How to stop fearing failure

In this episode of Web 3 and Thrive I go deep on my rollercoaster of a career journey and it's multiple failures.

From the nitty-gritty of freelance life to juggling the hats of a business owner, I unpack it all in today's episode. 

Yep, there were bumps on the road. Failed business ventures? Check. Setbacks? Plenty. But guess what? Every stumble made my comeback story all the more compelling. 

In today's chat, I throw a curveball at how we perceive failure. Instead of a big nasty monster, what if it's a wise old mentor? Intrigued? Stick around. 

I've got a tale to share about a business venture that went off-road, big time.  One where I had to sell the Bitcoin I bought at $900 to pay off the debt I as in.

But instead of keeping me down, it was the kick I needed to bounce back even stronger. 

Today I am tearing down the idea of failure as 'the end'. Instead, let's chat about how it can be a launching pad to our next big thing. 

So, buckle up for this ride of trials, transformations, and triumphs. Got your coffee ready? Let’s go!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

When you see opportunities in everything, failure becomes a blessing. I want you to think of an area or a time where you think you have failed, or you have failed right. Maybe it's a fact. I want you to examine it and see what you did. Moving on from there, what actions did you take as a result of this failure? I only started to see everything as an opportunity when I'd failed a lot, a lot, a lot, when I got rejected a lot, a lot, a lot. It's as simple as that. Failure is there to help keep us moving forward.

Speaker 1: 0:39

Hi everyone, welcome to the Web3 Thrive podcast. I'm your host, emily Rose Delara. This podcast was designed to give you the confidence, knowledge and clarity needed to succeed and lead in Web3. I teach proven strategies and tactics you can apply immediately to become confident and successful working in Web3. So take 20, plug in and learn how to really thrive in Web3. And if you like what you hear, leave me five stars and subscribe and Spotify or follow on Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode. You can also sign up to my newsletter to get exclusive content, tips and strategies to help you thrive at work without the burnout and formal, direct to your inbox each week Plus, you'll get full access to exclusive leadership and coaching Q&As, free workshops and all the Web3 Thrive podcast episodes in one place. So just head over to learnweb3thrivecom forward slash newsletter.

Speaker 1: 1:33

Let's get into today's show. Hi everyone, how are you doing today? I have just launched my group coaching. The applications are open. So that's for all contractors, freelancers, solopreneurs in Web3 who just want a bit of support. They want to stop feeling alone. They want to be able to all of the things that are on my list of to-dos. I believe, through impulse syndrome, they want to save space where they can do all this. So that's what the group coaching is for, but I'll talk about that another day. Sometimes it's nice to get work done, running it in beta for a while now, so ready to launch the rest of the world.

Speaker 1: 2:12

We've also been going through the stages of accelerators. So in the last episode you have understood what an accelerator is, and so we've been going through quite a few different interview processes with different accelerators for pay-on out of the business. Not sure if it's the right decision or not yet, but let's see. I'm really interested to know if anyone else has been through this process too. And yeah, now we're just waiting for everybody to arrive, including my brother who does social media. So hi, matthew, he's the one who makes all the reels for me. So he's a young entrepreneur building his way into the influencer and social media space. So very exciting. Anyway, shall we get into the show Today? I would like to speak to you about failure.

Speaker 1: 3:02

Ever since I have been of working age, I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I hated authority. I didn't understand rules, even at school. I got kicked out of school. I got kicked out of every single class ever. I got kicked out of religious studies and geography and history many different subjects because I found them boring. I was one of these high achievers, so I used to finish all the work and be irritated that I couldn't go and do fun stuff like paint or dance around or music or whatever. So I always felt a bit like an animal in a cage, and that's how I feel in a job.

