Why Failing Fast Works Best for Freelance Writers
Have you been beating yourself up over how many times you've failed? Or do you feel like the amount of failures you've wracked up in the last three to six months is taking a toll on your self-worth, confidence, and mental health?
This week's livestream is focusing on failing fast because a lot of freelance writers (including myself years ago) get this concept totally wrong. We often like to tell ourselves crap that isn't true that pushes us away from taking action instead of realizing that what we're doing is failing fast.
Come hang out to learn what failing fast is, why failing fast is super good for freelance writers, how often you should fail and how often I fail (big time busts), and how to help your mindset and mental health understand the good lessons in failures.
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Why Failing Fast Works Best for Freelance Writers
So let's take a tally. How many times this week did you beat yourself up? ? How many times did you feel like you were failing and how many times did you tell yourself that you're never gonna make it as a freelance writer? And that everything is shitty ? So this topic today is really about beating yourself up and failing fast, and how those things kind of intertwine, how they kind of like beat up on your self-esteem.
And then also why failing fast and why doing all these failure things are really, I. To growing as a freelance writer. So, hey Vicky, I always love the wave. So we're talking about the first thing, like as we're kind of going through failing and failing fast, a million. Hey Holly. Um, as we're going through, let's do number one.
1) What failing fast is
So number one here. Oops. There we go. Number one. So number one here, when we're going through this, what is failing fast? And this was something that I didn't understand for the longest time, I. Thought it was like a nice sounding idea. . Yeah. That's good. Yeah. A zero B one. Z zero. I like that biggie. Um, so when you're failing fast, what does that actually mean?
So when you're thinking about failure, Failing fast is that you are trying a lot of things right? And you are failing at a bunch of things. You're trying a lot of things in a short period of time, right? And it's just like a way to, um, make sure that you are experimenting in your business, that you're seeing what works and doubling down on that.
And for me, when I was failing fast, I was like, Man, every , every like three to four months, I'm making a huge mistake or I'm making a ton of failures. And I didn't realize, like as I had done that many, many times, and I still do it all the time, um, I didn't realize that that was really failing fast. Failing fast is like every few months you come up with like a big kind of learning and this is what it is to me.
There's different definitions, but to. Failing fast is that you're trying really hard, You're trying a bunch of different things and like every few months you end up with like some big failure where you're like, Oh shit, , I made a huge mistake. So for me, that's every three to four months and you're kind of like trying different things to see what works and if you.
Don't end up trying a lot of stuff, and you don't end up failing a lot. A lot of times, this is what I see is I see freelance writers get stuck. They get stuck at a certain income level. They get stuck with a certain set of clients. They get stuck at this place where they're like, Man, I should be growing, or I should be over here.
Or, I should, should, should, or I want what want, And it's because they're not failing fast. So failing fast really is rooted in more of this kind of like, I'm just gonna try and see how it works out, rather than being like totally afraid of failure. And when you kind of more trust in your ability to figure things out.
That was a principle that I pulled from, um, Brendan Burchard years ago. So if you really believe in your ability to figure things out, failing fast is like part of the process because if you're trying a bunch of stuff and you believe you're gonna figure it, Then eventually one of those things is gonna get messed up and you're gonna fail, but a lot of other things are gonna work out.
So as you kind of move along with failing fast, as long as you're, or not as long, um, when you're kind of doing the process, I think it's more about being open-minded and moving away from the idea that like, failure reflects poorly on you. Right. And there's also the idea, um, that when you're kind of doing.
You either you don't like win or lose, you either win or you get a lesson right? And that's kind of what failing fast is too, is that you get a bunch of lessons you haven't failed, um, but you've got a bunch of things that you shouldn't do or you should do, or things that you learned how to do better, um, or lessons that you can take into the future.
Yeah. Vicky says, Thanks for the three to four month figure. This helps me estimate how much extra money I need to earn in order to avoid failures or afford failures. I think it's just, for me, a lot of times when I'm thinking about failure, it's not even just money. Sometimes it's a lot of just self-confidence or like, I didn't believe in myself or I left a ton of money on the table.
Um, or I ended up working with clients I shouldn't have where like I knew I shouldn't be working with them, but I was like, I'll just try it. And then I was like, Oh yeah, that confirmed my belief not to do that. Um, hello. Welcome. Welcome to the livestream. Creeper. . Oh my gosh. Both of you guys have your little ball guys.
We'll get, we'll do a quick pop date in a second and I'll tell you guys what have been, what's been going on with the first a little ug. Um, but as we're thinking about failing fast, we wanna think about it as like an opportunity to kind of springboard our learning. And we wanna look at it as an opportunity to don't step on her.
Oh gosh. Oh gosh. Can you go back to your little hole? Thanks. Thanks buddy. You lay down. Thank you. All right, Charlotte, you can go back to your hub a hole. Now think of your failing fast as a set of opportunities or a way to take the pressure off of like your mental health, where you're like, I've gotta do this.
