Latest / Aggressively Human: For experts choosing expansion over extraction. / Why We Need a Party for Our Failures with Jess Manuszak

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Why We Need a Party for Our Failures with Jess Manuszak · Aggressively Human: For experts choosing expansion over extraction.

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Hey there, friends.
0:00
SPEAKER_01: I want to give a quick content warning before we begin the episode.
0:04
SPEAKER_01: This particular episode includes a candid discussion of suicide,
0:08
SPEAKER_01: suicidal ideation,
0:09
SPEAKER_01: mental health crisis, psychiatric hospitalization, addiction, and chronic illness.
0:15
SPEAKER_01: So if those topics are triggering for you, you can skip the episode.
0:19
SPEAKER_01: You can save it for later.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: You can listen to it with somebody who can help you work through it.
0:24
SPEAKER_01: But the most important thing is that you take
0:25
SPEAKER_00: care of yourself.
0:30
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Aggressively Human podcast,
0:31
SPEAKER_01: where today we are celebrating and embracing failure.
0:36
SPEAKER_01: I am your co-host, Meg Casebolt.
0:37
SPEAKER_01: And I'm Jessica Lackey.
0:39
SPEAKER_01: And today we have Jess Manuzak.
0:41
SPEAKER_01: I am so excited to talk to you, Jess.
0:43
SPEAKER_01: We have never actually spoken in person,
0:45
SPEAKER_01: but we have been Facebook friends for like at least a decade.
0:48
SPEAKER_01: So I know so much about you and I've never talked to you.
0:51
SPEAKER_01: Hello.
0:52
SPEAKER_02: Hello.
0:53
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I feel like when our parents,
0:55
SPEAKER_02: you know,
0:55
SPEAKER_02: in the late 1990s were telling us not to become friends with internet strangers,
0:59
SPEAKER_02: they really were misinformed because that's where so many
1:02
SPEAKER_02: of my good friendships have come from.
1:04
SPEAKER_01: So we're here today to talk about the failure ball and neither Jessica
1:07
SPEAKER_01: nor I have attended it, but we have seen the gowns and the everything.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: And I wanted to bring you on to talk about like,
1:16
SPEAKER_01: not just the concept of embracing failure,
1:18
SPEAKER_01: but like,
1:20
SPEAKER_01: and also before people,
1:21
SPEAKER_01: you know, get lost in tune out, when is the failure ball for 2026?
1:24
SPEAKER_01: Cause it's coming up, right?
1:26
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
1:26
SPEAKER_02: The failure ball is September 19th, 2026 in Denver, Colorado this year.
1:31
SPEAKER_01: And we only do it every two years.
1:33
SPEAKER_01: So.
1:34
SPEAKER_01: So if you're listening and you have time before, like it's September now, go grab your tickets.
1:41
SPEAKER_01: Where did this idea come from?
1:43
SPEAKER_02: I mean, a culmination of lifetime failures, right?
1:46
SPEAKER_02: As the best things do.
1:48
SPEAKER_02: I would say, you know, ultimately.
1:53
SPEAKER_02: Shame festers when failures are left in the dark.
1:57
SPEAKER_02: And I had a period not only of mental health,
2:00
SPEAKER_02: but also just like life circumstances where I simultaneously felt more shame
2:05
SPEAKER_02: than I had ever felt.
2:07
SPEAKER_02: And I felt more proud of myself than I had ever felt,
2:11
SPEAKER_02: which I think is so often the way that effort comes to light when we try new shit.
2:18
SPEAKER_02: So in this specific example,
2:20
SPEAKER_02: like I've been with my husband since we were 16,
2:24
SPEAKER_02: 2020 pandemic, there's nowhere to hide from yourself or your partner.
2:28
SPEAKER_02: And we separated for a year and moved six blocks apart.
2:32
SPEAKER_02: Went to couples therapy,
2:34
SPEAKER_02: dated each other, all of the things, happened to work out great for us, huzzah.
2:38
SPEAKER_02: But during that time,
2:39
SPEAKER_02: it was the fact that my marriage was failing, objectively, my marriage was failing.
2:45
SPEAKER_02: And I was so proud of myself for trying to make it work, for aiming for something better.
2:50
SPEAKER_02: And that kernel of effort, you know, effort is always worth celebrating.
2:55
SPEAKER_02: And that's ultimately where the failure ball came from,
2:58
SPEAKER_02: like, We know there's a huge connection between shame and suicide.
3:02
SPEAKER_02: So we're here to celebrate failure for suicide prevention
3:05
SPEAKER_02: because they can't really not hold hands with each other.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: So when did you start the ball?
3:11
SPEAKER_00: I've heard about this from a couple of our previous guests.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: I've never.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: It's one of those things where things like you have to know somebody to know
3:21
SPEAKER_00: that it's happening.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: And now I know you and I know it's happening and maybe in two years I'll get my butt to Denver.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: But when did it start?
3:27
SPEAKER_00: How did it come about?
3:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it started in 2020.
3:32
SPEAKER_02: It was when I was living alone and trying to do anything and everything to distract my brain.
3:38
SPEAKER_02: And I knew that I wanted to bring together the people I love most into a room
3:44
SPEAKER_02: where we could all revel in our humanity,
3:47
SPEAKER_02: which I know you guys obviously deeply understand and relate to.
3:53
SPEAKER_02: It was messy.
3:54
SPEAKER_02: It was scrappy.
3:54
SPEAKER_02: It still is.
3:55
SPEAKER_02: This is my SideQuest.
3:58
SPEAKER_02: I own a copywriting studio in Denver called Vernon Vicker by day and have for the last 12 years.
4:04
SPEAKER_02: So this is my hobby.
4:05
SPEAKER_02: I say as if it doesn't consume my entire life and also my dreams.
4:10
SPEAKER_01: And your office because I can see all of those silent auction items behind you.
4:14
SPEAKER_01: And we don't do video so no one else can see it.
4:17
SPEAKER_01: But there's a lot happening right now.
4:19
SPEAKER_02: There's a lot happening.
4:21
SPEAKER_02: And I live in like a little, you know, 700 square foot cottage built in 1912.
4:26
SPEAKER_02: And so our home becomes Failure Ball headquarters for about six months every two years.
4:34
SPEAKER_01: And so you started this in 2020.
4:36
SPEAKER_01: Has it grown every two years?
4:38
SPEAKER_01: I know some people are flying out to Denver to be able to participate in Failure Ball.
4:43
SPEAKER_01: Like, tell me about how it's evolved.
4:45
SPEAKER_02: What's been so interesting about it is kind of like Jessica said, it's evolved on its own.
4:51
SPEAKER_02: You know, our first year, my goal was to have 30 people there and we had, I think, 78.
4:57
SPEAKER_02: And then since then, it's just gone up in scale and scale.
5:01
SPEAKER_02: And we've been fortunate enough to sell out tickets every year.
5:04
SPEAKER_02: We always offer scholarship tickets because I firmly believe that,
5:07
SPEAKER_02: like, if you're broke, you are also sad and still need support.
5:12
SPEAKER_02: Right.
5:13
SPEAKER_02: That doesn't magically resolve itself.
5:17
SPEAKER_02: And we initially started doing it every year until I realized that very ironically,
5:22
SPEAKER_02: it was hurting my mental health to both run a business and try to learn how to be
5:28
SPEAKER_02: the president of a legitimate legal mental health nonprofit.
5:34
SPEAKER_02: We tend to try out different venues every year.