Speaker 1: 3:45

So for my entire career, ever since I left England, which was 11 years ago nearly, I have been a contractor. So I haven't ever been on an employee basis, because I couldn't deal with that psychologically, on a mental basis, I couldn't be tied to one job, and getting down to the bottom of this is really it's been fuelled by scarcity, the feeling that if I don't have my own back then how can I rely on this other company? And, honestly, that thesis has proved me right for quite many years now, in Web 3, after getting laid off twice and actually I was a contractor. In these situations I was never an employee, so I'm very much an entrepreneur. I like to have multiple revenue streams, I like to be able to see an opportunity and go and try it and not be restrained by anything. And, of course, because of this nature, I have had a lot of failures. And I would say at my age of a prime, 33 years old, I am less and less and less affected by failures. In fact, I see it as like a really quick notice, like a notification to myself that I can change something and it might work next time. Okay. So it's like, okay, this is not working. It's like a really fast way to show me that it's not working. This is not the right direction, but I can quickly change and pivot and try something else. Okay.

Speaker 1: 5:13

So I've had businesses my whole entire life. This is not actually something I talked much about, but when I was 19, I had a street food business with one of my ex partners and this is a business that went. This was kind of when street food was starting to be cool in the UK went around the UK music festivals, events, all these different things and worked on this bloody van. It was like cool fish and chips. Anyway, if you know, you know and you're in that industry, you'll know what it was like.

Speaker 1: 5:46

Very hard work and I am not made out for physical work like that. Honestly, I hate camping. I would never go camping unless it's camping. I hate being hot, like too hot. I was always too hot doing this job and I hate food smells. It wasn't really the right business for me and it failed because we didn't have any bloody money and it was very seasonal and, honestly, I was not cut out for this kind of business. So that failed, the relationship failed. We don't talk more about that anymore.

Speaker 1: 6:13

But then I moved on to being a consultant. So when I left the UK I was a solopreneur. I was contracting at loads of different companies small ones, big ones, especially in Asia, which was really fun because it's more of a gig culture over in Asia. I feel like that's where it started. So I used to work with tech companies, erp software companies, cloud companies and then, of course, I moved into crypto and so when I was in Bitcoincom, we were all contractors, independent contributors. No one was actually employed, and that was amazing and I actually started my own business. Then I met an amazing woman called Akane Yoku, and I don't know if I've spoken about her in the podcast, probably have. I love her. She's like what are these soul sisters that you meet and you'll never lose touch with? We've been through a lot of stuff together, especially in the early days of Bitcoincom, where we were in Tokyo, we were trying to increase merchant adoption. We were in Philippines, we were in Thailand, we were in Vietnam trying to get merchants onboarded and using POS systems for Bitcoin cash Right, so it was very much user adoption focused.

Speaker 1: 7:20

Now, as part of this, we decided to build out a business, and it was triggered by one tweet that I did. I remember got like 900 retweets or something, and this tweet was about the lack of women and the lack of kindness in the space, lack of compassion, and this tweet got retreated loads of time because Roger retweeted it and then it like blew up and it was very much a bit of a awakening for us, realizing that there were so many other women in the space. We didn't realize how many there was. This was 2016, 2017. And so we decided to create a business, a bit of a community, that helped all these other women in the space to thrive.

Speaker 1: 8:03

And so we used to go to all the different events around the world and around Asia, and we created little necklaces and we gave these necklaces to all the speakers, like the female speakers at the events. Like I remember, we went on the Coinsbank cruise, which I've spoken about before, and we gave one of these necklaces to John McAfee's wife. We gave it to a few of the speakers, we gave it to the media, because this is a token of we see you, we've got your back, if you need anything, we're here, we're all in this together, and so it was really very much bringing us all together. This was before NFTs, by the way, ladies, we didn't have them yet. So this, I guess now, if we had this community, we would have an NFT, but this is like a physical item that they could have, and we gave them to everyone. We managed to get great PR. That was what we were always good at marketing.

Speaker 1: 8:50

Then we decided to create an e-commerce platform, and this e-commerce platform was enabling small merchants who were online in Asia specifically mainly women to sell their products and get paid in crypto because they couldn't get a bank account. It was helping them to reach a larger audience and it was helping them to actually get paid, and so we ran this for I think it was about a year and in the end, we just we lost interest. I think it wasn't for us anymore. The business model wasn't really working. None of us had any experience in e-commerce. We didn't have the experience to scale when it came to the business model, we didn't have the funding, and so it ended with a partner fallout.

