Jasmine Star 00:00:00  Welcome to day two of the five day Growth Challenge. I'm so happy you're here. As we continue to celebrate the 500th episode of The Jasmin Starr Show and our fifth podcast anniversary. If you missed yesterday's episode, be sure to check it out. But today we're diving into something we've all faced failure. We will talk about the ways to push back from past setbacks and turn them into stepping stones. And don't forget, if you leave a review during this challenge, you'll be entered to win $500 and stick around till the end for your action step. Part of the challenge is taking the action step to get to where you want to go. Let's get into the first reason failures are necessary for business growth. They help you build resilience. When we face failure. We're forced to either number one quit or number two develop resilience. What is resilience? The ability to get back up. It's grit. It's hustle. It's the hones. You know, like failures teach us how to bounce back, how to adapt, how to persevere when things get tough.

Jasmine Star 00:01:03  Which y'all, when we're talking about business, things will get tough. It's not a matter of if, it's when. So if you know it's going to get tough, then you're going to go through it and you're going to say, I am supposed to learn something. What am I supposed to learn through this? When you get familiar with failure and you become resilient, you start to trust yourself and your abilities, which gives you the strength and confidence to handle change and uncertainty. So when I created my first ever online course, it was called instant 80. And the premise of this course, and I've talked about this before in the podcast, I'm not going to get into how we started here, and it was completely unexpected, and it was super scrappy and I didn't know what I was doing, and I just went through the process. Right. And so when I talk about that story about how I launched my very first digital course, it sounds great because, yeah, I made over $1 million in less than a year, right? Like, well, nobody knows all the back end, all the lessons that we learned to get to that point.

Jasmine Star 00:01:56  But then we wanted to offer it evergreen. So that means that, like, people can buy the course whenever they wanted, like we used to have just open and closed enclosed period, and I paid a lot of money to learn how to set it up with evergreen. And then I invested in new software for the evergreen, and then I made a new ads for the evergreen, and then I recorded multiple new webinars for the evergreen. And I am telling you, no matter what we did, it just didn't work. It wasn't working. And I am telling you, I can get into the details and maybe I will. So it's like we all learn from these lessons, but we tried everything to improve it, but it just did not convert the way that it did. When I launched into 180 live. When I launched it live, we had massive success. And when I tried everything, no matter what we did, y'all. And when I finally decided to pull the plug, I felt like I wasted so much time and money and I could sit here and tell you how I beat myself up like you failed.

Jasmine Star 00:02:57  What a failure. This was a failure. But now when I look back and say that was a series of lessons that taught you what, what were you supposed to learn? And so I have to tell you, you know, since that time, I made a list of everything I learned and the new things I could try and new ways to test an evergreen offer. So at the time of this recording, we're currently in the process of trying our hand at evergreen again. I just want to try it based on the lessons that I had learned, I feel really good. We're going to set up an evergreen webinar for Social Curator. I want to educate people around what this is outside of live launching, and I hired a consultant who was teaching us how to get better, because I'm not going to let past experiences and past lessons dictate what I'm going to do in the future. I never want to let failure prevent me from trying the same things again. But I'm smarter. I'm better. I'm more prepared.

Jasmine Star 00:03:50  Now. Why? Those lessons prepared me for it. And this is very good because the entrepreneurial journey is inherently uncertain, like, and it will always be inherently uncertain, but it's the failures that help us overcome things, and then we become comfortable with change, and eventually the changes and the challenges become just an everyday, expected part of building a business. Hot dang, that makes us stronger. Period. The end. The second reason failures are necessary for business growth is because they improve innovation and creativity. Now you might hear those two words and be like, I'm checking out here, no problem. But I have to tell you that innovation existed in my business far before we ever had our own tech stack, before I had a development team, before I hired a CTO. Basically, innovation is a Silicon Valley rich people, venture back capitalist way of saying get scrappy and try new things. That's it. So facing failures, more often than not, it's going to lead to creative problem solving. When we are met with setbacks, were forced to think outside of the box and come up with innovative solutions.

Jasmine Star 00:04:57  Y'all, this is where we get scrappy. I think somebody that's a famous quote that said, like necessity is the mother of innovation. Basically, when you're out here like a squirrel trying to get a nut, trying to make a dollar out of $0.15, and you're like, I need this thing to work in Silicon Valley. They said, oh, that person's so innovative. And out here, like in, you know, East L.A. is like doing what you need to do to survive. Cool. You're innovative. Bravo. And the truth is, as our businesses grow and the setbacks and the issues that we face, they're going to become more severe. Like you might have heard me say that new levels bring new levels. Ooh. It's facts. So honing in on these problems solving skills now not only benefits your current state of business, but it prepares you for your future success and your growth. So the third reason why I believe firmly failures are necessary is they improve your self-awareness. Embracing failures makes us more self-aware by making us think about our strengths and weaknesses and how we can improve.

