So we lost €65,000 investing in the wrong people in our business.

And it ended up costing us more than a million euros in revenue.

This episode will be all about how we can learn from our mistakes, how we can make sure that we are not avoiding making mistakes and running a successful business.

I love this episode already.

Me too.

And I'm super curious what's going to come up because there's so much that we could cover.

Yeah.

And since there's so much we can cover, it also means we fail more than anyone.

I believe.

I mean, we have a lot of fails, but I believe.

Okay, not more than a lot.

Yeah.

And I believe everyone who has a successful like business, everyone has failed.

Yeah.

But I think that's in the, in the foundations of it.

I think that's because in order to get a breakthrough, you need to have breakdowns.

Because with.

If there is nothing at risk, if and if you're not doing something that is actually important, that could be significant enough to be called a breakthrough, there need to be failures in the, in the life zone.

And also breakdowns on that path and the success, like the, the, the blueprint to achieve breakthroughs are always, you know, breakdown, continue breakdown, continue breakdown, and then you get the breakthrough.

So to me, that's where it all begins.

So I believe that any successful story contains more failures than anything else.

Yeah.

And why I think this is so interesting is fear is the biggest problem for a lot of coaching coaches moving forward.

Fear of failure, the fear of doing stuff because I might fade that fear that holds us back from testing, trying, or even go full in really committing to the business, of really committing to take the business to a next level.

That fear of not really moving forward in the business is far more costly or I would even say devastating to the business than actually doing the failing and actually making the mistakes.

The holding back when we speak about the failures.

Let's figure, let's take some of our failures up.

Because I've seen we've been talking about a lot of different failures we make and our clients have been making and that we see all the time.

And that's kind of interesting.

See one of the first failures because I do want to come back to the one you started off with because that is, that is one, one good story.

But the first one, the first failure I realized I had when I started up the coaching business was I did not know really how to do to get clients.

So I followed someone else.

I was just googling how to do or looking around on Facebook.

What is everyone Else doing how to make money as a coach because I've been in business for many years, but selling myself as a service and working online in the online space using social media was so different from everything else I've done.

Even though I've been done sales and marketing for 20 years.

So what I learned in the beginning was yeah, I need to run ads to webinars on the webinars.

That is where I pitch and I get some clients.

So I invested quite a lot of money into a person who could set up the technical stuff.

I'm not a technical person myself.

Yeah, you can almost see that on you.

Yeah, I know.

So I'm not that technical.

And I also invested in learning how to do webinar, also invested in the ads.

I actually literally invested €2,000 to running monthly webinar because that was the strategy.

Run one monthly webinar on the webinar I was then pitching and it went well once and see the thing about when we do something and get a great result, we believe that oh my God, this is really working.

This is the right way.

That was where I was at when I was winning the first time.

I was so happy because I thought I've literally just found the key to happiness and success by everyone ever because everything was working out.

But I started doing repeating the same procedure month after month after month.

And what I discovered was I month.

I think the biggest failure in that was the big the month where I had my webinar.

I've been doing running ads for two weeks to leading up to the webinar.

I had 600 people registered as I was going online.

There was about 350 people in the zoom room.

I was going on and then my Internet broke down.

While I I'm not technical, I got the Internet working but I couldn't log in again.

I couldn't get like get online.

I was so shaking and I was so scared.

And once I got into the Zoom room again, everyone was gone.

I completely lost all the revenue of that month and it cost me 2000 in in ads.

That is when I felt I was a complete disaster.

Why can this work for everyone else but it's not working for me?

What is it I'm not getting and how can my Internet go down?

So in the face of that and it happened a few times actually a few months where I did not get I technical issue.

So there was some other issue that didn't work.

So from that point of view, I hated it.

I started seeing that shit, this is not going to work.

I'm going to fail my business.

I need to go and get my job.

But what we are all about today is talking about, so what did we learn from that experience?

Because I believe that failing in our business is the key to being coming successful due to.

You start wondering what happened?

Why did it go this way?

And what do I need to do instead?

Because the biggest lesson I got from that thing was actually that I need to have a system that works in a way where I can sleep at night.

