The Most Valuable Failure I've Had This Year (Jo Moment)

I cancel a workshop after ticket sales fall flat, and I unpack why that “public failure” ends up being one of my most valuable lessons this year. I show how to separate disappointment from self-doubt so we can move faster, learn more, and stop paying the hidden cost of personalising outcomes. 
• cancelling a workshop after strong early signs but no sales 
• perfectionism wounds and the urge to make it mean something 
• how personalising failure becomes expensive over time 
• why speed matters and self-doubt slows us down 
• the difference between disappointment and losing confidence 
• treating outcomes as experiments to protect self-worth 
• using feedback and data to refine and try again 
• the question that reveals what we are ignoring 

If this resonated, share it with a friend who needs to hear it today. 
And don't forget to subscribe to Balance and Beyond for full episodes and more of these bite sized breakthroughs.

The Balance & Beyond Podcast Hosted by Jo Stone, founder of The Balance Institute

For women who are already succeeding, but beginning to wonder if they're willing to keep losing themselves in the process.

We know high achievers, because we are one. This podcast draws on Jo's 20 years in global leadership and thousands of hours coaching executives and ambitious women: the patterns she sees, how to untangle them, and what it actually takes to keep your success without paying for it with yourself.

If something landed today, there's more where that came from.

And if you know a woman this would resonate with, send it her way.

🎙️https://www.balanceinstitute.com/podcast
🔗 www.balanceinstitute.com
💼https://au.linkedin.com/in/stonejoanne
📷 @therealjostone

Transcript

Welcome And A Quick Reset

Jo Stone (Host) 0:04

Welcome to Balance and Beyond Moments, your weekly dose of insight, wisdom, and mindset shifts, all in 10 minutes or less. Whether it's a powerful truth, a fresh perspective, or a spark of inspiration, this is your space to pause, reflect, and reset. Let's dive in.

The Workshop That Did Not Sell

Jo Stone (Host) 0:22

I had what most people would call a failure last week, but I think it might end up being one of the most valuable things that's happened to me all year. I cancelled a workshop very recently. I was really excited about it. I had lots of signs that it would land, lots of clicks, lots of oh my gosh. When it came to ticket sales, it was crickets. Old me would have made that mean so much about me. I failed, and not just a failure, but a public one. I don't understand my audience, I don't know what I'm doing. The perfectionist wounds I have around not making mistakes and getting in trouble run really, really deep. Thankfully, new Joe was able to make a completely different meaning about the whole experience. I made it mean that, okay, well, there's a market there that's shifting. There's a market there that I can do some more research on.

Why Personalising Failure Costs More

Jo Stone (Host) 1:32

Failure becomes really, really expensive when you personalize it. And so many women swim in failure and continue to pay a really, really high cost. But failure becomes really valuable when you actually start to interrogate it. Failure is a word that is bandied around all the time, especially at the moment, around failing fast and failing foreign. And I see so many women embrace the vernacular and be like, yay, I'm happy to fail publicly. And then if you were to be inside their head at two o'clock in the morning, they're going around and around in circles, beating themselves up for what happened. The faster the world moves, the more expensive that ongoing beat up becomes. You can't spend three weeks questioning yourself every time something doesn't land. The world is now calling for so much more speed. And if every decision is a, oh, what if I get this wrong? And oh, what if I fail? You're going to slow right down. It's going to cost you promotions, opportunities, results. And that's something most women don't want to give up.

Disappointment Without Self Doubt

Jo Stone (Host) 2:52

I was disappointed that I had to cancel the workshop, of course. But disappointment and self-doubt aren't the same thing. This is where so many women get confused. They think that just because I'm disappointed or I'm upset or it didn't land, that I now have to go into this crazy cycle of self-doubt and erase my confidence. But for me, the clarity I got was worth the disappointment. Now I have feedback. I know where to move. Heads up, stay tuned. Next workshop incoming very soon. But if that one doesn't land either, I'll go back and do the same thing. I'll collect the data, I'll refine, I'll go again, and I'll not make any of it an indictment on my knowledge, expertise, capability, anything.

Treat Outcomes Like Experiments

Jo Stone (Host) 3:46

Learning to separate yourself in this era from your experiments and from your successes or failures as a result of those experiments is going to be one of the most valuable skills you can build. And I want to really emphasize something here. Often we, I love the word, let's start that again. And I intentionally use the word experiments here because when we're doing things, so much rides on did that succeed or did that fail. And as a generation who grew up on gold stars and good job, we chase that external validation, that result, that thing as proof of our worth or intelligence or capability. But the more you decide I'm running an experiment, and experiments fail, then that is part of the initial work of separating who you are from the outcomes that you're able to get. So whether it's a failed workshop, job interview, a difficult conversation, or something else entirely, I have to ask, what information are you actually ignoring?

What Information Are You Ignoring

Jo Stone (Host) 5:02

Because you're too busy making it mean something about you. Thanks for taking this moment for yourself. If this resonated, share it with a friend who needs to hear it today. And don't forget to subscribe to Balance and Beyond for full episodes and more of these bite sized breakthroughs. See you next time.