5:37
SPEAKER_02: And last year was our biggest.
5:39
SPEAKER_02: We just introduced the silent auction last year, which was a hoot and a half.
5:43
SPEAKER_02: And we ended up last year renting out a like a Victorian historic mansion.
5:49
SPEAKER_02: I think we had 200 people there.
5:52
SPEAKER_02: And we donate all of our profits to a fellow American nonprofit called To Write Love
5:59
SPEAKER_02: on Her Arms because currently they're able to do suicide prevention
6:03
SPEAKER_02: and education programming at a scale that we just can't yet.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
6:10
SPEAKER_01: as somebody who came up and cut my teeth in nonprofit fundraising and development,
6:14
SPEAKER_01: like sometimes the best thing you can do is just hand the money to the people
6:18
SPEAKER_01: who have the programs already set up.
6:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like you can tell your own message,
6:21
SPEAKER_01: you can bring someone in from another place,
6:23
SPEAKER_01: you can sort of like be the rallying cry,
6:25
SPEAKER_01: but you don't always necessarily have to be the boots on the ground at
6:28
SPEAKER_01: the same time too.
6:29
SPEAKER_02: Very much that.
6:30
SPEAKER_02: Well, and I mean,
6:31
SPEAKER_02: so much of the magic of the Failure Ball,
6:32
SPEAKER_02: like we have plans, of course, to start doing in-person and online programming.
6:37
SPEAKER_02: I would love to start doing like partnerships with therapists where they can come in
6:41
SPEAKER_02: and do online art therapy that's free to our community, things like that, right?
6:45
SPEAKER_02: But what's magic about the Failure Ball is really that in-person community
6:49
SPEAKER_02: where you know that you are safe, you know that you are not judged.
6:52
SPEAKER_02: Like walking through that room between the speeches,
6:55
SPEAKER_02: you hear Some of the most honest conversations you will hear in your entire life
7:01
SPEAKER_02: and people leave and say,
7:03
SPEAKER_02: you know, wow, thanks to you, I finally have the courage to start therapy.
7:06
SPEAKER_02: Or wow, I didn't know that so many people were doing this.
7:09
SPEAKER_02: I'm actually not going to close my business.
7:11
SPEAKER_02: Or wow, I didn't know so many people were feeling this.
7:13
SPEAKER_02: I am going to close my business, which is all equally celebratory, right?
7:18
SPEAKER_02: Like there are no wrong answers,
7:20
SPEAKER_02: especially when it comes to business,
7:21
SPEAKER_02: because both the most fun and terrible part is that we get to make the rules.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: I'm curious if,
7:29
SPEAKER_00: you know,
7:29
SPEAKER_00: without violating any confidentiality,
7:31
SPEAKER_00: what are some of the failures that maybe don't get the airtime except for at
7:38
SPEAKER_00: the ball?
7:40
SPEAKER_02: Oh, so many.
7:41
SPEAKER_02: So, so many.
7:42
SPEAKER_02: And no confidentiality at all.
7:45
SPEAKER_02: All of our failures, we make sure that they are at a...
7:49
SPEAKER_02: Place we're talking about it is cathartic and not re-traumatizing.
7:52
SPEAKER_02: That's really important to our organization.
7:55
SPEAKER_02: Telling your story is okay if you cry.
7:57
SPEAKER_02: It should not make you cry in private for many months after.
8:02
SPEAKER_02: Some of the failures we've had is, you know, we had an actress from The Good Place.
8:06
SPEAKER_02: Her name is Meryl Hathaway,
8:08
SPEAKER_02: and she was talking about how she bombed her marvelous Miss Maisel audition.
8:12
SPEAKER_02: She's one of the top contenders, but her agent didn't tell her it was a comedy.
8:16
SPEAKER_02: Right.
8:17
SPEAKER_02: So she read it entirely wrong twice.
8:20
SPEAKER_02: She even got a callback twice, read it wrong, bombed it.
8:23
SPEAKER_02: Um, we've had people,
8:25
SPEAKER_02: you know, the,
8:26
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you guys know overtone haircare,
8:28
SPEAKER_02: they're like the leave in coloring conditioner, but, um,
8:31
SPEAKER_02: she was talking about how they tried to do like a,
8:33
SPEAKER_02: a glitter conditioner and it was a failed multimillion dollar launch,
8:39
SPEAKER_02: you know, right out of the gate did not work at all.
8:41
SPEAKER_02: Tech didn't work.
8:42
SPEAKER_02: Nothing worked.
8:43
SPEAKER_02: And then we have the more personal failures because life and business go like this, right?
8:47
SPEAKER_02: And so often the things that we fail at in life mirror themselves in the way
8:52
SPEAKER_02: that we also fail in our business, right?
8:55
SPEAKER_02: Don't have boundaries in our personal life.
8:57
SPEAKER_02: They often get overstepped in our business relationships.
9:00
SPEAKER_02: And so we had someone in 2024 who recognized she was being swindled by
9:08
SPEAKER_02: an online romantic partner and
9:12
SPEAKER_02: Kept giving him very large amounts of money anyways because she needed
9:19
SPEAKER_02: that validation at that time.
9:20
SPEAKER_02: Even though she was a very monetarily successful,
9:23
SPEAKER_02: powerful woman in her 50s with these powerful kids and a successful career
9:27
SPEAKER_02: in this beautiful house,
9:28
SPEAKER_02: she still wanted that relationship regardless of what she knew it was doing for her.
9:36
SPEAKER_02: This year, we have someone who was a lifetime recruiter for Scientology.
9:42
SPEAKER_02: Who recruited thousands and thousands of people into a cult and has since recovered
9:48
SPEAKER_02: from cult life and is talking about that.
9:50
SPEAKER_02: We have an ex-Playboy model.
9:53
SPEAKER_02: The stories really span far and wide.
9:57
SPEAKER_02: Everything from,
9:58
SPEAKER_02: you know,
9:58
SPEAKER_02: I personally talked about how I didn't realize how miserable I was
10:04
SPEAKER_02: until I almost died from my spine exploding when I was on a tropical island.
10:09
SPEAKER_02: And the nurse told me I was going to die.
10:12
SPEAKER_02: And then the next day I woke up and she said, actually, you're not.
10:16
SPEAKER_02: And I cried and she was like, oh, I know it's such a relief.
10:19
SPEAKER_02: But I was crying because I wasn't going to die.
10:22
SPEAKER_02: And in that moment, I realized like, oh, shit, something's not working.
10:26
SPEAKER_02: And how have I been living without realizing that it's not working?
10:30
SPEAKER_02: So it's everything from mental health to addiction to love lives to launches.
10:37
SPEAKER_02: To businesses and business debts,
10:40
SPEAKER_02: we believe that there's no story untold and no failure not worth celebrating.
10:47
SPEAKER_02: Though something that's very,
10:48
SPEAKER_02: very, very important to us is that it has to be a failure that you caused.
10:54
SPEAKER_02: Like we all fail because of things that are outside of our control all the time
10:59
SPEAKER_02: and bad things happen to us all the time, which I hate.
11:02
SPEAKER_02: I'm so sorry for all of us.
11:04
SPEAKER_02: But if you didn't play a direct role in that failure,
11:08
SPEAKER_02: then it's not the sort of failure we celebrate at the ball.
11:13
SPEAKER_01: We'll hold space for you.
11:14
SPEAKER_01: We'll hug you and we will pass you
11:15
SPEAKER_02: tissues if you cry and laugh with you.