Oh my God. Like almost every time you fail, it's not as catastrophic as you think. Um, , it was a good shot of them for once. Um, and think about it as like your. Uh, your ability to fail is like how you actually go forward in your business. Like your ability to accept failure, to understand the lessons, to move forward, to try new things, to believe that you're gonna figure it out.
That is way more, that's like, that's the process, That's the worthwhile process. Rather than beating yourself up over a failures or thinking, you're like, Oh my God, I'm failing all the time. This was something that I did to myself, was like, my friends just seemed to like, I had a bunch of. And some of them were failing a bunch like me, and some of them just like went off and like their business just boomed.
And I was like, How are you doing this? And when I was kind of like working on growing my business, I mean, I still am, but this was years ago and I was just like, man, like I'm, I'm doing it wrong. Like I'm failing all the time. And my friends aren't, like, my friends are either working with dream clients or they're working on bigger projects or, um, they are.
Their marketing seems to be going so quickly, or they're making more money, or this thing seems so easy for them. But the key is like everybody is in their own little business journey. Like you, failing quicker gets you better on your own business journey. Like it pushes you in your own, excuse me, in your own path, but your friends will always have their own challenges, like things they don't talk about or things that like, you know, may not be a challenge for you, but are a challenge for them and everybody's on their own.
So even if you're failing fast right now, which you should always be failing fast, but even if you're failing fast and your friends aren't, they're going to get to a point where they either get stuck, right, Or they end up having to get in that cycle as well. Hey, Shta. Hey Marie. Welcome. Yeah, the haa hole.
Hi guys. Um, so as we're, oh gosh, we started the right thing. So let's just do pup date cuz we've got active, we've got activity going on, so hold. Let's just pop that on. There we go. Oh man. Charlotte, why do you look so mad? Probably cuz Barry's raking and stuff. So let me give you guys a little pup date update.
little pup date. So Barry had surgery, the eye that's closest to the camera that looks kind of smaller than the other eye, that's the one he had. Um, he had a mass removed from that eye and he's been doing great. Like he, um, didn't seem to like care at all. , which is just, you know, classic berry. Um, hey Lisa, um, and Charlotte, Hold on.
Let's see if we can get everybody on camera. There we go. Charlotte. High five. High five. As you can see, Charlotte has been shaved on one arm. . Let's see if we can show everybody your shaved arm. Charlotte, hold on. Ready? Good girl. This one. All right. So see, we've been shaved. We've been shaved on our arm here.
Hi Barry. You gotta back. And that is because Charlotte decided to get friendly with a cactus. So basically, um, Bo got outta surgery and as usual, a couple days later, Charlotte decided that she needed to have a medical emergency. So she , she got friendly with a cactus. She basically, what, what, I guess is that the c.
Had a bunch of other, you know, dog smells on it and that's why she was sniffing it. Cuz you know, we live in Texas, there's lots of cactuses and we've never, you know, we really haven't had a problem with her in cactuses before And uh, so anyways, she got a whole mouthful of spines and a whole chin full of spines and we got most of 'em out, but there was four left so we had to take her to the emergency vet and get those removed.
So they had to put her under to get 'em out cuz she's a wiggle worm. Plus one was in her tongue, which is really hard to get to. But yeah, So , So she, Yeah, exactly what Holly said. She can't be one upped. So that's the thing is like whenever one of them seems to have something, the other one's like my turn.
So like last time, you know, Beau had a medical emergency and Charlotte got sprayed by a skunk and skunked, Oops, sorry. And skunked our whole house. And this time Barry had to go in to get a mass removed off of his eye. He had a little eye bump on. and, um, and Charlotte was like, Nope, I'm gonna eat this cactus.
I go, I up. Good job, Dean. So that's our pup date so far. So Charlotte's feeling fine, Bo's feeling fine. Everybody's feeling good and back to normal, but we've, uh, we've had multiple different situations with these two, and it's just been, it's been a wild ride this year in terms of dog stuff. So I just wanna give you guys that pup date about how they were doing.
So basically, you know, Charlotte French to Cactus, and then we had to go to the Emergency Vet
2) Why failing fast is good for freelance writers
So, all right, let's talk about number two. So let's talk about why failing Fast is really good for us as freelance writers. So, Are you gonna bug her ? So as we're failing fast, right? Why is failing fast really good? Well, the more you fail, the more you learn. The more you learn, the better your business is.
Right? So years ago when I was failing fast and I used to be really, um, she did friendship cactus. Yeah. Um, So years ago I was, when I was failing all the time, I would get really upset about it. I would, um, just like, I was like, Why is this happening? Like, I'm trying really hard and like everything's blowing up in my face.
But really what that was was like me learning a lot of lessons really quickly. So a lot of things that other people took years to learn, I learned them in a few months because I kept making all these mistakes and it kept blowing up in my. So what I should have learned, and what I hope you're taking from this is like instead of me being distraught and, and being like, I'm a failure and I can't do this and I shouldn't be doing this, and then burning out, think of it as like, what are the lessons that I'm learning?
