Suz Chadwick [00:00:00]:

Welcome to the Brand Builders Lab Podcast. I'm your host, Sue Chadwick, certified business and mindset coach, author, and speaker. Each week, we'll be talking about simple but powerful business and mindset strategies that will help you build a lean, clean, and profitable business so you can learn to get out live your own way and pay yourself more. Forget average. It's time to level up. Hey, lovely. Welcome back to the podcast. Today, we're doing something a little new.

Suz Chadwick [00:00:31]:

We are diving into what I'm calling the fail files. You know that I sometimes share with you what some of my fails are. I have also told you before that I really value it when I hear other people's fails. It's not that I'm wishing anybody badly, but it just makes you kinda feel like, okay. Like, I'm not alone. Even though I have my fails, other people have theirs. We all learn them together. I love learning from other people's fails, like the lessons that they learn along the way.

Suz Chadwick [00:01:04]:

And so, obviously, as I share some of my fails and how I think about failure, to be honest. Hopefully, it inspires you into action, but also shares some of the lessons that I learned after that fail as well. So we're talking about creating for your future clients is the lesson that I learned, and the lesson came from the fail I'm gonna share. So I'm excited to share this with you. And, obviously, we are inching towards the end of the year as you're listening to this. As I've mentioned before, if you wanna come and join me in the Amplify Mastermind for 2024, then I would love you to head over to sueschadwick.comforward/amplify. Check out all the details. I am excited to be working with lots of different businesses in there, you know, online businesses, coaches, consultants, service providers, agency owners to not only help you build a powerful and profitable personal brand, but to really up level what it is that you're doing and have high level conversations, deeper conversations around how we lead our businesses into the future, how we lead ourselves, and how we manage change and how we build brands that stand out in 2024 because the market's always changing as we talk about, and it's so important for us as leaders to stay ahead of that.

Suz Chadwick [00:02:36]:

And so if you wanna be in those types of conversations on a weekly basis, there whenever you need it in the group, not only group coaching, but 1 on 1 as well, then this is for you. And if you apply now, then you can start with us in January, and I would love you to come and join us. And let's have a chat. And if you've got any questions. Just let me know. But listen. Let's dive into our 1st fail files. So let's talk about failure today.

Suz Chadwick [00:03:08]:

Now before we dive in, there are a few things that I wanna share with you about failing and how I think about failing. So whilst I don't wanna fail, I have to be honest, I'm not scared of it. I know that to grow any business is gonna take a lot of failing, so I'm okay with it. And I think that where I draw the line is not having massive fails. So I don't take huge risks where I'm just randomly gonna go spend a huge amount of money on something that I haven't tested. So I'll take small risks often, and then if things work out or they seem to be working out, then I'll go bigger with them. But there's 2 people that I think about when I when it comes to failing. And I think I've shared it before on the podcast, but I love hearing it over and over again.

Suz Chadwick [00:04:00]:

So, hopefully, you do too. The first one is Sara Blakely from Spanx, and she always shares the story that her dad used to ask her and her brother every, like, evening at dinner what they had failed at because if they hadn't failed at something, then they hadn't tried something new. And that has stayed with me for years. And I just think about the fact that I am always encouraging you to be courageous. It's not about being ready, but it's about being courageous. It's not about being in a place where you know that things are gonna work out, but taking a chance, saying yes, building the plane as you're flying it. So I think that the only way we can do that is to be okay with risk. And in order to be okay with risk, you've also gotta be okay with failure, with that risk not working out.

Suz Chadwick [00:04:54]:

So Sarah's story is one that I think about a lot, and I find it an exciting challenge. Like, what am I testing this month? What am I gonna try? And we actually just had a fantastic masterclass in Amplify with Louise Griffith who is a fractional CMO. I don't know what that is. I know that it's a chief march marketing officer. Gonna I'm gonna have to learn what a fractional CMO is, but she has got an agency. She coaches people. She does strategy sessions, she consults, she's got courses. So she was the perfect person to come into Amplify and talk about marketing strategies.