11:18
SPEAKER_02: But it's all about like,
11:20
SPEAKER_02: oh, I did this thing that caused this chain reaction and that was a bad idea.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: Like there are some failures that like you're likely cause fails.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: And then there are choices we make that the online business ecosystem have told us
11:35
SPEAKER_00: that are failures.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: Getting a job is a business failure, right?
11:39
SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, you couldn't hack it till you got a job.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, you, you know, you didn't have a million dollar launch or you aren't.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: I mean, like, there's always like, so these are like, there are failures.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: That are like, oh, yes, we cost a lot of money.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: And then there's choices that we've been told are failures.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: Like a couple of my clients have like recently gotten jobs because they realized
12:03
SPEAKER_00: that like,
12:04
SPEAKER_00: yeah, like I got into this business for flexibility and hey, you know what?
12:09
SPEAKER_00: The financial stability I was looking for actually isn't here in entrepreneurship.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: So you know what I'm going to do?
12:13
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to go get a job that's Way more financially stable than the dream I was promised.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: But that doesn't mean I failed at entrepreneurship.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: That means I made a different choice from a place of power about what my life
12:26
SPEAKER_00: and business needs right now.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: And yet there are some things that are like,
12:31
SPEAKER_00: oh, well, you know, you chose not to have $100,000 launch.
12:34
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, you're a failure.
12:37
SPEAKER_02: That's a great question.
12:40
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the benchmarks of failures and when other people tell us we have failed is
12:43
SPEAKER_02: a fascinating cycle of shame and isolation.
12:47
SPEAKER_02: But ultimately for us, what it comes down to at the core is what is the effort behind it, right?
12:56
SPEAKER_02: So when we say,
12:57
SPEAKER_02: you know, oh,
12:57
SPEAKER_02: I failed at entrepreneurship because I got a day job,
13:01
SPEAKER_02: well, No, you put in the effort to make your life better, and you did.
13:07
SPEAKER_02: You made the choice to get what you needed, and then you got it, right?
13:15
SPEAKER_02: When we look even at some of the most cataclysmic failures, okay?
13:22
SPEAKER_02: I launched my business 12 years ago, had a very, very, very long waitlist.
13:27
SPEAKER_02: Magically, it was such a gift.
13:29
SPEAKER_02: And then I launched and two weeks into having my own business for
13:32
SPEAKER_02: the very first time,
13:33
SPEAKER_02: I had my one and only psychotic mental health episode and had to go
13:37
SPEAKER_02: into inpatient hospitalization for a week.
13:40
SPEAKER_02: And I had to send emails from my hospital intake bed being like,
13:44
SPEAKER_02: I'm so sorry,
13:45
SPEAKER_02: I have to postpone your kickoff while my ass is like flapping in the wind
13:50
SPEAKER_02: of this hospital gown, right?
13:52
SPEAKER_02: And ultimately I failed at launching my business and failure is not a dirty word.
13:57
SPEAKER_02: I failed at it.
13:57
SPEAKER_02: My business launch was a failure.
14:00
SPEAKER_02: And the thing we're celebrating is the effort that it took to become a better person
14:07
SPEAKER_02: for myself and also my clients.
14:09
SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
14:10
SPEAKER_02: Oh, you failed because you didn't have a million dollar launch.
14:13
SPEAKER_02: That sucks.
14:15
SPEAKER_02: Oh, you failed because you should close down your business and got a day job.
14:19
SPEAKER_02: Good for you.
14:20
SPEAKER_02: For giving a shit enough to try at going after a life that you want.
14:25
SPEAKER_02: So it's kind of a fine line.
14:27
SPEAKER_02: And really what I'll say is that like, failure is not a dirty word.
14:32
SPEAKER_02: And even if you fail at your launch,
14:34
SPEAKER_02: or even if you fail at entrepreneurship, like,
14:37
SPEAKER_02: heck yeah, for try it in the first place, because that's more than most people do.
14:41
SPEAKER_01: Feels very like Brene Brown of like, if you don't go in the arena, then you can't criticize.
14:48
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, essentially.
14:49
SPEAKER_01: And also, I guess it's Teddy Roosevelt, not Brene Brown.
14:52
SPEAKER_02: But, you know,
14:54
SPEAKER_01: I always get those two confused.
14:56
SPEAKER_02: Tomato, tomato, right?
14:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
15:02
SPEAKER_01: So my question wasn't so much about the failure side, but the ball.
15:07
SPEAKER_01: What was it that made you go, you know what?
15:09
SPEAKER_01: I want to not just talk because this could be a podcast, right?
15:13
SPEAKER_01: This is the format of these stories.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: Speeches and conversations could be so many different things.
15:20
SPEAKER_01: This could be a summit.
15:22
SPEAKER_01: The way that online entrepreneurs think is like,
15:24
SPEAKER_01: oh, how can I monetize this and make it consistent?
15:27
SPEAKER_01: And how can I turn it into content?
15:28
SPEAKER_01: And that was not the goal for you.
15:30
SPEAKER_01: It was, how do I get these people into a room?
15:33
SPEAKER_01: And how do I make it fun while also talking about some hard, deep shit?
15:39
SPEAKER_01: So we've been talking about the failure, but why the ball?
15:44
SPEAKER_02: That's such a good question.
15:47
SPEAKER_02: Few parts to it.
15:48
SPEAKER_02: First of all, failure is so often people get a face when they say failure.
15:53
SPEAKER_02: I tried to do a campaign a few years ago where I wanted people
15:55
SPEAKER_02: to send me short clips saying like, hey, I'm so-and-so and I'm a failure, right?
16:00
SPEAKER_02: People could not do it.
16:01
SPEAKER_02: And I got so many messages saying like, I physically cannot get those words out of my mouth.
16:06
SPEAKER_02: And I understand like it's,
16:08
SPEAKER_02: you know, and that's not to say that if you fail, you are a failure, right?
16:11
SPEAKER_02: I understand the difference, but marketing.
16:15
SPEAKER_02: What I wanted to do essentially was flip it on its head and glamorize failure.
16:20
SPEAKER_02: And what is more glamorous than ball gowns and crowns and velvet sofas and chandeliers, right?
16:27
SPEAKER_02: Fancy pants, snacks.
16:30
SPEAKER_02: And in terms of the actual format of not only the nonprofit element,
16:35
SPEAKER_02: but also getting people in the room together is it's a different energy.
16:39
SPEAKER_02: It's more supportive.
16:40
SPEAKER_02: People feel safer.
16:43
SPEAKER_02: I like to say that it it oftentimes,
16:45
SPEAKER_02: even though these speakers come from all over the world and prepare their speaker
16:49
SPEAKER_02: or their speeches with our speaking director who's on our board of directors,
16:54
SPEAKER_02: his name's Mike Ganino.
16:55
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you guys are familiar.
16:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we've had Mike
16:57
SPEAKER_01: on the show.
16:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Mike is just a gosh darn angel baby.
17:00
SPEAKER_02: And he mentors all our speakers for free because he is a fantastic human being.
17:07
SPEAKER_02: Even though they prepare and prepare and prepare,
17:09
SPEAKER_02: a lot of times the atmosphere feels more like an open mic with call and response,
17:14
SPEAKER_02: right?
