“Acknowledge all your failures”: Mia Fileman shares her biggest business blunders

In case you missed it, an intern at entertainment giant HBO recently lived out the collective nightmare that is sending out an empty test email to the entire database. Instead of piling on the poor person, Twitter collectively showed up in support of the nameless intern. Because let’s face it, we’ve all been there.

As a professional marketer and business owner, it may look like I have everything sorted and am kicking goals, but of course, that isn’t the whole picture. Sure, after three years of running my own business, I have learnt some lessons the hard way and am finally starting to reap some of the advertised benefits of running my own business. But don’t be fooled, I have made some absolute whoppers along the way.

So here are my six biggest blunders from the last three years, which as you will see, are way worse than sending a bulk mass email with “test” in the subject line (which of course, I have also done too).⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

1. Coming up with a business name that no one could spell or pronounce: Idiello. That’s right, I failed marketing 101;
2. Creating a free seven-day challenge that would have taken anyone about seven weeks to complete. No one did complete it and, surprise surprise, we didn’t make a single sale;
3. Not learning from number two and creating a 30-day challenge that yielded the same results, or lack thereof;⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
4. Sinking hours upon hours into building my own website because I wanted to ‘save money’ when I could have repaid the cost of a kickass web designer in just two weeks focusing on what I do best;
5. Offering a digital membership for $59 per month that cannibalised my $1,800 course. Customers actually told me, “I was going to sign up for the course but joined the membership instead”. I cried, and then swiftly pulled the pin on the membership; and
6. Not taking a single proper break all of last year and hitting absolute and complete burnout. This was surely a contributing factor to my business partnership ending.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Let’s face it, running a business is definitely not all roses. Despite all the celebrity CEOs and so-called gurus constantly telling us that running a business is all about four-hour work weeks, passive income and making money in your sleep, the reality is very different.

The only real secret to success? Acknowledging all your failures along the way and getting knocked down, but then getting back up over, and over, and over again.