Welcome to Take Back Mondays podcast, the podcast dedicated to helping you love Mondays! I'm your host Krista Mollion. I'm a business and marketing strategist, an entrepreneur, and a mom. I'm on a mission. My mission is to help people find their passion, to build businesses around the lifestyle they want to live, take back their time, and get into the best shape of their lives in the online space, covering marketing, business, mindset, and more. Are you ready to take back your Monday?
Today we're going to talk about something very very dear to my heart and that is the word ‘failure'. What do you think of when you hear that word? Doesn't it evoke in you a deep pit at the bottom of your stomach? No one likes to fail but today I'm here to talk to you about why failing is not bad, not one bit. In fact, you must fail in order to succeed. Failure is the path to success. So instead of hiding or denying failure, I want to encourage you today to do the exact opposite. Let's stop saying stuff like I'm going to or I'm trying to. No, my friend, it is black and white! Either you have it or you don't. Did you ever play freeze tag as a kid? The kids all run around and when the leader yells freeze, everyone stops mid- game. Well, success is a lot like that. One should play freeze tag with their lives regularly because we need to reflect honestly and take inventory about where we're at in your goals at any given time.
So here's how I want you to do this. We all start with writing down our goals right. The goals have to come from your heart. They can't be shallow, superficial goals. If they're only tied into getting rich or finding a dream husband, those just aren't the type of goals I'm talking about. They have to have a little bit more substance. The goals also should make you a bit frightened because that is a good sign. It means that they're big enough. You don't want to settle. You want to aim big in your life so set goals that are feeling a little bit out of your comfort zone then you'll know that those are the right goals and ultimately and most importantly, make sure that these are goals that you truly truly want.
Here's a tip for you: you'll know you've got good goals when you can write an entire page about your ‘why'. With shallow and superficial goals, that will be hard so you'll know that you've got a good goal that has depth and substance if you've got a lot of compelling reasons to achieve it. That's your motivation. That's your drive. That's the fire that will keep you going through the failure. Because you WILL go through the failure to get there. So do I expect you to sit down right now and just pump out those goals in five minutes? Not at all! In fact, it's really difficult to get honest about goals until you first clear your mind of all outside noise. We live in a very busy world. Our attention is being pulled in a million directions. We're multitasking. We're bombarded with notifications and social media and just non-stop communications via every possible channel. Today it's getting worse, not better, to really be able to concentrate and minimize distractions. So you will first have to make an effort to quiet your mind. Some of the best tips I can tell you to do this are: -daily meditation -journaling -taking walks outdoors in nature -breathing -yoga -relaxation exercises All these things that you can do to get yourself some mental clarity will really help you in setting the right goals. You have to quiet the mind to see the truth.So now that you feel calm and grounded then you'll know it's time to write down those goals. It could take time especially if you have to be honest with yourself about what you truly want.
Sometimes in life we're living a lie. We've been suckered into drinking the kool-aid. We followed dreams because we thought that would please other people who loved us and had our best interest in mind. But it wasn't the right thing for us so I really urge you to take your time and give you a big virtual hug because sometimes for certain people it can be harder than for others. But once you've got those goals written down now you're going to have to be honest. Are you taking the right actions every day towards your goals? So here's some of the big excuses that I hear all the time: I don't have time to focus on those goals, I don't have money to focus on those goals. But probably even worse than both of those which are very very common is to deflect responsibility onto outward circumstances I have seen people blame their failure on every possible thing in life except taking responsibility for themselves it's their boss's fault, it's their spouse, it's their kids, it's their cousin's sister, it's the economy or even politics.
Guys I'm going to be brutally honest here. Maybe you've been dealt a hard card in life. Maybe you're going through a season in life where you have a legitimate struggle so I don't want you to get the wrong impression that I'm saying look you know I'm sick, a loved one is sick I'm going through a divorce. There are all these really legitimate reasons in life where maybe goal setting has to take the back burner. That's never the problem, the problem is when people by default use these excuses long term that they're just gonna live without ever going after their dreams. They're gonna keep putting it off for years. I'm not talking about a temporary phase in your life where you're in mourning or you're in grief or dealing with health issues. I'm talking about years of living that way. I mean no you don't have to wait until your youngest child is 18 in order to accomplish your dream. I can teach you how to build an online business where you work as many or as little hours as you want to now! You're a student, okay same thing there are really no excuses! So at any stage in life you can find it in yourself to build a successful business. For example, to lose weight or to start working towards paying off your debts I have seen or worked with,experienced or known about people who have achieved everything under the hardest circumstances. So no there really isn't any excuse long term to not accomplish your goals. So stop waiting because tomorrow is not guaranteed. I know it can be very difficult sometimes to face the music about this and accept that this is a fact because it's so nice to stick behind the story of excuses. It's not my fault you know it's this and it's that that's happening in my life right now. It's not a good time, who knows if tomorrow will be an even worse time so no I don't buy that there is really never a good or bad time to do anything in life. There's only a priority and there's also getting past the fear of doing it. But be aware of that, be aware that it's not a worthy excuse it's your choice not to do it. That's a big difference.