If I'm failing fast, I'm learning fast, so then I can apply that to my business. Like what types of things? Am I like, what types of things am I learning here that can either propel my business or change my business or gimme better insight into my clients or my work, or how I wanna, like what direction I wanna take my business.
So yeah, just this as her cats also compete at the vet. Yeah. . I don't know why that is. It's just so weird. Animals. So as you're failing fast, it's a, it's a really good. Like it's, it's this repetitive process almost where, like I said, like for me it's like every three to four months and I still do it now.
Like I'm still trying enough stuff now where like things blow up in my face or I end up, you know, doing a project I shouldn't be doing, um, or I end up pushing myself too far and I need a break. Um, but I'm always trying to like iterate and change things. And as I'm kind of doing that, that's the failing fast part.
So for us as freelance writers, the more we try and the more we experiment and the more we kind of build our confidence in, like I can figure it out rather than beating ourself up and being like, Why isn't everybody else Soering? That was me. . Um, these things actually make your business go faster. It helps you get to the next level quicker because you're more willing to try things than other people.
I think it's kind of this nice separation in building confidence. Like for me, after all the things I've done so far, like I have a lot more confidence now. So like even just thinking about me teaching my course, right? So like even if I think about my business and my course, like the first time I ran my course, I was so nervous and I didn't know how it would turn out and I didn't know what people would think of the information.
And I knew that the information was a lot different than what they'd received before and it. Super Boot Delicious, like very heavy, dense material sometimes. And I was really nervous about it, but now like I've done the course enough times to be like, I've got this. There's like, you know, I'll figure it out.
Like even if someone asks me a question about something I don't know about, I'll go figure it out. It's not a big deal. But that confidence came from me, like making a lot of mistakes and taking a lot of risks and trying a bunch of different things. And even now, like I constantly ask for feedback, right?
Because the feedback makes all of the stuff better. So if I'm asking for feedback from clients on my. Or I'm asking for feedback on the course or whatever. Um, that, that kind of stuff lets me know like where I can make things better. I'm not like, Oh my God, you didn't make the perfect workbook. I'm just like, Oh, we should make it better.
Like, that's something I learned about how they use it or what makes sense or, um, the types of things that go together. So for me, I just kind of feel. When you're failing fast, that makes your business go quicker and it helps you learn more and it builds more confidence and more self-esteem, and it's actually better for your mental health.
I, for me, failing fast. Like the, the mindset shift that I got from that was way better. Like, it, it allows me to deal with more uncertainty in my business. It allows me to take more risk and like better calculated risks. It allows me to go for things I wouldn't have gone for a few years. Um, it allows me to work with all these different types of clients and try things out.
Um, and there's a lot of different good things that just come from just trying things. Like, the other thing too is that, um, I often think about like, am I working to my potential? Like, am I providing the content that is of like my potential? Am I working like I, I want to, you know, realize the amount of potential that I.
So one of those things that happens right when you're failing fast is that you like end up burning out, right? And then you're like, Oh, that was too much. But now at least you know, like, this is the edge of my potential. Like this is where I should kind of like cut things off and this is where I should kind of like rest and this is where I need to do this.
And that kind of helps you learn like, how many hours do I really have in a day? How many hours do I have in a day to do work, to walk the dogs or do personal stuff, to exercise, to take calls? Do all these other things. And that's another thing where I feel like for me, a lot of times, um, Sorry, hold on.
So for me, a lot of times when I'm asked like, how do I get so much stuff done in a day, it's that it's because I kept experimenting and I kept failing. And I kept like having these little like schedule snafus to the point where like, now I get a lot done in a. So like, even though like it's kind of that thing where like we all have the same hours in the day, but like I'm really efficient with a lot of processes.
Some things I'm still slow at, like I'm still slow as a writer. Like when I actually sit down to write something, it takes a long time. But all my other processes are efficient and systematized and processized and, um, automated as much as possible because I've made all these. Or because I've gotten into different types of situations where like, like a good example was like when I was doing a ton of interviews, um, we talked about this in with my students.
I was doing a ton of interviews and I would have a lot of people rescheduling or, um, it was really hard to schedule these interviews, so I set it up in dub sodo that they would also, or that they would schedule their interview into. And not until one hour before that interview could they cancel it or reschedule it.
So if they really had a problem, they could send me an email and say, Hey, I made a mistake in my schedule. Can I change this? Um, and it cut down my reschedules by a ton because when you just let people reschedule, like the minute they schedule an interview, they just like play around in the calendar. It's a huge headache.
So that was something where it was like, I failed so many times that I was like, I can't do this anymore. I can't do this. Like back and forth scheduled blah, blah, blah. Like it, it's too many emails, it's too many people. So then I set it up in dub sodo, right? And then I still had people reschedule it, but then I was like, Wait a minute, I'm gonna send them the one hour reminder.
