Today’s minisode is all about how to handle and fix mistakes as your own boss. We’re sharing some of the biggest mistakes we’ve made in our businesses and what you can do to move on when you inevitably make a mistake in your business.
Emily Thompson 0:02
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Emily Thompson 1:27
Hello, and welcome to being boss. This minisode is all about making mistakes and what you have to do to fix them.
Kelsey 1:43
Hi, Emily, and Kathleen, I hope you're having a great day. My name is Kelsey and I recently went full time with my design studio. While I'm five years into my business, I'm literally four weeks into making this my full time job as client projects have been ramping up. And I'm putting more pressure on myself than ever to do my best work. I'm wondering what kind of strategies you have, or how have you emotionally handled when you made a mistake? I know mistakes are going to happen in the future because none of us are perfect. But as a boss, how do you mentally get over making mistakes, fixing them and then get on with running your business? For example, today I received an email from my client saying that I had a lot of editorial errors and a document that I sent along, looking back. Yes, I did. I'm a designer by trade. And my biggest focus was not on the editing of this rough draft. I emailed noting my mistake and saying that I would be building and editing step into my process earlier From now on, and thanking her for her honest feedback. I'm hoping this was the right way to go about this. But now I'm spending this morning beating myself up about being less than perfect when it came to my initial delivery. I know this won't be the first or last time that I make a mistake like this in my business. And I want to build up ways in which to learn from these situations and get back to being boss. Thanks you guys.
Kathleen Shannon 2:59
First off, Kelsey, thank you so much for your question. And congrats on making this your full time gig. Yeah, right out the gate. You were like, this was such a good question. It makes you boss like even just asking this kind of question and being concerned about mistakes. But Emily, I want to hear from you. Like, what are how do you deal with mistakes? What are some of the biggest mistakes you've made in your business?
Emily Thompson 3:24
Oh my god. Um, I think the biggest mistake, the biggest mistakes you can make I think are are really around like client work, the one on one engagements where someone is paying you a lot of money to do this thing. And so whenever I think about my biggest mistake a couple about six, eight months ago, I booked a client, maybe probably not the best client I should have booked for myself. And through delivering the product, a couple of deadlines got missed on the part of the client on the part of some contractors. And it was essentially my job to make sure everyone was doing their job on time, even though I was doing my job on time. And some things fell for it fell through the client got really angry. And and I had to totally like take the heat for all the things sort of falling through cracks. And I cried. That's what that's how I started dealing with it as I totally just cried for a good day or so. But then you just stand back up and you fix the thing. You fix the thing you make sure everything is super on par you apologize, and you put systems in place to make sure it never happens again. And it sounds like that's exactly what you did. Kelsey to make sure that you know this isn't a problem in the future. And beating yourself up about it is definitely going to be part of it. But it doesn't have to be a forever part of it. We cry for a minute. That's okay. It happens many pick yourself up and Go do the thing.
Kathleen Shannon 5:02
So early in my career, whenever I was working as a designer at an ad agency, I would intentionally put typos in my work so that my client would have something to critique. That wasn't my actual creative. Whenever I
Emily Thompson 5:16
learned this, and whenever you first told me this, I thought it was the most genius thing I had ever heard a little backstabbing, and weird, but I love it.
Kathleen Shannon 5:26
So, Kelsey, your entire question was so sincere. And I think that you're such a boss for being worried about making a mistake. And for those of us who are very type A and driven, it's really easy to beat ourselves up for not being perfect. But I love actually just acknowledging the humanity in the creative process, mistakes are going to be made. And I think that clients understand this. And whenever you own your mistake, and you're not placing blame, and you're just dealing with it, learning from it, and implementing processes to not make them again, that is so boss. So I think what Emily said is, you're going to feel bad about it, and it's okay to feel bad about it, you're supposed to feel bad about mistakes. That's how you learn from them. But then it's how you move on that makes you boss. So you just keep going keep doing what you're doing. I think that one of the things I've implemented in my business, and really in my own personal policy, like if I was worried about grammar, and typos in my editorial content, every single time I publish something, nothing would ever get out the door. So one policy that you might consider implementing, like, if you really do aren't great at grammar, aside from hiring someone, you might tell people in the first draft, you might see a few typos, we'll fix them along the way, but don't get too hung up on that. And this part of the process is really about just getting the tone or the feel, or whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish with that first step. And some people just get really particular about their grammar and typos, this might not always be an issue for you. So again, I think it's all about just learning along the way, mistakes happen. We're all creatives. And that's how we work. That's part of the creative process.
Emily Thompson 7:15
Bazynga.
Kathleen Shannon 7:16
Kelsey, thank you so much for asking your question. And we're excited to see you in Chattanooga in March, who for those of you who don't know, being boss now has a clubhouse. With online retreats and in person retreats, you can learn more and join us at beingboss.club/clubhouse.
Emily Thompson 7:38
Hey, there bosses around these parts, we preach the necessity of email marketing for your creative business. Sometimes we joke about not being podcasters, but that we make our money writing emails. But the truth is, that's not really a joke. Email Marketing is the engine that runs our businesses. We share a lot of content around here from our own brands and T shirt biography and bring creative to all that being bought is going to become and we rely on a single system to make sure that we're making the most of our email list and the messages that we share with our tribe there. That system is ConvertKit I spent months testing every system I could get my hands on to ensure that the switch we were about to make was the right one. And we've been really pleased with our choice. We immediately found ourselves diving into using the system to more automate our email marketing content, and to better segment and target our growing list of cool creatives looking for the right content for them. If you're in the business of sharing content, we recommend you check out ConvertKit try ConvertKit for free for 30 days go to being boss club slash ConvertKit to learn more. Did you like this minisode Be sure to check us out on our website at being boss dot club. There you can find more from being boss including our full episodes minisodes and blog posts. And while you're there, be sure to sign up for our mailing list so that you can get access to behind the scenes and exclusive content from Kathleen and myself to help you be more boss in your work and life. Do the work be boss
Kelsey Cronkhite is a Creative Director who helps passionate business owners lay down their brand foundations through strategy, identity, and web design. She also has a love for mixing tactical experiences into digital manifestations — like making hand-lettered typefaces and integrating all sorts of hand-crafted personality into those branding projects. Find out more about what Pinegate Road has to offer at pinegateroad.com.