Because having a system where I would only have one night a month to get my complete revenue for the entire month, that meant for me that I wasn't sleeping really good at night.

I was so nervous.

No, but.

And I think it's very important for the story because this is.

This was before we started helping coach and.

And you were doing this on your own.

It was before we became a couple.

And you, you were alone with three kids.

What the reason why you couldn't sleep was because you were the.

The only provider.

Provider for those three kids.

And I think that's a big part of it.

Yeah, another big part of it.

I'm sorry for interrupting, but another big part of it is also that that the difference in that case was that you built confidence in the first webinar that you ran.

You had skills and you found the key.

So you went in with confidence into the next one as well.

And then it broke and it didn't happen the way you wanted it to.

And you picked yourself up, you did it again, but you couldn't really recreate that result that you did the first time.

And it's starting.

What happened with you in the process of seeing yourself not being able to do it again?

What happened with the way that you viewed yourself in that period?

That's a question that I'm curious.

Yeah.

I started doubting myself.

I started doubting that I was good enough, that I understood enough.

I wouldn't ever work for me.

I got very fearful because I was paying and not getting anything back.

So I started wondering, should I go and get myself a job instead?

But the business, that was where I got to.

But what I realized was that, first of all, this was not a way of working for me.

It didn't work for me because I was always in fear, always in, like, this uncertainty.

And I did not feel in control at all because everything was relying on systems, technical stuff, and all the things that I'm not good at, which felt for me, made me feel I was not in control.

And I didn't like it.

It's a little bit like casino style.

A bit of going to a casino and hoping that it would work.

And that hope is not a strategy.

So we need to.

Need to change the strategy from that.

Point, stand with those emotions and deliver and, and have such so much at stake.

Realizing your dream or going back to rubbing toilets, you know, that's the contrast.

Where am I going to be in two months?

Yeah, yeah, I totally get that.

And I can also recognize it from a lot of my own failures.

And there is plenty to share.

But let's not dive into that bucket just now because one of the things that I think is important because of the fear of failure, failing because we're.

It's such a common thing to be afraid of.

What if I do this and fail?

It prevents us from making decisions.

Yeah.

And those decisions are holding us in a standstill.

And when we're in a standstill in business, I'm so sorry, but the market is going to run away from you.

And that's the most painful thing because you can have the best idea, but if you do not execute and learn how to move forward fast with the thing that you have, it's going to run away from you because either the opportunity is going to disappear or it's going to be that someone else does it before you and takes it away from you or takes the opportunity.

Yeah, that's interesting because.

And it comes down to the decision making process, you know that.

So repetition, we usually say that repetition is the mother of all skill.

You know, you need to rehearse and repeat everything that you do so that you build the skills, so that you can, so that you can build the continuity or, or consistency.

So if, if repetition is the mother of all skill, action is the godfather or decisions is the godfather of all action.

Because any decision comes before any action.

That's where the courageous like we need to have be courageous enough to make like, hey, this is my decision, this is what I'm going to act on and this is what I'm going to see through.

And then also do it right away.

And I know that Tony Robbins always speaks about massive action.

When I heard it the first time, I thought massive action was something that was okay.

Massive action.

I need to turn the world upside down.

That's the action that I'm looking for.

And I couldn't figure it out.

But massive action was literally.

And what I've come to understand about it is investing myself, getting myself in a state where I, where I could take action, any action, and then do it consistently.

So not one big action, but taking action repeatedly.

Because that is what builds the momentum and gets the, like the train going.

Because what it comes down to is if I make a mistake and I go into the process of having an opinion about the mistake I did, it will not really give me a lot of retrospect.

You mean?

Yeah, will not give me a lot.

But what I really want to do is I want to evaluate what went wrong, why did it not work, and how can I do instead what, what is the lesson to take?

Because I believe it's easy for me, at least I believe that happens to a lot of us that we fall into.

Well, what it, what does this mean?

It means I'm not good enough.

But that was not what it meant.

The thing was, this story was not about me not being good enough.

It was me like stuck in a strategy that was not a good fit for me and did not.

And also a strategy or tactic that was not.

That was too high risk, let's say, going to the casino game, gambling.