And when they get the one hour reminder, that's when they can reschedule or cancel. And it just like, it helped so much, but it was like I had all these headache. That I kind of had to deal with first. Like I had to have the headaches and the problems to look for a solution. Right? Um, Holly says, Yes, circle community for the win
Yeah. Definitely. And um, Marie says, Every time I fail, I go into circle and I ask, and then like magic, I get five suggestions about how to be better. Yeah. That's another important thing is like when you're failing fast and you are around other people who understand how to fail fast or who are trying things, um, Or who are like operating in a safe environment where people want them to try things.
Like there's a lot of communities sometimes where I feel like you're not allowed to do that. Like you, you have to do the prescribed path. And when you don't do the prescribed path, you are in trouble. Like you shouldn't do that. Like why aren't you following the rules? And then everybody's business is different.
And if you try something and you go off and you find a platform that's better than the one I'm using to do whatever. Tell everybody we should be doing, we should all be doing that now. Like the iteration and the getting better and making your business more sustainable and more mental health friendly and more fun.
That's important. We need that. We need that in failing fast. So like I always feel like having a supportive environment or an environment where you feel safe to experiment with different business things, whether they blow up in your face or not, that's really important too. And that was another thing that.
Yeah. That's funny. Um, yeah, and Holly says this too. Holly says, Oh, we've got some wiggle friends. Um, Holly says, I literally cried the first time I got a pitch rejection. I think I did too, Holly. I think I did too. So I don't feel bad. Um, then got encouragement from the community and the cake list idea, and it's been so much easier, um, to be like, Okay, keep going.
So one of the things that we talked about was a cake, and this is something that we can. Um, when we're going through this stuff. So actually I'm gonna pop, I'm gonna switch to three as we go cuz this is the third part. So the third part, Number three here. One of the things that my community recommended was Andrea said that she gets a cake, like every, I forget what it is, but there's a number of rejections, and she gets to buy a cake, which I think is fantastic, right?
3) How often you should fail and how often I fail with big time busts
Like you're supposed to be trying, rejections are part of the process and you're like, basically the cake is to celebrate the fact that you're trying, right? That you're failing fast. And that's what she's talking about is the cake idea. So you make a bunch of rejections like a. Every time you get a hundred rejections, you buy a cake to celebrate how much you're trying and how much hard work you're putting in, and that you're putting yourself out there even though it's scary, right?
And you are failing fast. I think that's a really, really good, uh, a really, really good way to kind of pump yourself up and, and, you know, make yourself feel good about trying things. And instead of beating yourself up, you celebrate it, right? You do something cool with it.
Bless you. Hold on. Let's do Aup date since everybody's over here and not where they're supposed to be. All right, Barry, you gotta go back to your Hava hole Barry. Hell, sorry. Go back to your Hava hole. Good job, buddy. Sit close enough when you're 16. You know what? Sit and down sound very familiar. Are you doing high Five.
Good job. Other one? Good. You look super cute today, Barry. You look super cute. I like how your eyeball is healing very well and that you're being a good citizen today. I think it's cuz we got you a bigger blanket for raking. I've had good job. High five. High five. Good job. Other one? Nope other one. Good job.
Oh my gosh. A dro machine today. Droo machine. Droo machine. Probably cuz she's ready to French. Another cactus. She's like, Let's get out there. Let's go wild. Let's find some cacti. Oh my gosh. You guys are too cute. You guys are too cute. You guys are funny though because like, I'm trying to get it to readjust.
There we go. It readjust the lighting so you guys can see Charlotte cuz you know they're so different in color and uh, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. All right, Barry, you ready? Good job. I thought. Good girl. Other one. Good job. You look like a superstar today. You guys are like superstars today.
Oh, and the same thing. Yeah. Holly makes a good point too, that we should talk about is, um, software and stuff that you use to run your business. So this is another piece that we should talk about in terms of failing fast. So as we kind of go through things and we're failing fast, I didn't know about butter either.
Butter is where we go and co-work together, um, in our course and communities. So we go on butter, it's just butter dot. Um, and it's really, really great. And I didn't hear about it until someone else was using it and that was just like, let's just try it. You know, Maybe it'll blow up in our faces, but at least we'll try it.
Um, and it's been super fun. It's been super fun to do that instead of Zoom or instead of doing it on circle cuz circle's not. Super great right now with co-working circle's. Really great for all the community stuff. Um, but I think things like that, like how can we make it more fun or more efficient or give ourselves more options?
Because on Zoom there's not as many options as there are on butter. Butter. You can have agendas, you can have music, you can have flashcards, you can have questions, you can have all these different template. Um, and that was just from trying it, right? So I think it's also just the ability to kind of try things that you wouldn't normally like I wasn't even really, I kind of was looking for a solution cause I didn't wanna get on Zoom again cuz I'm on Zoom so much.
Um, and I just, you know, came across Butter, thought we would try it. And I think that's really important. It's like, just try things, try it out. Fail fast. Don't beat yourself up that, oh my God, it wasn't the perfect platform. It doesn't matter. Go find something else. Like you can cry about it for 24 hours.
