Episode 598: 5 Steps to Dealing with Entrepreneurial Mistakes (Mindset & Self-Care)

EBT598 – 5 Steps to Dealing with Entrepreneurial Mistakes

Intro  00:01

Hey food bloggers. Thank you so much for joining me in this mindset and self-care focused episode here on Eat Blog Talk. One of the reasons I started a blog talk was to hold a space to talk about the importance of mindset and self-care. Being an entrepreneur can be a lot. If we are not taking care of ourselves, then getting actionable information about SEO Pinterest or whatever else is all moot. I will meet you back here every Wednesday to discuss various mindset and self-care topics. So you have the energy and space to tackle the rest.

Sponsor (Terrence Roche)  00:36

Are you overwhelmed by the amount of unfinished posts in your computer? You sometimes wish you just had more available time? My name is Terrence Roche and I am one half of the Plant Power Couple, food blog I run with my partner, Brittany. I’m also a former English teacher who spent 20 years helping young writers find their voice. I currently offer freelance content writing and copywriting services for other bloggers. I can ghost write recipe posts, informative content, About me pages, LinkedIn bios and more. If you have any old posts or outlines sitting in your backlog, I can help get those up on your site by writing SEO keyword rich posts for you freeing up your precious time for other personal or business endeavors. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions or to request writing samples and my rate sheet you can contact me at terrence@plantpower couple.com That’s T-E-R-R-E-N-C-E@plant powercouple.com.

Megan Porta  01:28

Hello food bloggers. Welcome to this self care and mindset focused episode of Eat Blog Talk. Thank you so much for being here. In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about five steps to dealing with entrepreneurial mistakes. I was talking to a friend recently about these mindset episodes, and I had a total epiphany. These episodes have been my therapist throughout this year. 2024 has been a bit of a challenging year for me in some regards, each week I write the episode that I seem to need. Of course, I write these for you, but the topics arise from things that are currently happening in my life, so interesting. So if you want to know how my year has been, just look back over the mindset topics I’ve talked about, and you’ll know exactly how it has gone. This week and this topic are no different. I am recording this on a Thursday. I made a huge mistake on Monday of this week, and another huge mistake on Tuesday of this week, both in my business, both of them were pretty big mistakes that left me in tears and going through all the emotional turmoil that we put ourselves through until I realized I didn’t need to beat myself up quite so much. And actually, the mistakes weren’t that bad. 

Megan Porta  02:50

My Monday mistake I will tell you about briefly. So each month in our mastermind group, we host a guest expert speaker who delivers value on various topics such as Pinterest, email marketing, SEO, et cetera. So on Monday, we hosted the awesome Ty Kilgore from everything digital marketing on our Zoom call. As I knew he would, he delivered an awesome one hour talk about SEO. He dove into a few individual URLs of people who were on the call. It was just packed with value. It was awesome. About an hour after the call was done, my VA sent me a note asking why she couldn’t see the recording in our Zoom account. Total panic. Not every member of the mastermind group is able to make these guest expert calls. We vary the times throughout the month and the day of the week in order to cater to the guest expert, but we always provide recordings of the replays. Well, not this time. We had rescheduled Ty’s call a few weeks ago, so I don’t know if something weird happened in the back end. Some changes were also made in Zoom because other settings were kind of funky and changing whatever happened, we’re not really sure, but the call that was set to record did not record. This is devastating for my members, because they count on these recordings being available to them, and somehow I didn’t notice even once during the entire call that it wasn’t recording. Immediately after we realized what had happened, I let my members know, and although they were really gracious about it, I could tell that this was off putting for some of them, and I totally understand this. Of course, it was so after beating myself up for a bit, I remembered something I read in one of my favorite books recently, which is called the Untethered Soul by Michael Singer, something that has happened, something that’s in the past, is done. The sooner we accept reality as it is, the better off we will be. There was no possible way to rewind my day and press record. It was done. I did what I could to rectify the situation, and then I decided to move the freak on. I was going to tell you about my Tuesday mistake, but I’m not going to it was an even bigger mistake, and I don’t want to get into that. 

