Business Lessons That Will Make You A Better Entrepreneur

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0:38Welcome back to the Jasmine Star Show, a place where we discuss business, marketing, and today, failures, which are not only inevitable in business, but I'm going to go on a limb here, y 'all. I'm going to say failures are necessary. And you know, I truly believe this, that failures aren't failures. I have stopped calling my failures failures, and it's had a profound effect on me. I believe that failures are lessons. And yes, I know that it sounds like a positive affirming Pinterest quote or a Hallmark card, but I actually really believe it. So if you're not failing and or you're not learning the lessons you need, you're probably not taking enough action or risks in your business.

1:21So when we talk about perceived failures my whole life, that is what I called them. I didn't know them as anything else. I should probably back up a little bit and talk about, still as an adult, this irrational fear of standardized tests. Probably harkens back to the fact that I was homeschooled and every year in the state of California, you had to be tested in some way, shape or form, even if you were homeschooled. So my mom would get together in these testing centers with other random homeschooling families to do standardized tests to see where we were. And let me just tell you, year after year, I was always behind the curve.

2:00Like my reading comprehension was very low. My math was disastrous. I was just what you might call a special kid. And through it all, my mom never blinked an eye. She's just like, standardized tests don't really matter to me. She's like, you're a great kid and you're learning. What a profound gift my mom gave me. However, as a kid, I started lodging in the results of these standardized tests. I was bonafide behind the curve. But a crazy thing happened. I went into a public high school when I was 14 years old, and I took the SAT going into my senior year. And I didn't break 1 ,000. I didn't break 900.

2:41And I graduated at the top of my class. My junior year, when I took the SAT, I had a 4.5 GPA. That meant I was taking all honors and AP classes, getting A's in them. And yet, I couldn't break 900 on the SAT. So, you know, flash forward five years, and it's time for me to take the LSAT, or otherwise known as LSAT. I wanted to go to law school. And this time, I said, I'm going to do it different. I'm going to invest in a training, in a course. Oh, yeah, dropped a few thousand dollars on tutors because I said, I'm going to get in because I'm going to prove that I can take for the first time in my life a standardized test.

3:27And for all intents and purposes, I have to tell you, I felt like a total failure because at other points in my life, I could say, oh, I took a standardized test and I was homeschooled. So I really wasn't prepared for it. And then I could say, oh, well, you know, it didn't break 900 for the SAT. but you know, I didn't study for it. And here I was for the LSAT and I studied for it. I paid a lot of money. I spent hours with every LSAT prep book and it felt like a total failure. And so I knew that if I stood any chance of getting into law school, I actually had to explain who I was outside of standardized tests.

4:06So when I was applying for law school, I wrote an entire essay about how tests are a standard indicator of success, but not my success. I look back at that essay and I am telling you right now, I believe that I made such a strong case for myself that it impacted my success rate. It impacted my acceptance rate. I got accepted to three of the top 10 law schools amongst other law schools simply by showing people that my failures have very little to do with my future success. Now, remember at the time, I was still calling them a failure. Like my LSAT was a complete and total failure. But I just said, hey, there's some facts here.

4:49I grew up terrible at standardist tests. I did terrible for my SAT, but I graduated with a 4.0. So I literally made a case going into law school. It was like kind of like my first flex at let me lay out a case to see if I convince you. And it worked. And beyond that, I got accepted to three of the top 10 law schools with a terrible LSAT score. And I still got scholarships. So if you have ever felt discouraged by a setback or what you might call a failure, or maybe you're just hesitant to take the next big step, this episode is for you. I want you to look at everything that has ever happened in your life that you would consider a failure.

5:33and I want you to make a case for your future success. I want you to say that whatever happened in the past has no indication of what's gonna happen in the future. And I wanna start with why failures are necessary for business growth. Now, you're gonna hear me flip between lessons and failures. And so oftentimes, at least for me, when somebody would say, Jasmine, there's no such thing as failure, you just learn, I would literally scoff and roll my eyes. And I'm like, you have no, like, sorry, lots of failures in my life. And I would say like failures make me stronger, like failures put a chip on my shoulder.

6:08And while I still agree with that, what I have learned is just by the nuanced change of me calling it a lesson, I felt empowered. But it took me a long time to get there. And so if you're still in the state of Jasmine, I will never call a failure a lesson. A failure is a failure, period. No problem. I got you. I was there. So I'm going to flip between the two. but I want you to know that even though failures and or lessons still suck the living daylights out of me and punch me in the gut, I am still choosing to call them a lesson because every single time I look back, I learn something so powerful.