I also think what's really hard for people is to understand that a lot of times they're avoiding taking action on the things they need to succeed. An example is someone who wants to build a business must spend a lot of time networking with potential clients in a strategic way and selling compelling offers. So you know there's this misconception that you're just gonna hang around and randomly somebody's gonna come up and say oh hey you're so and so let me hire you.
That's luck not a strategy and it certainly won't pay your bills. You can't bet on that. So going to random social events, posting random posts, counting the likes and then saying wow I'm really hopeful because so-and-so liked my post or I get a lot of likes well tell that to your landlord. Tell that to your bank if you're paying a mortgage. Tell them that at the grocery store, oh yeah I got 50 likes today can i exchange those for a bag of groceries? Nope that's not how life works, it is black and white. Either you have succeeded and you're moving in the right direction or you're just randomly relying on wishfulness or luck and you're in denial. Only strategy will build you your dream and now this can be applied to any dream you have! Any goal you have: weight loss , relationships or simply finding the love of your life. All these things are not random or lucky; everything is based on strategic action, not wishful thinking.Let that sink in for a moment.
All those things are just distracting you and giving you a fake sense of accomplishment. It's giving you a quick dopamine rush minus the results. It's a lot like eating carbs or sugars. They fill up your body for a short time, they give you a temporary feeling of satisfaction and then pretty quickly they're gone. Then you're hungry again, switch to a high protein diet my friends, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about here. The truth is your high protein through truly nourishing food.
Or a slot machine, think about gambling you're giving yourself a quick dopamine rush without any strategy. Relying simply on luck and then it's over and you've spent your money and you get addicted so you keep doing it over and over again. Losing more and more money maybe you win one time and then you lose a lot more but you're always thinking back to that one time you got lucky. That's not a way to live, that's a total ripoff and it's a lie so why do we keep doing that? Even intelligent educated people are doing this because of fear. Part of the brain loves to live in those moments because deep down we will do almost anything just to stay in our comfort zone. We won't try something new. We won't go towards the things that we don't know or understand or feel competent in. We would rather be an expert in one area than be a novice in something new.
That's okay if you understand that's part of being human. But that will be temporary and you will get through it if you want to succeed in your goals then you can do it the right way! So what should we be doing? We have to look our fear and our discomfort in the eye figuratively and say aloud ” I am currently failing to” and in there you insert the problem that you're trying to fix or the goal that you're trying to achieve. Like a doctor you have to consider yourself a patient. You need to say I admit that I'm not at my ideal weight. I admit that my bank account is not where I want it to be. I admit that globally I'm not living the lifestyle that I deserve or I'm not with the partner that I deserve.
When you say that out loud you're going towards the truth, that's the very first step. Be honest!
So everything is fixable but you can't fix something if you don't admit that you have a problem. All right and that leads me to part two. Identify what the actual problem is, so maybe you can say I'm currently failing too and insert the “goal” that you want to achieve because “of” and then insert the things that deep down you already know. Somehow you're not able to stop doing a bad habit and you're not able to start doing the right habit because you're terrified & it makes you uncomfortable. It makes you nervous, maybe you're even addicted to something that's hard to stop.
So from a business perspective only let me give you an example of this:
Over my past four years as a business coach I've worked with people who loved producing content and they produced content all the time. They were like machines, writing blog posts, doing videos & putting out newsletters! They were very proud of themselves, patting themselves on the back thinking, wow I'm really good! However, guess what, they weren't getting enough clients. Now they're thinking for all this time they spent producing free content I'm just going broke. Once in a while they're getting some clients, but definitely not a steady flow of inquiries.
They're not seeing their email list exploding, doubling, tripling or quadrupling. So they come to me as a business coach, and they say I don't understand why I'm not converting. Why am I not getting clients? When I look at the situation it's almost always the same problem as a doctor.
A business coach can come in and look at your business and say here's why, here are the problems. But globally one problem stands out over and over again. The content is in your comfort zone. So whatever that content is: maybe you like to do live streams, maybe you like to write, whatever type of content is your thing you could do it all day so that's not a problem for you because it's your comfort zone. So what I like to ask them is what are you not doing and almost every single time they don't have any kind of conversion strategy in place. So they're just putting out this content living in their little bubble. I like to call these people keyword warriors and then they're hoping, waiting, praying that somebody will take interest.
Sometimes their content is good and sometimes their content isn't even good at all. I've had clients who had boring videos, flat posts, stock footage, strange ramblings, inconsistent or irrelevant topics, not quality content whether the content was good or bad they didn't really care because it's still in their comfort zone. Once in a while I had clients whose bad content even did very well on social media because they used pods. Engagement pods to artificially get likes.
