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What I Learned from 3 Embarrassing Business Failures · The Daily Writer

• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome everybody to the Born to Create Podcast.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Kent Sanders, and I'm your host.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an author, musician, and a teacher.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: But my most important role is being a husband and a dad.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Here on the show we talk about practices, habits, and strategies that help us live out our creative calling.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is episode thirteen, and today we're going to be talking about what I learned from three embarrassing business failures.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: You can find the post that accompanies this episode, as well as all the links, at Kent Sanders.net slash business failures.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a dash between business and failures.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how you deal with failure, but my tendency has always been to beat myself up for my failures.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: But after many years of feeling guilty for my mistakes, I'm finally learning to see my failures as stepping stones to success.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Some of my biggest failures over the last two or three years have involved business decisions that didn't go quite as planned.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Although I wasted a lot of time spinning my wheels, I learned several valuable lessons from these experiences.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's real value in looking at our failures from an objective and analytical standpoint.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: If we can take the emotion out of a situation and see it for what it truly is, I think we can learn a lot from it.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Let me emphasize that the mistakes I'm going to share with you have nothing to do with the businesses or organizations themselves.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Many others have been involved in these specific business areas and done quite well.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: However, these were mistakes for me for reasons that I'll explain.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Not only that, they were embarrassing because they showed my rush to judgment and lack of due diligence on more than one occasion.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: For each of the mistakes that I'll share, I'll tell a little bit about it, why I did it, why it failed, what happened when I quit, and what I learned.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: As I share these, I hope it will be an encouragement to you to reflect on your own failures and learn from them.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: So let's dive in.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Here's failure number one, multi-level marketing, also called MLM.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: In the summer of 2014, I borrowed a little over$2,000 to purchase a membership in a multi-level marketing company that sold health products.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Several people in my extended family had joined the business and they loved the products.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: One person I knew was doing really well in the business, so I figured I'd give it a shot also.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: However, I honestly didn't think it through very well.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Although I personally loved the products, I was a total failure when it came to marketing and spreading the word about my new business.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: I felt super awkward when I talked to family and friends about the business, although people were generally really gracious and kind about it.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now I don't have a problem with the structure of an MLM business or anything like that, but I personally wasn't cut out for that type of direct sales work.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: It just didn't fit my personality well, and I'm not really wired to succeed in that type of work.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: So why did I do it?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I thought it would provide a decent side income for my family.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Why did it fail?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't count the cost before joining the company, and my personality wasn't suited to network marketing.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: What happened when I quit?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I never recouped my money, but I honestly breathed a huge sigh of relief when I quit because I had so much anxiety and stress about it.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And what did I learn?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Most important thing I learned from that experience was to make sure you're well suited to a business before you get involved in it.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Failure number two was a part-time church job.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: In the fall of 2014, pretty soon after I quit my multi-level marketing business, I agreed to take on a part-time job helping coordinate worship volunteers at my church.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: My church has two campuses, and at that time the smaller campus where we were involved was going through some leadership transitions.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Since my background is worship ministry, I agreed to coordinate the volunteers in this ministry area.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's not that I didn't want to help, it's that I truly didn't have the time that the job required, and I should have known better than to agree to do something that I didn't really have time for.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: But instead of having the courage to say no, I said yes because I really, really loved the church and I wanted to help them, and I cared about their worship ministry.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: But as the job required more and more time as the weeks progressed, I started to feel kind of resentful in my spirit.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: The job was getting done, but my attitude was going downhill pretty fast.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, that's unusual for me because I'm almost always an upbeat and positive person.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: It came to a head one day when I found myself having a fairly heated discussion with our campus pastor over some worship issues that were in retrospect really, really insignificant.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Looking back, I was in the wrong because I was making mountains out of molehills.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: But because of my stress level, I was emotionally really out of sorts and super irritable.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: I realized that I wasn't doing the ministry or myself any favors by continuing on in that role.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Just for the sake of clarity, let me emphasize that this was in no way our campus pastor's fault or the church's fault.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: It is a fantastic church and I still love it, and the leadership was completely supportive of me in this role.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: So why did I do it?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I did it because I wanted to help the ministry navigate a transition period.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: So why did it fail?