17:15
SPEAKER_02: Where people get on and say, oh,
17:16
SPEAKER_01: I did this and this,
17:17
SPEAKER_01: and then the crowd
17:17
SPEAKER_02: goes, oh,
17:19
SPEAKER_02: or like you hear the audible gasps and people are hugging and laughing and crying,
17:25
SPEAKER_02: which is an energy that doesn't belong in a summit and wouldn't have
17:33
SPEAKER_02: the same In-person power as a podcast,
17:38
SPEAKER_02: because if it's all about,
17:41
SPEAKER_02: you know,
17:41
SPEAKER_02: feeling less alone,
17:43
SPEAKER_02: I think being able to look around and see all of the people that it's resonating
17:47
SPEAKER_02: with, like, you know, every single person in that room is not judging anyone.
17:54
SPEAKER_02: And that's rare.
17:55
SPEAKER_02: Not to mention when I started realizing the caliber of the failures
17:58
SPEAKER_02: that people were comfortable talking about,
18:00
SPEAKER_02: it felt extremely exploitative to try to monetize it.
18:05
SPEAKER_02: And do something like a summit or a conference.
18:08
SPEAKER_02: And can you imagine talking about your failure under fucking fluorescent lighting?
18:13
SPEAKER_02: Like, no, thank you.
18:14
SPEAKER_02: Hard pass.
18:15
SPEAKER_01: I was thinking like how terrible this would be on Zoom if you're like crying
18:19
SPEAKER_01: and you're like half these people have their cameras off
18:20
SPEAKER_01: because they're folding their laundry.
18:22
SPEAKER_01: Like they're half tuned out.
18:23
SPEAKER_01: They're watching the replay.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: Like it doesn't feel engaged or personal or human in any way.
18:29
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
18:30
SPEAKER_02: And humanity is the core of all of it.
18:33
SPEAKER_02: All of it.
18:33
SPEAKER_02: All of it.
18:34
SPEAKER_02: All of it.
18:36
SPEAKER_02: We always come back to our core ethos that we are all in this together.
18:40
SPEAKER_02: And mental health is not a moral failing.
18:43
SPEAKER_02: Failure is not a moral failing.
18:45
SPEAKER_02: It's just a side effect of effort.
18:48
SPEAKER_02: And it's proof that we're dreaming at a scale worth our time.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: So there's a trend right now,
18:56
SPEAKER_00: and I don't know if y'all have noticed this,
18:58
SPEAKER_00: but there's a trend where I see a lot of people Monetizing their own failure as
19:05
SPEAKER_00: the hook for a paid substack.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: Like there's someone who like went,
19:08
SPEAKER_00: you know,
19:09
SPEAKER_00: basically,
19:10
SPEAKER_00: you know,
19:11
SPEAKER_00: blew up her,
19:12
SPEAKER_00: you know,
19:12
SPEAKER_00: multimillion dollar business and is now charging people $5 a month,
19:16
SPEAKER_00: $10 a month,
19:16
SPEAKER_00: whatever,
19:16
SPEAKER_00: to like hear the behind the scenes tea about how that worked in the numbers.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: It's like, like get the details of like how it went down behind the paywall.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: Or a lot of people are detailing like their pivots in public.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: This feels very different than that because the goal isn't to tantalize and monetize.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: The goal is to normalize,
19:39
SPEAKER_00: celebrate,
19:40
SPEAKER_00: and share,
19:41
SPEAKER_00: not as a marketing tactic to make money, but as a way to do collective healing.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: Are you seeing that trend?
19:51
SPEAKER_00: Is anyone else seeing this trend to me?
19:52
SPEAKER_00: Because I pay attention to too many shit online.
19:54
SPEAKER_02: Oh, it's so real.
19:55
SPEAKER_02: And it's the hero's journey arc that's been used in every...
19:59
SPEAKER_02: Marketing campaign since I first started copywriting 12 years ago,
20:03
SPEAKER_01: where it starts with,
20:04
SPEAKER_01: you know, Oh,
20:05
SPEAKER_02: and then my children, blah, blah,
20:06
SPEAKER_02: and you get super invested and the end is like,
20:09
SPEAKER_02: and get my course for $9.97 where I show you and you're like,
20:12
SPEAKER_02: I feel like I just got bait and switched.
20:15
SPEAKER_02: And that is not to say that people are not allowed to leverage their own stories and
20:19
SPEAKER_02: the power of storytelling to support themselves, right?
20:23
SPEAKER_02: Like no shade for people who have paid Substacks to talk about things they need
20:28
SPEAKER_02: to process and talk about more power to you.
20:31
SPEAKER_02: But the failure ball is here.
20:33
SPEAKER_02: Essentially, we know the psychology behind shame.
20:36
SPEAKER_02: We know that the antidotes to shame are community, non-judgment, sharing, and self-kindness.
20:44
SPEAKER_02: And that's really what we're here for is like, Drag your dark secrets into the light, right?
20:50
SPEAKER_02: You feel like they're so dirty,
20:52
SPEAKER_02: bring them into this room and you'll see how squeaky clean they actually are.
20:55
SPEAKER_02: Because I guarantee someone in this room relates,
20:58
SPEAKER_02: even if they haven't personally gotten swindled out of money by someone on
21:02
SPEAKER_02: the internet, right?
21:03
SPEAKER_02: It's the failure behind the failure.
21:06
SPEAKER_02: Everybody wants to be loved, right?
21:09
SPEAKER_02: If you've had a launch that failed, maybe everyone hasn't lost a million dollars at launch.
21:13
SPEAKER_02: But everybody wants to try to have financial stability in their life.
21:18
SPEAKER_02: And it's those underlying threads that connects everyone and helps heal
21:21
SPEAKER_02: that trauma versus for $27 in four installments, we will heal your shame for you.
21:30
SPEAKER_01: God, that's so fucked up to think about.
21:32
SPEAKER_02: I also believe that people who are not,
21:34
SPEAKER_02: I think the word trauma informed is very problematic in the marketing space.
21:39
SPEAKER_02: A lot of people working with trauma and things like that,
21:42
SPEAKER_02: if you are not like a licensed clinician.
21:45
SPEAKER_02: And so we work really hard to say that this is, you know, community.
21:49
SPEAKER_02: This is not therapy.
21:51
SPEAKER_02: This is a safe space to process and belong.
21:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
21:57
SPEAKER_01: And like.
21:59
SPEAKER_01: Therapists should be paid and not and not in twenty seven dollars to heal you.
22:04
SPEAKER_01: No installments that, you know, like, oh, God.
22:07
SPEAKER_02: I often tell people to fire their life coach and hire a therapist,
22:11
SPEAKER_02: which is not a very popular outlook, as you can imagine.
22:15
SPEAKER_02: And people point to the fact that therapists can do so much damage,
22:18
SPEAKER_02: and they point to these anecdotal stories of ways that therapists have caused harm.
22:23
SPEAKER_02: And all I can think about is if someone who has done all of this work and has all
22:27
SPEAKER_02: of this training can do that harm to your psyche,
22:30
SPEAKER_02: imagine how much some life coach from Her couch living room can do to your psyche
22:36
SPEAKER_02: without that training.
22:39
SPEAKER_01: And they have a license that can be taken away.
22:42
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
22:43
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: And you talk about community and I think it's really important because as someone,
22:49
SPEAKER_00: you know, I work on the internet by myself, right?
22:51
SPEAKER_00: I lead a community.
22:55
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about y'all, but like there are failures that I need to process.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: Not in my community, like in the community I lead and with my peers.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I don't know.