6:43So this is me admitting that I'm going to flip between the two because I don't know where you're at on your journey, but I have wholehandedly raised my hand and said, it's not failure anymore. It's lessons. Now, there are four main reasons that come to mind, and I'm going to name each one why I think, hey, your failures, they're necessary for your business growth. And at this point in the conversation, if you want to bypass this podcast, go right ahead. I, like you, didn't want to talk about the failures that were coming in my future. I really, for the large part of my life, I love living that ostrich life.

7:15Let me just stick my head in the ground and let me just say, if I don't see it, it doesn't exist. No, no, no. It is his eyes wide open now. I am not an ostrich. I'm a giraffe. I want to see what's coming. Why? Because then you normalize it, you accept it, and then you set the terms. I see what's coming. Am I okay with it? Because if you see what's coming and you're okay with it, not because you want failure, not because you want to learn lessons, but because you want the future, the goal, the benefit of whatever that is, boom. now you're playing a different game. So let's just even before we talk about business, I have struggled wildly for the vast majority of my life.

7:56My weight fluctuates dramatically. It is up and down quite often. And so probably in the last couple years, there's just been a real kind of renaissance of me having a conversation. What is my goal? What is the benefit? Why am I making these lifestyle changes? And I have clearly identified what the goal is. But then I've also said, what's going to come up for me? What's going to come up for me is going out to dinner with friends. Do I choose dessert? Do I choose a glass of wine? Like the pitfalls, the lessons, the purported failures, I get to know, hey, that's coming. And occasionally, if you do decide to make a decision that impacts your future, no problem, but you knew what was coming and then you got to make that decision and then you could decide, am I going to get back on and pursue it again?

8:45Or am I not? So this whole conversation is not me predicting what your failures or lessons will be. It is simply saying they're coming, but they're necessary. Because number one, I believe that these lessons, they're going to help you build resilience. And this is going to help you overcome tough times. And you're going to continue to learn from these setbacks. Like you're building a muscle. If you ever want a six pack, you want to flex like a tricep, you got to build through it. And how do you do that? You do the reps. Your lessons are your reps. Number two, these failures are going to help improve innovation and your creativity.

9:19Number three, failures help improve self-awareness, which will help you understand yourself and improve your relationships with others. Like, I have to tell you, I value self-awareness so much. And I look at somebody who's extraordinarily self-aware, and there's a really good chance that they had life chopped up, handed to them like a plate of liver and sardines and some fresh onions as said, eat it up. It's the people who constantly consume the hardest stuff that have a deep sense of self-awareness. They've gone through enough lessons and processed them and got better over time. And lastly, why I think failures are necessary for business growth is they're going to help you improve your decision-making skills.

10:01So 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 HUSPA. It's cajones. You know, like failures teach us how to bounce back, how to adapt, how to persevere when things get tough. 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 what'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.

10:43What 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 Insta 180. And the premise of this course, and I've talked about this before on 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 a million dollars in less than a year, right?

11:21Like, well, nobody knows all the back and all the lessons that we learned to get to that point. But then we wanted to offer it evergreen. So that means that like people can buy the course whenever they wanted. We used to have just open and closed periods. 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 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.

11:58So it's like we all learned from these lessons, but we tried everything to improve it. But it just did not convert the way that it did when I launched Insta 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, 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, new ways to test an evergreen offer.

12:47So 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 a social curator. I want to educate people around what this is outside of live launching. And I hired a consultant who is 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 now.

13:21Why? Those lessons prepared me for it. And this is very good because the entrepreneurial journey is inherently uncertain. 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.

13:57No 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-backed 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, we're forced to think outside of the box and come up with innovative solutions. Y 'all, this is where we get scrappy. I think somebody, it's a famous quote that said, necessity is the mother of innovation.

14:35Basically, when you're out here like a squirrel trying to get a nut, trying to make a dollar out of 15 cents, 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 East LA, it's like, get 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've heard me say that new levels bring new devils. Ooh, it's facts. So honing in on these problem solving skills now not only benefits your current state of business, but it prepares you for your future success and your growth.

15:11So 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. 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.

15:58But 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 has 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 gonna 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 woo-woo, but it is really my intention.

16:31The things I'm gonna be focusing on at this retreat, presence, humility, and openness. 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.

17:06And self-awareness, the more lessons you have, the 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 a promotion. And I get it. I know it sounds really weird to admit, but it's true. 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.

17:44That 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.

18:24That 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.

