How I Failed: I closed my business because my heart wasn’t in it - Jess Salamanca

0:00If you're not doing hiring right, then your business is not going to succeed. But finding the right people is a nightmare. You get sent loads of irrelevant applications, so you spend hours sending LinkedIn messages to great talent, hoping for the best, and honestly, it's just exhausting. The good news though, is I can tell you about Otter, who I use at my company Heights to hire some of our best people. Otter have over a million users on their platform, and they match my jobs to only the most relevant candidates. Plus, Otter makes sure candidates know exactly what kind of company they'd be joining, our mission, our values, and our culture.

0:37This means by the time I get to interviews, the applications that come from Otter are on a completely different level. The whole process is quicker too, so ultimately we get to hire the best people in less time. So if you want to upgrade your hiring, check out otter.com forward slash secret leaders. That's otta.com forward slash secret leaders. It is sad. It is sad that the business didn't go where I wanted it to go. And, you know, talking to people like you and you saying, oh, I would have, you know, would love to buy the ice cream. I was like, well, the ice cream doesn't exist anymore. I can't even have it anymore.

1:14And that is sad because I do agree there's it has legs, an idea that has legs and someone else will probably do it and do it better than I could. But it is sad to think that that business didn't go all the way, even if it was the right decision. Jess Salamanca is the founder of Moxie Club, a community for female founders. But before Moxie, there was another business Jess started which could have been big. She had the opportunity to take it to a whole new level, but instead decided to close it down. What really happened?

1:52Jess started the business, Banana Scoops, at her kitchen table. and I'm not going to lie, it's the kind of product I would have loved. In 2019, I started a banana-based ice cream, so I like to call it Ice Cream So Healthy You Can Have It For Breakfast. So it was called Banana Scoops, basically a bit of a frozen smoothie, so super healthy but still that indulgent kind of ice cream feel, so it was kind of like blending the best of both worlds, something that was super, super tasty but also was good enough that you could have it for breakfast. What's not to like? Delicious and uncalorific. The retailers thought so too.

2:27Very, very quickly and last in a year, we got listed with Ocado, Planet Organic, As Nature Intended, which is now part of Planet Organic, and two different distributors around the UK. So that meant lots of independence as well. So that bit was the amazing bit that I'm super, super proud of. I still kind of like have to pinch myself that we actually managed to do that. But obviously, that's kind of like the highlights. That's what was amazing about it. And that was what I was really proud of. Obviously, behind the scenes, it's not always as shiny as that, I guess. Jess experienced something she hadn't expected.

3:05With any new product, and this is something that I didn't quite realise at the time, and maybe goes down to, you know, one of the failures, I guess, in the mindset that I had. But I didn't quite realise that, you know, not everyone is going to love your product. um so we did have some amazing reviews and people that absolutely loved the product and people that were like buying it you know two tubs a week and giving it to their children because it was like you know low sugar low calorie ice cream um but we also had negative reviews and i think people don't talk about this people just talk about the you know hundreds of five-star reviews and they never talk about the negative ones and i must say that was heartbreaking for me like that was such to shock especially as we launched into Ocado in May 2020 so right in the middle of the first lockdown so you know the world was crazy no one knew what was going on and then you know I was working on my own without seeing anyone um to make this product and this business happen and then these some of these negative reviews started coming in and it was it was heartbreaking I I was crying.

4:12I can only describe it as almost like a breakup when your world is just shattered because you put so much effort into creating a product that you love and your family loves and friends love. And you do have really, really good customer reviews, but all you're going to fixate is on the one or two negative reviews that come in. And that can be just heartbreaking, really. But the handful of negative reviews was not the reason Jess closed the business. It all came to a head when something happened that should have been good news. We bootstrapped the business to a point where we were in Ocado. We needed funding.

4:47We needed money to really grow the business. We needed to put more money into packaging and manufacturing and NPD and marketing, obviously. And we got this investment offer. They approached us. It's not someone that we kind of like approach them or anything like that. They approached us. They sent us a contract. I'll be honest it wasn't a great investment offer but it was an offer it was it was flattering and there was a clause that said something along the lines of I commit to working exclusively for the brand for the next three years something along those lines quite normal investment offers obviously if someone's going to give you money they want to make sure that you're going to be working in that business um but that's when I knew I couldn't sign that clause I couldn't get myself to sign those that that point because I knew I couldn't work on this exclusively for the next three years I knew my heart wasn't in it I knew that whilst I loved the idea and those prospects and where the business could lead I knew that the reality of it is that I was not really enjoying my day-to-day I was stuck at home sending emails that didn't get replied because if you email buyers no one replies to you and so I just I just knew deep inside that it just wasn't the right thing for me.