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: It failed because I was quick to say yes to a commitment instead of considering whether I really had the time to do it well.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: What happened when I quit?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, here's the interesting part.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: As soon as I quit, a young man in our church stepped in to fill that role.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: He did such a great job that our main campus ended up hiring him as a full-time tech team member.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a pretty awesome deal.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: What did I learn?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: I learned that sometimes quitting is the best thing you can do because it gives another person's chance to step up and lead.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Failure number three was fulfillment by Amazon.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: In the summer of 2015, I was introduced to fulfillment by Amazon, otherwise known as FBA.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: This type of Amazon selling allows you to ship your items to Amazon, who then fulfills and ships the orders to buyers.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: It sounded like a win-win to me, and I knew many people were doing super well with FBA, so I decided to give it a shot as well.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: I started by selling hundreds of my own books.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: I knew it was going to take some work, but I wasn't prepared for the immense amount of time it took to scan, label, organize, and ship the books.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was just starting out, so of course there was a learning curve, and I was okay with that.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: However, when my books began to sell on Amazon, I was pretty disappointed in the huge cut that Amazon takes from your sales, not to mention the expense of my own supplies.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: After more research, I realized that most of the truly successful FBA sellers were either high capacity sellers or they were selling high-priced items.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it was going to be really difficult for me to become either one of those.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, at this point, you're probably tempted to call me really naive, and you can go ahead because I truly was naive.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: I thought that making a decent site income on Amazon would be a lot easier than it actually was.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: By the time everything was said and done, I made less than$1,000 from this whole endeavor.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And to be really honest with you, I devoted a good chunk of the summer of 2015 to work on this FBA business and learning it.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the real kicker.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Amazon charges long-term storage fees for your items if you're part of the FBA program, and I was going to have to pay hundreds of dollars for these storage fees to Amazon this spring.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was actually much cheaper just to have all those books in my remaining inventory destroyed than it was to keep them in storage or to have them shipped back to me.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't really selling anyway, so destroying them was actually the cheapest option.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: The cruel irony of all this is that I had to pay Amazon to destroy my inventory so I could shut down my failing business.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: So why did I do it?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I simply wanted to make a decent side income.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Why did it fail?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: It failed because I didn't realize how much work it was going to be to make FBA a viable business.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: What happened when I quit?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when I quit, I sold my supplies and just stopped sending in shipments to Amazon.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: In the end, it actually cost me money to have Amazon destroy my inventory so I wouldn't be charged for any more expenses.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: What did I learn from this whole failed venture?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what I learned is that it's vital to perform your due diligence before launching into a new business area.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: You probably are sensing there's a theme happening in these business failures.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sensing a theme too, which is think before you leap.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: So let me get down to brass tacks.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to know the real reason I got involved in all these businesses?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's not because I necessarily wanted to just make a side income.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: The real reason is that I was afraid I wouldn't be successful with a writing-related business.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: The blatant, unvarnished, embarrassing truth is that these businesses were more or less an excuse to avoid facing the truth that perhaps I couldn't be a successful writer.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: If I could distract myself enough with these side businesses, I would never have to face that cold reality.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: I would have much rather put my efforts into writing, speaking, coaching, editing, and so forth, but I didn't have the confidence that I could make it work.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: So instead, I let myself get sidetracked with these other pursuits where I wasted an enormous amount of time and energy.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: It truly breaks my heart when I think how much further I could be today if I had focused on my writing instead of these side businesses.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: The end result is that today I'm focused on my writing and I'm going full steam ahead with my efforts to make it a viable business.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now I have made some truly dumb mistakes in my life, and these are just a snippet of them.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: But they have taught me to stay focused in my areas of strength and to avoid getting distracted by the lure of the easy path.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope that you can take something away from my failures and avoid doing the same thing in your life.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: What are some mistakes you've learned from in recent years?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to hear your thoughts.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: You can join the conversation and find the post and the links that accompany this episode at KentSanders.net slash business failures.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a dash between business and failures.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: When you visit my site, you'll find all kinds of great resources to inspire your creativity.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'd also love to share a gift with you when you subscribe to my newsletter.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: You can check it out and learn more about my books, writing, and services at KentSanders.net.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to connect and you can send me a tweet at Kent Sanders, and you can find me on Facebook and Instagram as Kent Sanders.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that you also join our Born to Create Facebook group by visiting KentSanders.net slash Facebook group.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, remember that you were born to create and designs to make a difference.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: What will you do with the time you have left?