Lauren: You built your product, you launched your business. You saw success, money in the bank, growing team, happy client, but now you feel like you’re drowning. I’m here to help you get your head above water. I’m Lauren Goldstein. My clients call me the Business Doctor

Together, we’ll diagnose the root cause of your business. Worries. Whether it’s your people, your process, your product will clarify your business. So you can scale without the burnout and then we will simplify it all. So your business can do what it’s designed to do, make a profit and an impact. Welcome to The Biz Doctor Podcast.

Welcome back in today’s episode, I wanna talk about something that’s been coming up in an alarming number of conversations I’ve been having with. Owners feeling like a failure or what I like to call business dysmorphia. It’s that sneaky little thought that despite what people see on the outside, you feel like a fraud and a failure on the inside the outside and the inside don’t match.

By all accounts, the boxes are checked profitable business. That makes a difference, a great team, et cetera, et cetera. But on the inside, all you see is the game tape of the game you are currently losing on. Personally, I think that social media and pay to play awards are most likely to blame. It’s really hard to compare your behind the scenes to everyone else’s highlight reel, especially when we don’t actually know what they’re behind the scenes really is.

Generally the only thing that comes out of that game is feeling like a fraud imposter or the topic of today’s podcast, a failure. So today I’d like to talk about a few tools I’ve learned over the years to deal with the green nine monster of. First let’s reframe failure. Shall we? Webster defines it as a lack of success or an unsuccessful person enterpriser thing, but I don’t actually like that definition, do you to me?

And what I help my clients see is that quote, unquote failure is simply feedback. See, the sneaky thing that they don’t tell you about entrepreneurship is that it is risky AF and comes with a whole lot of fallen flat on your face. Or as I like to say, failing forward, or as comedian Christopher Titu is fond of saying I don’t fail.

I succeed in finding what doesn’t work. Heck even Edison said, I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. Think of it this way. How do you find out if something works or. You test it out, right? Let me give you a great example that applies well to business. When you’re building a new house, you put in the electrical and the plumbing first, but what do you do before you go and start putting up all the drywall floors, et cetera, you turn on the water and the electric to see what is or isn’t working now.

Why do you do that? Because being an ostrich and praying that everything is good without testing, it is just a recipe for. And the cost of trying to fix something after you’ve already put in the walls, the floors, etcetera, is pretty high. And honestly, that’s how boiling water ended up in the toilet. And under the Tuscan sun, they didn’t test it out before they closed up the wall.

I digress, but the point I’m trying to drive home is that without data, AKA feedback, AK failure from movement, we can’t adjust our course. It’d be like an airplane staying on the ground. Cuz the pilot was afraid that the navigation system might. Sure it might, but you’re never gonna know if you don’t get up in the air and you’re certainly [00:04:00] never gonna get to your destination.

If you’re too afraid to fly, we only learn by doing and being courageous enough to risk. So now that we’ve redefined failure, how do we pull out of the failure spiral if you find yourself there? Well, here are a few of my favorite tools. First build evidence to the contr. I find that often us business owners have a hard time celebrating the little wins we get so focused on this seven figure business wins that we [00:04:30] forget that it’s the little wins that actually make the big wins possible.

So here’s my tip for you. Create some sort of win repository. Some of my clients do it in a Google doc. Some keep it old school in a journal, but hands down, my favorite is a fun jar that you jot down the wind, fold it up and save it for a rainy day. That way, when you’re having a failure cloak day, you can walk over and read a wind to remind yourself that this too shall pass PS.

This is actually what I do. Rainy day notes are my favorite. So why do I love this so much? Well, for one it’s a great reminder of all the good you’ve done, cuz I don’t know about you, but sometimes I tend to dwell on what isn’t working versus what is, which is a whole other sister rabbit hole of failure.

So I won’t go into that now, but second it’s almost like an anthology of the success and how far you’ve come. The reason this is important is that much like with weight loss, Because we see our business every day in the mirror, it’s hard to see how much progress we’ve made, cuz we’re numb to it. And this little baby progress, we can’t see when we’re looking at it every single day, plus who doesn’t love a good rainy day note to remind you of just how awesome you are.

The second tool that I’ve found to be most effective antidote to failure. Is this when in doubt, focus out when you’re in the throws of feeling like a failure. Get outta your business and go support someone else. I know this might seem counterintuitive, especially when you think things aren’t working or that you’re just in a big dumpster fire of failure.

But trust me, it works could be a symbol as a coffee chat with someone who’s going through a tough time that you can support. Could be donating your time to a local organization, volunteering at an event that has nothing to do with your business, or it might be just going for a walk by yourself or my personal favorite going and jumping in mud puddles to shake up the energy.

Now, any of those options have a magical way of shaking out the Cowe of failure, reminding you of your greatness, cuz believe me, sometimes a step back is all you. The other side of the same coin is practicing gratitude. Sometimes when we’re feeling like a failure, it’s because we’ve lost sight of not only how far we’ve come, but of all we have.

So when in doubt, take a moment to really get clear and grateful for what you have. I know it sounds a bit. Woo, woo. But the more grateful you are, the more this magical world will give you to feel grateful for last but not least phone a. If you are really in the thick of it, call someone who can remind you of your greatness, even when you can’t see it.

Heck if you need a friend to remind you how amazing you are, reach out to me, us entrepreneurs gotta stick together so we can change the world. And the last thing that I’m gonna leave you with is just remember as cliche as it sounds without rain, we wouldn’t have rainbows or trees or flowers or anything like that because things grow in the.

It gives us the amazing dichotomy of what we want versus what we don’t want. So appreciate the times when you’re feeling down or feeling like things aren’t working. So you know what to work on. And as always remember, failure is not permanent. So this to shall pass. That’s it for this week’s episode, please take a moment to subscribe.

So you get notified first when our next episode. I’d also love to hear from you and your biggest takeaways. So tag me, or DM me on Instagram at its Lauren Goldstein or LinkedIn, or wherever you hang out on the thanks so much for listening and we’ll see you next week.

So which part of your business needs, love and attention? You might be wondering that, Hmm, here are your next steps.

Head to goldenkeypartnership.com. Or the show notes below to schedule your Diagnostic Deep Dive.

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