The Launch Failed. I Didn't.

What happens when you pour your time, money, and heart into something, and nobody says yes?

In this deeply personal episode, Pamela shares what happened when her RESET program launched to beautiful feedback but zero enrollments, all during the same week her daughter graduated from high school.

This is a conversation about disappointment, fear, and the stories we tell ourselves when one thing doesn't work. You'll learn how to separate the facts from the shame spiral, treat failure as one part of your life rather than a verdict on your whole identity, and identify the next brave, useful move.

Because the launch may have failed.

That doesn't mean you did.

Key Takeaways

• Why failure is local, not total
• How to separate what happened from what you made it mean
• Why specificity interrupts shame
• How to interpret fear without letting it predict your future
• Four questions to help you move through disappointment
• Why you don't have to wait for the comeback to tell the truth
• How successful people use fear as fuel

Listener Reflection
What happened, what are you making it mean, and what else is true?

Find me on instagram: thepamelameadows

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, I'm Pamela. Welcome to Over The Should Podcast, a place for honest conversations for women who are ready to move past expectations, roles, and the shoulds keeping them stuck. Today we're talking about fear and failure, not failure in the inspirational quote kind of way. I mean real adult bank account attached to it kind of failure. The kind where you pour thousands of hours into something, you invest real money, you believe deeply in what you created, you put it out in front of the world, and nobody says yes. Not one person, zero, which it turns out is an aggressively clear number. A few weeks ago, that happened to me. And although this episode is about a launch that didn't work, it's really about what happens inside of us when something we care about doesn't go the way we hoped. Because the disappointment is one thing. The story we build around the disappointment, well, that's where things can get messy. So let me tell you what happened. A few weeks ago, I launched a group coaching program called Reset. Reset was created for women who are exhausted from being the reliable one, the one holding the work, the home, the calendar, everyone's feelings, and the 17 things that nobody else seems to remember need to be done. It's a program I believe in. Not because I threw together a cute workbook and decided the world needed another acronym, I built it from my own experience, my coaching work, my leadership career, and the years of watching brilliant women slowly disappear beneath everything they were managing for everyone else. I put thousands of hours into it. And I know sometimes people say thousands of hours when they really mean several long afternoons. I mean thousands. The curriculum, the exercises, the messaging, the technology, the emails, the late night where I'm questioning every single thing I put into this program to make sure that women know they're allowed to want more for their life. I hired support. We built the email sequence, we made the workshop. I invested real money, not imaginary business money, actual money from an actual bank account that now contains significantly less money. And then I facilitated a free workshop. And women came and they participated, they opened up and they sent beautiful feedback. I received messages like, this is exactly what I needed. And I felt like you were speaking directly to me. And I thought, okay, this is working. They get it. And some of these women are going to join. And a few people expressed interest and then registration closed. Then no one signed up. I don't need a complicated marketing dashboard to interpret those results. So I was sitting there on my couch with my five dogs, with a lighter bank account and a confidence level that had become a little less sturdy. I felt embarrassed. I felt disappointed. I started questioning the program, my messaging, my business. And because the human brain enjoys efficiency, I then questioned my entire professional identity. But the launch wasn't the only big thing that happened that week. At almost the exact same time, my daughter graduated high school, 18 years, apparently gone in like six minutes. One cap and a gown and a series of photos in which I tried very hard not to cry my makeup off. I watched this vivacious, opinionated, deeply kind, hilarious human walk across the stage and begin the next chapter of her life, and I was so proud of her. So there I was, holding two completely different truths. One part of my life felt deeply disappointing. Another part felt overwhelmingly beautiful. Failure and flourishing in the same week, under the same roof. And here's what I started to notice. My brain wants to go back into old patterns. My brain wasn't content at first to say, this particular launch didn't fill. That sentence would have been accurate, specific, and emotionally responsible. Nope. My brain wanted the old caps version of you're a failure. Not the launch, not the strategy, not the timing. Me. And maybe you know this feeling. One application gets rejected and suddenly you're questioning your entire career. One relationship ends and your mind starts whispering that perhaps you're fundamentally unlovable. One difficult conversation happens with your child, and somehow you've gone from that didn't go well, to everyone then forever, they need a therapy fund. We take one painful moment and we hand it a megaphone. But failure is almost never as total as it feels. Failure's local. It's one room in a very large house. One room might contain disappointment, and another might contain a daughter graduating. Another might hold your friends laughing around the kitchen table. Another might hold the work you're proud of, the people you've helped, the courage it took to try, the life you've already built. One dark room does not mean the whole house has lost power. And I don't say that to minimize what happened. I'm not going to pretend that getting valuable feedback from failure immediately made me feel better. Sometimes people rush to call failure feedback because they don't know what to do with disappointment. But we're allowed to be disappointed. We're allowed to say, that hurt, and I wanted something different. Calling it feedback does not mean you have to skip the feeling and leap right into the color-coded improvement plan. It means that disappointment does not get the final word. It's a feeling, and then you move on. Here's the exercise that helped me get my feet back under