October 7, 2024 • 10 mins
What if failure was the key to unlocking your entrepreneurial potential? Join me, Joey Young, as I share how my own stumble with a failed subscription model became a catalyst for growth and innovation. In this episode, I unravel the misconception of failure as a dead end and reframe it as an invaluable stepping stone towards success. Listen to how mature companies harness setbacks as a treasure trove of learning and discovery, using them to refine strategies rather than hastily dropping projects. By embracing and expecting failure, we can build businesses that are not only resilient but thrive on constant improvement.
Whether you're just starting out or are a seasoned entrepreneur, the strategies discussed offer a roadmap to turning failures into triumphs and building lasting connections with your audience.
Got Questions? Send them here and I'll tackle them on the show: joey@joeyhyoung.com
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Ready to scale your business? Book a free connection call here and let's chat!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Joey Young (00:00):
Welcome to Bright Side Business, where we talk to
online entrepreneurs likeyourself about how to grow to
seven figures and beyond.
My name is Joey Young.
I helped grow my family'sprofessional services business
to seven figures in under twoyears and I learned a lot of
lessons along the way.
One of them is about failure.
You see, several years ago,when I was starting my coaching
(00:21):
practice, I was brand new tothis whole world of
entrepreneurship.
Very bright eyed and bushytailed, I got completely sold in
this idea of a reoccurringrevenue model and I wanted my
whole business to be completelywrapped up in and based on this
idea of subscriptions.
Because I thought, oh wow, youknow, if I could just get a ton
of people on my subscriptionprogram, like I could do a
(00:42):
little bit of work, provide alittle bit of value to a ton of
people and make really highmargins, and it'd be a great
system to set my whole businessup on.
So the idea was was there, butum, the execution unfortunately
did not go as planned.
I'd set up my monthlysubscription program.
It was called monthly pro.
It was productivity stuff, anhour webcast each month with
(01:05):
some follow-up homework.
I, you know, got on the calls.
I delivered value for sixmonths and the average
attendance was like two peopleper webcast.
It was a complete financialfailure and, of course, a huge
hit to my ego because I was likeyou know.
I thought this would work.
You know I'd put all my heartand soul into this, yada, yada.
You know all the new business,entrepreneur stuff, right.
But very soon after I finishedthat subscription program
(01:31):
debacle, I learned a valuablelesson.
I learned about the valueladder in business.
It's the idea that a businesscan offer different tiers of
products.
You got your low ticket, yourmid ticket, your high ticket and
, of course, as an earlybusiness, I learned that it's
better to focus on high ticketbecause you can make higher
margins on those high ticketprograms and you have to do less
(01:54):
marketing to get three clientsthan you do to get 30 clients
for your low ticket.
So it actually makes sensefinancially and for your time to
start out if you don't have anaudience with a higher ticket
program.
But that's neither here northere.
Anyway, the point is I learneda huge lesson and now here we
are today, years later, I'mstill creating content, still
coaching.
That was a huge breakthroughfor me and I'd say that that was
(02:16):
a pretty normal experience fora new business owner.
We start out bright-eyed,bushy-tailed and we get to a
point where there's a failureand we learn something cool and
we carry on with a new productline or new service, or we just
change our approach or whateverand we keep going.
But the problem is we stillfeel fear about failing.
(02:41):
We have this lived experienceof failure as not a big deal,
but we don't believe that in ourhearts we still have this
innate fear like failure issomething that we should hide
from other people because it'slike shameful, or failure is
something we should avoid at allcosts.
Because we heard the quotefailure is not an option from
some space movie, I think, andso we can't fail, you know.
(03:03):
And it just doesn't help whenit comes to business, because
the reality is in business,failure should not just be
accepted, it should be expected,and I'll tell you why in a
second here.
But we need to change ourphilosophy from failure is an
end game to failure is astepping stone.
Because listen to this there'sone approach a company could
(03:25):
take to a new product or a newinitiative.
It could be a new product lineor just a project they're
working on.
It goes like this.
You've got a new vision.
So you're really excited.
You make progress reallyquickly.