There's a bunch of. That I've actually read about this and I sometimes do this, where like if something blows up in your face, spend 24 hours, you cry about it all you want, then you move on the next day, . All right, so,
um, oh, it's a hundred rejections. Okay. He did look like a Bo did look like a bond villain with his eye. His eye definitely looked like a bond villain when it was like all messed up, you know, like he has, it's getting better now. Like the eye that he had the corneal ulcer in, you can see it's kind of blue looking.
He looks like a bond villain. Like he, you know, he'd been, he'd been like, you know, wronged and stabbed in the eyeball or something. Um, . Maurice says, My friend's dog drank her perfume and got drunk and sick, but she smells great. Oh my gosh. I guess I'm not the only one with wild dogs that like do weird stuff.
All right. So the other thing I wanted to talk about is, um, just wanna mention the metrics again, which I mentioned earlier. So as you're failing fast, I like three to four months, basically. Once a quarter you should have something blow up in your face, , and I do that still, like, so I'll tell you even now.
So, um, I don't even think I told my students this. I usually tell my students all my like weird little secrets. So, um, the past week, so basically things have been crazy since July, so, Barry had his whole medical emergency since July. Things have been crazy and I haven't really had a lot of time, like downtime.
This was the first, this past week after I got done with a project was the first time I actually had some downtime and I slept like 14 hours a night for like three nights. And even last, last night was the first time I slept like only nine hours. So, Uh, every night before this one, I'd been sleeping like somewhere between 14 and 12, 12 hours a night,
So that gives you, like, that's the failing fast, right? Like I know that right now what I was doing was too much. So if I go back and look at all the things, then I'm like, okay, how do I make that better in the future? How do I kind of deal with that and get some time off and give, get some rest time so that I don't have to spend like a week sleeping a billion hours a night to catch up?
So for me, a lot of times that's the mistake that I'm making is like I'm not, I'm putting too much stuff in my day and then I need a bunch of breast time, but I've gotten a lot better at that because I've made like a lot of mistakes that actually really hurt. That really hurt a lot. And every three to four months, like right now, we're about three months, right?
We're about three to four months. . And, um, I feel like that just kind of like helps me recalibrate. Like it helps me kind of look at like what are the systems and things I need to do? What are the kinds of things I need to improve? What was going on during that period? It's not about beating myself up.
Right. And we, I've talked about this, um, on here, on the livestream before, which is like the idea that like if beating yourself up worked, it would've worked by now, Right? Most people who beat themselves up, that's an old childhood thing we've been doing for decades. If it worked, it would've worked by now.
So we're coming at this from a non-judgmental place of just saying like, what are the facts? Like what was going on and how can I move forward? Um, and sometimes failing fast is like when you really, you know, you burn out really badly and you need some time to really, like a month to like step away from stuff.
And that's another thing where it's like, don't beat yourself up. Think about what you could do next time or how to better manage your rest or how to like this. For me, when I really burned out, like in 2018 when I really burned out, that was because I was doing a ton of small projects. I was doing a lot of little things.
A lot of the time, rather than doing some big projects and some small projects, or mostly big projects, That just like was too much. That's when I made the decision to be like, Nope, I need to do big projects. Like, I need to stop doing so many of these little articles. I need to actually do some big, beefy things.
And that changed my business. It changed the course of my business. Like I wouldn't, um, I wouldn't be where I am now, working on what I'm working on now without doing that. And for me, you maybe you're like me, where like sometimes. in order to learn, like I really have to like scrape myself up . Like I really have to fall down and get bruised and like, you know, get a lot of blood going and like all this stuff.
Like for me, it's, a lot of times when I fail, like big failures, it's like I have to learn the lesson the hard way and that's fine. The whole point here is that we're just learning the lessons and we're not beating ourselves up. We're just like, Oh, that was a hard lesson, but now I've learned it. Yeah, that , I would, I didn't really go work at Dairy Queen, but I, this was, that's like the story I always tell.
So like, when I burned out, Hey, Woo. When I burned out. Um, so I, this, I've talked about this before, but, so from April of 2018 to basically September of 2018, I worked every day, um, with two days off. And then I had like, uh, a few days off for vacation. And then, um, I just worked the whole time. Like I just, I didn't have any days off, like that whole period.
I worked every single day. It was a nightmare. And so what happened was, like, I just got to this point where I was sitting on the floor in the bathroom or like near the bathroom crying, saying like, If it's gonna be like this, I don't wanna do it anymore. Like, I really thought I was gonna quit freelance writing.
And I was just like, if freelance writing is gonna be like this, I'm not gonna do it like I have to do. So, And I was like, I, And then, you know, Tommy was like, Well, what are you gonna do? Like, what are you gonna do instead of being a freelance writer? And I was like, I don't know. I'll work at Dairy Queen. I don't know why I said that.
Hi Will, hi Will. But, um, that was, that's the story. Oh, what a nice woo of you today. Can you go back to your hava hole? No, you have to go back to your hava hole. Go back to your hava hole. So that was the thing. I didn't work at Dairy Queen, but I, for some reason, in my mind, I was like, you know what? giving people some ice cream and making 'em happy.
