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Writer's pictureJessica McKinley

203. CEO DRAMA: Navigating Business Mistakes

Updated: Mar 7

Jess dives into the realities of business ownership that often go unspoken. When you screw up, and what to do!


Join Jess as she explores the critical aspect of paying yourself as a business owner. From starting with a modest salary to reinvesting profits, Jess shares her belief in building self-trust and legitimizing your role as an employee of your own business. The advice is practical, and the mindset shift towards viewing your paycheck as a non-negotiable bill is a game-changer.


The episode takes an intimate turn as Jess opens up about a recent mistake in her entrepreneurial journey. She walks you through the thought process she followed to navigate the situation, emphasizing the importance of owning the mistake, separating self-worth, and deciding who she wanted to be in that challenging moment. This five-step process provides valuable insights for anyone facing CEO drama.


Jess's vulnerability and practical wisdom make this episode a must-listen for entrepreneurs at any stage of their journey. It's time to embrace the challenges, learn, and grow on the path to becoming the future version of yourself – a resilient and successful CEO.


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Keep dreaming, keep growing, and stay sincerely you!







🌟Catch up with Coach Jess...







*This Transcript is Autogenerated*


Jessica McKinley Uyeno 0:00

That is a tricky way not to show up in people pleasing not to show up in manipulation trying to manipulate so that your client likes you so that they feel or thinks something. It's really none of your business you want to make it about who you are as a business owner who you are as a company. Welcome to sincerely future you a podcast that helps ambitious women like you and make decisions today with the future you in mind. You're listening to the sincerely future you podcast. This is episode 203. Can you believe it? We're talking about CEO drama today, we're talking about when you screw up, whether you are a beginner business owner, or someone who's been doing this for decades, you've screwed up and your business, it's just a part of the game, we fail, we collect failures, we eat that shit for breakfast. So today we're talking about what are you do, who you are, and how you show up, when you screw up is going to determine whether you have a higher return rate of clients, whether you have higher reviews, the screwing up part, that's a part of the game. It's inescapable. But how you show up when you screw up is very important. Let's dive into it. But before we dive into the topic, of course, we got to get hype. Get your body going, if you're in the shower, you know, just like pump your fists up into the air if you're driving like tendency to keep your hands on the wheel, but still just like maybe shimmy your shoulders, whatever it is, we're getting hype, because when you are hype, you tend to absorb information in a more powerful way. And you're going to want to absorb every word of this episode today, in our hype sesh we are talking about getting paid from yourself part of owning a business, it's making money and I fully believe in reinvesting profits. In fact, I reinvested definitely more than 50% of my gross revenue, my first year, my second year, I believe, my third year, and I still reinvest 50% of the profits now. But you got to get paid on top of it. I don't care if you start your salary at $50 a week. But if you stay with your business and personal accounts mingled, if you just pay yourself what's left over, or worst of all, if you stay scared to pay yourself at all, you're keeping your business and your future self small, I want you to think of paying yourself as a bill. And for some of you guys, you're already doing this paying yourself the same amount consistently each week, in which case, you get to spend this hype sesh just patting yourself on the shoulder being like, I'm killing it. Even if other areas you're failing, you're killing it. Okay, but if you're not doing this yet, also, this isn't a shame party never use my podcast episodes, to beat yourself up, we only use them to say, oh, and then we grow, we learn and we move forward. So you're gonna think about paying yourself as if it's just a bill as if it's paying your Canva bill or your website hosting a fee. Or if you have a brick and mortar, it's paying your rent, you're going to put it on auto pay. And in order to do this, yes, you need to have a business account and a personal account. It doesn't have to be fancy, you can go back and listen to the podcast episode where I talked about having a business credit card and all of those more strategic things. But really, this is a mindset thing. Because when you put paying yourself on AutoPay, even if you're starting at $50 a week, you then get to reassess at the end of a month or three months or six months and give yourself a raise. This is not about bankrupting your business. That's not what I'm saying to do. This is about building self trust. It's about legitimizing yourself as an employee of your business. What would you do if you had to pay an employee tomorrow and you didn't have the funds? You'd make it happen? Right? You wouldn't be like, Okay, it's five o'clock time to clock it in. You'd call everyone that's outstanding. And make sure that they paid the balances that were due, you'd sell something, you'd get scrappy, you put it on a credit card, whatever you would have to do, right, move things around. Are you showing up that way to pay yourself, you deserve it, if you're thinking of yourself as a CEO, we want to make sure that you are thinking about your business as if you're growing it into something you could sell men think about their business this way, way more often. But women, I don't think we have the same conversations about Am I growing an asset and if you are growing an asset, it needs to be something that is showing that you are able to pay yourself. So start wherever you need to start conservatively. And then we're going to continue to give yourself a raise. Do this to build your self confidence and to put some money in your bag. Let's go.

