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Let’s talk about something most people don’t want to admit: Failure is part of the process.

In this episode, I’m sharing a conversation I had with one of our Expand members who ran her first launch, brought in 250 leads… and got zero sales.

I want to normalize this. Because if you’re an entrepreneur, this moment will happen to you. And what determines your success is how you respond when it does.

I’ll walk you through what I told her, what I’ve learned from launches that didn’t go as planned (yes, even after 10 years and 7 figures), and why failure is not just normal—it’s required.

This is the episode I wish someone handed me when I started.

Key Takeaways

• Why your first (or second, or third) failed launch doesn’t mean your offer is broken—and what to fix instead
• The biggest mindset shift that separates successful CEOs from those who give up too soon
• How to shift from “this didn’t work” to “what is this showing me?” and start creating marketing that actually converts

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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh:

I wanna normalize something. It is actually normal. To not hit a sales goal, to have your first launch, get zero to two sales. You will never get out of the situation as a business owner of trying something, and it doesn’t work as well as you had hoped. What matters is how you respond in those situations.

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. I hope you guys are having an incredible week. I’m getting so excited for Embodied Marketing Live. We are in the final countdown. I think there’s like, I don’t know when this will come out, how many days, but like right now, 43 days-ish until Embodied Marketing Live on July 17th In Austin, we have eight.

As of today, eight tickets left until we are completely sold out and it’s going to be so good. Like last time was so good. The January event was incredible and I have added things, shifted things. We’re doing some really cool workshops. I’m actually gonna bring some workshops related to AI and, ’cause I’m doing a lot of that in my company right now and, and really the innovative stuff I’m doing in my company, bringing it into the event, plus all of my own work with.

The Dispenza retreat and all that I’ve done is gonna be integrated into the event, so it’s gonna be the best yet, that’s for sure. Embodied marketing.com/live. You could grab your ticket if you want one of those eight spots. It is so affordable. It is such an affordable event. I could charge. Triple what I charge for this event, hands down for the results that you get.

But really, I, as a business, my goal in this event is to just break even because I just wanna get people in the room and have them experience the transformation that I can give you in an in-person event because it, it is definitely my purpose and a gift. So I hope to see you there and so many of you do have tickets and I’m so excited.

It’s gonna be so good. All right, so today I wanted to have a conversation around a question that I answered for somebody in one of our programs who had recently joined our program. And I did a four week business incubator for our expand members. And part of that, at the end of the each workshop for the four weeks, there was q and a and you could hot seat, ask me anything.

And this person came with a question slash a struggle that I think. So many entrepreneurs, if not every single one has, and we’re just not talking about it enough, so we’re gonna have this conversation because as soon as she said it, everybody was like, oh yeah. Like, you know, I’m in a similar boat, or I’ve been in that boat and, and I’m, I’m just feeling this this discouragement that I have felt it, it’s challenging when you are a solo entrepreneur, getting a business going.

So basically she just did her first launch ever of her program. And she didn’t make any sales. She still had, I think, three days left of open cart. She was in the middle of her open cart and she had gotten 250 leads. So that’s like step one. She’d gotten 250 leads, but she hadn’t made sales yet. And so she came on super transparently into the.

The call with me and said, you know, I’m feeling really bummed. Like, can you gimme some words of wisdom, basically? And I wanna talk about what I said with to her back and just talk about this because I wanna normalize something, something needs to be said. It is actually normal to not hit a sales goal, to have your first launch, get zero to two sales.

That is not a sign that your business can’t be successful and good marketing. Good marketing actually comes into play when that happens and you turn it around, I think most people have this. Vision in their mind that strategic good marketing means I put it all together and I launch it and it works. And then when it doesn’t, it’s because the whole thing is broken or this isn’t gonna work for me, or my offer is not good enough, or I can’t do this and other people can’t, or I’m failing.

And they just feel that discouragement. And here’s the reality, you will never get out of. The situation as a business owner of trying something and it doesn’t work as well as you had hoped. Now, that’s not gonna happen every time, and the longer you’re in business, the less that happens. Why? Because you’re playing the game of consistency, not because you found a magic formula.

So I wanna talk about this and normalize it because here’s what matters. What matters is how you respond in those situations, not. If those situations happen to you or not. So if your expectation as an entrepreneur and as a business owner is that you will never have a situation where you don’t make sales, you don’t hit a sales goal and something falls short, you’re, you’re signing yourself up for a disappointing journey.