You know? Maybe that's what I was thinking at the time, being like, You know what? That sounds fun. Rather than being in the misery that I am now, go go. So when you work a lot on little things or when you work a lot over a long period of time without any rest days, it's just, for me, that was a period where I just had to learn that the hard way, like I had to.
That all of these little tiny projects I was working on, wasn't it just, it's not long term sustainable for me. Like I'm not the type of writer that can write 20 to 50 articles a month and like, that's fine. Like that doesn't work for me. So it's just the free ice cream. Well, yeah, but the difference, Tommy, is that it's not half baked ice cream.
It's just, it's not Ben and Jerry's. It's just like regular, soft.
This is the same principal. What Vicky says is like sometimes when you know, the teachers are like, I have experience, don't do this. Right? Um, and then they're like, you know, you don't understand what's going on. And then it says, Right. She's like, Sometimes I have to do the thing in order to outgrow it.
This is the same thing like, There's stuff too, right? That I tell I'm, I'm careful sometimes about what I tell my students because I want them to try things and I want them to do things without me, like spoonfeeding them. I want them to like learn how to fish, right? That's the whole point of the course is like, I wanna teach you how to fish.
I don't want you to keep coming to me being like, more fish please. I wanna teach you how to fish because if I teach you how to fish, then you will learn on your own right how to outgrow things or what things you need to fix or what lessons, or like how you learn more about yourself than me being like, Do this, don't do that.
And even if I know , there are times when like I know someone doing something is not a good idea, but I'll say try. Because maybe it's not a good idea for me, but it's a good idea for them. So I'll say try it. And sometimes it'll blow up and I'm like, Well, now we learned our lesson, but I'm not setting them up for failure in that way.
I'm setting them up to learn more about themselves. And I also think it's important to try things for this exact reason, right? Even if I tell you no not to, I know there's gonna be people who do it. And I know that me telling you not to doesn't change the fact that there are things that you just have to learn the hard way and things that you have to outgrow, and things that you have to learn on your own timeline, right?
And that's the idea of failing fast. So that, I like that to be every three to four months. That's how you should be trying enough stuff that you can look back and be like, Oh shit, that was terrible. Like a bunch of my students, um, have been kind of doing that. Like Marie, actually, Marie's a good example.
She tries a lot of different things. Um, she's always like sending me emails, being like, I tried this. We should talk about that. And I like collect them all because it's like really, really good stuff. Like she's often out there. She's often out there really checking things and trying stuff, and that's a really important attribute.
That's more important. Trying things, being open and not beating yourself up for failures, that's more important. Okay. And then, um, I told you about my big time busts. I guess we can kind of count like my recent sleeping, I'm normally like, that's like my thing sometimes is. is like, I just need a lot of sleep.
Like, I'm just . I just, I've always needed a lot of sleep. Um, I used to sleep a lot as a baby and even like, even when I was in high school, you know, when you're, you're a teenager and you're sleeping the most, I still slept like 12 hours. So I've always needed a lot of sleep. It's just like, for me, one of the things I learned from failing fast was like, that's a really restorative activity for me.
So walking the dogs is really restorative to me, and when I get really busy, I just don't like, have time to do it or the weather sucks or it's too hot. Um, and then like when I get back to walking the dogs and when I get back to like getting on a sleep schedule or at least like corralling the late. That kind of helps me, you know, gel.
But that took me a long time to figure out. But if I had be beat, if I had beaten myself up over it, right, I would just be like, Oh my God, you loser. You're sleeping again. You're wasting the whole day . Rather than being like, I need this sleep to function, my brain is tired. . Yeah. Sleeping is like, like one of my favorite things.
Yeah, it would be . Yeah, the, that's, I don't know why that was. I just for, I think like, you know, cuz sometimes like one of, you know, like one of the things that I think um, is, you know, we do is like emotionally eat, right? So like when I'm at like that point in my life, Holly was like, like, it's one of the lowest points in my entire life.
Like I really, I, I, I fell in love with freelance writing, like almost immediately. Like I just fell in love with the whole thing and I just have developed that love like more over time. So when that, that period came in 2018 where I was just like, I'm gonna quit and I don't know, I'm work at Dairy Queen, right?
Like I, maybe I was just like, I'm gonna emotionally eat a bunch of ice cream cuz I'm so devastated right now. Um, and maybe that's why Dairy Queen came to mind, but. That was one of the lowest points in my life, and I really thought I was gonna quit. Like I really thought I, like we wouldn't be here right now.
Like, I really thought I was gonna quit and in like, I had to take some time to myself. Like I, I had to take like a few months. Like I, I didn't do work for a month. Like I didn't do any work for a month. And I had to take some time to like figure that out. And that giant failure led to me being here, right?