me. I separated four things. The fact, the story, the lesson, the next move. The fact was, no one enrolled in reset this round. The story was, no one wants what I offer. I've wasted my time and my money. I'm failing at this business. The lesson was, I need clearer positioning. I need to build a stronger audience before launching again. I need to look honestly at how I communicated the transformation, how I invited people in, and whether I gave the right audience enough time to trust the offer. And the next move? Not burn the whole thing down, not dramatically on a whim by my highland cows that I've always wanted so they could be my emotionally supportive animals. And to be clear, I have the acreage. I just don't have the husband approval. The next move is to learn, to talk to the women who attended, to ask better questions, to test the messaging, strengthen the offer, keep building trust, and then decide what the next version looks like. And that distinction matters because I'm a failure, gives you nowhere to go. This particular approach did not produce the results I wanted, gives you options. Specificity interrupts shame. The other thing I've been thinking about is fear. Launching reset scared me because I cared about it. I wasn't only offering a program. I was offering an idea that felt deeply personal. I was saying, I believe this can help women, and I'm asking that you believe it too. That's vulnerable. Our nervous systems do not particularly enjoy uncertainty, exposure, or possible rejection. And the launch contains all three. So yes, fear can be a sign that something matters, but I also want to challenge one piece of popular advice. You've probably heard people say, if it scares you, you have to do it. Not necessarily. Sometimes things scare us because they matter. Some things scare us because we need more information. Some things scare us because the plan still needs work. And some things scare us because they're genuinely not right for us. Courage is not blindly ignoring fear. Courage is getting curious about it. Is this fear asking me to stop? Is it asking me to prepare? Maybe it's asking me to ask for help. Or it's simply asking me to accept that I can't control the outcome. Fear's information. It's not a fortune teller. It doesn't know how the story ends. And here's what I want you to know. The most successful people I know do not have less fear. They just know how to use it differently. Sarah Blakely's father asked her and her brother every single night at dinner, what did you fail at today? He normalized failure so completely that she wasn't afraid to try bold things. And she built spanks. Michael Jordan said, I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot 26 times and missed. I have failed over and over and over in my life, and that is why I've succeeded. Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper job for lacking imagination and good ideas. His first animation studio went bankrupt because he miscalculated the cost. He could have quit. He could have decided that the firing was proof that he wasn't cut out for this. Instead, he learned. He built something that has become an empire. The fear didn't disappear. He just stopped letting it rate the ending of his story. So we're action-oriented on this podcast. And there's three things I want you to carry into next week if something doesn't work for you. Number one, name the failure precisely. Instead of saying, I failed, finish the sentence. What specifically did not work? The presentation, the application, the conversation, the launch, the plan, the timing. Your first interpretation may not even be the correct one. The more precisely you name what happened, the less power Shame has to turn one result into the verdict of your entire life. Number two, separate the fact from the story. Ask yourself, what do I know happened? And what am I making that mean? I did not get a promotion as a fact. I'll never be respected here, and my career is going nowhere, is a story. The story might contain information worth exploring, but it's still a story. It's not set in stone. You're allowed to question it. Number three, keep the whole house in view. When one room feels dark, deliberately look through the rest of the house. What else is true? What's working? Who loves you? What have you already survived? What are you building that can't be measured by today's results? It's a legacy piece. That week I was disappointed by the launch. I was also so proud of my daughter. I was loved, I was learning. I was still someone who had created something meaningful. All of those things were true at the exact same time. Your disappointment does not have to disappear before you're allowed to notice what's still good. Before you go, I want to leave you with four questions. You can write them down, take them on your next walk, or sit with them after everybody else goes to bed and the house finally stops asking things from you. Number one, what actually happened? Not the dramatic version, not the most painful interpretation. Like what are the facts? Number two, what am I making this mean about me? Is that meaning true? Or is it a story that fear wrote while I was hurting? Three, what else is true right now? Where is there still love, growth, possibility, and something quietly going right? And finally, what is the next brave, useful move? Not the move that proves everyone wrong. Not the move that guarantees success. Just one next honest useful move. The reset launch didn't go the way I wanted it to. That's true. It's also true that I created something I believe in. And it's true that I learned and I'm still learning. It's true that I'm not finished. Neither are you. And it's true that during the same week I watched my daughter walk towards the rest of her life, I got to be disappointed and proud in the same breath. And so do you. A hard moment is a moment. It's real. It deserves to be felt, but it's not the whole house. And the should I'm personally over this week, the belief that successful women should only tell a story after they've figured it all out. They've fixed it and they packaged the failure into a neat little comeback. Sometimes we're still in the middle. Sometimes we're learning in public. Sometimes the brave thing is simply telling the truth before we know how it ends. And now I want to hear from you. What should are you over? What expectation, old belief, or impossible standard are you ready to stop caring? Send me a voice note on Instagram or client in one of my emails or share this episode with a woman who needs to be reminded that one hard thing does not define her whole life. Thank you for being here. I'll see you next week.