Social Garden 007: Mastering Content & Sales Without Burnout

Your practical guide to reframing setbacks for real-world online growth.

​​If this letter does anything for you, I hope it helps you reframe how you view failure. I’ve been working in social media for over 8 years, and trust me, I've "failed" hundreds (maybe thousands) of times. But here's the thing: every single one of those "failures" resulted in a lesson, in doing things differently that yielded better results. So, were they really failures? Or just detours to success?

Let me give you a few examples of my "detours":

• No Contract, No Pay: I once pitched, created, and delivered content without a contract and never received payment. (My lesson: Always have a contract to clarify expectations and protect yourself!)

• Over-Negotiating a Dream Gig: I attempted to negotiate a payment that was over the allotted budget for my position and ended up losing the opportunity to be on a billionaire's team touring France for a month. (My lesson: Sometimes the experience and opportunity are worth more than money, and often, you're replaceable. Negotiate with caution.)

• The Launch Day Platform Panic: I initially launched my paid Love Letter subscription on a platform that only allowed one-time payments (not recurring!). This meant I had less than a month to switch everything over to a new platform and pray I didn't lose subscribers in the process. (My lesson: Sometimes things that seem like the end of the world just aren't. Does anyone here even remember my little mishap? Probably not! Also, before you launch something in a matter of hours, take a breath and make sure you aren't missing something major like, you know, recurring payments.)

• The Zero-Enrollment Program: The first paid program I ever launched was a total flop; zero people signed up. (My lesson: Do market research and sell to a warm audience. The next program I launched had 40 people in it!)

Do you see how none of these examples stopped me from being a wellness entrepreneur? None of them stopped me from creating content about my work and reaching my ideal audience. None of these examples included things like, "My Reel only got 500 views in the dead of summer when no one is on their phones anyway, so I decided to quit forever." Because that isn't failure; that’s experimentation.