It led to me meeting all of you and it met, led to me building my course that I always wanted to build and it led to me building a really awesome community. Um, and it led to me doing all this stuff where like I wouldn't be able to teach the things that I teach. Without doing that, without falling on my face and being like, You know what's a good option Dairy Queen, Let me just go stuff my face with chicken nuggets and ice cream.
And that sounds like a good idea. . Oh my gosh, we've got wiggle friends. All right, let's talk about four. This is our last point, number four. Um, let's talk about this in terms of like good lessons and mental health. So number four here. I know we have things in the chat and I'm trying to like keep up with them.
4) How failing fast and the lessons you learn help you mindset and mental health long term
Yeah, I love the, the pillow man. Like, that's one of my favorite feelings. I, I don't talk about this. One of my favorite feelings is laying down in bed at night, just laying down and putting the covers over me. Like, that's one of my favorite feelings in the whole world. Like the crispy, like the crisp comforter and the crisp sheets.
Like, I always get those, like, you know, the sheets that are like, it feels like a button down shirt. Like I like. Cottony sheets, like the SAT sheets. I don't like those. Um, but that's like one of my favorite feelings in the whole world is at the end of a day, like no matter how hard or easy it was just like laying down and being like, Oh my gosh.
Um, so anyways, . Yeah, that's the Vicky says in 2018, she quick living in a cesspool town. Well, maybe that's how we found each other. Vicky is like, I was having the lowest moment of my life and you were like, Fuck this town. I'm out. And I was like the same thing, except I was like, I'm not doing freelance writing this way anymore.
Yeah. Clean sheets. Yes. All right. Let's talk about this. So when you're thinking about mindset and mental health, this is like how we're looking at failure, right? So what I'm hoping is that you're getting a new pair of lenses today. You are looking at failure through a mindset of like, this is a good thing.
I need to do this in order to get to the next. The more I experiment, the more I fail, the better I learn, the more I get. And there's a difference obviously between like giant failures that like you could've seen coming, right? Or um, things where you're just like disorganized. We want to fail in an organized fashion by trying things that make sense?
Okay, so we wanna make sure that, Hi, Woo. Can you go back to your hava, Hulu, Go back your hava hole, You. So when you're trying things back up, can you go to Hova Hole? Can you be, Nope. All the way over. There we go. Lay down. Nobody wants to lay down today. Think of your mindset as this new pair of lenses where we're looking at failure as a good thing.
We're looking at failure as our option to get over the plateau. . So instead of like looking at, like, I always feel like, I mean, especially as someone who grew up in school, like my school was like competitive and we were always trying to get the best grades and we were always trying to like, you know, like people's parents were like competitive
And, um, it was, you know, one of the top public schools in the country. So like, it was, it was a thing and. I think it still is, it doesn't matter. But there was always this competitiveness where like you couldn't fail. Like if you got a C or like a B, like you had failed horrendously, like you didn't even actually fail.
And I just feel like that's the wrong approach. Like instead of looking at it as like, huh, we need to kind of like go over some things or we need to kind of like fix these things or like see like, okay, this isn't failure, it's just like redirect. , that's way more healthy for your mind and like how you look at yourself.
So your mindset, your mental health, your self image, right? It's way more healthy to look at things like, Huh, I need to kind of figure this out, or I need to look at this more. Or like, What types of concepts or ideas did I miss here? Rather than like straight up making it black or white, You failed or you didn't, so, When you're kind of looking at your failures, I think maybe it would be helpful too, and this has kind of been helpful for me, is to look back on things like what kinds of failures brought me to where I am now?
And I can tell you like almost all of my big blow up failures, not like my little failures helped my big blow up failures. Those made the biggest, significant jumps in my business. I was, I got to this point, um, one of the things that I learned too when I burned out in 2018 was like, how to say no. I was really people pleasing.
People pleasing, people pleasing, people pleasing, . Um, I did a lot of people pleasing and I didn't say no. And like when I got to that point where I was like, I'm gonna quit, and I literally, I was mentally, physically, emotionally drained and I was just like, No, I'm not gonna do that. Like, I literally have nothing left.
Like I cannot. And I realized like it's none of their business. Why I'm saying no, like I don't have to. People please. Like, no, I can't do it right now. But maybe I just like literally, I was just like, No, I physically, emotionally, mentally cannot do this. I didn't say that, but I would say no. And that taught me to say no, which has been vital to my business going forward to learn how to say no in the first place and then refine what I say yes to.
So now I say yes to a very small percentage of. Rather than back then where I just said yes to almost everything. And that was a really important lesson. Like the, that switch in my mindset and that switch, like it made a big difference in my mental health because then I felt like I had boundaries and I felt like I could be myself and I could be like, I have choice.
Like I have choice in saying yes no in what I wanna do. And that all came from failure. That all came from like me failing huge and then having to be like, Huh . I need to like figure this out and like, Oh, I cannot work right now. So, um, Oh, you know what? I remember this story. This is actually, I'm glad you said this.
This is one of my favorite things that she says. This is why I like following Sarah Blakely. So Sarah Blakely's dad, every time she came home used to ask her like, How did you fail today? Right? And so she would look for things to fail at or to try or whatever. And I think that's a great way to do, like, do your.