If you commit to consistency, commit to the process, which is what I give them, and expand the process of. I teach your messaging, your offer positioning, your lead generation funnel generating leads, converting those leads, right? Those are the high level of the steps she got all the way to the conversion of the leads.

Does that mean her whole strategy didn’t work? No. It means offer positioning or the offer. So I’m gonna tell you what I told her, but before I do that, we’re gonna finish this piece, which is. If you stay committed to the process, if you stay committed to consistency, if you stay committed to no matter what, I will create success, then you will be successful.

But if you bet your success on if this doesn’t work, then I’m gonna make that mean I can’t be successful. You are going to be disappointed. It is normal to have something not work how you would hoped. Like, I still have that, and I, and I sit with it and I go, damn. Like I thought that was gonna work better.

Okay, here’s what the feedback means. Here’s what the data is telling us. So here’s the actions we’re gonna take and staying as removed emotionally from that as possible, because here’s where it gets dangerous, not dangerous, I guess. Dangerous in the sense that you could really stall your growth when you.

Assign a belief to that situation. So you say, because this launch didn’t convert, my offer must suck because I didn’t make sales to these 250 leads. I’m gonna stop my business, or I’m gonna just launch a whole different offer or a whole different business. Or I’m gonna sulk around for two months because this didn’t work.

I’m gonna blame my coach, I’m gonna blame my this course, I’m gonna blame my mentor, whatever. If you do that. You’re gonna stall your growth for as long as you sit there and do that. If instead you say, okay, here’s where we’re at. This is what it’s telling me. This is what’s true. What’s true in this situation is she got 250 leads.

They want her help, or they wouldn’t have signed up for the webinar. They liked her message. They liked what she had to say, they didn’t buy. So what is that telling us? It’s telling us we either have an issue with the offer, which hasn’t been sold before, so we still have to prove it. Which is the hardest thing to do in business.

It’s the first hardest step, or we’re missing out on the offer positioning. We haven’t, we haven’t communicated the value to these leads on why they need this offer, so we’re missing that. That’s all it’s telling us. Can we fix those things? Absolutely we can. So good marketing and good leadership and a true CEO.

It’s not about do these things happen or not happen to them. It is 100% about how they respond when those things happen. As your business gets bigger, you’re still gonna have these things happen. As I said, I still have these things happen where we either. I, I don’t anymore have where we get zero response on anything.

And that’s only because I’ve been doing this for 10 years. So I have a big list. I have a following. I have a warm audience and I also know you guys. So I don’t have that experience anymore where I do something and it doesn’t work at all, which is great. That’s come from putting in the reps. It’s come from 10 years of building an audience and a list and showing up consistently with 700 something podcast episodes.

And through that, knowing my audience and my messaging so well, but do I have things or we don’t hit our goal that I wanted? Absolutely. Yes, we do. And I take that and I say, okay. What is it telling me? What is the message here? What does the data mean? How can I let this drive my actions? I do not let it mean something.

I do not create stories around, oh, this means that the economy is not good and my business isn’t gonna do as well as it did. Or, oh, you know, so-and-so’s gonna always have a big bigger business than me, and I’m not as good at this. I never ever go there. That’s a choice. That is an intentional choice of being aware and conscious of your thoughts and your beliefs, which is a lot of what the CEO game is about, because your thoughts and beliefs dictate your actions, right?

So if you sit there and have a. Like victim mentality, thoughts, which I think that word can trigger people, but ultimately that is what we do and our brain does, is want to blame somebody else so we can take the pressure off ourselves. If you sit there and do that, then you’re no longer able to bring the solution, putting the power in somebody else or something else’s hands.

So that’s the first thing I want to normalize that this. Is normal in business and this is going to happen over and over again. And it is how you respond to it that matters. And not enough people talk about this because they wanna sell you on an easy dream and those beginning phases of business. Are the hustle face.

They are the grinded out face. You’ve gotta prove your messaging. You’ve gotta prove your offer. You’ve gotta build your brand, you’ve gotta build your following. You’ve gotta build trust in, in an era where trust is really lacking, that takes reps, it takes time, it takes commitment. And so if, if you have that commitment, you will be successful.

If you don’t have that commitment, you should reconsider having a business because you’re gonna spin your wheels. So let’s normalize that. When I look at my programs and I look at our done for you service, and I look at how I look at marketing it, yes, it’s great when we nail a strategy out the gate and it works, and most of the time that happens when they’re, that happens most of the time in our done for you or in our done with you with a business who’s got their messaging nailed down because it really mostly comes down to messaging.

