I failed sooooo… I gave up. As a stubborn type A person I can not say which makes me feel worse to admit, failing or giving up.
As most of you all know if you’ve been with me for a while, I launched my business back in July of 2019, I got the opportunity to do a few small events and birthday events. Worked with a couple of nonprofits for work. Beginning of 2020 I was in contact with 2 larger clients for larger events with more exposure which I was hoping to be the catalyst to launching the community outreach portion of my business that was the inspiration behind the business itself. Then COVID happened… Events went from on the back burner to discuss in a couple of weeks to let’s pone this till October to let’s just cancel. I sat and waited in complete naivety that the county would go back to normal and I could pick up where I left off. Spoiler alert it did not, and still have not. Restaurants opened and I tried to launch small picnic packages and then restaurants and gatherings were, with good reason, closed again. I launched birthday event boxes and cases rose and mail and shipping scares happened. I launched a holiday box package and the mail system lost the majority of the boxes that went out. My audience and clientele was continuously and rapidly declining as was my motivation and after that last failure I gave up. I pulled ordering info off my website and focused my attention elsewhere.
Right now you are probably asking yourself, “Well if Lauren gave up, why is she posting on this blog? Is Life’s Sweet Moments Events closed forever?”
Here is the thing failure is inevitable in life and expected in business. The important thing is to identify where that failure came from and how you grow from it. If you failed at something because you lost passion, motivation and consistency you need to decide if this is something you want. If it is then work harder, hold yourself higher and more accountable. Now, if you failed because of situations completely out of your control and you gave it your absolute all, that hurts. It’s still not over if it is something you love and are passionate about find new ways to accomplish your goals and to continue forth.
I have also been reading a book on perfection and how perfectionism is detrimental to success and mental health. Perfection is a social construct and unattainable goal we create as a means to never try. The book talked about how people who work so hard for perfection and success often burn out and turn to various additions to cope with the feeling of constant failure. We can not obtain what we believe success is, and any moment of joy or step towards our goal gets overshadowed by doubt, fear and our minds dress rehearsing tragedy, because we feel so vulnerable and undeserving because we still are not perfect. That’s what I was doing, even though starting a small business means you fail time and time again, I wanted perfection and each failure made me feel like I was undeserving of the business I created and the dreams I held. That is why I wanted to quit and just stop trying. Then I watched this YouTube video by Colin Spencer, and he was talking about his anxiety around starting a YouTube channel and how he was afraid of failing and how he was waiting until he was “ready” to start and continued to make excuses as to why he should launch it quite yet. Then he said “We are never going to be ready, we will always have our doubts. It will always be scary until we do it. So just start.”
I needed these two things, because I needed to understand why I failed myself, and not talk about all the bumps in my business but the true failure was me giving up. I needed to understand what caused that decision and change my definition of “success” and quit trying to be perfect and have a large well known business overnight. I also realized through Colin’s YouTube to stop waiting to launch projects and things I want to do until I felt I was ready, and just do it.
I did not clickbait you entirely. I did quit but I also restarted. I am going to launch new stuff with Life Sweet Moments, launch some non-profit events. I am going to do more blogs on the business world, my experiences, and the event industry. I am bringing you all along for the ride, so buckle up it might get a little bumpy.
I hope you all learn more about business, entrepreneurship and important causes in the country. I want to introduce you to some of my favorite businesses I find and great people I meet along the way.
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