Now it is time to talk about the real deal when you screw up I know is such a fun topic, right? But actually, this episode should make you feel safe to fail, it should make you feel like there is a plan so that you're not going in afraid that you're going to create a situation that you can't get out of. Because there's no such thing, you absolutely always have a next step and a future move, even and especially when you screw up. So I want to talk about a specific example in my own business where I screwed up. And I want to just give you the exact circumstances so that you can see how I handled it, but mostly how I thought about it behind the scenes. So I was in the process of transitioning over from the year I've experimented with a lot of different payment plans in 2023. And one of them was this idea of having a pre pre enrollment where people could, you know, sign on and create a deposit payment that would reserved them into the next round. Now, if someone was in my current round, and they paid a deposit, it created a duplicate account for them. This also happened another time within three weeks of each other where I decided spontaneously, I want to do a one on one week with my group. And so I had my assistant be like have them schedule a one on one call that duplicated accounts in the backend of my system. So I had three or four clients that had duplicate accounts. And I was like, Okay, we just need to delete their duplicate account. And we talk to our customer service department about it. They told us what to do, I gave my assistant that go ahead, she deleted the account at all looked good. Except for that two of those people. Were no longer getting calendar reminders for the calls. One of them heavily relies on her schedule, which is one of the things that I teach my clients to do, right? Rely on your schedule, so that you don't have to be thinking, what am I doing next? What am I doing next? And so she missed two calls. And she noticed that when she missed the first call that the second call wasn't on her calendar. And she thought it was weird, but she was like, Is there a call, I don't see a zoom link. And she sent an email, then she sent me a text message. I did not get the email or the text message before the call. And I instead of sending out an email, we've put it in the Facebook group to notify people that, hey, it looks like some of you don't have the link. Everyone else got it. But this one girl, and she missed the calls. And she was really upset. The reason this was happening was because she had doubled down in her investment with me, I would be pissed too, right? She's like, hey, what's the deal? Like, I am putting my future right in? I'm investing into you. And I seem to not be benefiting from it right? Just in this one instance, not in general. She's actually obviously a raving fan of the masterful CEO school in the program. That's why she's coming back for another round. The truth was, is that it was just an error on our end. So what did I do? First of all, I freaked out for a second. I'm not gonna lie, sometimes the first thing that you do is to have a human experience. So I made room for that I was pissed. I sent a text to my assistant. And I was like, Oh, my God, we messed up like, I don't like this, we have to write this. We want to fix this. So I just recognized and I owned the fact that I messed up. So step one, when you mess up, just own it. Right. But the reason I was like why was I able to do that and fix it so quickly? I'll tell you exactly what I did. I think it's because and I came up with this process for you this five step process of what do you do when you screw up? And it's really a thought process. So number one, I look at where was the error? Was the error and oversight on my part? Was it something that I did in terms of not showing up or miscommunicating or something like that, in this case? I didn't follow through quickly enough. Or maybe I could have double checked my email before the call. But I think I had my back on that. I don't think it was really like me or the process. But it definitely was me making spontaneous decisions and being willing to let things be a little bit messy. Again, I decided I want to have my own back on that. I don't want to be scared to be able to offer my clients new things or come up with new ideas just because of failure. I was willing to have that happen. And so when I looked at what the error was, it really was one of the types of failures that I'm willing to collect, I could clean up a little bit in terms of Okay, make sure that once I did realize that there were some issues and some glitches and one person wasn't getting the link, I should just put my assistant on making sure that all of that is worked out, and everyone has the call, so I could cover all the bases