, and the best thing is I can eat it with a straw if I feel like it. You can now get 25% off with discount code Copozade at check out!*
*Please use Protein Works instead as they are our client and I’m actually a customer of theirs because their stuff is good!
So this is true and I love coming up with new ideas and even better when our clients like them. Before you create a SAAS offering though you need to show that the process can work manually first and that someone is willing to pay for it. To create what we want that has a client facing front end is going to cost thousands of pounds and a lot of time. I push the timeline back one week...
This call was a client letting us know that their marketing budget has been cut and they won’t be able to renew their retainer with us. I said that this newsletter would show the real story so I need to include real things like this. Losing clients at an agency isn’t uncommon. This is actually only the second client we will have lost but it hurts every time. Looking back we turned a 3 month project into a 2 year long relationship and the team did a good job on it, which is the positive spin I’m going to end on.
I can’t tell you who but I can tell you it’s not an eyebrow piercing brand or V05 wet look freeze gel and they were 2 out of the 3 things that defined me as a teenager.
Following on from winning a client that wants to start in 2025, we had a tonne of new business pitches that this time last year would have been signed off and kicked off in the space of a few weeks. Getting things from A to B has been a slowww process and not one that we’ve been used to since we launched. Still we have a load of work to do for our current clients : )?
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What If I fail?
A lot of people are scared of failure when it comes to launching a business. It’s something that reduces people's sentences to “I’d love to set up a business one day” instead of actually doing it.
Unfortunately, failure is probably a necessity when it comes to entrepreneurship, in fact it might be the most useful part of the whole process. If you are going to launch a business you are going to fail at some point, it might be small, it might be big but in the end you need to redefine what failure is and what it means in order to get something out of it.
Failure is an essential part of improving. Like when muscle tears slightly after a workout and comes back stronger (Is that the wankiest thing I’ve ever written?).
But that’s how you need to view failure.? A constant learning process instead of something that knocks you down, and keeps you down. If you set your expectations that you are going to fail at some point then it’s a word that becomes less crushing.
It’s not about aiming for failure or indulging it. I want to make that clear.?
It’s about how you can reframe failure to stop the thought of it preventing you from taking that leap and stop it crushing you if it does happen.
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What’s the worst that can happen?
Literally, write it out.
Most of the time the answer is “I can just go get a job”. Sometimes it’s bigger or at least made bigger by your brain.
What I launched my first company in 2017 mine was
“Failing is not just my company not succeeding it’s not becoming a millionaire”
How stupid. That’s how big I set my goal and that’s how big I set the tower that came crushing down on me. Now add your personal situation to that sentence. It might be:
“I can just get a job, but I will need enough money to support my family in that overlapping period”
People who are reliant on you add some complexity to it so you will just need answers to each of those parts. Answers like.. Like “I have 4 months of savings we can use if needed” – anything that will ease that anxiety.
Again, in 2017 my additions were:
“Failing is not just my company not succeeding it’s not becoming a millionaire. I need this because I want to be able to provide my dad with a care home when that time comes in the next 5 years. I also want to live a normal life and go on holidays etc so I will also need a large salary to cover both of these.?
Failure is not being free from worry and financial stress for the rest of my life”
I added the most ridiculous, overwhelming layers and pressure to it all that even if the business did well it wouldn’t be enough because I wouldn’t be a millionaire? By the way, my brain still views it like this, so I think I was correct in this goal and assessment and think that I should have achieved it. That’s what I’m dealing with here. To be fair, big goals like that and a mindset at not being content with slightly missing them, that probably creates successful people. Again, I’m not indulging failure here. My goals just could have been far smarter or with a far longer time frame.
What do you think happened when I started to realise that my business wasn’t meeting my expectations? Anxiety started out of nowhere. Resentment of myself, even of my family sometimes that I was “Having to do this”. Inevitably the failure was 10x harsher on me than it would have been if I had reframed all of this and made my goals far far more realistic. I was 26.
You can take this into any small part of running a business too.
Nervous about speaking at a conference??
What’s the worst that could happen?
That’s when you hear the little faint voice in your head say
“Could shit yourself on stage Luke”
And 9 times out of 10 that never.even.happens.
Dealing with failure
Admitting failure is something that is half encouraged and praised in the agency world. It would probably get more engagement on here than a positive post because everyone is going through some sort of failure so they empathise with others that are public about it. I agree that dealing with and talking about failure is important. But it’s a shit marketing strategy. So how do you actually deal with failure without just looking for validation for it?
Yes it does start with reframing like above, so the work can be done ahead of time.
?If it’s now though and you are “in it” it’s more difficult to deal with. The best thing you can tell yourself is that you are not fully in control. As a control freak I struggle with that. I always think there are actions and even variations of sentences that can lead me to a positive outcome and I need to pick the exact right one to succeed. This is somewhat true. Now though, I view it like I’m watching a fast running river from the bank, I can occasionally do things that change the rivers course but I’m ultimately not fully in control of that river. It’s too big. There are hundreds of external factors when running a business, like
-? ? ? ? ? ? The economy
-? ? ? ? ? ? Other people
-? ? ? ? ? ? Timing
-? ? ? ? ? ? Luck (Most people who have become successful owe a lot to luck)
-? ? ? ? ? ? Location
You are quite possibly not 100% in control of your own failure. And once you accept that you just see your journey as something that continues flowing and one day all those things will align, and it will be flowing right for a consistent enough amount of time for you to meet your goals.
Work hard of course. Work smart, more importantly. But accept there are external factors out of your control and just do everything in your power to own the ones that are under your control. In my current situation this includes things like
That doesn’t always mean in terms of time. There is a minimum amount of time that needs to go into a business in order for it to succeed but if you define it by time you will burn out. I could sit aimlessly messaging people on LinkedIn all day in the hope 1 in 50 respond to me. I could micromanage the team and try and be involved in every conversation being had to make myself feel like I’ve done enough. Or worse, try and give myself the win that the team is already achieving. It’s not that. It’s smart, effective bets of your time to improve your successes and limit your failures.?
The biggest bet is the one you make on yourself at the start. The all in bet when you launch the business. You’ll need to make that bet to even be able to find out about failure in the first place. So what you waiting for?
4x Founder | Co-founder of Rebel Lemon & The Creationists – drinks brand design. Co-founder of Phantom – unlimited design for a fixed fee. Fractional leader with Clickist - mentoring creative, tech & marketing leaders.
1 年Nice work Luke. I was planning on something similar if you fancy combing our resouces?