I mean, today what we've been teaching for four years is the organic client flow system, which is all about being in control, getting clients without any ads in the beginning, really having human connection, being able to get leads every single day, clients every week, without those big thing that will save everything.

See, that system did not come in place.

We did not decide on going with that system or create that system if we did not or I did not have that failure doing something else before.

So sometimes we need, we need those things to realize that that will change the direction in our business once we're doing these mistakes, they're so important.

So let's actually go back to then the other story, because you started by saying we invested 65,000 into one human being, a team member in our business, to help us scale our sales team.

Yeah.

Build out a sales academy to train people to help us to build out our sales in our business.

Yeah.

And without going into a long story about it, that was a bad hire, right?

Well, it was, but it was also very poor leadership.

I mean, because.

Absolutely, we gotta take it on ourselves because.

Because there are two things that stands out.

The first thing was that it was presented as a monthly kind of monthly thing that we could invest in.

And we being at that point had cash in our business.

So we instead we asked, hey, so if we pay, pay you for a full year upfront, what kind of price would we like?

And this person was going to take over a part of our business in the contract was kind of like we Pay him for a year.

So he's going to be here for a year.

Yeah, we, if we would have like called him off or take him out of the business after three months, then it would be €65,000 for three months instead of €65,000 for years.

We kind of put ourselves in a place where we, where we felt and where we got back to.

We're going to ride this out.

Even though we didn't really see the results, I think that was an important learning that I take when hiring that kind of executive role.

And it's way different.

Hiring a coach and paying a coach off, paying them annually, that's a different thing because they don't actually have any power of, of steering the business.

They have input and they like.

It's still us by the, by the machinery.

But this person was given so much responsibility and he's done great things and he was also really good at selling himself.

We were kind of, you know, we, we also took our own feet off the, the gas pedal and we, we kind of gave it to him.

And we were, we had been working so hard up until that point, so we were also super tired.

So we were very relieved that someone was gonna step in.

And that's the failure in leadership.

Yeah.

Because we didn't.

We.

He was so assertive and he was such a.

Like a.

He had the experience and he said a lot of good things.

The words that came out of his mouth was reassuring.

Yeah.

So we constantly kind of.

Okay, we'll see.

Yeah.

It sounds like we're doing something.

So we, we.

We let go.

Yeah.

Which meant that our sales team did not perform.

It also meant that we lost clients, but it also meant that we did not get the clients.

We got.

Get the sales.

The sales team did not work and we lost.

Literally, we lost a million on.

On that.

So apart from us, like understanding.

Okay, you.

So, so just quickly.

Yeah.

So sorry.

Just to kind of.

How did we come up with that.

That factor that we lost a million.

We actually backed.

We did a million less in revenue that year from the year before.

Yeah.

So.

And, and most of the revenue that we generated in that year we also sold the year before.

So there were a couple of things that are important to.

How did we calculate that?

Yeah.

It was because of.

Of loss in revenue.

So apart from.

We learned that.

Okay.

A great lesson is as leaders, it is our responsibility.

Even though if we hire high executive persons into our business, we still need to have responsibility.

If I was doing that differently today, I'll doing the same because we are, we do have another team, we do have different teams.

But we do it way differently today.

Because today we have beginning of day meetings.

We have meetings all the time.

We have very clear KPIs.

And I think one of the biggest things I learned that year is to hire fast but fire faster.

If they are not the right person, we need to fire because we, we, we're such coaches, we have such big hearts.

We really want to, we like people, we really want to be with people.

But it wasn't serving the business.

We were letting, we were not letting go.

We needed to cut the, we should have cut the losses, cut the losses way faster.

So that was a big great lesson.

But it cost us a lot.

And the thing is it might have cost us a million and it's not that long time ago.

We are not completely back, but we almost back on track again.

But the thing is.

No by now because only because I've let myself fail a lot of times.

And on these lessons I also know that that lesson we got from there will get us to 10 million in way faster.

Because I would rather do those big mistakes with less revenue.

We had 2 million yearly revenue at that time.

I would rather do it there than when I have a 10 million year and lose half of it.

What better to do there?

Right?

Good rationalization of a shitty situation.

But yeah, yeah, yeah, no.