Suz Chadwick [00:05:37]:

And one of the things that she was talking about was always be testing. Like, we've always gotta be testing in our business and seeing what's working, what's not, measuring all the rest of it. So I think that's one of the first things is what are you failing at or what are you testing on the regular. The second thing that I think about when it comes to failing or the second person that I think about is Steven Bartlett from the Diary of a CEO. And in his recent book, he talks about economies of fail. And I mentioned this a few episodes ago as well, where he I don't think I shared the story, but I was talking about his reference to economies of fail, which is obviously economies of scale, like the more that you have, the greater the outcome, etcetera. So he shares a story about a father and son who worked together in a big business, and Steven was, like, their marketing person because he's had huge marketing agencies. And so the father had 1 business, and the son had another business within this wider structure.

Suz Chadwick [00:06:45]:

And the Sun would jump on things that Steven suggested that they tried, and Steven said they failed a lot. But when something worked, it worked so well and it went viral that it sort of counteracted any of the failures that they'd had. Whereas the father would take the suggestions, sit on it, ask a lot of people what they thought, like, you know, older people within the organization. And by the time that they decided that they might wanna try it, by then, it was too late. Like, the opportunity had passed. And so there's a couple of lessons that I kind of take out of that. The first one is it's worth trying a little and often. It's kind of the whole thing of what I said at the start is that I may not take a massive risk, but I might take lots of little risks.

Suz Chadwick [00:07:35]:

And so I'm okay with lots of little fails because I'm always learning. Almost you know, you almost wanna change the word failed to learning. Like, there's lots of little learnings in the failures so that you can make those more informed bigger decisions, take those bigger risks because, you know, well, we've tried all of this, and we've learned what's worked and what hasn't. And so now we're gonna do that because, you know, we think that that's what's gonna work. Like, you've kind of got a hypothesis now. As somebody who's married to a scientist, you've got a hypothesis where you've tested, you've tried different things, you've now had all the learnings, and so now you making more informed decisions based on what you've tested and tried and what has and hasn't worked to then take bigger risks as well. The other thing I take from the story is that when something comes along, it's worth trying it out. It's worth seeing.

Suz Chadwick [00:08:33]:

Is this something that I wanna have a go at? It's almost like threads on Instagram. Is it worth having a go at? Is it worth seeing whether it's something that I wanna test and try. And I think as business owners, yes, you're gonna have your core elements to your business as far as your marketing, Etcetera goes, but I think that it's always worth being curious. And I think that if you lack the ability to test and try new things. I think you're lacking curiosity, which I think any good business owner should have in some parts of their business. Don't you think? What do you think about that? So those are 2 people that come to mind when it comes to failing and lessons that I've learned. Now I feel like I've learned listened to a lot of founder stories, and I've heard all the fails. I've heard all the things that have gone wrong, and I've learned a lot from listening to their stories.

Suz Chadwick [00:09:31]:

And I love listening to founder stories. I find them super interesting, and I always take something away. So at the end of the day, the lesson is if you're not failing at something in your business, then maybe you're not trying, you know, enough new things, and maybe you're just not being curious enough. That's a question to ask yourself. But let's dive into one of my fails because, friend, I've had a lot of them, and I'm okay with sharing it with you. I think that's what builds trust between us. It's not always amazing, shiny, bright, and it's something that I coach a lot of my clients on. I coach a lot of my clients on the roller coaster that we choose.

Suz Chadwick [00:10:10]:

I coach my clients a lot on, you know, the s h I t sandwich that Liz Gilbert talks about. How badly do you want this? Are you willing to give it up, or are you willing to eat the shite sandwich in order to do the work that you love, to build something that is gonna take time because I know that we all want it to work so much faster than what it does. I totally get that. And so when it comes to my fail and the lessons that I learned, one thing that I've been kicking myself about for a while, which I hate doing as well, because some like, okay. Let's just learn the lesson and move on, Suz. But some things sting a little bit more when you realize what you've probably missed out on during a period of time. So a few years ago, the business was booming. I had loads of clients.