Speaker 1: 9:30

We had another partner partner fallout, which was very messy and a lot of lost cash, and I ended up with £10,000, not USD £10,000 in debt on my credit card, because that whole year I'd been living in debt on my credit card and I was just I didn't know what to do. I was feeling. I remember crying for a week and I remember that I just didn't know what to do anymore. I felt like an absolute failure. So I remember calling my dad and saying dad, I need help. Like I'm in £10,000 worth of debt. I have no fucking money. What do I do? And he said you'll work it out. And this is this is the really like. Me and my dad are really, really close and he's always see me succeed, so he's like you'll work it out, go figure it out. So what did I do?

Speaker 1: 10:15

I saw my Bitcoin and it was the hardest moment ever, because I've got Bitcoin in 2016, 2015, and it was like the hardest decision ever. So I sold it. Had some left thankfully had some left but I didn't have a shit tonne left and the market was shit as well. So I had to pay off all this debt. But I was very fortunate, I was in a privileged position and so I paid off this debt and I thought what the fuck do I do now? And instead of moping and instead of like getting into a hole, I did.

Speaker 1: 10:46

I did that for like a week, and this was at the time when I was getting a bit of traction for the marketing. I was always doing like contracted stuff for different companies and for Bitcoincom, I'd done a lot of product marketing, social marketing, running the teams, helping them to build out their wallet and stuff, and there wasn't actually that many marketers at the time. So I remember lots of people kept pitching me to come and work for their exchanges, and so that's when I first started for the exchange. That was like five, six years ago now and I remember that I really struggled to get a job. No, I didn't struggle to get the job. I struggled to accept that I would have a job, a full-time job, where I was working just for that person, because I was so used to working for my business.

Speaker 1: 11:30

And I realized that this e-commerce platform, this community that we built what I saw at the time was a failure, was actually an incredible opportunity. It gave me a foothold, it got me PR, it got me in front of people, it got me a shit ton of speaking gigs and it got me in front of people who were hiring. So it gave me this massive job. I was the head of global marketing and I managed to use, I'd say, my superpower, which is focusing in on things that other people don't see, so noticing blind spots, and I do this in products as well. I went into the business and I fixed a lot of shit I think I've spoken about this before and I realized, wow, I'm really good at what I do. I haven't failed. Actually, I've just increased my skill set, and this is amazing and I've got a great job.

Speaker 1: 12:18

But if we can go on all day about this job because it was a big learning experience then I had to deal with a lot of difficult personalities, but I had this big block of getting a job. I got the job, I did really well, and then I thought what next? So I started to offer my skill set which was increasing retention and deposit rate to different exchanges and they said yes and I was like what the fuck? I'm good at this. I need to keep getting results for people. And I just worked with different exchanges, did different contracted jobs.

Speaker 1: 12:50

So this failure in the past had really helped me. This fear of being employed had kind of helped me as well, because I'd managed to hustle and create my own business. And so in this moment I started to see failure as a challenge Now. I had many failures at Liquid, I had many failures at OKX. I had many failures at all the other places I ever worked at and they happened on a day-to-day basis. So I might try and get buy-in for a new product or a new initiative and I might get turned down. Some people would see that, as they've prepared a big project and they failed, that person said no, I would just say, ok, so what will work? And so every single failure I started to see as a challenge to create a new solution.

Speaker 1: 13:36

And so when I moved away from working for other people, I was in this really interesting position, an interesting mindset, where opportunities were everywhere. I've got so much experience that I could now apply this to anything I could ever think of, and it was very freeing. So I did a lot of self-work, as I've spoken about in other podcasts on what have I done well in the past, what failed, what did I learn from this? And one of my biggest challenges now was to understand what business I could build that I was obsessed with because I felt like where I'd failed were the businesses that I was not that bothered about. I was good at them, but I was not bothered about them. I'd failed because I had not handled a situation in the right way. Maybe I'd made the wrong decisions. So I started to really learn from these failures and that helped me to build out the business that I've got now, which is my baby coaching business. I've been doing this for a year now. Can we believe it and I have failed in different ways.