23:07
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to like,
23:08
SPEAKER_00: there's no judgment on my side,
23:09
SPEAKER_00: but I'm like, I don't want that to diminish
23:14
SPEAKER_00: my and cross boundaries with my clients.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: Like if I'm struggling with something in my business,
23:20
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if this is my personal opinion,
23:22
SPEAKER_00: but like if I'm struggling with something in my business or I'm like dealing
23:25
SPEAKER_00: with my own stuff about choices I'm making and things like that,
23:29
SPEAKER_00: like, The place to process that is not to my audience as a marketing thing.
23:35
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
23:35
SPEAKER_00: Like I just need to go like build other relationships to handle that kind of stuff.
23:40
SPEAKER_00: That's not part of my brand story or diminishing my own credibility in front of
23:44
SPEAKER_00: the people I'm here to serve.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that's just like a me thing.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm a business coach and business consultant and like maintaining
23:52
SPEAKER_00: a professional posture in my practice.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: Is that just a me thing or is that what everyone struggles with?
23:58
SPEAKER_02: Definitely not a you thing.
24:00
SPEAKER_02: Definitely not a you thing.
24:01
SPEAKER_02: And I think it's also not that you need my validation,
24:04
SPEAKER_02: but it's also completely legitimate, right?
24:06
SPEAKER_02: There's a reason why we also don't stand on street corners and shout about
24:10
SPEAKER_02: the trauma that we're currently experiencing or the failures that we're going
24:13
SPEAKER_02: through.
24:13
SPEAKER_02: There's a time and a place for everything.
24:15
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, like I said before, we're not here to re-traumatize anyone.
24:19
SPEAKER_02: Or make anyone turn, I always say you don't have to turn your trauma into content, right?
24:24
SPEAKER_02: You can,
24:25
SPEAKER_02: if it's cathartic for you,
24:26
SPEAKER_02: if it's helpful for you, but like no one is ever obligated to talk about anything.
24:33
SPEAKER_02: And there are circumstances where talking about an active failure with clients
24:39
SPEAKER_02: before you've come to resolution can hurt your credibility.
24:42
SPEAKER_02: Like I'm not, I think that's a smart business decision.
24:45
SPEAKER_02: I do the same thing.
24:47
SPEAKER_02: There's a reason we have friends and partners and therapists and doctors
24:52
SPEAKER_02: and anonymous forums, right?
24:54
SPEAKER_02: Is everything doesn't belong everywhere, but it very often can belong at the ball.
25:00
SPEAKER_02: And to that point,
25:01
SPEAKER_02: like so many of the people who speak are on the other side of these things
25:06
SPEAKER_02: that have happened,
25:07
SPEAKER_02: but we always make sure that every single year there's at least one person
25:11
SPEAKER_02: who is actively failing and feels comfortable and confident saying, hey,
25:16
SPEAKER_02: I am actively failing and there's not a gold bow on this because I do think there is
25:21
SPEAKER_02: the misconception that we are not allowed to say that I messed up
25:26
SPEAKER_02: and I don't know all the answers until we're on the other side of that
25:30
SPEAKER_02: and it becomes this shiny packaged thing.
25:33
SPEAKER_02: Um, so I would say yes and yes, totally normal, completely legitimate.
25:38
SPEAKER_02: And there are exceptions to that.
25:40
SPEAKER_02: Use your best judgment.
25:42
SPEAKER_02: Um, I certainly don't tell my clients everything when I'm going through stuff.
25:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think also like just because people on the internet care
25:50
SPEAKER_01: about us doesn't mean they need to know everything about our businesses or our lives
25:54
SPEAKER_01: or any of that.
25:56
SPEAKER_01: And I love that what you just said,
25:59
SPEAKER_01: Jess, of like your trauma does not need to become your content.
26:02
SPEAKER_02: Not unless you want it to be.
26:04
SPEAKER_02: Like I am a lifelong overshare on the internet.
26:08
SPEAKER_02: I had my first live journal at 14, right?
26:11
SPEAKER_02: And I think The key to sharing vulnerable things about yourself without getting
26:18
SPEAKER_02: an emotional hangover, essentially, is knowing why you're sharing it, right?
26:25
SPEAKER_02: Are you sharing it so that people feel less alone?
26:28
SPEAKER_02: Are you sharing it because you need to feel witnessed?
26:31
SPEAKER_02: Are you sharing it because you need input?
26:33
SPEAKER_02: And as long as you know what that is and you recognize that the avenue you're using
26:37
SPEAKER_02: for that matches with what you need, then like, go for it.
26:42
SPEAKER_02: If I need somebody to argue with me and point out maybe the irrational parts
26:49
SPEAKER_02: of my thought processes, I'm certainly not going to post on a frigging Reddit forum.
26:53
SPEAKER_02: Are you kidding?
26:55
SPEAKER_02: That's a conversation for therapy.
26:57
SPEAKER_02: When I was going through my incredible chronic illness for three years
27:00
SPEAKER_02: and we were trying to seal the leak in my spine where brain fluid was pouring out,
27:04
SPEAKER_02: that is something I recognized I needed.
27:08
SPEAKER_02: To talk about and process in public because I personally needed my community.
27:14
SPEAKER_02: And there was the flip side of like wanting to normalize people who were
27:20
SPEAKER_02: on paper quite successful in their businesses and chronically ill, right?
27:25
SPEAKER_02: Because there's so many of us.
27:26
SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's all the data that shows that Entrepreneurs are like twice as likely
27:30
SPEAKER_02: to have suicidal ideation or commit suicide than people
27:34
SPEAKER_02: who are traditionally employed were six times as likely to have ADHD
27:38
SPEAKER_02: and mood regulation disorders, things like that.
27:40
SPEAKER_02: So it's like this dirty secret underneath all of the shiny marketing stuff that
27:46
SPEAKER_02: so many people are suffering and we feel like we're not allowed to talk about it.
27:51
SPEAKER_02: I'm fortunate that I'm comfortable enough in my business's track record
27:54
SPEAKER_02: that I can be like, This shit is going very, very terribly.
27:58
SPEAKER_02: But look at these clients in my portfolio.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: It's nice when you can find the balance for sure.
28:04
SPEAKER_01: My personal life is a dumpster fire, but this launch went really well.
28:09
Yeah.
28:09
SPEAKER_02: I've been lying in bed for the last three years,
28:12
SPEAKER_02: staring at the same patch of my ceiling on doctor's orders.
28:15
SPEAKER_02: And I did this public health campaign for Narcan.
28:18
SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, so it's, yeah, it's a trip.
28:22
SPEAKER_02: It's a trip.
28:22
SPEAKER_02: We are whole humans, you know?
28:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:26
SPEAKER_01: And you're allowed to be a human.
28:29
SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.
28:31
SPEAKER_01: Memorable.
28:31
SPEAKER_01: And it makes you, you know, somebody that people may want to hire because you understand.
28:37
SPEAKER_01: But there were probably people who were like, oh, God,
28:39
SPEAKER_01: maybe I shouldn't hire just because I don't know if she'll be able
28:41
SPEAKER_01: to hit these deadlines.
28:42
SPEAKER_01: And you have to navigate that part of it, too.
28:44
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
28:45
SPEAKER_02: And you know how I navigated it is I had conversations where I said,
28:48
SPEAKER_02: hey, you might be worried that I might not be able to hit these deadlines.
28:51
SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about it.
28:52
SPEAKER_02: Right.
28:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:54
SPEAKER_02: Again, that comes from that humanity and transparency piece of like, well,
28:57
SPEAKER_02: if I'm going to be transparent talking about all this shit that's going on,
29:00
SPEAKER_02: then I also need to be transparent talking about how it may affect my business,
29:04
SPEAKER_02: right?
29:05
SPEAKER_02: Let's set accurate expectations at this intersection.
29:11
SPEAKER_00: Going back to the stories,
29:11
SPEAKER_00: because I'm also, you know, I know Mike Ganino's work and he's amazing.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: How did the,
29:16
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you get to hear the stories before they're shared,
29:19
SPEAKER_00: sort of,
29:19
SPEAKER_00: I'd be curious about sort of like when we're telling stories The stories of
29:24
SPEAKER_00: the failures.
29:26
SPEAKER_00: How do some of the stories evolve as the coaching happens?
29:30
SPEAKER_00: Like what are the things we maybe tend to emphasize when we're telling
29:33
SPEAKER_00: the story versus like what's the shape of the story when it's on the stage?
29:38
SPEAKER_02: That is where Mike,
29:40
SPEAKER_02: so I go to every speaker coaching call because it's important to me that I Connect
29:45
SPEAKER_02: with the speakers if I'm going to be the one, you know, introducing them.
29:49
SPEAKER_02: And if they're part of this organization,
29:50
SPEAKER_02: like I am here to be their personal frickin cheerleaders throwing fistfuls
29:54
SPEAKER_02: of confetti on the side of the road.
29:56
SPEAKER_02: So I get to watch their stories evolve, which is such an incredible gift.
30:01
SPEAKER_02: And so often it starts out with the thing.
30:05
SPEAKER_02: I failed at this launch.
30:07
SPEAKER_02: I X, Y, Z, right.
30:11
SPEAKER_02: I tripped off the sidewalk, whatever.
30:13
SPEAKER_02: And Mike's gift is that he gets to the failure underneath the failure.
30:20
SPEAKER_02: It's not that you failed at the launch.
30:23
SPEAKER_02: What was it that made you make XYZ choice that meant your launch failed, right?
30:30
SPEAKER_02: What was it that made you decide blah, blah, blah, that made this fail?
30:35
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, someone may say, Hey, I am currently in a lot of business debt.
30:43
SPEAKER_02: And I'm feeling lost in my business.
30:45
SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, why?
30:47
SPEAKER_02: Oh, because I've been outsourcing to AI so much.
30:49
SPEAKER_02: Okay, but why?
30:51
SPEAKER_02: Well, I actually don't trust myself.
30:53
SPEAKER_02: Okay, but why?
30:54
SPEAKER_02: Well, I don't trust myself because of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
30:58
SPEAKER_02: And then the failure is actually the seed that caused that domino effect of all of
31:04
SPEAKER_02: the rest of the failures.
31:06
SPEAKER_02: So, so often we're quick to say, I failed at this.
31:09
SPEAKER_02: Material, external, objective thing where so often our failures are internal.
31:15
SPEAKER_02: Everything we feel translates into the external world, right?
31:18
SPEAKER_02: It'd be so cute if we could separate them.
31:21
SPEAKER_02: But alas, we are but mere mortals.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: I failed at XYZ because as a child,
31:28
SPEAKER_00: the only way I could get my parents' attention was by being good at school
31:31
SPEAKER_00: and therefore I put my entire value proposition on being smart.
31:34
SPEAKER_00: Is that some of those things that are underlying?
31:39
SPEAKER_01: Jessica takes this podcast as like therapy sometimes,
31:42
SPEAKER_01: especially when we have a therapist in the room as a guest.
31:45
SPEAKER_01: So it's like,
31:46
SPEAKER_01: I remember when we had Nicola Whiskeyber on and you were like,
31:49
SPEAKER_01: so let's talk about Jessica on the playground.
31:51
SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh, we're going here.
31:55
SPEAKER_01: Little Jessica telling the other kids about the book she read.
31:57
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, yeah, I totally see this.
31:59
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's going to be the next business podcast I do.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: But, you know,
32:03
SPEAKER_00: as a six-year-old that didn't play so well,
32:05
SPEAKER_00: as a 43-year-old woman, that's actually a business asset.
32:09
SPEAKER_01: But that's a terrible conversation.
32:11
SPEAKER_01: And maybe that's also part of it is what are the things that shaped us
32:14
SPEAKER_01: and made us make the decisions that we did.
32:17
SPEAKER_01: So I love that,
32:17
SPEAKER_01: that it can go all the way back to that seed decision and that
32:21
SPEAKER_00: You know,
32:21
SPEAKER_00: it's not
32:22
SPEAKER_01: just recent trauma that we're talking about here.
32:23
SPEAKER_01: There's childhood trauma popping up, I'm sure.
32:26
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
32:28
SPEAKER_02: And it always comes back to wanting something.
32:31
SPEAKER_02: What were we trying to accomplish?
32:33
SPEAKER_02: Did we want to feel loved?
32:34
SPEAKER_02: Did we want to feel safe?
32:35
SPEAKER_02: Did we want to feel successful?
32:37
SPEAKER_02: Did we want to feel validated?
32:40
SPEAKER_02: The core human needs, I think, are really at the core of of most of our external failures.
32:45
SPEAKER_01: And I hate,
32:46
SPEAKER_01: you know,
32:46
SPEAKER_01: I hate
32:46
SPEAKER_02: that everyone's like,
32:47
SPEAKER_02: oh, you go to therapy and they're like, oh, well, what were your parents like?
32:51
SPEAKER_02: But I mean, really, like, what were your parents like?
32:55
SPEAKER_01: My mother-in-law's visiting and I was literally having this conversation
32:57
SPEAKER_01: with her this morning about like,
33:00
SPEAKER_01: Ben does this because you and your first husband did this.
33:05
SPEAKER_01: And I do this because my parents did this and I don't want to do that.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: So I went this far and like my pendulum swung the opposite direction.
33:12
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like telling her,
33:13
SPEAKER_01: talking her through this and she's like, Oh, I never thought about that.
33:16
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, oh, I did.
33:17
SPEAKER_02: I think a lot about what
33:20
SPEAKER_01: he and I grew up with and what we want our kids
33:22
SPEAKER_01: to experience and how we're picking and choosing and making conscious choices
33:27
SPEAKER_01: of what cycles to break.
33:28
SPEAKER_01: And she was like, oh.
33:30
SPEAKER_01: I'm also picturing, oh.
33:33
SPEAKER_01: God, that sounds exhausting.
33:36
SPEAKER_01: It's been two weeks.
33:37
SPEAKER_01: It's been two weeks with a family in town and it's a lot.
33:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:41
SPEAKER_02: You are a braver soul than I am.
33:43
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I think it's so relevant.
33:45
SPEAKER_01: It all comes back to what did you want as a kid?
33:47
SPEAKER_01: Who did you want to be?
33:48
SPEAKER_01: And then the choices that you make from there.
33:50
SPEAKER_01: And I think entrepreneurship is one of those choices.
33:53
SPEAKER_01: That was not what I wanted to be when I grew up.
33:55
SPEAKER_01: But it's what I needed to do to survive.
34:00
SPEAKER_02: Not only what did we want, but what do we believe about ourselves?
34:04
SPEAKER_02: And did we choose to believe that?
34:05
SPEAKER_02: Who made us believe that?
34:08
SPEAKER_02: It's all interconnected.