Suz Chadwick [00:11:05]:

I was doing, like, 50 to 80 k months with a few $100 months thrown in there regularly, like, on the regular. And 2 things happened that I kind of look back on it, and I just go, what were you doing, Suz? The first thing that I've mentioned is that I got complacent. We weren't marketing or running ads, so list building slowed down. I just took things for granted, and it would you know, I took it for granted that it would always be good and that I would just always have this cash coming in and, you know, just an abundance of clients and that it was gonna be, like, this easy. Was it was as if I had kind of crossed a line, and now I was riding a high, and I had made it. But as we know, what goes up must come down. So that was the 1st fail, was complacency and basking in the joy of success and not continuing to build, and it's something that I talk to clients about as well. It's kind of like when you're really busy and you're like, well, I don't need to market.

Suz Chadwick [00:12:22]:

I don't need to try and get new clients because we're so busy. We've got so much going on. But it's the whole thing of it can you you know, business works in 3 to 6 month cycles. So if I don't mark it for 3 or 6 months, I can guarantee you, especially if you've got clients who are who fall off as in they're only there to work with you for a certain period of time, like, you know, a 3 month coaching thing or a 6 month coaching thing. If I haven't lined up new clients, and I've just been a bit complacent with my marketing. It's gonna hit me in the next 6 months' time. And so I kind of went through this time where I just wasn't marketing my business. And as I kind of came out of the glow of being fully cashed up and, you know, having the abundance of clients.

Suz Chadwick [00:13:11]:

As clients started to drop off as far as, like, they were out of contract or, you know, other things were happening, I found that I had a massive dip. Like, I kind of went from, you know, 50, 80 k months down to 20. Now for some people, you might be going, well, that's still good. But when you've been at that level, you obviously, like, want to stay at that level or not drop too far off it. And so her as a business coach, as somebody who's been in business for a long time, as somebody who understands sales cycles, I totally saw what happened, but I saw it too late. And that's the thing that I kick myself about. It's like, Suze, you know this. Like, you know how this works.

Suz Chadwick [00:14:02]:

What happened? And I think that sometimes we can get I don't even know what it is that I would say or how I would describe it, but we just get so comfortable. We get so comfortable with how everything's going that we stop doing the work that's required for the ongoing success of the business. So number 1 fail in this particular scenario was complacency, lack of continuing to market, missing massive opportunities for list building and growth when I had a lot of money in the business. I manage the money fairly well, but I probably have to say that I you're gonna laugh when I say this. I probably spent $100 that I didn't need to in different areas over, like, a year or 2. And when I look back at it, I'm just like, that was ego. Like, that purchase in your business was based on ego. You didn't need it.

Suz Chadwick [00:15:07]:

It wasn't required. Whilst it was nice to have, it didn't actually help you massively. And you could have spent that money, that $100,000. If I'm gonna blow $100,000, and it wouldn't be blowing it. I should've put it into marketing. I should've put it into team. I should've, like, invested it in a way that had much greater returns. But sometimes you've just gotta write these things off and be like, well, I failed, and I Experience That, and now I've learned the lesson, and we're never gonna be complacent again.

Suz Chadwick [00:15:43]:

The second thing, and it's kind of what I have named this podcast, which is Create For Your Future Clients. It's the second thing that happened is because I had a lot of clients, I had a bit of a brain fart. When I was trying to create content, I just kept thinking about my current clients. I kept thinking about the clients that I was working with and everything that I was working with them on and what I was, like, teaching them and showing them. And so when it came to my marketing and my content creation, like, outside of working with my clients. My brain just kept telling me, oh, they know all of this. Like, they know all of this. We've already talked to them about this.

