How To Fail Smarter & Avoid Burnout While Building A Resilient Business

[00:00:00] Failure is one of the most petrifying things that can exist for so many of us, but actually it's one of the biggest keys to success. Today we're breaking down what failure really means for entrepreneurs, why it's essential for growth, and then how to trust yourself through the ups and downs. My guest Paul has seen it firsthand. He had a six year startup that ultimately failed after raising millions of dollars. And he interviewed 50 entrepreneurs who have failed and he's taken some of the valuable, most valuable lessons of business resilience and intuition and pivoting and how to fail better so that you can move forward faster.

[00:00:35] At the very end, stick around because we have a quick two minute video on the foundational beliefs that you need to make sure that you feel safe to rest. Know you've gotten enough done this week and move forward in your life.

[00:00:48] paula: Failure is not a dirty word. It's something that you learn from.

[00:00:52] The people that don't fail, that never fail, they haven't done anything because life is just about failing and [00:01:00] moving on and learning from that. And yeah, it's, it's all about learning and moving on. Um, that's, that's what failure is. Yeah, I've kind of gotten, I, I used to, I still am sometimes really afraid of, afraid of failure, but when I'm able to zoom out from that fear, I almost get excited and almost want to challenge myself to fail more and fail more often because it feels like then you get more out of it.

[00:01:27] paula: Right. Yep. Yep. Have you heard that expression fail and fail fast? Yeah. Yeah, it's like if you're going to, okay, fail, fail fast. Um, and well, in my, in my startup, we failed very slow, uh, like six years and a million dollars failure. So it would have been better to fail fast,

[00:01:49] so six years on, and also having interviewed 50 people in my podcast about failures, I think one of the most important things.

[00:01:59] [00:02:00] Is to have really good business skills and particularly sales skills or have really good people that can do that for you. At one stage we actually did do that. And this guy, it was like, we went through an agency and said, Oh, this guy's fantastic. Scott is the best. And, and so we knew nothing really about sales. So he was like, Oh yeah, you know, I'm talking to the head of Bunnings.

[00:02:27] I'm talking to the head of this and like, ah, this is really close. And then. You know, his mother died, and his sister had an accident, and all these things happened in his life. And, and then six months later, it's like, nothing was happening. So we said, look, you know, you're gonna have to finish up, but give us, because we always said, you know, like, use, like, tools like HubSpot.

[00:02:49] And he said, no, no, I'm, look, I'm old school on paper, and he'd show a piece of paper with all these names on it, and all this sort of stuff. And so when he finished up, he gave us a list, 137 [00:03:00] people, and just like a spreadsheet, like in negotiation and whatever. I ranked 10 of them, and I said, Scott? Scott who?

[00:03:09] Who's Scott? So, the guy totally Ripped us off for six months and we spent quite a bit of money on that. So that was our experience He was a good sales guy as in he sold himself to us But I I think he actually had some issue like gambling or something and he was just using us Just as like a cash cow, you know What did you learn from that?

[00:03:34] Um, actually I remember talking to somebody at the incubator at Macquarie, uh, project manager, who was an ex salesperson, I told him, he said, Paul, I had a boss, he used to say, if it's not in half spot, it didn't happen. In other words, get them. Like to put all everything in into a CRM and then, you know, monitor them all the time.

[00:03:59] Give, [00:04:00] give them, to give updates all the time to see exactly what they're doing. Don't just trust people on this paper flow that's just not on, you know, so we were too trusting. We were too trusting. But you really have to, like, the thing is with all our other Well, everyone else that worked for us, we were very trusting, we treated them beautifully, we believed in having a really caring culture, and they worked brilliantly, all of them, without any real directions, just like, have the meeting, this is what we're working on today, and they just put in the extra yards, and they were really dedicated.

[00:04:37] Just because we treated them so well, but unfortunately this guy, he just, you know, he just abused that, I guess. Yeah. It almost sounds like you were too trusting of their word and not trusting enough of your own gut. Cause your gut was like, we need a hotspot. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, and that's, that's the biggest thing in startup world is as soon as [00:05:00] you, you think, Oh.

[00:05:01] You know, this could be something that's, well, you call it gut. I call it intuition. That's the thing that you should be listening to the most, because then after you can reason, Oh, but this, by that, the other, I think the most successful entrepreneurs are the ones that listen to that intuition immediately and, and act on that.

[00:05:20] As long as you're, you're in a good headspace. As well, so that you, you know, you're calm and you, you feel good, then you'll get the right intuitions to, to move forward or to do what, whatever you need to do. Yeah. I mean, I literally wrote a book about it, like that's everything. The most successful entrepreneurs are the ones who understand that voice inside and act on it.

[00:05:46] So if there's one thing to take away from this conversation, it's that failure isn't the end. It's not something you have to be afraid of. It's just information, feedback, and every misstep or challenge or even scam, such as Paul was sharing, teaches you something about how to move [00:06:00] forward. The key is to listen to your intuition and make smart decisions and trust that failure is a stepping stone.

[00:06:09] I'm going to be sharing in a second, the foundational beliefs that you will find helpful to hold in your body, in, in your bones to know that you've done enough this week. You can turn your work off, you can move forward and that your success is inevitable until next time, trust yourself, learn from the progress and keep moving forward.

[00:06:32] paula: Okay, I'm going to tell you something that is going to save you so much energy this week, and you're finally going to be able to rest and know that you've done enough. You have all of these beliefs inside of you that tell you that you can't turn off your notifications at 3pm and not respond, or that you have to keep working, you have to make sure that you do that thing, or that it has to be done this way because you have this big goal in mind.

[00:06:59] [00:07:00] And There's a lot of those beliefs that are stopping you such as even just a simple belief of my body tells me when to move and take action And I can trust those things and so if I don't feel in my body And I need to move take action and hustle and do the things Then it means that I need to rest and stop not that I'm lazy not that I'm Not going to achieve my goals You have to learn to, first of all, read your body's cues. So how do you know how it feels in your chest when you're avoiding something out of resistance versus how do you know when you feel something in your chest that you're avoiding something because there's this like. divine intelligence inside of you.

[00:07:44] That's like, now is not the right time. It's illogical. You couldn't possibly understand it with your analytical mind, but it it's serving a greater purpose. And then you have to actually believe that it's safe to trust that. So I teach all of that inside of this book, semantic intelligence for success. If you [00:08:00] already have it popped to page 181, we have this exercise on beliefs that is really helpful for you to understand.

[00:08:07] Okay. What are the beliefs that I've learned from my mother, from my father, from society, about whether or not I can trust the urges in my body from religion? And then what do I need to expand or understand or amplify my understanding so that I can create the life that I love? You'll find it here.