You take three steps forward.
Everything's hunky-dory andthen, during this product
development process, thisproduct launch, this project,
(03:45):
whatever it is you meet somechallenges pretty quickly.
So you realize, as you'remaking progress, as you take one
step forward, you're alsotaking a step back in some areas
, and so there starts to be alittle bit less momentum, a
little more confusion.
These challenges start to popup you didn't anticipate.
And then One of thosechallenges is great enough to
the degree that the personheading up the project maybe
(04:07):
it's you as the business owner,maybe it's a team lead they
decide that this product orproject is a failure.
It's completely unsalvageable,it's embarrassing, we have too
much sunk costs, we need tofocus on something else.
So they shut the whole thingdown and all that money is
basically drained down thetoilet, and a lot of
(04:28):
solopreneurs do this in cycles.
So they'll have a new initiative, new marketing strategy.
They'll make some earlyprogress because it's fun and
new, it's exciting, has a lot ofpotential.
We reach some challenges andeventually we reach a challenge
that we designate a failure andthen we give up and try
something new.
We completely deviate from thatline of thinking and we start
on a new project or newinitiative somewhere else.
(04:50):
Now here's what maturecompanies do.
They don't view failure as theend game.
It's simply a stepping stone onthe way to the desired result.
So these companies will begin aproject and create some
momentum early on.
They'll face challenges, justlike any other business will,
but the difference is how theyreact to them.
(05:12):
When they do reach a point wherethey have a perceived failure,
where they had a really bighypothesis that didn't end up
being what they thought it wouldbe, or they had a beta test
that flopped, where they couldconceivably call the whole thing
a failure, they don't throw inthe towel at that point.
They sit down and they look atthe data.
They look at the results of theprevious tests.
(05:36):
They look at what happened, so,like if it was a new product
launch, they looked at thecomments on this product to see,
okay, what were people actuallynot liking about this product
that caused them not to buy?
What were the, the specificfeedback they had about X, y, z,
feature, you know what?
What was the response to thiscopy versus that copy?
And so they capture the data.
(05:57):
They try to ingest all theinformation and really soak up,
okay, what happened here, sothat they can move on to the
next step, which is changingtheir approach.
They're like okay, so, based onthis failure, we can see that
one, two, three things need tobe twisted by a little bit, and
we need to stop doing that thing.
We need to put this piece inand we're going to try this
again.
(06:17):
Okay, now we're launching againwith a specifically better
strategy than what we hadpreviously, because we took the
time to not get all emotionalabout the failure or think we
should give up because it gothard, but instead we just looked
at what happened, we changedour approach and then we tried
(06:40):
again and then, ultimately, thatleads to the desired result,
because we are focused on theapproach instead of focusing on
getting the early results.
So how does that translate toyou?
How can you and I leverage thefailure of that is a stepping
stone and grow our business?
Well, first of all, we need tomarry the goal and date the
(07:01):
approach.
That's the number one thing totake away from this whole
process.
If you want to view failure asa stepping stone and not an end
game.
Remember that your goal is yourNorth Star.
You have a target, you have avision, you have something in
the future you want to gettowards in six months, 12 months
, whatever.
That is what you should stickwith.
What's flexible is the approachyou take and you should not be
(07:23):
fully emotionally bought intoany specific approach.
Sometimes, with egos, you canget in businesses where someone
tries to, you know, getemotionally attached to their
idea and so they try to push itforward on the team and if it
doesn't work out, you know itends up being this huge disaster
because they had their ego alltied up with a specific approach
.
Well, just completely de-attachall emotion from the approach
(07:44):
and just keep trying thingswhile keeping the goal, the
North Star.
The second thing is to actuallylearn from your failures.
Not too many people actuallytake time out of their week to
sit down and to look at the lastweek of journaling they did, or
the notes from meetings, oreven the marketing efforts they
(08:06):
put forward or the fulfillmentefforts they put forward, and
try to pull some lessons fromthe last week.
Now, this is really powerfulbecause if you take a look at,
let's say, a sales call thatwent south in the last week,
there was probably not a lot oflessons.
