10 Mistakes I've Made & What I Learned
It’s Selina here! If you don’t already know who I am, I’m the Founder of Recloseted and in this blog post, I wanted to get more personal and honest with you all.
I’ll be sharing the 10 mistakes I’ve made so far while working on Recloseted and the things that I was able to learn from them. I know that starting your own business comes with so many mistakes, bumps and learning curves along the road and I wanted to share some of my struggles with you so that you can take note of them on your journey!
1. Thinking I Could Figure It Out And Not Need Anyone’s Help
Having come from a business background, I thought that my business degree can carry me through my entrepreneurial journey. In my teens, I started a piano teaching business so I felt like I had some experience running my own business. I was determined to use my Bachelor of Commerce degree and Google to figure everything out for myself. But fast forward six months later, I was doing a bunch of random things — blogging, hosting clothing swaps, etc.
I started my business around the time a good friend of mine started doing 1:1 coaching and I decided to take a leap of faith and get the support I needed by working with her to determine how I could monetize Recloseted. I didn’t want to run a non-profit or charity and wanted it to still be impact-focused so I needed that push from her to really figure it out. After working with her, I pivoted Recloseted and made my first $10k within a few months. Because I told myself to swallow my pride, take a beginner’s mindset and be open to learning, I was able to grow and this is so important for new entrepreneurs.
2. Not Validating Product Before I Launched
This one still pains me to talk about and I’ve never really publicly talked about this before, but it’s really important so I’m discussing it with you all here. Way back when I decided to launch my first online program, I had been doing 1:1 consulting with some clients for a few years and decided that because a lot of them had similar issues, I could just simply combine it into one course. While that is true, the way I executed it was not what my ideal clients (slow fashion founders) truly wanted. I was cocky and lazy and didn’t do the necessary market research I needed to. I launched what was called the Conscious Apparel Academy which contained lots of mini-courses including finance, marketing, sales, etc. But come to launch, there were crickets. I was so devastated because I spent 4 months pouring my heart and soul into building it. After swallowing my pride and going back to the drawing board, I did market research on my ideal customers and was able to create the Launch Your Brand Program that really helps our clients. Having made this mistake is why I’m constantly emphasizing the customer-first approach so much with our clients and on our podcast.
3. Being Scared To Invest In My Business
The first time I invested in a program, I was terrified because it was $1,000. But I gained so many valuable things from taking the program and I don’t regret it at all. Although the prices may seem scary, you need to INVEST in your business in order to grow it. Whether it’s ads, influencer campaigns, mentors, programs, etc. find areas you need support on with your business and make that investment. Just make sure to do your research and ensure that you’re investing in valuable things– there are people out there making programs and courses that aren’t amazing and best suited for your needs!
4. Being Too Idealistic And Not Logically Looking At What Was Going On In My Business
Lately, there has been a huge “trend” around manifesting. But you can’t just say “I will manifest $100k and it’ll be great” while taking no action whatsoever to make that come to fruition. While I’m a big believer in setting goals, reminding yourself of the goals and continuing to look at them is important to logically figure out what’s going on in your business. I had multiple clients looking to get to $100k in a short time span and although possible, looking at it logically and realistically, it was a bit of a stretch. Having had similar approaches to my goals, I learned that you can’t just always do best-case scenarios, but to be mindful of some conservative and pessimistic forecasts.
5. Work Harder And Not Smarter
I have worked through this with my mindset coach and counselling/therapy but I had this ingrained belief that I had to work hard in order to be successful and it couldn’t be effortless or “easy” — otherwise that would mean it wouldn’t work or I was being lazy.
Not everything has to feel like an absolute uphill climb. I learned to work only on things that will move the needle in my business and you should too! You want to work on items that help you achieve your goals and here at Recloseted, we do annual goals, quarterly objectives, monthly goals, weekly goals, and daily goals to help break everything down and make doing the day-to-day tasks more manageable and time-efficient. Working myself so hard to the point of burnout made me feel really overwhelmed and stressed, especially because I used to obsess over having everything be perfect. Through the years I’ve worked to correct this and I hope that sharing this can help you avoid it altogether.
6. Being A Perfectionist
Like a lot of other founders and business owners, I wanted Recloseted to be perfect. I saw my business as a reflection of myself out in the world and to those around me. Through self-reflection, I realized that I tried to control everything to help cope with the unknown. At the end of the day, nobody is going to notice the tiny little things like the font on an Instagram graphic being slightly off-centre— and it is definitely not worth my mental energy stressing over.
At the end of the day, done is better than perfect and don’t let your creations never see the day of light because you’re constantly tweaking it before you put it out. If you experience perfectionism, let it go and feel at peace with it.
7. Putting So Much Of My Self Worth In My Business
When I first started Recloseted, I thought of it as my baby or an extension of me. I would take my successes, failures, setbacks, etc. so personally. Putting so much of my self-worth into my business was unhealthy and draining. I started to be afraid of taking calculated risks or doing different things to scale or adapt to change because of this. Luckily, with time I worked through this internal issue and really realized that Recloseted is a separate entity from myself. I still deeply care about the business, but it’s not tied to my self-worth anymore. Things that happen to or within your business do not mean it’s a reflection of who you are as a person or entrepreneur, and you can’t let these fears control you!
8. Not Trusting Others With My Brand
I used to think that nobody can do anything in my business as well as I can, or that nobody cares as much as I do. But this is the farthest thing from the truth! First of all, you need to delegate to scale— you cannot keep doing everything. Overwhelming yourself will prevent you from doing a good job and things will slip through the cracks and you’ll burn out. Also, it’s not worth your time to be doing certain things such as shipping and packing orders— you have a million other more important things to be attending to!
Instead, I learned to empower my team to care for and train them properly. It takes so much willpower not to go in and fix things for them and instead, take time time to explain things and nurture their growth and learning. Yes, sometimes it’s quicker to just fix things yourself but you need to help them in their journey so that you can empower your team.
9. Not Documenting Enough
The economy is cyclical, so journaling and documenting your journey as an entrepreneur and business owner through all of these cycles can be helpful. It’s always nice to have something to look back to and know how you felt during different times and how you were able to deal with them previously. Business in itself is also cyclical. You’ll always experience an array of setbacks and failures but it’s important to reflect back and see how you dealt with those things in the past. I now document these things more but wish I started earlier on. If you don’t already do this, start now!
10. Letting Other People’s Opinions Affect Me
Having started my own business, I would often question things such as, “what will X think if I start a brand?”, “what will Y do if I do this and outgrow my friends?”, etc. But at the end of the day, nobody else’s opinion should matter! You need to live your life FOR YOU— not to make anyone else happy or impressed by your successes or failures! Don’t have any regrets — pursue your dreams with everything you got and do it for yourself, your goals, your visions, and your mission.
Although there are plenty of other lessons I’ve learned and continue to learn even now, these are some of the most valuable ones I’ve grown from and hope that you can take away some of this advice with you on your journey. If you have any questions about these things or want to share your own lessons, feel free to send me a message @Recloseted — I’d love to hear your thoughts!