there. So I'll do that in the future. And then the second thing is, you have to take your self worth off the table when I was coaching, that same day, I went in and was coaching in the splash pad, where it's a more beginning, beginner level, it's people that are at like zero to 50k in revenue. And a habit in that room, because they're less familiar and less seasoned in failing is that when they fail, or when there's where there is an error in delivery, they blame themselves, like they take it to heart, they really think like, Ah, this feels terrible. And the reason it feels so terrible is because they're thinking, I should have done better, I should have been better. So we want to make sure that like, I don't want that to happen again in the future. But I'm still a good CEO, right, I'm still a good person. Like, I'm not like a bad person, sometimes watch out, if you are having those thoughts when something happens, especially if someone is unsatisfied, or they don't get the results like that wasn't even this case, this was a logistical error. But if someone doesn't get what they came for, watch out for how you're making that be about you as a valuable person or a valuable service provider, or that your product isn't good, right? So I took my worth off of the table is separated. And the number three, now that you've owned the fact that there was a screw up? Who do you want to be? Who do you want to be in this situation? Versus the low quality question of how do you want to manipulate the situation? And that's where you see a lot of you operating from? The high quality question, I'll repeat is, who do you want to be in the situation? So I decided who I want to be is efficient, I want to get back to her and I want to solve it quickly. I want to take care of her I want her to feel really held. I want to create a safe space where people know that if there was an issue, even if I haven't decided exactly how I'm going to fix it yet, or it's not fixed yet. I sent out a direct message to her that day say, hey, apologies, I see that this was an oversight. Janelle and I are both working on it. But I want to let you know that I'm going to make this bright. And what I ended up doing in terms of actions when I ended up offering her a 30 minute direct one on one coaching call she had missed the other call it was because of an error on my part. And I love to feel I want it to be someone who I want to be in the situation. I want to be someone who's over delivering. I love to remind myself that as a CEO, I have the opportunity to over deliver when things are going great. And when things are not going great. Just because you screw up doesn't mean that you are no longer someone who's over delivering. Do you follow what I'm saying? Pick it up what I'm putting down over here? Yes, we always have opportunities. In fact, some of the best times when I felt to the close, it's the most loyal to brands, or when I go to a restaurant, something's just like, not quite right. It's undercooked. I already feel awkward about sending it back. And I say something and they just take care of me. They're like, No problem, we're gonna send you this and we're gonna send you this extra little treat and it's on the house. Now there's no right or wrong way to solve it. Don't get into that black hole, right? You're going to make a decision, and you're going to have your own back, that's going to be the last step. There's no right or wrong decision, right? There's only the decision that you make right here. So you're going to make a decision about what you want to do. In this case, I decided with my client, Danielle, that I was just going to offer her a 30 minute one on one session that felt very generous. I felt like I was taking care of her I sent her a direct message not from my assistant from me just letting her know, hey, we're handling this. You'll get a link soon. But I appreciate your patience. And I also gave her some insight being like failure collection happening over here. That's one of the things that I teach them to, to normalize not to sweep anything under the rug or to say like, oh, it's no big deal if we mess up, but to say, Hey, this is a part of the game and we're gonna own it. And then we're gonna focus on the future and how we can always do better. Right? It's very different than say like, it's no big deal. I mess up. I mess up all the time, right but it's not justifying it. It's like, okay, this is what happened with neutral honesty and then focusing on the future. Step one was look at where's the error? What happened in the first place to cause the screw up? Was it you? Was it a process, you need a policy? Was it that you've attracted a type of client that is not really a fit for your program, or you're Miss marketing and your marketing and your delivery don't match, there's