Is it Really a Failure? | You belong Podcast with Alison Hatch

After a four-month hiatus, Alison is back to talk about why she decided to cancel February's Photo Native. After stepping back from the Photo Native platform and everything that went with it, Alison is back to talk about failure and if Photo Native really was that. This episode of “Is It Really Failure?” Alison dives into why we feel like failure is bad when really it is inevitable. How we can easily change mindsets around failure in a culture that hides it? If you are feeling like you belong in the failure club, welcome. You’re not alone. So glad you are here and get listening.

Alison (00:01.858)

Okay, welcome back everybody. It has been a hot second since I have recorded a podcast and we are going to get deep into why, but I'm so glad you're here. First of all, thanks for coming back to me after a four month hiatus. It was a little longer than I expected it to be. And honestly, I didn't even know if I would be back. So I am just going to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here.

Um, so today we're going to be talking about failure and I feel like it is so incredibly appropriate and it was something that I knew would be my very first episode when I came back after this break because the reason why I took a break was because I had a failure and how many times can I say because in the sentence, okay. Um, if you've been around for a while, you know, that photo native was

something that I was working on. We had PhotoNative 2023 in Palm Springs. It was really fun, but it was financially a fail and I wanted to do it again. I took everything that I learned from the first one and changed things around, created a different conference with the same amount of value and experience and

everything that photo native is known for the attendees without it being such a financial strain on myself and Put it out there and Ticket sales were too low from the get-go and I just could not get myself to go through the stress of continually trying to market it and hope that People would buy tickets enough to again cover my costs. I could not take another loss and

The stress was too much, so I canceled. And I needed to take a massive, massive step back. So we're going to be talking about failure today. Failure, I feel like, is something that in our American culture, this entrepreneur success, success culture, failure isn't something that we're willing to talk about very much. And

Alison (02:19.718)

I feel like that is a huge detriment. When I decided to cancel Photo Native for 2024, the one that I created for February in 2024 in Texas, I was very honest about it. I completely was transparent as to why I went on Instagram. I wrote an email explaining everything and I felt like it was really important to explain that it was a failure.

we celebrate and only see our successes and we don't celebrate our failures. And I want to talk about why that is such a detriment to us, especially as entrepreneurs as running businesses. There's absolutely no way unless you are touched by the business gods that you do not have a failure as you are working your way in your business towards your goals. It's just a fact of

works out all the time, always. And I feel like we hide that, we hide those failures, we hide those things that don't turn out the way we planned or stumbling blocks, we hide it and only show our successes, our wins, everything's great, everything's awesome. And that's just not true. It's not fair, I think, to everyone out there, especially in a photography world, to show that all the time.

As artists, when we create art, it doesn't always work out that way, as well as our business. So let's talk about failure and how it's a good thing. How it's something that we should celebrate and share and expect and not get so upset by it. So first of all, I want to talk about two different types of failure. There's a soft fail and a hard fail. A soft fail is when you are consistently working towards a bigger goal, but have a stumbling walk along the way.

For instance, if you have a goal to increase clients by so much, so say for 2024, you want to have X amount of clients and you work towards it. So you have, you know, upping your SEO, your email, doing different analytics through all of those channels and marketing and you have this wonderful marketing plan and you execute it and you work towards this goal.

Alison (04:46.606)

towards 2024 X amount of clients, but the end of 2024 you haven't met that goal, it's a soft fail. There's no way you haven't increased your clients. There's no way you haven't learned from all of that. And there's no way that all of that work isn't going to continue rolling over into the next year and it compound. So that is a soft fail. A hard fail is when you try one time and you gave up.

Those can be the most painful because they come with really big feelings of regret. And that is what the problem is with failing is our feelings instead of looking at it as concrete evidence of what we need to change these feelings of shame and embarrassment and anger and sadness totally overtake us. We're all artists in this space and

For most of us, I'm going to say are pretty emotional people because of that. We have a lot of really big emotions and it can be really hard to process a fail because of that. So how do we overcome failure? There's a lot of ways to do it. The first one like I did is took a massive step back. I just knew that I needed to stop everything with photo native and take a step back, not work on it anymore.

and try to gain some perspective on the situation. And having no expectations, no pressures on me to do that and being so transparent with everybody and my clients, my employees, that that's what I was going to do, really helped me process those emotions and take a look at the bigger picture. So gaining some perspective. A quote about that is,

According to research, when people adopt a self-distancing perspective while discussing a difficult event, they make better sense of their reactions, experience less emotional distress, and display fewer physiological signs of stress. In the long term, they also experience reduced reactivity when remembering the same problematic event weeks or months later, and they are less vulnerable to recurring thought or rumination. So at first, when I...

Alison (07:07.77)

canceled photo native and started taking a step back anytime I caught brought up I cried or I got angry or I just got in this dark place and that happened for a while but as time went on I was able to Talk about it more and more without having those feelings and I think being able to give yourself that grace of saying hey I'm done For a while. Let's just take a break. Um

I think that is such the kindest, most gentlest thing you can do to yourself. If you don't have to continue, if you have that ability to stop and give yourself space, I think that is the best thing you absolutely can do for yourself the very beginning of your fail. The next thing is that practicing no list back up.