What do you do about it?

Why would I comment?

Being negative about it.

Look at the positives from it.

Take the lessons and move on.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

And also once shit hit the, hits the fan, you know, you know that's reality.

It has happened.

We can't go back in time and even if we want to.

Avoiding mistakes is not the game.

No, it really, really isn't.

And I'm not just speaking about business.

If we live our life that way, it's going to be so boring because to some degree all people needs variety and doesn't come any variety in life without potential risk of failure.

So, so.

And that would make any person frustrated or depressed or you know, develop bipolar dis like disorder.

I, it.

It just doesn't work.

So we can't do that in business either.

Building a business is the best personal development that you can ever give gift yourself.

And you're, you're, you're gonna grow so fast the faster you take action and the faster you dare to move towards that important thing, the faster you're going to grow.

And the faster you grow, the faster your business is going to grow.

And that is in all cases always true.

As long as we're focusing on the business's health.

You know, what a funny thing is as coaches and we get to work with such so many amazing people and as coaches, we see them make mistakes all the time.

And I've been thinking a little bit about this because in the beginning I felt like we at least I were a little bit scared to tell them very clearly, I believe you're making a mistake because I didn't want to like step anyone on their toes.

But I believe today, just because we've had the privilege of working with more than with literally 800 people, we've helped so many people to get to six figures from zero and get to seven figures, which means that we see patterns.

We see we don't just have our own experience, but we have clients experiences.

And when we see clients today, who is clearly.

What I see is making mistake.

I really enjoy having those dialogues now today where we can tell them, you know what?

I believe it's a mistake you're doing here because the consequences that you will face doing this will look this in this way.

And then having the dialogue about, yeah, but you know what?

I really want to do it.

It really feels right for me right now.

I also understand that it is not my job to like completely get them to avoid mistakes because some mistakes people, yeah, they're crucial.

They need to make those mistakes.

And we just need to be on the side once that happens.

Because I literally.

It's not.

Last month I've had this dialogue with a beautiful client.

How beautiful?

Very beautiful client.

I believe this is not a mistake.

I understand also how eager you are to test it out.

And I want you to know that I'm here to help you to get the best result out of this.

If it works well, I'm going to celebrate with you.

If it doesn't work, you can say you're right and then we fix it afterwards and get you back on track.

I really love that because some mistakes, there's a lot of mistakes we take away from clients, but there's also a lot of mistakes everyone needs to make on their own.

Just like we have.

Even though our coaches tell us also our mentors, our coaches also tells us about that that's a stupid idea or maybe should do like this.

That there's just some things that we really want to test on our own.

Yeah, but.

And there are a few things.

Like if we're just looking at how we have developed our business, I'm not going to say that the first 20 people who we help to to make six figures in their business, businesses, all of them.

We took care of all of their future potential failures or mistakes.

But I remembered clearly how I was a shock to any, like any red flags that I could notice amongst all of our clients.

And I ran to it and I've solved it and I fixed it.

The problem is that what it builds isn't, isn't capability.

It builds codependency.

And to figure out how can I help my clients overcome and solve the problems so that they don't.

I can help them realize and not have to take a break to the face rather a feather tickling them and, and, and you know, and that is disturbing.

So that they get the lesson without being too hurt and without also building the like codependency so that all of a sudden, you know, the only reason why they have a functional business is because we actually are next to them and helping them out.

Like that's been a really interesting journey for me and in many, in many ways like that's, that's, that was failure.

Me running after potential mistakes our clients could have made.

Me running to them and just taking care of it before didn't build their muscles.

So it didn't help them on the back end of the experience being with us.

And to me that is a really big thing because I am not in this race.

I'm not in here for helping coaches to become dependent on us.

We've had coaches who stayed with us for years and years and years.

I want them to do that because they love the family and the community.

I do not want them to stay.

Because they change all the time.

Yeah, absolutely.

And because we're still running businesses and we have a good, good time.

But the thing is I don't want the client to stay because they have to.

Because if they don't, they, they like they, they, you know, I want them to stay because they love it.

And it took me a while to figure that out and it's been an emotional, like it drained me, not, not emotionally because I had a fueled purpose.