usually one or two of those things are happening, you want to know what it is? Number two, right? You're taking your worth off of the table? Number three, you're asking the high quality question of Who do you want to be in this situation? Versus or who does your company want to show up as? Versus how do you want to manipulate the situation so that they feel better? Or that they think highly of you or they do something right? That is not a good place to show up from? And then four is, what's the result that you desire? What's the Win win here. So the win for me was that I wasn't running around like a chicken with my head cut off, I wanted to feel in contact with my clients, I wanted to get a plan going with my assistant. And I didn't want to have to do it that day. Because the truth was, we were reaching the end of the day. And I had a lot of personal things that were on my schedule that I wasn't going to move. So I wanted to handle it. And I didn't want to interrupt my schedule to do so. And that was the wind on my hands. Now on her end, I wanted to make sure that I was offering her something that felt generous, that felt like an over deliver. Those are words that I use always to describe my programs to describe me to describe what I what I sell, I'm always trying to find ways to over deliver even after I've sold someone something on how can I over deliver, especially when I screw up, I'm like, Alright, here's my opportunity, who do I want to be? How do I want to over deliver. So this felt like the perfect solution, once I was clear what the result was that I desired. And careful if the result that you're looking for is for your customer to be satisfied. It's such a slippery slope, it feels innocent enough. But that is a tricky way not to show up in people pleasing not to show up in manipulation, trying to manipulate so that your client likes you, so that they feel or think something, it's really none of your business, you want to make it about who you are as a business owner who you are as a company, so that you can increase the value that you're offering. Sometimes you're gonna do all the things that you feel right, and the client will still not be satisfied. And those are, those are tough moments in our business. But we have to be willing to understand as you're growing, there are going to be some times where people are like, hey, I want to get on the phone with the CEO, and you're not going to be able to get on the phone with Jeff Bezos or with these CEOs who are scaling to a certain level, there's there's different solutions for each, some people are still always going to want to have something that isn't realistic or isn't the way that you want to deliver in your business. And for that, you have the final step, step five, which is once you've established who you want to be, once you've separated, you're taking your self worth off the table once you've identified where the error is. So you can increase your efficiency and your delivery. Once you have established the result that you desire, the win win situation, you're going to step five, make a call and have your own back, I made the decision about the email that I was sending out, it felt very generous to me it felt like it overdeliver I loved it. If she came back and she was like, I want to talk to you on the phone, my answer would have been no, I would have actually down the line. But I wouldn't have that day. Because my priority was to my son and is to my family. And I already feel I already did the work behind the scenes to be like, I know I'm going to be taking care of her. And I'll explain to her when we have our one on one if she needs a little bit more information on how it went down but not in depth, right. Because when you have your own back, you don't feel the need to go and justify. I'm also not trying to show up from a place of getting her to like me, I'm showing up from a place of knowing that I'm a business owner who over delivers and then having my own back on it. It allows you to lean back, when you screw up. It allows you to lean back when you're diving in and you're taking risks allows you to lean back when you're being spontaneous. And you're saying, Hey, we're gonna throw together this thing and we're gonna throw it out there and I think it's gonna be great. I'm not really sure we got to work out the kinks. We got to make sure that everything's moving and grooving and all the logistics and the technical stuff is all working. Probably something is gonna go wrong and I can handle it because I know who I am and I know who I will decide to be i There's nothing I can't figure out. These are such key core beliefs. You have to have to be a masterful suit. Yo, and the future version of you is not scared to go forward and make mistakes because you have this process,