You learned that the momentafter you got off the call
because you were all filled withemotion and adrenaline from the
call.
But if you look at it a fewdays later and you say, okay,
(08:28):
what, what actually led to thatsales call flopping?
And you, you know, review somenotes or maybe a recording,
you're going to get a lot moregood lessons from that failure
than if you just rely onwhatever you thought the lesson
was in the moment.
So taking time to sit down andactually learn from your
failures, that's going to giveyou a lot of leverage when you
(08:49):
actually fail.
And then sharing your failureswith your team or with your
people.
If you don't have a team yet inyour business, this is so
powerful.
You want to not just havefailures accepted in your, in
your organization as a culture,whether it's you or a huge team
like you want failures to beexpected in your business.
You want people to try thingsand and fail, to attempt
(09:13):
different ideas to see whatworks better.
You don't want a lackadaisicalapproach in your business.
So the way you do that is youlead the way and you share like
hey, I tried this thing, itflopped.
I tried this thing it flopped.
I tried this thing it halfflopped.
I tried this thing wow, look atthat, 80% worked.
If you share those things inteam meetings or if you just
kind of think about them, youknow in terms of if it's just
(09:35):
you and your business, you'regoing to get a lot more bang for
your buck in terms of your timeand you're going to get a lot
more ROI in your failures,because now it's not some
awkward thing to be hidden, tobe ashamed of, to be avoided.
Failure is a normal part of thebusiness development process.
It's a normal part of launchinga marketing strategy.
It's a normal part of having aproduct being sold to a new
(10:00):
market and figuring out how todo that, or try to figure out
team or HR or any other aspectof business.
So share it a lot.
Hey, I hope this lesson onfailure has been helpful for you
today.
If you have a question for theshow, I would love to hear it.
Shoot me an email, joey, atjoeyhyoungcom, or a DM on
Instagram at joeyhyoung onInstagram, and I'd love to hear
(10:22):
your question so I can talkabout it here in the show.
I can attack it here and maybeyou'll get some breakthrough
you've been looking for in thearea of business that you are
looking for breakthrough on.
And hey, like and subscribe ifyou're this far in the video.
I'm sure it helped you at leasta little bit.
But I'd appreciate it if youhit that subscribe button or the
five-star review button ifyou're on a podcast or whatever.
All those things really helpout the algorithm to spread the
(10:45):
show around.
So appreciate you doing thatand until next time, my friends,
happy scaling.
Welcome to Bright Side Business, where we talk to
online entrepreneurs likeyourself about how to grow to
seven figures and beyond.
My name is Joey Young.
I helped grow my family'sprofessional services business
to seven figures in under twoyears and I learned a lot of
lessons along the way.
One of them is about failure.
You see, several years ago,when I was starting my coaching
(00:21):
practice, I was brand new tothis whole world of
entrepreneurship.
Very bright eyed and bushytailed, I got completely sold in
this idea of a reoccurringrevenue model and I wanted my
whole business to be completelywrapped up in and based on this
idea of subscriptions.
Because I thought, oh wow, youknow, if I could just get a ton
of people on my subscriptionprogram, like I could do a
(00:42):
little bit of work, provide alittle bit of value to a ton of
people and make really highmargins, and it'd be a great
system to set my whole businessup on.
So the idea was was there, butum, the execution unfortunately
did not go as planned.
I'd set up my monthlysubscription program.
It was called monthly pro.
It was productivity stuff, anhour webcast each month with
(01:05):
some follow-up homework.
I, you know, got on the calls.
I delivered value for sixmonths and the average
attendance was like two peopleper webcast.
It was a complete financialfailure and, of course, a huge
hit to my ego because I was likeyou know.
I thought this would work.
You know I'd put all my heartand soul into this, yada, yada.
You know all the new business,entrepreneur stuff, right.
But very soon after I finishedthat subscription program
(01:31):
debacle, I learned a valuablelesson.
I learned about the valueladder in business.
It's the idea that a businesscan offer different tiers of
products.