Even this example I think is a messaging gap. So it’s great when that happens and that does happen, but usually there’s a foundation we’re building off of the process of marketing. And I think where the true good marketing comes in is when you can take something that worked part of the way and you can turn it into success.

So like this example, when we turn some of these leads into sales, that’s when we know we really had good marketing because some of the process of. Creating business success is actually what you do with the quote failures, what you do when something doesn’t work. And that’s when the good marketers come into play because that’s when you know how to take feedback, shift messaging, look at data and make optimizations.

And so when I look at my program and I look at our Done for You offer, and I say this to my team all the time in the Done For You offer, I say when something isn’t working. When we’re missing a, a target, when we’re missing a KPI for a launch, for a funnel sales conversion, whatever, we need to see that before the client even does.

And then it’s followed up by actions. And as long as you’re doing that, you’re doing everything you possibly could to create success and nobody else is gonna do it better. And that’s always my goal for my team, is that we’re doing it better than anyone else could. We are doing that when you say, here is the data, here is the situation and here are the actions we’re gonna take based on that, and we’re doing everything we can to create success, you can’t do anything more than that, right?

And there’s always actions that can be taken. So with this person, when she asked me this question, first of all, I explained this is totally normal. This is an offer you’ve never sold before. And most of the time the. Situation doesn’t end up being, you just sell a bunch, right? To an unproven offer. There’s, there’s usually refinement that needs to happen.

And again, I cannot emphasize this enough, this is part of the process. So if you resist this in the process and you’re afraid of this in the process, you are going to prevent your success. And I see people who are like, I am not going to invest in ads. I’m not going to invest in my business because I don’t wanna spend money and not make sales.

1. Okay. But if you spend money and get 250 leads, those leads are going to convert at some point. You’re either gonna change the offer until they do. You’re gonna update the offer positioning until they do, and you’re gonna make sales. So you will always be successful. It’s just a matter of when. But if you resist failure and if you let that stop you from taking action because you are too afraid to invest and not see sales.

That is going to slow down your growth for a long time until you are willing to say, this is an investment in my business. And even if it doesn’t pay off right away, it will pay off her investment. 100% will pay off. She got a great cost per lead and she got 250 leads. Imagine if you had a room of 250 people, and that’s what I told her.

That’s a lot of people who said they’re interested in what you’re offering. So first of all, I told her it’s normal. This is part of the process. This is a step in the process. And we just addressed that. And then what I told her to do tactically is I said, right now you need to have as many conversations as you can with those leads because those leads told you that they are interested.

In your webinar, which her webinar was similar to her offer in terms of the problem that it solved. So they want their problem solved. There’s just a disconnect in the value or the perceived value of her offer in solving that problem. So I said, I want you to put all your time and energy right now into having conversations with every one of those leads.

Start with the people who showed up to the webinar, they’re the warmest, and then expand to every single lead, and you can mention your program. You can talk to them about your program, but more importantly, you wanna connect with them. So I gave her some verbiage, something like, Hey, I’m so excited that you signed up for X, Y, Z webinar training.

I wanted to connect with you, relate to their, these are her ideal customer avatars, pregnant women. So I wanted to connect with you and see how I can support you through your pregnancy. I would love to connect something like that is what I told her. You can always ask a question too that helps kind of push people to respond.

So something like what would be, what would be one thing I could do to support you right now as it relates to the problem they have for them? It’s not a problem, but the situation they’re in is they’re pregnant. So what would be one thing I could do to support you right now as a pregnant mama? And then spend all her energy connecting and then when I told her.

Is, I want you to pour your energy into this, but I want you to also do it with an open mind, because if you go into this and you say. Because she has an unproven offer, we, we haven’t proven that this offer hit the nail on the head for what her ideal customer wants. Okay? So we have to be open-minded that we might need to shift the actual offer.

So I said, I want you to go into these conversations, and I want you to have an open mind. I want you to lean into the unknown a little bit and not fit them in a box of, let me talk to them so I can sell them into this offer that I created. But let me go into this with an open mind so I can figure out what it is they’re struggling with and what they say back and make sure my offer connects to that.

And that might lead to a realization that I need to shift my offer. It’s missing a core component or I’m not talking about something that’s like the number one thing they all respond to. And so I wanna highlight this because that’s also really important. I see often see entrepreneurs get very very.

Rigid, very like, this is the way I want my offer to be. This is the way it, it should be, and this is the way I created it. And so I need to force this to work. I need to force this outcome. And when you do that, especially with an unproven offer, you are shutting down an out possibility. Because if you go into, if she goes into these conversations with these 250 leads and she goes in with an open mind, she goes in, I said, go in like you’re an investigator.