Look for opportunities for you to go out of your comfort zone, look for opportunities for you to expand your business in ways you hadn't thought of before. Think about like what are some things that, maybe they're baby failures, right? Like maybe you are like, I really need to say no to this client. And maybe you say like, No halfway, and you're like, I gotta win, right?
But like there's something that you can worry about like that. Not worry, that you can fix or fail at or try every single day. Like there's something to push you outta your comfort. And that's kind of what failing fast is, is it's pushing you out of your comfort zone so regularly that you end up with all of these failing fast opportunities and then you end up with big failures along the way.
But those are really good. Getting outta your comfort zone and being uncomfortable and dealing with uncertainty, especially over the last few years. That's like a skill, that's a honed skill, right? So there was a lot of uncertainty in the beginning, right? Years ago. Um, and now that we've been in. Situation for three years or whatever it's been.
Um, I feel like a lot of us are better at dealing with uncertainty. I know for me, at first it wasn't so bad and then it felt really bad and then it was tough, and now it's not so bad, right? So dealing with uncertainty or dealing with difficult situations or stuff that you can't control, failing fast helps you get more palatable, that becomes more palatable, and you also start to underst.
So instead of you just like it tasting like bad medicine all the time, you start learning like, Oh, this isn't even bad medicine. This is just like something I had to learn, right? I had to learn this in order to move forward. You go, bud. Oh my gosh. Pouring, pouring rain outside. Here you go. So as you kind of look through this, look at it through a different lens.
Stop beating yourself up. Look at failure as an opportunity to learn lessons, and you should be failing every three to four. Um, you're gonna have blow up failures sometimes, and you may learn your best lessons from those. Bless you. You okay? And I think that for me at least, the failures have really helped my overall mental health.
Like they really helped me ground myself and be able to deal with my anxiety better, or be able to take rest when I need it or say, No bless you. Gross. You okay? Go back to your haba hole. Go back to your hobbit hole. Thank you. Good job. So parting words, also pub date. , also puppet date. Oh my gosh. Barry, you're drooling all over the place.
That's a good phrase too. Marie says, Her mom would say like, What would make today Marvelous. Yeah, I like that too. I, um, every day I ask Tommy how he's gonna have a great day. I say, How are you gonna have a great day? And maybe that means like working hard and failing at a bunch of things. And sometimes it means, you know, like you're just gonna try really hard to have a good day.
Ready? Good job. All right, Min, you gonna give us the PI five? Good job. Super bean. Good job. All right.
Yeah, there's, there's another thing too about things being terrible and then like learning, You know, sometimes there's the silver lining stuff, which helps, and sometimes there's just. Everything's terrible. What's kind of a lesson I can learn, you know, moving forward? Hmm. Yeah. Okay, cool. Good job. You look super cute today.
I don't have anything but I just wanted to give you some pets. I just wanna give you some pets cause you guys look super cute. Okay, I think those were all the points I wanted to make, but I hope that this has been helpful and I hope it's helped you. Like understand kind of reframing. Failure and that failing fast is really good for you as a freelance writer.
It really helps you get over the hump. It really helps you get past a lot of points where people stop or people just give up. Um, it helps you understand your business better yourself, better your mindset better. It helps you like re kind of calibrate your mental health and how you're dealing with that, whether that's sleep or you need, um, to eat better during times of stress, or you need to walk your dogs or you need to blah, blah, blah.
Read more books. I don't know. I think these things are really important. Like the times where I see freelance writers get stuck is cuz they're not getting outta their comfort zone, which means they're not failing very much, which means they're making their world very small. We wanna make our worlds very big.
We wanna make our worlds very big, or we see lots of opportunities. Okay. If you feel like this has been helpful, give it a thumbs up. If you feel like you wanna learn more about building a business you adore. Figure, freelance writing business, subscribe. Um, we are here every Friday, except sometimes for holidays.
So we'll be here next Friday, right? So next Friday's not Thanksgiving. So we'll be here next Friday at noon Central time, but not the Friday after that, cuz it's Thanksgiving. But we'll be here next week. I'll see everybody . Yeah, I think this is good too sometimes, like if you're having like a big fail, you know, like sometimes you just, you.
Take the day, rest up, regroup, and then learn lessons later on. All right, So I will see you guys next Friday. And then, oh, the other thing is, um, if you ever have a question or a topic that you want me to cover, you can put it in mandy ellis.com/question and I will answer it. This was not, uh, a reader, like a reader, a uh, a subscriber submitted topic, but last week's.
And then the other thing is that, um, 2023 is coming up. So if you need to review your pricing and you wanna change your pricing, get my free pricing guide. Go to mandy s.com/pricing guide. I updated it recently with all new different types of projects and different types of advice. Um, so grab that. It's free.
All right, I will see you guys later. I hope you have a great weekend and a great Friday. And, um, I hope you feel fast. Failing fast is important. I hope you feel fast soon. All right.
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