You got your low ticket, yourmid ticket, your high ticket and
, of course, as an earlybusiness, I learned that it's
better to focus on high ticketbecause you can make higher
margins on those high ticketprograms and you have to do less
(01:54):
marketing to get three clientsthan you do to get 30 clients
for your low ticket.
So it actually makes sensefinancially and for your time to
start out if you don't have anaudience with a higher ticket
program.
But that's neither here northere.
Anyway, the point is I learneda huge lesson and now here we
are today, years later, I'mstill creating content, still
coaching.
That was a huge breakthroughfor me and I'd say that that was
(02:16):
a pretty normal experience fora new business owner.
We start out bright-eyed,bushy-tailed and we get to a
point where there's a failureand we learn something cool and
we carry on with a new productline or new service, or we just
change our approach or whateverand we keep going.
But the problem is we stillfeel fear about failing.
(02:41):
We have this lived experienceof failure as not a big deal,
but we don't believe that in ourhearts we still have this
innate fear like failure issomething that we should hide
from other people because it'slike shameful, or failure is
something we should avoid at allcosts.
Because we heard the quotefailure is not an option from
some space movie, I think, andso we can't fail, you know.
(03:03):
And it just doesn't help whenit comes to business, because
the reality is in business,failure should not just be
accepted, it should be expected,and I'll tell you why in a
second here.
But we need to change ourphilosophy from failure is an
end game to failure is astepping stone.
Because listen to this there'sone approach a company could
(03:25):
take to a new product or a newinitiative.
It could be a new product lineor just a project they're
working on.
It goes like this.
You've got a new vision.
So you're really excited.
You make progress reallyquickly.
You take three steps forward.
Everything's hunky-dory andthen, during this product
development process, thisproduct launch, this project,
(03:45):
whatever it is you meet somechallenges pretty quickly.
So you realize, as you'remaking progress, as you take one
step forward, you're alsotaking a step back in some areas
, and so there starts to be alittle bit less momentum, a
little more confusion.
These challenges start to popup you didn't anticipate.
And then One of thosechallenges is great enough to
the degree that the personheading up the project maybe
(04:07):
it's you as the business owner,maybe it's a team lead they
decide that this product orproject is a failure.
It's completely unsalvageable,it's embarrassing, we have too
much sunk costs, we need tofocus on something else.
So they shut the whole thingdown and all that money is
basically drained down thetoilet, and a lot of
(04:28):
solopreneurs do this in cycles.
So they'll have a new initiative, new marketing strategy.
They'll make some earlyprogress because it's fun and
new, it's exciting, has a lot ofpotential.
We reach some challenges andeventually we reach a challenge
that we designate a failure andthen we give up and try
something new.
We completely deviate from thatline of thinking and we start
on a new project or newinitiative somewhere else.
(04:50):
Now here's what maturecompanies do.
They don't view failure as theend game.
It's simply a stepping stone onthe way to the desired result.
So these companies will begin aproject and create some
momentum early on.
They'll face challenges, justlike any other business will,
but the difference is how theyreact to them.
(05:12):
When they do reach a point wherethey have a perceived failure,
where they had a really bighypothesis that didn't end up
being what they thought it wouldbe, or they had a beta test
that flopped, where they couldconceivably call the whole thing
a failure, they don't throw inthe towel at that point.
They sit down and they look atthe data.
They look at the results of theprevious tests.
(05:36):
They look at what happened, so,like if it was a new product
launch, they looked at thecomments on this product to see,
okay, what were people actuallynot liking about this product
that caused them not to buy?
What were the, the specificfeedback they had about X, y, z,
feature, you know what?
What was the response to thiscopy versus that copy?
And so they capture the data.
(05:57):
They try to ingest all theinformation and really soak up,
okay, what happened here, sothat they can move on to the
next step, which is changingtheir approach.
They're like okay, so, based onthis failure, we can see that
one, two, three things need tobe twisted by a little bit, and
we need to stop doing that thing.
We need to put this piece inand we're going to try this
again.