Megan Porta  05:12

So as entrepreneurs, mistakes are inevitable. Some are bigger than others. Some can even be detrimental. I think it’s so important that we know how to move through mistakes so we don’t allow them to completely stop our forward momentum that we work so hard for in our businesses also, so we can just learn from them in order to become more awesome and capable entrepreneurs. So let’s talk through five ways to deal with mistakes as an entrepreneur, because I know you make them, we all do, sad to say, but there are likely more in your future. 

Megan Porta  05:49

Number one, accept and process the mistake. When a big mistake happens, it’s almost like time moves in slow motion. Denial almost sets in, and we try to fight whatever just happened with my Zoom mistake this week. As soon as I read Cara’s message about the recording not being there, I immediately started saying no, no, no, no, no, no, no, over and over on repeat about a million times like this was going to help, but somehow in our minds, it feels like denying it will make it go away. Soon reality settles in, and our brains understand that the mistake was indeed made. Yes, it happened at this point. I think it’s super important to pause just for a bit and just let it really sink in. Set your computer down, your phone down, whatever is in front of you, just step away, have a cry. If you need to even throw a tantrum or just take a walk outside around the block, do whatever you need to do, to give your mind the space it needs to process what happened. I would say if I had to put a time on it, at least 15 minutes, maybe more. But you need to feel that out. Only you will know how much time you actually need after the Zoom mistake happened, and after saying no a million times, I closed my computer very calmly and I walked straight to my bedroom and I laid my bed for about 15 minutes. Eventually, you need to accept that the mistake happened and just prepare yourself to move on. 

Megan Porta  07:23

Which leads to number two, take action and clean up the mess. Sometimes, after a mistake, there’s nothing you can do aside from just accepting that it happened. Other times, there is a little bit of cleanup to do. Don’t allow cleanup to build up in your mind. A cluttered mind will not allow you to move past the mistake, so take care of whatever you need to take care of, and as soon as possible. Back to my Zoom mistake. There was no possible way for me to turn back the clock, but with the call fresh in my mind, I knew I could recreate as much of Ty’s talk as possible, so I pulled up the URLs that Ty had audited on the call. Thankfully, I remembered them. Then I logged into Loom and I started recording. I recorded myself talking through as much as I could recall about what he’d said. Obviously it was not as good as hearing him say it. He’s the expert, but it was the next best thing. I delivered the video to my group along with a heartfelt apology. That was the action I knew I needed to take, and that was my way of cleaning up the mess. 

Megan Porta  08:27

After that, we need to go to number three, which is learn the lesson. I believe that there are lessons to be learned from every single mistake we make in our businesses or in life in general. That’s one of the silver linings about mistakes is that you always know you’re going to be learning a lesson. If you walk away from a mistake without taking the lesson away, don’t you think it might come back to you in maybe a different way? It’s like we all have certain really specific lessons that we need to learn in our lifetimes and in our businesses as well, challenges and bumps in the road happen sometimes in the form of mistakes that lead us to learning those important lessons. Understanding and learning the lesson decreases the likelihood of similar challenges coming back our way. I so strongly believe this, so if for no other reason than to avoid another similar mistake or challenge happening. Figure out what the dang lesson is and make changes accordingly. With my Zoom mistake, the lesson is obviously to be more mindful of making sure I capture important recordings to add optimal value to my group that I care so much about so what can I do to ensure this happens? I connected with my VA right after this happened, and I asked her to confirm that all upcoming guest expert calls are set to record in zoom settings. This is when we found out that something weird happened, and not all of them were set. So thankfully, we checked on that. I also put a big post it note with bold lettering on my monitor that says in caps, recording?? to remind myself to visually confirm all calls are being recorded from the start. So figure out what the lesson is. Add it as a new system to your business so you and your team can grow and improve, and so you can decrease the likelihood of it ever happening again, at least that same exact mistake. 