They attracted popularity. They had a big group of those pod friends or real life friends who would support their posts. They attracted especially women lurkers or admirers and also there are a lot of wannabes who will keep showing up on your post liking them because they hope you'll hire them someday. So I always look at who liked my post. I don't care about the number of likes. What tells you you're doing well is if the people liking your post are all potential clients, you'll know because you'll try to convert them and you'll figure out right away are they truly interested in your content or they just randomly liking a post. They're there to support you, they want to stay in the friend zone, they're not ready. In order to get to that point what do we need to do? We need to get over our ego, and it hurts. It hurts to say I love producing content but this content isn't working.
I know and I feel your pain. It's really a common thing to be in denial chasing your own tail seeking every possible excuse to blame on something else. Instead of saying I'm doing this all the time it's not working I need to change something. In order to do that it means you'll have to step outside your comfort zone. What you're not doing is, you're not social networking with the right people and you're certainly not converting them. You've got no conversion strategy in place and I'm not talking about spamming or pitching. I have a whole system around this but it means learning new skills and getting better at them even failing at first, and most certainly it means fear. So if you can apply the same behavior to a personal setting, I've seen this with families when a person comes from a dysfunctional family dynamic they get so used to it that they don't realize that what they're experiencing might be abuse. It might not at all be normal. It's a tragedy because they've never known anything different so they don't even know what it's like to be successful. A person who's been chronically overweight their whole lives doesn't know what it feels like when your body is optimized. When your body's running really well you've got tons of energy, you don't have any aches or pains and you have true hunger. This is like a fat burning hunger where you can digest and not gain a pound. They don't even know what that's like so the first step is really taking an honest inventory of your life. That's why I said it's like freeze tag.
I know this is hard, and I know it might hurt to admit it because sometimes people have spent a long time living this way. I gave two personal examples: being overweight or being in a dysfunctional relationship with the bad family dynamic that probably has been going on for years. Sometimes I see this in business ownership. People have been running their businesses for years in a certain way and they really have a hard time changing because of everything they've learned from, but whatever it was they got into their heads that this is the way that I do things.
That becomes familiar, that becomes comfortable and then they really are skeptical about changing. They'll do anything not to change and this could happen for years and they're just used to these ups and downs, inconsistencies & shortcomings they're not used to success in all these scenarios, it's always the same problem.
Being afraid of failing is a tragedy. It's an absolute shame because you can change! All of us can change what we have to do is we have to find the courage to say aloud I am failing to achieve and then insert your “goal” because and then insert the “behavior” that you know you're not doing or the one you're too focused on that's hurting you instead of helping you and that awareness is step one. The second step is to get help.
Sometimes you need help from some outsider like a business coach to point out these things that maybe deep down I think everyone actually knows their own shortcomings but sometimes we just need someone else to validate that in order to make it true.
You know we suspect that this is a problem but we don't know for sure like a dysfunctional relationship. Maybe I need a therapist to come and listen to my story and say that is not okay, that is abuse, that's an abusive spouse, that's a narcissistic person you're dealing with, we need someone else to identify that for us. It takes off the responsibility of making that diagnosis on our own. But asking for help and finding the right help is hard too. Even if you make it past the first stage of the denial, the ego, the fear, reaching out can be a whole nother battle. And even when you do reach out how do you find the right person to confide in, to trust, to give you an actual solution? Not to rip you off, not to misguide you,waste your time and steal your money.
So yes all of these things are hard. I'm not gonna lie. But it's so worth it you must commit to fixing these problems you must say I am going to succeed! Enough of hoping, waiting, trying things that aren't working. It's time, it's time to lose that weight, it's time to find the love of your life, it's time to get your business in order or quit that bad job and find something better for yourself! There is no tomorrow and when you say that to yourself you know, let that be a trigger that you deserve it. You deserve to live your best life and that fear is what's causing you to lie to yourself. That fear is causing you to make excuses or to wait and procrastinate or just keep struggling. It's so sad when I see people doing this. It's almost like watching a drowning animal and I'm like they keep struggling their heads barely above water. But they keep trying. You may say okay this is nice but i don't have the money to find help or hire help. Guess what, today knowledge is free! You don't need to pay anybody. You can find free help for any problem you have right now and deep down I think you know that you know. Look at weight loss there are so many healthy recipes online, youtube channels dedicated to these topics. Same thing for starting a business, growing a business. Every single thing that you're struggling with is available right now for free online. Remember before we had online we had books business.