Suz Chadwick [00:16:26]:

This. We've already taught them this. And it's because I was thinking in a silo of the content that I would create, but with my current clients in mind, which is not where I should have been creating and not where you should be creating from. You should always be creating from the client who doesn't know you, like the client who hasn't bought from you yet. And it's not to say that you're not, you know, sharing things that are gonna be useful to your current clients. But when we think about the funnel. When we think about the marketing funnel, you've got your top of funnel, who are people who don't know you. You've got your middle of funnel, who are people who know you, but you're building a relationship and trust.

Suz Chadwick [00:17:07]:

You've got your bottom of funnel, which are people who are about to become clients. So when you are marketing, when you are creating content, you wanna be creating it externally outside of the business. You wanna be creating it for your funnel, for the people who are at those 3 stages. This. And I got so stuck with focusing on the clients that I had and constantly telling myself that I had already shared this with them. And so then I got into a content rut where the content I was creating, I just didn't think was very valuable because I always had my current clients who were already paying me in mind, and they were already getting amazing content that I had built, coaching, support, access to me. So that content that I was creating, they didn't need that because they already had so much of me already. So now I'm obviously thinking about my funnel.

Suz Chadwick [00:18:09]:

I'm thinking about creating for future clients, creating for the people who don't know me or the people who know me, kind of, but haven't actually worked with me or bought from me. And can I tell you, being in that mindset, being in the trying to create content with my current clients in mind, that stuffed me up so badly? Like, I kind of felt blank for a long time. For months on end, I was just like, why am I confused? And I and I was in spinning drama about it, and I couldn't work out why I was confused and why I couldn't create content with the same conviction and being compelling Anne with new thinking and all the rest of it, and it was so frustrating. And it took me ages to figure out why I was in that right, it took me ages to figure out, like, what I was doing, which is why doing thought management, which is why doing reflective thinking or, you know, the mindset mirror exercise that I've mentioned before that I get my BBA clients to do. Sometimes we have to be really self inquiring in order the to make sure that we know what's going on in our own brains. And it's really interesting because sometimes clients who come to me, and we might be on a discovery call, and they're like, so my mindset stuff is all sorted. Like, I don't I I don't have any any issues with mindset stuff. And I'm just like, that's amazing because I still have issues with mindset stuff, and I'm 5 mindset coach, and I work on my mindset every day.

Suz Chadwick [00:19:57]:

So there's never a point where I don't think that I have mindset stuff to work on. Like, when I had a coach the beginning of this year, I would talk to her about the mindset stuff. Like, I'm like, I'm thinking this. I don't know why I'm thinking this. Like, I know that that could be the answer. Why am I stuck? And I think just having somebody where you could be like, I don't get what I'm thinking. I don't get why I'm, like, thinking this way or why I'm doing these things. And being able to have that conversation with somebody who can inquire with you who can ask you questions, who can be like, well, what about this? Like, who like, if somebody had said to me, Sue's, who are you creating content for? Like, when you're creating content, who are you thinking about? If somebody had asked me that question during that period, I would have been like, I'm thinking about all the clients that I have right now.

Suz Chadwick [00:20:53]:

What a stupid answer. And I can say that because it's me. Because because, you know, I'm reflecting on on a thought that I had in the past. And once once I realized that so the 2 realizations. Once I realized that I was not marketing well because I was being complacent. When I realized that I was trying to create content for clients who had already bought for me, and it was really stuffing with my mind, I really had to do a massive reset to be like, okay. We have gotta sort this out. We've gotta get out of this thinking.

Suz Chadwick [00:21:28]:

We've gotta get out of what what we're not doing right now and be like, okay. Let's realign. Let's start doing, you know, master classes. Let's start doing more ads again, which I wish I'd been doing during that time because then revenue had started to drop. And so once we started to do that again, and then I started to obviously see that come up again where we were getting new clients and all the rest of it. But can I tell you, it took a lot longer than it should have? Like, it took a lot longer when you don't have that consistency where you've got that 3 to 6 month runway, where you are building clients and trust and people who are thinking about working with you, and you have a big gap. It can take you a while to kinda get back out of that. And so we are coming like, we're out of that now, but it took a while.