(06:17):
Okay, now we're launching againwith a specifically better
strategy than what we hadpreviously, because we took the
time to not get all emotionalabout the failure or think we
should give up because it gothard, but instead we just looked
at what happened, we changedour approach and then we tried
(06:40):
again and then, ultimately, thatleads to the desired result,
because we are focused on theapproach instead of focusing on
getting the early results.
So how does that translate toyou?
How can you and I leverage thefailure of that is a stepping
stone and grow our business?
Well, first of all, we need tomarry the goal and date the
(07:01):
approach.
That's the number one thing totake away from this whole
process.
If you want to view failure asa stepping stone and not an end
game.
Remember that your goal is yourNorth Star.
You have a target, you have avision, you have something in
the future you want to gettowards in six months, 12 months
, whatever.
That is what you should stickwith.
What's flexible is the approachyou take and you should not be
(07:23):
fully emotionally bought intoany specific approach.
Sometimes, with egos, you canget in businesses where someone
tries to, you know, getemotionally attached to their
idea and so they try to push itforward on the team and if it
doesn't work out, you know itends up being this huge disaster
because they had their ego alltied up with a specific approach
.
Well, just completely de-attachall emotion from the approach
(07:44):
and just keep trying thingswhile keeping the goal, the
North Star.
The second thing is to actuallylearn from your failures.
Not too many people actuallytake time out of their week to
sit down and to look at the lastweek of journaling they did, or
the notes from meetings, oreven the marketing efforts they
(08:06):
put forward or the fulfillmentefforts they put forward, and
try to pull some lessons fromthe last week.
Now, this is really powerfulbecause if you take a look at,
let's say, a sales call thatwent south in the last week,
there was probably not a lot oflessons.
You learned that the momentafter you got off the call
because you were all filled withemotion and adrenaline from the
call.
But if you look at it a fewdays later and you say, okay,
(08:28):
what, what actually led to thatsales call flopping?
And you, you know, review somenotes or maybe a recording,
you're going to get a lot moregood lessons from that failure
than if you just rely onwhatever you thought the lesson
was in the moment.
So taking time to sit down andactually learn from your
failures, that's going to giveyou a lot of leverage when you
(08:49):
actually fail.
And then sharing your failureswith your team or with your
people.
If you don't have a team yet inyour business, this is so
powerful.
You want to not just havefailures accepted in your, in
your organization as a culture,whether it's you or a huge team
like you want failures to beexpected in your business.
You want people to try thingsand and fail, to attempt
(09:13):
different ideas to see whatworks better.
You don't want a lackadaisicalapproach in your business.
So the way you do that is youlead the way and you share like
hey, I tried this thing, itflopped.
I tried this thing it flopped.
I tried this thing it halfflopped.
I tried this thing wow, look atthat, 80% worked.
If you share those things inteam meetings or if you just
kind of think about them, youknow in terms of if it's just
(09:35):
you and your business, you'regoing to get a lot more bang for
your buck in terms of your timeand you're going to get a lot
more ROI in your failures,because now it's not some
awkward thing to be hidden, tobe ashamed of, to be avoided.
Failure is a normal part of thebusiness development process.
It's a normal part of launchinga marketing strategy.
It's a normal part of having aproduct being sold to a new
(10:00):
market and figuring out how todo that, or try to figure out
team or HR or any other aspectof business.
So share it a lot.
Hey, I hope this lesson onfailure has been helpful for you
today.
If you have a question for theshow, I would love to hear it.
Shoot me an email, joey, atjoeyhyoungcom, or a DM on
Instagram at joeyhyoung onInstagram, and I'd love to hear
(10:22):
your question so I can talkabout it here in the show.
I can attack it here and maybeyou'll get some breakthrough
you've been looking for in thearea of business that you are
looking for breakthrough on.
And hey, like and subscribe ifyou're this far in the video.
I'm sure it helped you at leasta little bit.
But I'd appreciate it if youhit that subscribe button or the
five-star review button ifyou're on a podcast or whatever.
All those things really helpout the algorithm to spread the
(10:45):
show around.
So appreciate you doing thatand until next time, my friends,
happy scaling.
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