Alison (08:04.37)

Whether you take a break from it or not is allow yourself to be sad allow yourself to feel that Sadness or anger or shame or embarrassment or whatever you're feeling around your fail um Allowing yourself that Gives you that permission to feel those feelings and process it like I said before as artists Where most of us are very emotional people very empathic and have these you know, feelings is what helps us to create

wonderful art. So allowing yourself to feel that instead of just being the business person that you are giving yourself that space to feel those feelings and process them is also another wonderful thing you can do to process your fail. The next thing is practice self-compassion. So giving yourself that grace saying, okay, I'm having one of those days when I'm thinking about this and not getting mad at yourself for having those feelings and needing to take a step.

So how is failure good? I talked about failure being good and it really is so let's talk about why. Failure is learning from our mistakes and when you fail and you have all these feelings when you're ready to start tackling your fail and making it a positive thing the first thing you need to do is get honest about what was the motivating factor behind the failure.

Alison (09:31.398)

Okay, so I'm going to use photo native as an example. So my motivating factor behind the fail was the financial aspect of it. I didn't get into photo native because I wanted to make a ton of money. I mean, come on, everybody knows that photography, if you want to be rich, photography is a place to do it. But I did it because I wanted to continue that connection for other people to be able to have that same wonderful experience that I had.

and get those connections and connect with themselves as an artist and other people. That was the real reason why I did it. But I did want to at least make some money at it. I knew it would be a lot of work and I wanted to be compensated for my time, my value, my time, and I wanted to be able to do that. So I went too deep financially.

That was the wrong thing to do. I expected too much of myself. I, you know, had a little bit too big of goals and that motivation behind my fail was the financial aspect of it. And when I did have to cancel because of financial things, I was really upset at myself. I felt really down on myself. I felt like I was, you know, had all that shame and embarrassment instead of looking at the positive things that I gained from that.

experience. I met so many incredible people. I grew so much as an artist and as a person. I learned to put myself out there more. I learned so much about marketing and all these other things. There were so many benefiting factors from it and when I had processed those emotions and was able to go back at PhotoNative and look at the positive things, those are what has helped me continue to want to keep going with it.

and learn to look at it as a win. Yes, all the things that went wrong sucked, but I learned so much from it. And I'm going to be adapting to those things that I learned that went wrong. And then the things that were positive from it, I want to just keep bringing with me, keep bringing with me and continuing it through to whatever photo native will be in the future. So recognizing those successes.

Alison (11:55.474)

Recognizing that even yes, it didn't turn out exactly like you were expecting it to But there were some wonderful things about it or learning experiences from it And this growth that you can gain from failure Is so big um, the other thing I think is really important to learn from a fail is that You're okay That you actually tried. Um I have a

So you actually tried, which is amazing.

Alison (00:10.998)

Okay, there we go. Being able to have the guts to try something so big or outside of your comfort level is amazing. And being able to do that means that you might have a chance of failing. And what an incredible place to be of excitement and fear, but it's growth. You're not gonna be able to gain that growth that you want with

out having the option that it'll fail. So if you're scared of failure, then you're not going to gain these goals. You're not going to be able to grow like you need to or want to. You have to be able to be okay with the possibility of it failing. So pat yourself on the back that you even tried. Seriously, like you have to be so proud of yourself for trying even though it didn't work out the way that you wanted.

And the last thing I wanted to go over real quick is stop comparing yourself to others. It looks like so many people are doing so well out there that they're just killing it with all these different things. And you're over here going, it's not working out for me. Why isn't it working out for me? And you got to stop. You've got to just stop comparing yourself to other people. It isn't fair. The only person that comparison is hurting is you. It's not hurting anybody else out there who looks like they're doing

amazing. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't and they're just faking it till they make it as well. You've got to stop doing it because it's only gonna hurt you. So how do you feel about failure now? After I've talked about it and gone over all the things in my own personal failures, I would love to hear your response to failure. If you are liking this episode, please share it. Share it in your stories or

Share it in your email lists. I would love for this to continue to get out The other thing is if you would like to be a guest on the you belong podcast You can go to the my website and there's a link in Instagram or you can go to the photo native dot -com backslash you belong and It'll get you there so you can apply to be a guest on the episode. Thanks everybody. I'm so glad you're back here with me after my perspective break with

Alison (02:37.538)

VOTO native and being able to process my fill and I am happy to share it with you. Alright everyone, bye.

Alison is an Albuquerque, NM analog film photographer and photography educator. Her work has been featured in many online publications such as Shoot It With Film and Heartful Magazine, many social media features, and published works like The Front Steps Project Book. You can here
Alison talk about creativity, photography, and the power of the feminine on her weekly podcast You Belong.