Books have been all around a long time. Cookbooks have been around a long time. Relationship coaches have written books for years and years. You have everything to succeed without having to pay money. You could even go to the library and get these books you know. Do you think that information has changed over the years on how to lose weight? There's just different versions of it but it hasn't changed. You just eat healthy, avoid the bad stuff and move your body. All right in some shape or form there's just a thousand different spins on it everyone comes out with their own version of the same basic principles business how do you start a business. So yes we have a whole new type of business that has come to light in the past couple of decades. You know online business didn't exist, e-commerce didn't exist, all these things are new but the basics of business are always going to be the same principles. Identify an audience who you know you can help and validate an irresistible offer with them. Find something that they can't resist that they really really need and want. Then give it to them. Are there a million versions of this? Yes there are just like fad diets, but ultimately it all boils down to common sense every goal that you have comes back to common sense. Does that mean that you on your own can come up with all the fancy strategies to achieve these things? No but you can start with free resources, you can find free support groups, you can network with other people who are trying to achieve similar goals as you. So don't come telling me that money is the reason that you're not able to achieve your goal.
It's about priorities. You're afraid to do it. You're tired, you're overwhelmed, you lack the support, you lack self-confidence. Maybe even you lack a little bit of self-love to believe that you deep down deserve to achieve these things. Maybe deep down there's a voice that says yeah I know it's never gonna actually happen for me but you know I'm gonna keep trying. If I can at least somehow get to this level which is lower than that goal but still higher than where I'm at I'll be okay. No, stop that right now and say I deserve to achieve this goal and I will achieve this goal I can achieve this goal my destiny is to achieve this goal.
Stop that wishful thinking. That hope strategy and start making it a fact because your brain does not know the difference between reality and perception. So that voice that's down there telling you I know I'm not going to achieve this but I'm still going to try is killing it. That voice has to go die all right and it has to be replaced by a new voice, one that comes from self-love. And if you have self-esteem issues. Such as depression or maybe you have a traumatic past that you're struggling with. I want you to find at least one person who is a cheerleader for you! I want you to find at least one person who is an inspiration for you! I want you to refer to those people. These real people whenever you feel down on yourself & whenever that bad voice starts talking and I want you to say no I know I'm going to achieve this!!! Let those other people inspire you, let them motivate you because you do deserve this! You may feel frustrated. You may feel overwhelmed, you may not even know where to start or you may have been doing a bunch of things that haven't worked and you're really lost. On top of it all you may hear conflicting advice because just like business dieting I've given those examples. There are different strategies you have to keep seeking until you find the one that really works for you is my solution. Are my methods perfect for you? No. I can't tell you that. I can explain to you my methods and you can judge for yourself just know that no matter what when you do pick a strategy, pick only one don't just keep jumping from one shiny object to the next. From one coach the next. From one book to the next and never try them you have to want in your heart. To apply these things and believe there is a period of time with any strategy where you will step outside your comfort zone. You won't like what you're doing. Just like when you have to start going to the gym because you're trying to lose weight. You hate your gym session, you hate it but then you start seeing results and then it gets easier. And then you feel something new you're like I actually don't find it this bad anymore. I'm actually starting to enjoy this and you're shocked because you remember hating it so much. Well that might be with anything like going live for the first time, getting onto a stage, making a sales call. Don't you remember every single good thing that you've done in your life started out being scary? I remember learning to ride a bike. Learning to drive a car. My first date. I was terrified of all these things and now I'm confident beyond belief these things come like second nature to me now. So think about it that way as well. Don't just think oh you know I don't feel comfortable. Well if you didn't feel comfortable you wouldn't have learned to speak or walk because every baby fell down at some point. And we still kept going. We bumped our head we scraped our knee we still learned in the end so it's not just about picking the right strategy it's committing to getting through the failure in order to achieve! Thank you so much I hope this was helpful! And I want to thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to listen to this podcast. If you know anyone who may be on a journey in their goals in their lives and could benefit from this advice please share. I really appreciate it and for those who are listening to me for the first time, I'm Krista. I've worked in marketing for 20 years. And I've been an entrepreneur almost the entire time building a successful eight-figure vr 3d agency in San Francisco. I've got four kids. I'm a busy mom & I'm also a content creator. Today I help others build their dreams by advising consulting and coaching aspiring and early stage startup founders. I also work with established businesses to build their marketing. To tell their stories, to help design better marketing strategies and I have a ton of programs I've built for entrepreneurs, for content creators, for dreamers that you may find valuable at academy.kristamollion.com
I go live weekly to talk about all things small business and also about mindset and goal setting and I have a weekly email that I send out with all that good stuff in it! It is truly my mission to help everyone live their dream life and I do that via entrepreneurship because that's what I know best. So I hope you have an amazing day and that you find the courage inside yourself to get past your fears! Failing is not the true problem. Seeking help is a strength, the true cowards are the ones staying in denial and continuing to struggle doing the wrong things. That's failure, be a success story, love yourself and have an amazing life. Hopefully, see you soon. Bye!