An Overlooked Rite of Passage

How You Handle The No-Shows

For an audio version of this article, listen on the embedded player below or subscribe to The Irresistible Marketing Pod wherever you get your podcasts.

I realized recently that every single mentor I most look up to in business, who makes the kind of money I want to make, with an unconventional business I admire, who powerfully believes in herself, her work, & her people- have all had something like this happen - often several times:

🙃They offered a freebie and no one came to the webinar or downloaded the PDF
🙃They carefully planned out a launch and got low or no sales

🙃They showed up and showed up and showed up in their marketing & got crickets

🙃They had some real rough money months at some point in their lives

Now, keep in mind, these are multi-6- and even 7-figure entrepreneurs now. So how the F did they get from Point A to Point B?

Long story short: they kept going despite these setbacks.

But how did they find the strength to do that? Now THAT is what sets them apart. 

Let’s break it down. Here’s how bad asses who become wildly successful entrepreneurs handle disappointments in business.

#1 Managing The Meaning They Make of It

Don’t get me wrong, these things are uncomfortable AF. 

They are bound to trigger old wounding you may have around rejection, abandonment, & self-worth. I know I’ve felt all kinds of triggered when this stuff has happened to me in business.

So, it’s not that you need to figure out a way to not be triggered by such disappointments.

Here’s what’s crucially important though: 

You do need to be careful about the meaning you make of it.

Many entrepreneurs- particularly ones with personal brands- are likely to start telling themselves wildly unkind tales about what it means that no one showed up or downloaded or what have you. “I’m not good enough.” “No one thinks my work is valuable.” “They don’t like me.”

These thoughts not only make you feel like crap, but they are de-motivating AF. If any of them are true, your business is just doomed. There is no point in trying further. With these thoughts on repeat, it’s no wonder that many entrepreneurs give up here.

But the entrepreneurs who make it find different ways to look at it. They find ways to get curious:

🥭Did enough people even see this offer to take me up on it?
🥭How many times did I tell people about this opportunity?
🥭Did my aligned customers even realize I was talking to them?
🥭Do I know who my aligned customer is?
🥭Did I communicate what the benefit was? (And no, the benefit was not that it was free.)
🥭Did I go hard enough to help them imagine what results were possible for them if they took me up on this offer?
🥭Was there a clear & compelling Call To Action?
🥭Did I make this offer confidently? Or did I bury the lead?

Now these thoughts will help you make better marketing in the future. AND- notice how none of these questions are about whether you’re good enough? Because business isn’t about that. 

#2 Finding The Creative Opportunity in Failure

Here’s what really sets the destined-for-success entrepreneurs apart: they found ways to make something empowering out of a disappointing experience.

Here are a few examples:

🥭They still taught the webinar no one showed up to so they could practice their messaging and use the recording for marketing content.
🥭They designed a mini-marketing campaign just for the free download and promoted the shit out of it for 2 weeks.

🥭They surveyed the folks who were looking but didn’t buy about why not and whipped up a custom offer to better suit their needs.

🥭They asked themselves how they could take a bigger emotional risk in their marketing, got vulnerable & personal, and watched the DMs and inquiries roll in

🥭 They delved into the depths of their shadows to understand and heal their wounds around money & self-worth. This made it possible for a sale just to be a sale- they weren’t accidentally assigning their self esteem & ability to believe in their business to potential customers (which is wayyyy too much pressure).

I believe that turning setbacks into empowering experiences is one of the most important skills for entrepreneurs. This is what keeps you going. This is what keeps you getting better and better.

Don’t get me wrong: this is challenging mindset work. It is so important to have a mentor, a coach, a community, and/or a cheerleader to help you check your doom spirals and turn them into tornadoes of creativity instead.

#3 Treating Words As Spells

As an entrepreneur, how you talk to yourself really frickin matters. Especially in the face of setbacks, disappointments, and failures.

The more you say something, even in your own head, the more you believe it. Neural pathways and whatnot.