Suz Chadwick [00:22:23]:

And so that was a really hard lesson to learn and also just continuing to focus on the metrics. Like, how many leads have we got through this month, how many has our list grown by, has our organic traffic to the website increased, like, where where are we making money, which products and services are we making money on, am I managing my spending, all the rest of it. And so just getting back to core, getting back to core business running and making sure that every time I create content. I am thinking about, like, the 30% of the time, 50% of the time, I'm thinking about the person that doesn't know me. The person who's sitting there, and they're scrolling through TikTok, and they're sitting and looking at Instagram, and they're sitting at their desk, and they're trying to figure out, I don't know what to do now. Like, what am I what are people doing in their business? Like, what am I supposed to be doing now? How am I going to know what marketing is gonna help me. I don't even know what my message is. I've got all of these different assets, and I don't have a brand strategy, they don't even know that they need a brand strategy.

Suz Chadwick [00:23:35]:

And so now when I create content, I'm thinking about that person, or I'm thinking about the person who kind of has some knowledge, but he's trying to piece it together and work it out. So every time I create content, I'm just so focused on the problem that I solve, the person that I'm speaking to, like, people that I have worked within the past where they came to me, and they were like, I am so over myself. I cannot figure this out. I'm wasting money. I I need better paying clients, but I don't know what to say. So I am now thinking about all of those people when I'm creating my content, and I am being consistent with my marketing and marketing every day. Yeah. That's, like, another the podcast episode that's coming up, which is all about, like, mastering your marketing and marketing every day.

Suz Chadwick [00:24:27]:

The other thing that's come out of this particular episode is thinking deeper and and creating really stellar content. That's another podcast episode that's coming out of this. See? So even when we fail, there are so many lessons that we learn. There are so many things that come out of it that it helps us to be relevant and relatable to our audiences where it's like, maybe you felt like this. Maybe you've experienced some of this before, or if you haven't, learn from me and my mistakes because that's what I want you to do. That's what's really helped me with other people sharing their fails and their lessons is, okay, I need to remember to not do what they did. So, you know, even though this was years ago, I just remember listening to the Airbnb guys, and they maxed out, like, $100,000 in credit cards in order to get the business up and running. I'm like, okay.

Suz Chadwick [00:25:21]:

Maybe let's not do that, Suze. So just really learning from what has not worked in your business. And I really wanna encourage you that if you've had a fail, don't just sit in the puddle and splash. Don't just sit there and be like, oh, I failed. Like, I'm rubbish. I'm not very good. Like, don't do that. What you can do is actually take a step back and go, okay.

Suz Chadwick [00:25:48]:

That didn't crap. That didn't work. So what did I learn from it? And what am I gonna take away from it? And what could I share about it? And and what am I gonna do better next time? So that is my 1st fail files. Let me you know, if you've taken anything away from it, if you're like, Suze, I didn't learn a thing from that, then you could let me know that as well. But I feel like that's one of the fails. I feel like there were a couple of fails in there, but that's, like, one period of time where I had a fail, a couple of fails where I'm like, if only I had been aware of that, I could have really, like, done bigger things in my business, but you can't live in the past. You can only learn from what you've done and take the lessons, move forward, and just try not to repeat them is really all you can take away from it. So That's it for another week.

Suz Chadwick [00:26:49]:

I hope that you enjoyed that episode. If you've got any questions, then you can DM me at Sue's Chadwick. I'm always gonna ask you if you could share this. I would love it. If you haven't subscribed to the podcast yet, make sure that you do. And, also, if you enjoy the podcast, then I'd love you to leave a review on wherever it is that you listen. And I so appreciate you being here. And I'm excited for more episodes to come as well as starting to dive into 2024.

Suz Chadwick [00:27:20]:

Have an amazing rest of your week or weekend whenever you're listening to this, and I'll see you next time on the potty.