S1E6: 5 Ways Failure Has Helped Me Grow My Business
In this episode, we’re going to be talking about the one thing business people avoid talking about — failure. There's a personal backstory on my one business failure never shared before anywhere else publicly.
Every downfall in your life will lead to something greater. At the point of the downfall, you just couldn't see it yet. Once the grieving process has completed, you'll look back in retrospect and realize that THAT moment occurred to guide you to be where you are today.
Eventually, all these events helped me grow my business.
I can't wait for you to listen to this episode!
Listen to the Episode below:
In this episode, you'll hear about failure and how it has helped me to:
Today is going to be an interesting episode because we’re going to be talking about the one thing business people avoid talking about — failure.
Here’s 5 Ways Failure Has Helped Me Grow My Business.
Let me take you back to the year 2015. I was still running my online store customizing notebooks & planners. It would have been my 8th year running it, on a part-time basis. To build this business, I sourced and commission numerous designers.
I even paid a friend of mine in kind to design the templates, and had hundreds of files saved to make this business work. It was my passion as a teenager bitten by the organizing bug, so by then, I was in too deep.
I had plans of building my own factory when I ended school, and I wanted to hire the low-income single-mothers in Singapore to make the notebooks. Eventually, I had plans for a social enterprise. Plans 3, 5 and even 8-years down the road.
Everything was going dandy.
But soon you'll realise that even though I planned so much, there was ONE thing I forgot to plan. So one day — One happy and well-rested morning, I woke up to a nice cup of Milo (it’s like hot chocolate and available readily in South East Asia).
Headed off to my working area, and turned on my laptop. If memory serves me right, I was working half-way through a new design for my client. If you’re a designer, you’d relate with me when you turn on Illustrator and click "open recent file".
Graphic Designers: You'll probably be able to relate to what I'm about to share. What is the biggest fear that graphic designers have?
You've guessed it.
A prompt appeared which changed my life forever
“Your file couldn’t be found”
As serious as it gets, I nearly dropped my mug of Milo. I tell you, this is literally the worse thing that could happen to a graphic designer. I searched for my file, and I couldn't locate even the folder that it was stored in.
The whole folder of my years of hard work building the business disappeared just like that. I remembered I had a backup. As I scour through my bag looking for my external hard drive, I constantly prayed that this one design was saved.
I plugged the cable into my laptop and tried once more and hoped for a miracle.
Nothing.
At this point, I just wanted to break down. I remembered I had a cloud backup. I opened Chrome browser, typed in the URL and tried looking for my works.
Everything before 2011 was there. But this was 2015, and anything between 2011 – 2015 was not there.
I cried.
All my hard work... Years worth of artwork... All gone in a minute. The designs that my customers order were no longer there, and my commissioned designers (mind you, there’s at least 40 of them) required me to pay a retrieval fee.
There right there was the lowest point of my business, which led to me going on a super long hiatus for this business until today. I've not resurfaced this business yet because of this loss.
So, how then did I pick myself up?
I realise then that I had to start over but I had to decide soundly. Calculating all my past earnings & expenses for the year made me draw a conclusion that it wasn't profitable to stay now that I have to start over. With a heavy heart and after speaking to many business coaches, I decided to leave my business.
My exit plan was to clear stock. But I couldn't because there was nothing left for me to clear. I did customized order, which means the orders come one at a time.
I only had tools which I use for the business left. I kept those, hoping that others will emerge.
As I cleared out my things, I found many unused notebook covers from my first pop up store. I packed them nicely and put them up for sale.
I took a month to recover.
After that month, I picked my camera up and thought that I could do something with it. I started exploring the ways I could easily maximise profits for myself.
A business plan was developed and I began my new journey as a photographer in Blissful Studios.
Fast forward to today, Blissful.Asia which now owns Blissful Studios, was a result of that. With that really important back-story, there’s a lot of learning points.
I’ll summarize them into these 5 Ways Failure Has Helped Me In My Business. This is as raw as it can get for me. This is a real thing that happened my business.
Failure has helped me to:
What do you think?
I'd love to know what you think of this episode. Do you struggle with failure in your business, and how did you overcome them?
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