I was strong and I, I was passionate.

But it, it took me a while to figure out because like I'm a human being.

I only have 24 hours a day and I only have this much energy until I need to go sleep.

You know, what, what kind of failure I like, I think they're interesting those things we do again and again and again.

You know, like talking about like the, the, the mistakes that we do again and again.

Again, small failures because it's a failure due to one Thing.

Let me give you an example of that.

When, when I say we, I mean me and I also hear the same for our clients.

This happens a lot.

Like let's say you have that script you use for your sales calls.

When your sales calls, it's just flowing and you're getting your 80% conversion rate.

60, 80% conversion rate.

It's just easy.

And then you get a little too, like, you kind of lose the humbleness, you kind of get a little bit too self secure.

You let go of the script because you think, oh, it's easy, I just need to chat a bit.

And you let go of the script and you do the freaking exact same mistakes as you used to do when you were a beginner because you did not stay sharp because you, you lost that edge on staying there.

And I believe it happens to me sometimes in different areas in the business where.

Why are you doing that again?

I mean, I know that, but you only need to do the mistake once and then you pull yourself up again and then you're okay back on track.

Follow the frequencies system, follow steps, follow the thing.

And it's the same with clients when I ask them, hey, did you follow this?

Did you do this?

Ah, no, I, oh, I probably missed that.

Well, I forgot about it.

Yeah, sure, yeah, that worked.

That worked very well before when I tried it.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, it worked when I used it.

And the thing is systems structures and strategies and tactics, they work when we use them, when we change them, they don't work.

And this is exactly the same thing that makes people believe that just because I made a great business, it will always be like that.

It will not.

As soon as you lose your edge, as soon as you let go and you start fear, doubt and all of that, you start doing a lot of mistakes.

So success is not like a rule.

It's something you create.

It's a job.

It's doing specific things in the right sequence, in order and doing enough of it.

Yeah, it sounds so fun.

Well, if you like systems.

Well, but, yeah, but, but it really is fun because, you know, it allows, it's, it's also a matter of responsibility because it takes something to say, I'm gonna go for this thing and then go for it and then be discipline disciplinary enough to also see it through.

So that is a part of it.

You have way more discipline than I, I believe will ever.

I'm more of a, I'm, I'm, I'm running on emotion.

Doesn't mean that I'm not doing what's necessary.

It doesn't mean that I'm not working even when I feel it sucks.

But, but you have a discipline that, that like to me it's, it's like magic.

I can't, I have other skills though.

If anyone doubts it, I have.

But, but it, it really is, really is.

And that, and that's a, an important thing when it comes to the mistakes that, that we are kind of, or I'm not saying necessarily mistakes, but when, when we're starting to distinguish patterns of seams on a month to month basis.

This is my behavior in business.

Just, I just think that that is so valuable to pinpoint and to be curious about, to look for.

How am I showing up in my business and what am I doing?

How can I, how can I outdo myself from yesterday?

How can I become 1% better?

Because I believe that, that those small, small micro changes does everything and it does compound.

It's possible to 5x and 10x a business in a year.

Absolutely, absolutely.

But in order for 10x to mean something, you first need to have made something.

Because 10 times zero is still fucking zero, you know?

So get the motor running.

And when you, when you are, when you've built that momentum, it's so much easier to kind of uphold the momentum that's already generated than having to work it up again and again and again because of a periodic behavior or because of procrastination or whatever it can be and then evaluate.

Right on the failures.

One of the worst evaluations I hear, especially if you're just a new startup.

I didn't get any clients.

That means it doesn't work.

Right.

The strategy doesn't work or, or even worse, the people don't do the right thing.

So.

No, but what I call that is also conditioning.

You know, I'm going to do this and I'm going to, I'm going to try run a business and I'm going to see if it works.

No business has ever been built because someone wanted to try.

No one has ever grown a business from trying to grow a business.

No, you do and I don't.

And it comes down to, are you ready to like, are you ready to fight for making this work?

How the hell do you say that.

I believe, dream or fight for you?

Like, yeah, to make it work?

Basically, yeah.

Which means don't stop just because you fail.

Because fail is inevitable.