Speaker 1: 14:43

So number one when you're a coach is how do I build relationships with potential clients? I don't fucking know when I first started. You don't go and pitch people like when you're a consultant. You build relationships. You can't just go say, hey, do you want to be my client? It doesn't work like that, especially in coaching, because you guys need to understand if you even need coaching. I needed to understand if I needed coaching or therapy or mentorship. So it was a completely new learning experience and I failed constantly. I used to send DMs that would fall flat. They wouldn't get any responses. Okay, then I would send emails. That emails wouldn't get any responses. Even the first ever podcasts that I've recorded were shit. Honestly, I go back and listen and I think everyone says this and they're all below par, as I would say. Now I have a booth and it sounds like a bazillion times better.

Speaker 1: 15:35

Failure is all part of this. Now, in this process of us applying to accelerators, which is a very interesting experience, I've been rejected so many times. I think I've been rejected from four places. So far. I've been ghosted by at least two, and these people are much younger than me, much less experienced than me, and they're the ones ghosting me. And so at first, in fact, actually, I didn't feel rejected. I would say that old Emily would have felt rejected. I didn't at all. I just felt like you know what, maybe it's not a good fit, or maybe I need to explain this business better, maybe I need to work on the copy, maybe I need to work on the presentation.

Speaker 1: 16:16

So every time I get rejected or I fail, I think, okay, what needs to improve? How can I step back and go back in again to make it work? So now the way I do it is I see my coaching business like a product. I run market validation calls, I have constant feedback loops. I do reviews with all my coaching clients Every three, every six sessions. I do it now and I do a big feedback at the end of any of their packages. And so I'm constantly treating this like a product, because if I didn't, I would take it so personally, I don't know if that's worth for you guys. I treat it like something that's separate to me, which it is. It's a business. It's not me personally, and I think and I'm just coming full round in a circle now because these podcasts are very much me channeling.

Speaker 1: 17:06

Whatever is going on right now, when you see opportunities and everything, failure becomes a blessing. I would like you to think about that. Have you ever been in a situation where your business has completely failed? You've run out of money, you've run out of people, your partners walked away from you or in business, or maybe one of your relationships in real, in your personal life, has failed? Maybe you've got fired. Maybe your health care routine isn't going on anymore. It's not working Right. I want you to think of an area or a time where you think you have failed or you have failed Right. Maybe it's a fact. And now I want you to examine it and see what you did moving on from there.

Speaker 1: 17:45

What actions did you take as a result of this failure? How did it go? Did you move forward? Did you stay stuck? Do a bit of reflection on that, because I only started to see everything as an opportunity when I'd failed a lot, a lot, a lot, when I got rejected a lot, a lot, a lot. And I think you really need a bit of exposure to these things, and the best way to fail fast is to try and do a lot of things fast, and when I mean fast, it's not like doing them quick and shoddy, it's reading tests. So, ok, I'm launching this group coaching. It might not work, but we get it out there and we see, and then we go back, we reiterate, we relaunch. Ok, that's my plan.

Speaker 1: 18:27

Anyway, I don't see any other way forward. I don't see how I would stop in this, because I'm so passionate about helping other people. Maybe for you there's a product launch that didn't work. I challenge you to go back and make it work. It's as simple as that. Failure is there to help keep us moving forward. And don't even see it as failure. Right?

Speaker 1: 18:47

Lots of people who are beginning to manifesting big into positive thinking. Right? I don't know if positive thinking is a thing. They are very shocked when things go wrong, but it's all part of the game. Things go wrong because you'd need to make them go in a different direction to make them work. I don't know if any of this makes sense, but this is how I work and this is what's been successful for me.

Speaker 1: 19:09

And I will just give you one last thing Use failure to learn and grow. Don't let it hold you back. It held me back for a very long time until I realized the beauty in failure. I hope that that helps you today. I hope it made sense because, honestly, I have a few bullet points down but I just kind of riff and go off on one, and my editor loves it of course Doesn't have many stops and starts at all, but I hope you enjoyed it today. If you do want to know about accelerators, it was in the past episode with Sarah and I'll leave you at that today. I'm going to go off and get buried now. I hope you have a wonderful week and I'll speak to you next time. See you next time.