[00:00:00] Success. Isn't the lack of failure. It's persisting despite it. Today, I'm revealing the harsh truth of creative entrepreneurship. Social media is a highlight reel. And the reality is that this path that we're on is hard. Most who go down this road don't last. And those that do last experience failures, setbacks, rejections, and breakdowns behind every successful crave entrepreneur is a graveyard of failures that they persisted through and only through hard work.
Resilience and a strong support system. Did we persevere? This is a story you don't hear often. No one talks about this, but today I want to lay it all out there. Why does it seem that all the creatives that we follow on social media seem to be crushing it? We all experienced failures and setbacks, but why don't we see the top players experiencing the same?
Should our goal be the flashy lifestyle we see on Instagram, or should we define success for ourselves? Where can we go for. There's this illusion of [00:01:00] success on social media. Now, this illusion of success on social media is a very real thing. And yes, when I say illusion, I mean that, but it's not quite what you think.
Most of the entrepreneurs you see on the platform are crushing it and their wins are real. They are actually winning. The illusion comes into play where you don't actually see their failures and their setbacks. Most people don't want to share these things because it's not flashy. You're not going to get engagement or likes.
And when people do share this stuff, it doesn't get views. So it doesn't get promoted to more people. This is not what the algorithm wants to spread. They don't want to spread negativity. They just want to spread the wins of people. They want to see the flashy lifestyle. So most people don't end up posting their failures, not because they don't want to, it's just, it's not going to get promoted.
It's not going to help them in any way, but we all experience these failures and setbacks. Now, some people give up and others persevere. So what's the difference here? How can we go from experiencing failures [00:02:00] and almost giving up to developing a resilience to failure? What should we do if we actually want to learn from our setbacks and grow stronger because of them?
What if we could have a support system that enables us to succeed and lets us learn from others? Now I'm going to be answering all these questions today.
Welcome to the creative biz launch podcast, where we talk about how to grow your creative business and scale to six figures, whether you're a photographer, filmmaker, or designer. You'll find something of value here. When I was starting down the path of creative entrepreneurship, I had something called naive optimism.
I saw the freedom other entrepreneurs had, and I wanted that. I knew that it was going to be hard and I've worked hard before I've had ambitious goals and I've accomplished them before entrepreneurship. I couldn't be that much harder. I was wrong. I was very wrong. The good thing about naive optimism is that.
Forced me to actually go down this path. I started more than most people can say. The toughest thing is to start to say yes to the challenge, to have the courage to actually make the decision [00:03:00] to go down this path. But a few months down the road, I still wasn't making any money. I started to get discouraged.
The optimism I felt starting out was slowly withering away. At this point, I realized the illusion of success on social media. These platforms tend to curate a certain type of content, and I was seeing everyone's highlight reels rather than all the dirt and the setbacks they experience. People curate the content they want you to see.
It's easy to fall into the trap of comparison when looking at all the success stories online. Rather than comparing myself to these people, though, I started doing something else. I started using these stories as evidence. Inspiration. At the same time, I recognize that everyone's journey is really different.
I started maintaining a realistic perspective, a more balanced perspective. I look back and I recognize the progress I've made along the way and how far I've actually come. Sure. I wasn't making money yet, but I grew so much as an entrepreneur about a year into this journey. I was working full time for myself.
That [00:04:00] made me so proud. But throughout that year, I was faced with a lot of failures and shortcomings along the way. Did I get discouraged? Yeah, of course. But I realized that these are all part of the journey. Embracing failure is key. Using failures as stepping stones to success was very important. We can learn from our mistakes.
Rather than get discouraged, I started using failures as learning opportunities to improve and refine my approach. That's key. When we fail, we need to analyze what went wrong, improve upon it so we don't make the same mistake again. That is key here. Failing is fine. Everyone goes through failures. Failing over and over on the Same thing is not okay though, because we didn't learn from that failure.
Failures are supposed to be learning opportunities. They shouldn't be repeated multiple times because if they do, if we do repeat these failures multiple times, that means we didn't learn anything from them and they were useless. Failures are actually really powerful because if they're painful, we'll learn from them [00:05:00] and we won't make the same mistakes again.
Now, through all of this, I started developing a sort of resilience. I was building up my character traits. I built up an emotional resilience to be able to bounce back from failures quickly and keep moving forward. The first failures suck, but once you realize you learn from these and actually come out stronger, you're able to bounce back quickly and keep that forward momentum going.
Now there's this cyclical nature and entrepreneurship that I really want you guys to be able to grasp here. The journey has this repeated cycle of trial and error, but from this you learn, you try, you mess up and you learn from it. And you try again with your new learnings. Now, this is an upward trend.
Each time you come out stronger, you've learned something new. We're talking about building a growth mindset here, a mindset that sees challenges and failures as opportunities for growth. And through this, we learn persistence too. We keep trying and persisting and continually, continually refining our approach here.
And this is key to eventually finding this kind of [00:06:00] success.
Now the reason I post this kind of content, why I have free workshop, why I have paid programs is because I don't want everyone to experience all the same failures I did. Whether you're consuming my free content or working with me in a paid fashion. My goal here is to be able to teach you these failures I experience, so that you don't have to go through the same thing.