You will do it, you will fail, you'll make a lot of mistakes and then you need to get back on track.

So when people say, hey, it doesn't work Because I didn't get the result.

The thing is, nine out of 10 times the evaluation is well, because I'm not good enough, or the system is not good, or they are not good enough.

And most of the times it's actually just like a 2 millimeter thing within it.

We need to break it really down to figure out what was it really about.

What was.

Because mistake is seldom the mistake you believe it is when you're not getting clients.

The problem is not that you're not getting clients.

The problem is some steps you do, some action steps that it's not.

You're not doing either enough for you.

Good enough.

Yeah.

Where you're leaking leads instead of generating somewhere.

So it's not that the failure is not that you're not getting clients.

It's some other action steps.

Totally.

Totally.

Yeah.

And that's also very, very important distinction.

The result is almost never the failure in itself.

It's the.

It's the behavior and actions and environments that I've been in that is the failure.

And like that might be the most important thing that came out of this episode.

Because if we can realize that a result is only a result, it also makes it easy to understand how the importance and how important it is to commit and really commit to go for achieving something and then emotionally dissociate.

Not be invested emotionally or with your opinions or.

Because at the moment you're there and kind of digging in it with your emotions.

Emotions and what you feel about it.

And what if, what if, what if it's a slippery slope that's always gonna lead, lead you down, going downhill feeling.

Yeah, yeah.

And you're gonna feel shit.

Yeah, definitely.

But if we, if we can learn to take ourselves out of the equation and not be.

If I fail, does that mean that I'm not good enough?

That can still be a fear.

That can still be something you feel, but don't take it to the office, don't bring it into your business.

Take care of that outside of your business.

Speak to someone.

I have, I have such a great friend that, that, that we, like, we talked about our relationship and he said that.

So my definition of, of the masculine is to embrace and hold the space and the structure for events to happen.

And don't go to your woman to ask your woman for help being a man.

Get some men that can help you to help you be a good man.

What, what I mean with that and why I say that?

No, it's because it resonated a lot to me because it means don't Go to your business and ask your business to take care of your emotions.

Go to a friend, go to the community, to someone that.

That.

That can support you, that care for you.

And then take care of the head stuff that's going on outside of the business.

And then when you step into the business, understand that this is your baby.

Understand that this needs.

This baby needs your nourishment and it needs you, your care and your structure.

You need to hold that space and you need to take care of it and make it work.

Because if you don't do it, it's not gonna work because no one else can do it for you.

Yeah.

Which means that there's a high level of being able to be in cause and understand the problems, the lacking results.

Everything in your business is about you as the owner.

You're not doing it.

Doesn't mean you're not good enough or you are dickhead or anything.

I think we need to make take care of our language here.

It might be that you're a dickhead.

You just like let it go and see yourself from the outside.

Okay.

There's some skills I need to learn.

There's some things I need to apply.

There's some things I need to grow into in that way.

It's not that you're not good enough.

There's just some things that you haven't learned yet or you haven't seen yet or experienced yet or anything else.

I think we get about to wrap it up.

Is there any final thought?

No, but.

So if we were to break it down into what are the takeaways from this episode, I would start by saying that to understand that the result is not the failure, there is something that happened that you failed at that brought you the result.

That distinction.

Very important.

Another thing.

Make a decision, take action, and make sure that you act fast.

Because otherwise the market in the way.

Sometimes even though you're afraid of failing or maybe even that you're afraid of success, doesn't matter.

But acting and taking action is so important.

And it's better to make the wrong decision than no decision at all.

I don't know if we said that during this episode, but it's super important.

It doesn't matter if you make the wrong decision.

What matters is that you make a decision and that you take action.

And failing doesn't mean anything about you.

It's not a personal thing.

It's just running a business.

That's how it is.

You can't succeed without failing on the way.

You can succeed without failing on the way fail fast.

Also, that.

That the success is inevitable.

If you're okay with failing, you're always going to succeed.

If you're okay with failing on the road to that success.

All Stories ends the same ways and contains these.

These parts.

I could go on for hours, but let's pause it and let's.

Let's leave it to other.

Other episodes, but let's.

Let's see if we can revisit this again.