19:02Well, 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, 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?

19:39Analyzing. 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 makings 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.

20:15No 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. Now, before we get into the necessary types of failures that we experience as business owners, I'm gonna name each one and then I'm gonna break it down. Like y 'all know, like if you've been with me on the podcast and we do these like kind of like deep dive frameworks, I give you a high level and then we dive in each one by one. So the types of failures, number one, a product or service failure. Number two, marketing or messaging failures.

20:44Number three, operational failures. And number four, leadership and decision-making failures. I've experienced all of these, you know. Here we go, we're gonna get into the reels, we're gonna get into the goods. and then we're going to get into stories. We're going to get into the lessons because at the end of this podcast, I want you to, number one, understand that failure is coming. Number two, do you accept the terms of the failure? Number three, failure is normal and we go through it all. And number four, when you know what types of failure you're working with in the moment, you know how to work through it faster.

21:22So let's dive in. The first type of failure is product or service failures. Now, this is a very common type of failure, and it happens a lot when an offer kind of misses the mark, if all short of meeting the needs or the expectations of your ideal customer. Now, this could happen because of lack of market research. Maybe it's not, you know, it's not product market fit. Maybe there's misalignment with customer preferences or maybe even unexpected changes in consumer behavior. OK, this type of failure is important because it shows where improvements are needed. But then when you know that the improvement is needed, well, it should be encouraging because now you get to reevaluate and innovate.

21:58A failure or misalignment doesn't mean you can't start over or fix it. It never does. So let's get into an example. A finance coach, let's call her Amy, launches a premium online course about advanced investment strategies. Now, she assumes her audience could be interested in high risk, high return investments. However, after the course was released, she received feedback that her ideal clients were actually needing support with paying off debt, increasing cash flow, and saving strategies for security and stability. The course falls short of meeting her current client needs. Now, this failure helps her reevaluate her content, and it helps her reevaluate her offers to better align with where her ideal clients are at that moment.

22:41This morning, JD and I, we took a meeting and the meeting started at 6.30 in the morning. You know, like bless our hearts, y 'all, bless our hearts. So there we are, 6.30 in the morning. And what we do in this small group of people is we just ideate business ideas. We love to poke holes. We love to slash the ideas. We like to talk about industry trends. We like to be predictive in what it is we're talking about. Think about this. You know, have you ever been to like a cafe and you see like a group of old guys with their newspapers out, cup of coffee and like a shared plate of bacon and eggs in front of them.

23:11And you look at them and you're like, what did you do with your life? Like, I like what it is that you're doing. JD and I decided that we wanted to be the old, that old group of people right now. And so we're just gathering ourselves around people and we're just having those early morning chats about business and where the industry's going. And possibly maybe if we come up with an idea together, can we create it? And so what was happening today was we're having a conversation and I decided to be very, very quiet. I needed to hear what people were saying. And then the thing I realized was we had a hypothesis around a need in an industry, but it was just an hypothesis.

23:51And so I think that if you are trying to build a business or make an offer on the hypothesis, it's going to be really hard. You're going to go through a ton of lessons before you find what actually is working. So you could say, oh, it was a failure. Was it a failure or did you not just know enough of the problem you were solving in the industry you were solving it? The less assumptions you make about a particular offer or service, the less assumptions. It's going to be more successful. Because when you say, a small group of people have been asking me for this type of thing, you're going to have a much more successful offer.

24:28It's not an assumption. We're dealing with facts and requests. So when we look at Amy's example, she kind of did what was happening today on the call. She was making a lot of assumptions around what her customers wanted. And it wasn't until she offered it that they said, oh, this is really great for you, Amy, but what I really need is help paying off debt. I really need to increase my cash flow. I'm really not interested in investments right now. I've got to do first things first. Huh. Cool. The second type of failure is marketing and messaging failures. Marketing and messaging failures happen when a product or service isn't presented or marketed to effectively communicate its value.

25:04And this, you know, this happens, what I see a lot of this happening is unclear messaging, ineffective advertising strategies, or failure to resonate with the ideal client. So what comes to mind here is Pepsi's ad during the Super Bowl game. It was 2017. Now, do you know that this ad, if you remember, it was Kendall Jenner and she joined a protest and then she walked over to a police officer to hand him a Pepsi. It was weird. If you don't know what I'm talking about, like go to YouTube and just put in Super Bowl 2017 Kendall Jenner Pepsi. Okay, this did not work for a few reasons. Number one, it tried to address serious social issues way too simplistically and far too insincerely.