34:09
SPEAKER_02: And it'd be so handy if it fit into these tidy little boxes.
34:12
SPEAKER_02: But Humanity is complex and messy.
34:16
SPEAKER_02: And I think entrepreneurship so often requires us to be shiny.
34:21
SPEAKER_02: And we always hear about being thought leaders and authorities in the space.
34:27
SPEAKER_02: And I can both be like one of the best conversion copywriters out there and someone
34:34
SPEAKER_02: who has struggled with suicidal ideation since I was five years old.
34:38
SPEAKER_02: Right.
34:38
SPEAKER_02: Two things can be true at once.
34:40
SPEAKER_02: And that's something that I wish so many more people talked about.
34:44
SPEAKER_00: I feel like there's the authenticity as a human,
34:47
SPEAKER_00: and then there's the brand, and especially us as soloists, they get conflated.
34:55
SPEAKER_00: It's like, who am I as a thought leader?
34:56
SPEAKER_00: Who am I as deeper foundations?
34:59
SPEAKER_00: What does deeper foundations stand for?
35:01
SPEAKER_00: And what's behind the scenes of Jessica, the founder?
35:05
SPEAKER_00: But I feel like when we feel like we are the brand, sometimes it gets really humiliated.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: I absolutely agree.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: And it's something that I think a lot of us have to fail our way through and say,
35:14
SPEAKER_00: oh, that was a mistake.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: I probably shouldn't have talked to a client about that, right?
35:18
SPEAKER_00: Or
35:35
SPEAKER_02: Um, oh, that was actually okay.
35:37
SPEAKER_02: That was a safe thing to tell my client that I'm having spinal surgery or whatever.
35:41
SPEAKER_02: And it's all about feeling it out for yourself because everyone has different boundaries.
35:46
SPEAKER_02: It always reminds me of, you know, how Olive Garden is like when you're here, your family.
35:49
SPEAKER_02: Right.
35:49
SPEAKER_02: And I think so oftentimes people who don't separate themselves from their brand
35:58
SPEAKER_02: in certain intentional ways.
36:02
SPEAKER_02: Um, are often doing a disservice to their client because they're almost abusing
36:07
SPEAKER_02: the provider client relationship by putting emotional weight onto a client.
36:14
SPEAKER_02: Like my professional boundary as someone who is very transparent
36:18
SPEAKER_02: about things is I talk about all the things on my personal Facebook.
36:22
SPEAKER_02: Some past clients are on there.
36:23
SPEAKER_02: They continue to hire me because they trust my work and they know me and they like me.
36:27
SPEAKER_02: And over the last decade, we've developed, you know, a personal relationship.
36:32
SPEAKER_02: Then I have my personal Instagram account where you can't find it by my actual name.
36:37
SPEAKER_02: And I talk very explicitly about mental health and my journey with depression
36:41
SPEAKER_02: and chronic illness and things like that.
36:43
SPEAKER_02: And when I talk with clients,
36:44
SPEAKER_02: it is not unusual during a coaching call to have a client cry or process
36:49
SPEAKER_02: through something,
36:50
SPEAKER_02: because again, what happens in our personal lives so often is reflected in business.
36:55
SPEAKER_02: And I have no problem holding space for clients.
36:59
SPEAKER_02: What I will not do.
37:01
SPEAKER_02: When a client is paying me is ask them to hold space for me.
37:05
SPEAKER_02: Like that is not their job.
37:08
SPEAKER_02: It is mine.
37:10
SPEAKER_02: And like hard stop.
37:14
SPEAKER_01: And that's a perfect place to stop too.
37:17
SPEAKER_01: Yay.
37:17
SPEAKER_01: Yay.
37:18
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
37:18
SPEAKER_01: So Jess,
37:20
SPEAKER_01: if people are in Denver in September and they want to get tickets to
37:24
SPEAKER_01: the failure ball, where do they go for that?
37:27
SPEAKER_02: The failure ball.com.
37:29
SPEAKER_02: You can find us on social media at The Failure Ball.
37:31
SPEAKER_02: We share anonymous failure confessionals every Friday that are submitted
37:38
SPEAKER_02: the lovely folks in our community.
37:40
SPEAKER_02: And we would love to have you.
37:42
SPEAKER_02: It is one of the most glorious, fun, and accepting spaces you will ever step in.
37:48
SPEAKER_01: And if you are listening to this too late or you can't make it to Denver,
37:52
SPEAKER_01: then still go follow and you can go in 2028.
37:54
SPEAKER_01: Just put it on your calendar far in advance.
37:58
SPEAKER_02: Yep, follow, get on the email list.
38:00
SPEAKER_02: It's usually every September because it's Suicide Awareness Month.
38:04
SPEAKER_01: Very smart.
38:05
SPEAKER_01: All right, well, Jess,
38:06
SPEAKER_01: we'll give you a bit of a break,
38:08
SPEAKER_01: take some water, take care of yourself for a moment, and I'll hit up Jessica.
38:12
SPEAKER_01: What is Aggressively Human in your world right now?
38:15
SPEAKER_00: I ended up going with two,
38:18
SPEAKER_00: one of my long-standing clients and one of my long-standing, um,
38:22
SPEAKER_00: Other members who they had never met each other,
38:25
SPEAKER_00: but like I knew them from the same pocket of Charlotte entrepreneurship,
38:29
SPEAKER_00: but they'd never met each other.
38:31
SPEAKER_00: And the three of us,
38:32
SPEAKER_00: plus my dog,
38:33
SPEAKER_00: we got to go to the Charlotte Whitewater Center,
38:35
SPEAKER_00: which is kind of like a, think about like if you had a man-made business.
38:40
SPEAKER_00: A man-made Whitewater Rapids area,
38:43
SPEAKER_00: plus some walking tracks and like some hiking in like a really big forest.
38:48
SPEAKER_00: So we got to do that on Saturday.
38:49
SPEAKER_00: So it was like, and we were like, oh my God, it's so nice to like see you in person.
38:55
SPEAKER_00: I keep talking about like how much in person is really shaping my business and my life.
38:59
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, It was just so nice to see people who I've been seeing on the Zooms all the time.
39:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I box her with one of my clients like, you know, every single day.
39:07
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, oh, you're real here.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: You're here.
39:09
SPEAKER_00: And we got to step away from our families for like an hour and a half.
39:13
SPEAKER_00: And it was super hot outside.
39:16
SPEAKER_00: And we got to walk around in the sun.
39:17
SPEAKER_00: They got to meet my dog.
39:19
SPEAKER_00: She's one of my clients.
39:20
SPEAKER_00: She's like, I've known you for five years and I've never met Logan.
39:23
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, yes, well, we've now fixed it.
39:26
SPEAKER_00: That's my Aggressively Human and canine.
39:29
SPEAKER_00: So if you live in Charlotte and you're like, I want to go hiking with Jessica, let me know.
39:33
SPEAKER_00: We could do that now.
39:35
SPEAKER_00: Um, Meg.
39:37
SPEAKER_01: So I just went on a cruise with, uh,
39:39
SPEAKER_01: 10 of my extended family members,
39:41
SPEAKER_01: including my three nieces who are, um, 11, seven and three.
39:46
SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
39:47
SPEAKER_01: they live in Maryland, so it's not always easy to get down there and see each other.
39:50
SPEAKER_01: We probably see each other a couple of days a year and we FaceTime,
39:53
SPEAKER_01: but, uh, the little one, especially she's three and she's shy.