You are just trying to make sure you pull out from them as much emotion and pain and struggles and connection as you can because we’re gonna take all of that and we’re gonna use it to either A, adjust your offer itself. Maybe it’s not the right format. Maybe it’s missing something they really want, or, B, adjust the way we talk about your offer.

Maybe it is the right format, but you’re not talking about it in a way that connects the two. But we need to go into this with an open mind. We need to go into this trusting that their responses will give us the ideas that we need. And that is something that I have learned more and more the power of which is the unknown, which is if you get too.

Tied to the way something should be. You are now closing the door to possibility. So that’s where I left her. Go have these conversations, gather all the intel you can. And then we’re gonna come back and we’re gonna compare that intel with your actual offer and we’re gonna see where there’s a gap. And through that I said you might end up selling some of your offers.

Like you very well could end up having a conversation with somebody who is on the fence, who needed some questions answered. I. And then you can sell your offer. So this was a recent conversation and from there, like I said, we’re gonna let the actions from there dictate the next thing for her. The responses dictate those actions.

So I wanted to share this because when she shared this with the group, there was a lot of, well, it was cool. There were some people on the call who were like, that was me a year ago, but now I’m selling my offer and I’m having successful launches. But through that process, I’ve had to pivot a little bit.

My ideal customer. I’ve had to pivot my offer. I’ve had to pivot my business because they stuck with the process. There’s one individual specifically that I remember on the call who’s like, I’ve had a couple of those launches myself where I didn’t make sales, and I know this individual has been in the program for over a year.

And has really stayed committed through challenging times, including having her ad account limit, what she could be running traffic to because she was in the, the, like medical space in Canada. And or they deemed her as a part of me giving medical advice and just challenges, just roadblocks that. Some entrepreneurs would be like, okay, I’m not gonna run ads anymore.

I’m gonna quit. I’m gonna throw up my hands. I’m not gonna do this. And she didn’t. She’s been in the program over a year. She’s had multiple successful launches after having ones that didn’t sell right away, stuck with the process, stuck with the adjustments. I think she actually adjusted her ideal customer a little bit, then adjusted.

Her offer is continually working on her messaging. That’s what it takes. That’s the truth. That’s the reality. And so when I have someone come into my program or to work with us, I’m always upfront with that. If it is a new offer, I tell them it is a process. And we tell them like, if you are not committed to the process, we’re not a fit for you because we’re not gonna promise an overnight success.

It never happens. We are gonna promise success if we can stick with the process. And I wanna normalize that because on the call. When she shared this, other people I think felt like, okay, it’s not just me. When something like this happens or feeling the, the feeling defeat, there’s not a lot of people who get online and say, I’m feeling really defeated right now because I didn’t hit my goal.

But I promise you, it is happening to everybody and it’s how you respond to it that matters. So the next time you have that happen, pause and first check yourself. What are the thoughts I’m having about this? What are the beliefs I’m having about this? Those are real, but they’re not true. From there, what actions am I gonna take and from what place am I gonna take them from?

You can change your thoughts and you can change your beliefs in a matter of seconds once you become conscious and aware of them. And this is why I love the CEO work because. You know, I could give you all the mark, I could give you all the marketing strategy in the world. But if you sit there and you are focused on the fact that you’re failing or that you’re not good enough, or that you can’t do this or that this isn’t working for you, all the marketing strategy in the world’s not gonna work because the way you are showing up and carrying yourself matters more than anything else.

’cause that dictates the actions of the business and the actions of you. This is why I’m obsessed with that, because that really makes the biggest difference. Everything else becomes easier. So this individual received my advice so well and went and implemented, and I have no doubt she’s gonna make a lot of sales either on this offer or the next iteration of this offer.

And she’s coming to my live event. So we’ll dig more into her messaging then. And it’s the commitment. It’s the commitment to create success no matter what. That creates success, period. All right everybody. I hope you found this helpful. If you are in this boat or you’ve been in this boat before, or you just needed a reminder that all the things are normal in business and you’re never gonna escape it, you are never going to get away from having these experiences.

They just change as, as the levels as you go up in the levels. And I think, you know, when I look at my business now. I don’t have situations where something doesn’t work at all, but I have a lot bigger overhead and a lot more it feels like pressure, right? In the past when something didn’t work right, it was just me, and that’s okay.

But now if something doesn’t work or we don’t hit a goal, I have to consider a lot of things and. I have built the capacity to not allow that to impact me. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope to see so many of you at Embodied Marketing Live, happening next month. I’ll talk to you soon.