That’s why all this “I suck”/“no one wants what I have to offer”/”people don’t value my work” self-talk is so dangerous. Because you can find evidence of doom everywhere. You can always find ways to make it your fault, and yourself bad and wrong and unworthy. And the more you make business setbacks mean something bad about YOU, the more habitually you’ll think these thoughts.

But, you have other options. You can choose to notice the signs that it is working. And if you can’t see the signs, you can enlist support (like a cheerleader) to help you notice them.

You can choose to speak to yourself lovingly through the toughest of times. And if you don’t know how, you can enlist support (like a fabulous squad of excellently eccentric & ambitious entrepreneurs) to help redirect the stories you’re telling yourself and help you find more supportive and empowering ones.

You can give voice to your desires and soothe your fears by acknowledging them but not allowing them to drive. And if you can’t turn down the volume on your fears, you can enlist support (like a cheerleader) to give you hope that is louder than the fear.

The more you speak to your goals and dreams, the more you have supportive people who will hype you up about them and reinforce your belief that they are within your reach, the easier it is to believe in them and your ability to achieve them.

What if your habitual thoughts were about how EASY sales are? How FUN marketing is? How you’ll INEVITABLY achieve your goals?

#4 Self-Validation Before Market Validation

Look, faith is something you’ll have to cultivate.

There is a period after you make the offer that you have to trust people will buy it before they actually do. You have to trust it to make good marketing. You have to trust it to put in the effort required to tell people about it. You have to trust it to not feel like shit about your business and about yourself.

Which means, you have to validate the value of your work BEFORE your customers do.

Because if you don’t allow yourself to believe in it, you are putting a whole lot of nonconsensual emotional labor on your potential customers.

Imagine if it were a romantic relationship:

🙃”I can’t love myself unless/until you do.”
🙃”My confidence is entirely dependent on what you do or don’t do.”
🙃“If you say ‘no’ or ‘not right now’ I will give up on myself and decide I don’t deserve to have my needs and wants met.”

Not cool, right? You can’t have a healthy relationship unless you already value yourself.

But relationships are vulnerable, and triggering. That’s why so many people are in therapy! (And if not, they should be!) We have wobbles when we are triggered. We struggle to remember what is our responsibility and what is other peoples’.

Business is no different. Yes, you need to validate the value of your work for yourself- but you can and SHOULD get support in building that belief for yourself. But this support should come from a skilled business coach or-  ahem, marketing confidence cheerleader. NOT the people you want to become your clients.

#5 Treating Marketing as An Experiment, Not a Test

Notice how when you start thinking like this, “failure” isn’t really a thing? Because you’re always able to get something valuable out of it?

Labeling our marketing “failures” usually isn’t helpful. Because failure comes with shame. And shame shuts us down or has us fighting it. Either way, it pulls our attention away from showing up and finding out what DOES work.

Marketing is not pass/fail. It’s a continual experiment. And the more you can look at it like that, the more curiosity and creativity you can bring to the process of trial & error, the more fun you’ll have figuring out how to get the clients, following, and accolades you want.

You Don’t Have To- And Shouldn’t - Handle It Alone

Look, this is hard stuff. Most of us weren’t conditioned to approach life, business, and money this way.

You’re having to literally rewire your brain to become the entrepreneur with the kind of resilience, confidence, & fortitude that are necessary for the kind of success you want.

If you are sinking into doom spirals, if you freeze up when it’s time to share your offer, if you cried when no one came to your workshop… You are not alone. And you don’t suck.

You just need some support. You need love and encouragement and reframes to stop being so hard on yourself. You need buddies to help you practice new, more empowering thought habits.

You need a Cheerleader. And a Squad. Luckily- both are available to you.

Hi, I’m Isa, your Marketing Confidence Cheerleader - the on-call expert marketing director and hype fairy godmother to The Squad, a fabulous community of excellently eccentric entrepreneurs cheering each other on as we do the impossible in real time.

There’s no better time than now to book me as your own, personal marketing genie-in-a-bottle. A Year of Killer Content - my 1:1 program where we keep you motivated, hyped, and knowing exactly what to say to sell, comes with a 3-month complimentary membership to The Squad.