Jasmine Star 00:05:56  It also helps us stay very humble and understand ourselves better, which leads to self-improvement. At the time of this recording, I'm going to be headed to Arizona for an in-person mastermind retreat with other tech founders. I don't know anybody who's going on this retreat. I simply sign up. Why? I've realized that when I watch other people and I hear stories of how they have overcome their purported failures, what they've done, it helps and empowers me. But in order for me to get the most out of this event or any event, I need to be so self-aware of my limitations of the stories I tell myself I need to be okay being vulnerable, letting people know that I don't have it together. There is always been a struggle and perpetually, if you're in business, there will always be a struggle. Like, I'm going in with this intention, and they made us fill out a form that says, what are the three things you're going to be focusing on? And while I think people might list like networking and brand development, things like that I listed and maybe I sound super woowoo, but it is really my intention, the things I'm going to be focusing on at this retreat presence, humility and openness.

Jasmine Star 00:07:07  I think if I embody those three things, I'm going to get exactly what I need from this event. But that's on the back of self-awareness, of knowing that I don't need to network at this point in time. It's going to be important. But what am I trying to network toward? It sounds great, like brand development. It sounds great and we could always be doing it. But at this point in my life, in my career, I'm not looking for that. I am looking at finding who I am in this moment to grow as an entrepreneur. But that only comes off the back of self-awareness and self-awareness. The more lessons you have, you know, more failures you have, the more self-aware you become. As long as you're taking what happened and you're learning from it. Now, one of the biggest lessons I learned about my self-awareness was that for so long, I associated my self-worth with the outcome of a launch or promotion. And I get it. I know it sounds really weird to admit, but it's true.

Jasmine Star 00:07:56  Like the better the launch went, the better I felt about my skills as an entrepreneur, and I literally felt like, oh, it went well. Now I'm worthy of running a business. But if the promotion was, you know, mediocre and we didn't get the results we wanted, I associated the results with my worth as a human. That is so sad. Like when it didn't go well, I would ask myself, what does this mean about me? What is wrong with my skill set? That I can get the same results as that person or that person? And it wasn't until I started really assessing the strengths and weaknesses of my approach, and not of me. When I stood outside of myself and I assessed the approach, not who I am as a human, I was then finally able to grow as an entrepreneur because I could assess the situation for improvement and not bash myself for being too dumb or slow or stupid friends. That is what happens when you are aware that the lesson can and should be teaching you.

Jasmine Star 00:08:53  That overall improves your self-awareness, which then makes you a better entrepreneur. The fourth reason why failures are necessary is because they improve your decision making skills. Okay? When we analyze our failures and here's the thing if we're going and we're and we're learning a lot of lessons, right, we feel like, hey, Jasmine, it's been a long line of failures. The failures in it and of themselves don't teach you anything, right? the failures happen, and then you have to extrapolate what you're supposed to learn from it. That's the linchpin. If you really want to elevate, you really want to grow, you really want to change, and you're looking back at things don't happen for you. Well, all of those things were trying to teach you something. And if you don't learn what you're supposed to learn in that moment, you're going to have to go through the same lesson again and again. I sat recently with my therapist and I said, you know, I've been working with you now a year, and I feel like I make progress in so many parts of my life.

Jasmine Star 00:09:50  But this one thing I can't let go of. And so I continuously go through these lessons and I'm asking myself, what am I supposed to learn? But if I continue getting the same lesson, I haven't learned it. So what do I need to do to be more aware of learning when these lessons are occurring? Analyzing. When we analyze our failures and we make adjustments, we learn to approach our decisions with a new thought process and insight. Now it's the process. Like this process. It's going to help us make informed choices, consider risks, and it's going to lead us to be more effective and strategic in our decision making in the future when we are very aware. Oh, here is the lesson again. And then we ask ourselves, what am I supposed to learn from this? We're going to go through the lesson, and if we're aware of what we should learn, we shouldn't face that lesson again. If we come up and we have to face that same dang lesson again, we didn't learn what we were supposed to learn.

Jasmine Star 00:10:44  No problem. We're better for learning it. But it's the cognizance of saying, oh, all of these tiny building blocks are going to help me build a bridge to get over this particular issue.

Jasmine Star 00:10:52  Failures are part of the journey, but they don't define you. What matters is how you rise after each fall. Now. Now it's time for your action step. So I want you to reflect on a recent failure and simply write down what you learned from it. It can be one sentence and then decide one small step you can take today to move forward from it. And remember, leaving a review during this five day challenge gets you a chance to win $500. I can't wait to see you tomorrow for day three where we talk about building your emotional intelligence. Keep going. There's only three more days of the challenge and you've got this.