6:01To be fair, Jess had also started two other businesses, which had more of a pull. But it begs the question, why hustle so much on banana scoops if she didn't really want to do it anyway and had other ventures? When I had the idea for the business was five years before it actually did anything with it, which I think happens a lot. You have the idea and it takes you years before you actually go ahead and do anything with it. When I had the idea, I was like a health freak. I was going to the gym all the time. I was having green smoothies and that you know that was my world I love that you know healthy ice cream was everything that I wanted when I actually launched the business and then COVID hit I must be honest and to say that I'd rather have a pizza than a green smoothie at that point so I was still really interesting in the business I was super excited about the prospects of it and I was really excited about growing the business having a team but the product itself I probably was less excited about it at that point than I was when I first had the idea, if that makes sense.

7:01It does. But the decision to close Banana Scoops had unforeseen effects. I still think it affects me now that when I'm trying to grow my current business, I can see how limiting beliefs and almost that fear that it's going to happen again, it's almost stopping me in my new business, which is really, really interesting. It's something that I've only kind of like been exploring recently. But I do think that because that business didn't work out the way that I thought it was going to work out, I am now scared of taking risks with my new business. Jess is scared that it could happen again, that she'll suddenly think this isn't for me.

7:37You obviously don't want to work on something for years only to find out it's not what you want to do. So how do you know if what you're working on is the right business early on? It's a bit like how do you know if your partner is the right person to marry I mean I'm not married so I haven't been through this myself but I feel like the answer would be quite similar and it's almost like a gut feeling you just know it's like how do you know if you love a person you just know it you just feel it within you I think it's the same with a business I think you just there's something inside of you that you just know that it's the right things and I don't think I ever had that with banana scoops.

8:14I don't think even my second business, which was incredibly successful. And it was a surprise. It wasn't it was an accident. It was a happy accident in that business. Even that business, I didn't love it. It was just something to do over lockdown that made me money. And it was helping people. So you know, I did like that bit. But with this business I'm currently doing, I just love it. Jess learned some other things, which I think are spot on, particularly if you've never started a business before. Let's be honest, you know, there's this, there's a saying of love the work you do and you won't work a day in your life that is so untrue that is just not true every founder that I speak to whilst they love their business and they're super excited about the product or the service that they're doing it's you're not going to love every second of it and I think that was a big learning for me because I thought that because I was running my own business and I was in control of what my day-to-day looked like and I was making the decisions I thought I would love every second of it and that's just so far from the truth like there's so much admin you need to do there's so much rejection you need to deal with there's so much um so much that you need to learn and a lot of times you're working from not your zone of genius a lot of times you're working on things that you've never done before you have no idea how to do it and you need to figure it out and that can be so so frustrating so kind of like developing that growth mindset of you know even if i've never done this before it.

9:37Even if I have no clue how to do it, I can figure it out and I can make it work. And that's, it's easier said than done. I feel it's one of those things that everyone listening would be like, yeah, of course, makes sense. But until you're there, I don't think you quite realise how important it is. Jess also has a tip for how to stop procrastinating, which is something I'm going to start doing, if I ever get around to it. When I find myself basically procrastinating, and I think this is really interesting because a lot of people procrastinate, but they don't know why they're procrastinating. The main reason why I tend to procrastinate is because I'm either scared or doubtful or not really sure how to do something.

10:16So it might be that I'm scared of doing something because I might get rejected or it may not work, or I'm procrastinating because I'm not really sure what steps I should be taking. So I kind of like put it off because I don't really want to think about that just yet. So what I tend to do is write down and all of those limiting beliefs that come up. So I'm not good enough. I don't have the right experience. I'm not well connected enough. My previous business failed, you know, things like that. And then I try to write next to it. What would I say to my friend who, if my friend was telling me that, so if my friend was saying I'm not good enough, I'd probably come up with a whole list of reasons why they are good enough.

10:56So for me, I would be like, well, I did launch Pronounoscoops out of nothing. So that's worse than something. We got into Ocado. That's amazing. I had a second business that made six figure profit in less than 11 months. That's something to call for. So whenever I'm doubting myself and I'm coming up with these excuses, I try to be really practical about it. I'm like, right, let's sit down. Let's write this down and let's come up with all the reasons why those are actually not true. Those are just stories I'm telling myself. They're not the reality. They're just reasons and excuses I'm giving myself not to do the next big thing because it's scary.

11:39Jess Salamanca with some great advice. She also says you should reframe your failures. They aren't failures. They are learning opportunities. Right, she is too. Thanks for listening to this episode. I've been your host, Dan Murray-Surter. We'll be back with another series of Bite Size in a couple of weeks time. If you like this episode, please hit follow or subscribe. See you then.