fit and financial bootcamp. I know it sounds a little bit cheesy, but the truth is that on this show, we make decisions from our future self that is just rich and fit she is she's healthier, and she's wealthier. She has admirable habits. I'm not saying that because it's just my goals. But because time and time again, in the nine years that I run the letter to yourself future workshop, I keep seeing these two habits. And these two goals pop up in all of your letters. Whether you realize it or not, if you change nothing about the way you're showing up in your finances, and in your fitness, you're trending in a direction, you're either getting fitter or fatter, you're getting richer or poorer. Those are just the facts. And I'm not doing it to try and shame anyone it's neutral to me is Since you're here, learning about how to create a big life and future listening to this podcast, we want to demystify some of those things that we need to do to get there. And basic finance your daily spending, saving, earning, investing, having and giving, as well as how you show up regularly to move and feel your body are not mysterious. They're actually just simple habits. And simple, practical next steps, you probably just don't know what you don't know. And for some reason, unbeknownst to me, the three most basic and important life skills of how to think how to treat our bodies and how to grow our money are not taught in schools. It's the wild wild west out there people. So starting on Sunday, and again, this is going to be a once a year thing unless it's like a crazy Raven, then maybe I'll bring it back twice. You guys love the rewire your time bootcamp in this format, where it was one week, private, super intensive, I am laying it all out, I'm going to give you a list of all of the apps that I use all of the steps that I take things that you can change about the where you're putting your money, right now as soon as we start, and we're going to couple it with moving our body so that we are energized so that you are starting to see well what is the difference between fit me and unfit me, the person that moves her body daily the same way She brushes her teeth, and the other person who's like, maybe not maybe tomorrow, right? There is a key difference. So I'm gonna be teaching it to you. I cannot wait you can go and you can sign up for fit and financial in the link in my bio on Instagram at Jess McKinley, Wino, or it will be a link in the show notes. I cannot wait to see you guys in there. We're gonna get sweaty, we're gonna get wealthy, it's going to be great. Today's shout out goes to Danielle from good to intense. Danielle has been a longtime client. She came to me back in the day when she was a engineer with a pretty sick job. And she still knew that she had ideas that were just living in her brain, and she wanted them out there. And when we came to work together, it was in a one on one capacity. And I came to find out that she had this killer idea to create a tent, a revolutionary tent, not just like some other cue branded tent like I'm talking is changes the way that you set up the tent. It is engineered to be thermodynamic. I don't know if I'm making that word up, but like weather proof essentially in ways that certain tents are not and also, it's eco sustainable. It is all the things and now three years later, fast forward three years later, this product is about to launch. I have watched as Danielle has had the balls to leave her job to go all in without a salary, developing a product behind the scenes. She showed up in ways that even I am like what I have the balls to do what Danielle just did. It is so killer. Her belief in this product has is contagious and now other people are starting to notice. Yes, I'm shouting her out for her general balls. But I'm also shouting her out because this week she had a huge win. She had a major music festival just sign on to have her be the vendor for the VA their VIP experience. They want her tents there. They want her to be the brand that is starting to change the game for these music festivals that are staying overnight in these tents. It's so cool. Please go over and check out good intense you can check it out on Instagram. You can check it out on social media on Instagram and certainly at good intense.com We'll put all that in the show notes because it is about to launch and her first launch will sell out. So if you're a camper, get it on this baby. It's about to revolutionize the industry. Congrats Danielle. I just am so proud of you. If you've been listening to the show and enjoying these episodes, if a particular episode resonated with you, or if you just appreciate the effort that it takes for us to bring you these weekly episodes, I would be so grateful if you could take a moment to leave me a rating and a review. Your feedback not only fuels my motivation and is my substitute for coffee because I don't drink coffee. I know shocking, because I'm so hype. But also it helps others discover sincerely future you podcast, whether it's on Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen, your ratings and reviews are like golden tickets that open the door for more people to join our amazing community. If you're not sure how to leave a review, don't worry. It's usually just a quick scroll or tap away. And hey, if you've already left a review a huge thank you from the bottom of my heart seriously. Your support means everything. Let's keep this conversation going. If you have any suggestions or topics you'd love to hear more about, or you just want to say hi, hey, you can always reach out to me on Instagram. I love hearing from you. You can reach me at Jess McKinley we know that's je s s MC KINLEYUYEN Oh, I love hearing from each and every one of you. I always answer my DMs. So thank you for being the awesome listeners that you are now let's spread the word and make sincerely future you even bigger and better together. Let's go. The moral of the story of this episode is that it's okay to screw up. Not because you are minimizing it not because you want to screw up but because screwing up is a part of pursuing a big life and a big business. And it's not until you're in these situations where you're owning. Okay, that didn't work. Okay, I did that wrong. Okay, now I need a process or a policy that you grow that you get to the next level. This is what leveling up looks like. This is the dirty part the ugly part the part that people don't want to talk about. And I wanted to give you this episode so you could see behind the scenes that there is a process for handling it so you don't feel so scared to screw up and said you can welcome it. You can go and take big risks. You can leap, jump, dive and be bold because you know that at the end of the day, you know who you are, you know who you'll be and you know what to do. Have a beautiful day

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