Megan Porta  10:30

Number four, forgiveness and grace when there’s absolutely nothing else you can possibly do to make the situation better, and the lesson is seared in your brain. It is time to forgive yourself with a huge heaping dose of grace. You are human. I’m human. We’re all humans. And guess what? Humans are imperfect beings. Mistakes are inevitable. They’re going to happen in life. They’re going to happen in your business. At times, they will affect other people like my mistake did, but what’s done is done. It is time to forgive yourself, whether other people do or not. This is a part of the process that I have not always been good at in the past, a previous version of Megan would deal with this a lot differently if I knew someone was stewing on a mistake that I had made, then I would take on that stewing. It’s really quite silly when you think about it, but for my brain, it’s really easy to do this naturally. We don’t like when others are upset about something we’ve done, so for people who think a lot like I do, it’s easy to stew with the mistake I have highlighted in this episode, I fully committed to forgiving myself and you guys, it felt so good, because it has been a year of dwelling on all kinds of crap that I haven’t needed to dwell on, and this needs to change. Making that change with this mistake just felt amazing, even when I sensed that others were dwelling on my mistake, I was done with it. I cannot even tell you how light I felt. It was the most freeing feeling. Forgiving yourself is key to moving forward past any entrepreneurial mistake that you make. Forgiveness and grace are so important. Having forgiveness and grace for yourself might also bleed over into having forgiveness and grace for others. Here’s something that you might not know about me. I can be kind of hard on people. I have high expectations for myself and for other people, my team, my family. I know that my husband can probably feel this at times too. So after I make a huge mistake and see that others have grace for me, and after extending that same grace to myself, I feel more empowered to extend grace to others. This whole experience of making an entrepreneurial mistake and dealing with it in the appropriate way is turning me into a better human, a better boss, a better wife and a better mom. So find those silver linings after your own mistakes and bring them to mind when you start to get hard on yourself. 

Megan Porta  13:09

Number five, set it on the shelf. It’s been a few days since my Monday mistake, and I’ve noticed that every so often it’ll pop into my head and I’ll think, oh my gosh, Megan. How could you let this happen? I’ll start preparing myself to berate Megan like usual, and then I think, no, I can’t. We’re moving up in the world. We’re improving the quality of human being and entrepreneur that we are. And this has to stop. What’s done is done. So I’ve been working on setting those icky thoughts aside and putting that mistakes that I made on the shelf. Thinking about it will not serve me anymore. Another question I’ve been asking is, a year from now, will this even matter? Nope, I’ll remember it. Of course. I’ll never forget the feelings and the emotions that stirred up and the lessons I’m taking away from it. But it won’t matter in a year over time, by next week and next month, I won’t even be thinking about this mistake. Time is going to heal it. And this also comes from the book I mentioned earlier, Untethered Soul. I’ve been trying to do this a lot lately. Just think of the fact that we are all stuck to a giant blob of dirt that is rotating on an axis and circling the sun in the middle of outer space that is crazy and spectacular, and it makes any little mistake that we make feel totally insignificant. So set that dang mistake on the shelf and forget it. 

Megan Porta  14:41

That is all I have for you today. Let’s summarize the five steps to dealing with entrepreneurial mistakes. Number one, accept and process. Number two, take action and clean up the mess. Number three, learn the lesson. Number four, forgiveness and grace and number five, set it on the shelf. Fix those mistakes you make as best you can forgive yourself and move on. The more you do this, easier it’ll be, and remember that I’m right here doing this alongside you, your guide in navigating entrepreneurial mistakes here, signing off for this episode. Thank you so much for listening food bloggers. I will see you next time. 

Outro 15:20

Thank you so much for listening to this mindset and self-care episode here on Eat Blog Talk. If you are a food blogger providing a service for other food bloggers, and you want to spread the word about the value that you offer. I would love to offer you a free way to do just this. Send me a 60 second audio clip to be featured in a mindset and self-care episode here on Eat Blog Talk in 2024. Go to eatblogtalk.com/audioclip to learn more.