If you need any help with this kind of thing, send me a message on Instagram or click the, click the link below the video to learn more about how I help creatives just like you. Okay, so we all know that failure sucks and it can get emotional sometimes, but when we wake up the next day. We have a choice to make.
Do we let our emotions take over or do we prioritize the commitments we made to ourselves and to others recognize that prioritizing commitments is a long term winning strategy, emotions come and go. And yes, your feelings are veiled. But the best entrepreneurs show up each day and every day, despite how they feel, some days are going to feel great.
Some days they'll feel terrible, but [00:07:00] despite that each day they're going to show up and do the work that's necessary. And this is done by building up discipline, persistence, resilience, establish a disciplined approach to work, which means setting schedules and doing daily habits. That allows to get into the best states.
The small things are actually the big things. The things that you do repeatedly every single day that build you up as an entrepreneur and build your business. Again, we have to cultivate discipline here and on top of discipline, we need resilience to now resilience. Isn't just. Bouncing back from failures.
It's about sticking to commitments. You've made to yourself and to others, despite setbacks, sticking to these commitments, despite facing adversity or lack of motivation, even I've made a commitment to myself and to everyone that watches my content. To post weekly or even daily on some platforms. And a lot of the time I don't feel like making content, but I have a commitment to my team.
I have a commitment to the hundreds of thousands of people that follow me across all my platforms. So [00:08:00] I show up, I show up despite how I feel. Now you might be surprised to hear me say that because I've been in this game of entrepreneurship for over four years now. And let me tell you this, it doesn't get easier.
You just get stronger. You accomplish goals, but then you find bigger and bigger challenges for yourself. And this is what it's all about. You complete goals. You set bigger goals and you keep going. That's what entrepreneurship is. That's what this game is. And you know what? I feel really accomplished every time I actually sit down and do something that I didn't feel like doing.
I stuck to my commitments. Not to my emotions here, that's key. Success is going to be a long term game here and persistence is required success. It never comes overnight. It comes from consistent effort and patience. We need to build mental stamina, build the mental endurance required to stick to our path, even when we don't see results.
And while we're on this journey, it's also important to celebrate the wins along the way. Small wins, big wins, every milestone you hit. Go and [00:09:00] celebrate that, whether that's going out to dinner, buying those shoes, you've been eyeing or popping some champagne, celebrate in your own way. I know some of this advice and this podcast is tough, but don't forget about self care as well, take time for yourself and be honest with yourself about how you're doing.
And if you can find a support system as well, do that. Having a support system is the biggest thing they can do for lasting success and the game of entrepreneurship, whether that's friends, family, partners, an online community, a coaching group, whatever you can do to find a support system. Go after it. I know that I couldn't have done any of this without my girlfriend, Kayla, believing in me every step of the way.
Her support means the world to me. Someone in my corner who's there for all my ups and my downs. Now I mentioned there's other sorts of support systems as well. There, there are countless of groups online of like minded entrepreneurs. I've joined online courses, online programs that have taught me a lot about this.
I've had support groups and those, and as I've grown, [00:10:00] I've joined bigger and bigger groups with more advanced entrepreneurs. Right now, I'm in a group of about a hundred or so entrepreneurs, and I'm one of the lowest level entrepreneurs in there. Most of the people in that group are making seven figures and I'm still at six.
It motivates me so much to be surrounded by people who are that much ahead of me. Find your people like that. And the thing about this is you're probably going to have to pay to be in a group like that, because if you're not paying, there's no financial commitment to it. So you're not going to be showing up to those people and to yourselves.
The coach in my group has a saying that goes, the transformation happens at the transaction. As soon as we invest in ourselves to be a part of this kind of group, we have this mental thing click in our heads that says, Hey, We spent this much money on this group. So we're worth it. We tell ourselves that we're worth it.
We're worth spending that amount on ourselves. So we work harder. We show up to that group to ourselves each day and [00:11:00] work as hard as we can here. Now, whatever your goals are, create a definition of success for yourself here. This is going to be important. Don't look to social media. Don't look to other people.
Success should be something that's based on your own goals and your own values, not any external expectations or comparisons. Find fulfillment in your work. That is really important. Success is not about just financial gain or recognition, it needs to involve personal fulfillment. For me, that's freedom, freedom to do whatever I want every single day, whether that's waking up and working in my business or whatever.
But if you don't have a definition of success yet. That's okay too. And the thing is, these definitions can change over time. As you grow and evolve, your definition of success is going to change. Just try and make it directionally accurate at the start. Go towards the right direction. Remember to regularly assess your goals and make sure they align with your vision.
And your values, you can forget about the illusion of success on social [00:12:00] media, base failures head on and embrace that cycle of trial and error. When things get tough, focus on your commitments and let your feelings pass. Find that support system and build that persistence. If you need help finding a support system, reach out to me on Instagram, and I'll set you up in the support system that I run.
We have a wide range of creative entrepreneurs in their photographers, videographers. Motion designers, people that will help you along your journey. Remember, find your definition of success, focus on that definition, be resilient, and keep going after it. That's all I got today. Thank you so much for your time.
I'll catch you in the next one.