39:59
SPEAKER_01: And she had her dad and her mom there, my brother and his wife.
40:02
SPEAKER_01: So it took her a little bit of time to remember and warm up to the aunt.
40:08
SPEAKER_01: But by our final day there, she told her dad, I want to go swimming.
40:12
SPEAKER_01: My brother texted me.
40:13
SPEAKER_01: He's like, I've got this kid in the pickleball court and this kid's going over here.
40:17
SPEAKER_01: Can you take the baby swimming?
40:19
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, yeah.
40:21
SPEAKER_01: I can.
40:21
SPEAKER_01: And she and I spent an hour and she was like giggling and letting me do like,
40:25
SPEAKER_01: you know,
40:26
SPEAKER_01: the like this little piggy goes to market and we were playing with her hat.
40:29
SPEAKER_01: And like,
40:30
SPEAKER_01: I don't get a chance to play with three year olds very often,
40:32
SPEAKER_01: but she was she was having fun with me and trusted me after a week.
40:36
SPEAKER_01: And that's a very cool, beautiful thing.
40:39
SPEAKER_01: When you have a family member, you don't see that often.
40:41
SPEAKER_01: And by the time she sees me again, she's probably going to forget me again.
40:44
SPEAKER_01: So the fact that I was able to establish that and sort of like get that goodwill and
40:48
SPEAKER_01: then they texted me,
40:49
SPEAKER_01: they were driving home to Maryland,
40:50
SPEAKER_01: we were driving home to New York and they texted and said that in the car she said,
40:54
SPEAKER_01: I want to be back in an elevator and I want to be back with Aunt Meg.
40:58
SPEAKER_01: It was like those are the two priorities of the cruise,
41:00
SPEAKER_01: the elevator because those elevators are awesome and the long lost aunt.
41:07
SPEAKER_01: And Jess, what is Aggressively Human in your world right now?
41:11
SPEAKER_02: I'm in full badger mode, much like Jessica.
41:14
SPEAKER_02: I'm realizing how important all these in-person relationships are.
41:18
SPEAKER_02: And right now, I just don't have the bandwidth to do it.
41:21
SPEAKER_02: I decided that this was my year to rebuild community as a 37-year-old lady.
41:26
SPEAKER_02: And so I joined a book club and read all the books, and I still haven't made it to a meetup.
41:31
SPEAKER_02: Uh, because I've just been sitting on my couch every night,
41:34
SPEAKER_02: like really exhausted from work and ball stuff,
41:37
SPEAKER_02: watching Mythbuster reruns because that's one of my happy places.
41:43
SPEAKER_02: Uh,
41:44
SPEAKER_02: which is so fascinating because being not as social as I'd like makes me feel like
41:49
SPEAKER_02: a failure.
41:50
SPEAKER_02: Um, so yeah,
41:52
SPEAKER_02: I would say that I'm in badger mode in my cave right now and,
41:56
SPEAKER_02: um, it's both comforting and
42:01
SPEAKER_02: Weirdly embarrassing for me, I guess is what I would say about that.
42:06
SPEAKER_02: And that's okay.
42:07
SPEAKER_01: I was about to say that's not embarrassing, but then I'm like, no, we're not shaming.
42:09
SPEAKER_01: We're just embracing the fact that these feelings come up.
42:12
SPEAKER_01: And then I'm also like,
42:13
SPEAKER_01: let me know what books you're reading because I will sit on my couch and read
42:17
SPEAKER_01: the same book and just box her back and forth with you about like,
42:20
SPEAKER_01: oh my God, I'm reading the latest Ellie Hazelwood.
42:23
SPEAKER_01: Have you seen this scene yet?
42:24
SPEAKER_01: Have you gotten to this page yet?
42:25
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to put on hard pants to leave the house though.
42:28
SPEAKER_02: Oh my God, me either.
42:30
SPEAKER_02: When I was a lit major,
42:31
SPEAKER_02: and so my reading list is very much like highbrow things I would talk about
42:35
SPEAKER_02: in public.
42:36
SPEAKER_02: And then it's like,
42:38
SPEAKER_02: werewolf romanticy books where my husband leans over and looks at the title
42:43
SPEAKER_02: of my book and he was like, a reverse harem, what are you reading?
42:46
SPEAKER_01: Oh no, they call them white shoes now.
42:49
SPEAKER_02: What?
42:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you don't call them reverse harem because that is judgmental.
42:53
SPEAKER_02: Oh, sure.
42:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so now we just call them white shoes.
42:57
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you could read books like me,
42:59
SPEAKER_00: which is all about sort of like,
43:00
SPEAKER_00: you know,
43:01
SPEAKER_00: big governmental projects or private public sector projects and why they go
43:04
SPEAKER_00: over budget.
43:05
SPEAKER_00: So, you know.
43:07
SPEAKER_01: But you don't have to because it's not a failure to read for pleasure either.
43:11
SPEAKER_01: No,
43:12
SPEAKER_00: I like reading those books.
43:14
SPEAKER_00: I took a Substack quiz called The Color of Your Reading.
43:17
SPEAKER_00: I'll put in it or something like that.
43:18
SPEAKER_00: And I am a green reader and I love learning about systems and things.
43:22
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, oh, cool.
43:23
SPEAKER_00: This is so validating.
43:24
SPEAKER_00: This is why I don't like the purple colored books in his color scheme.
43:28
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, so I get to read nerdy nonfiction and feel good about it.
43:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:32
SPEAKER_02: I mean, my husband's reading a book this thick that's just called H2O,
43:36
SPEAKER_02: and I was like, what is that about?
43:37
SPEAKER_02: And he was like, oh, like the chemicals of water.
43:40
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.
43:41
SPEAKER_02: All right.
43:42
SPEAKER_02: Sweet.
43:43
SPEAKER_01: My mother-in-law brought her copy of,
43:47
SPEAKER_01: what is it, Kristen Hanna's The Women, which is like 600 pages hardcover.
43:51
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, oh, are you enjoying it?
43:52
SPEAKER_01: She's like, not really.
43:53
SPEAKER_01: But my cousin told me that she liked it.
43:55
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like 100 pages in and I can't get into it.
43:57
SPEAKER_01: And so I just went onto my bookshelf and was like,
43:59
SPEAKER_01: here's seven other books you can choose from
44:01
SPEAKER_01: that you might actually enjoy reading instead of somebody else telling you
44:06
SPEAKER_01: that you have to read something.
44:07
SPEAKER_01: And maybe that comes back to like the failure of someone else likes something
44:11
SPEAKER_01: and you don't like it.
44:11
SPEAKER_01: And that doesn't make you a failure.
44:12
SPEAKER_01: Like read what you want.
44:14
SPEAKER_01: Run the business you want.
44:16
SPEAKER_01: Talk to people you want.
44:18
SPEAKER_01: Spend time and go out and be in,
44:20
SPEAKER_01: you know, relationship with people in your community when you want to.
44:22
SPEAKER_01: And if you don't want to, then fuck it.
44:24
SPEAKER_01: Like, spend time on your couch watching Mythbusters.
44:27
SPEAKER_01: And that's okay, too.
44:29
SPEAKER_01: It's not a failure if that's your self-care.
44:32
SPEAKER_01: It's all okay.
44:34
SPEAKER_01: Jess, thank you so much for being here with us today.
44:37
SPEAKER_01: We really appreciate it.
44:38
SPEAKER_01: And listeners, we will be back next week with another episode about being Aggressively Human.