Flops 007: The Rocket to Nowhere

Flops 007: The Rocket to Nowhere

Karen Beattie:
On February 18, 2021, NASA's latest Mars rover, named Perseverance, made a successful landing on the planet's surface.

Karen:
Perseverance is the most recent of NASA's roughly 50 missions to Mars. Why has the agency sent so many probes to the red planet? Well, part of the reason seems to be that so many of them don't get there in one piece. As Tariq J. Malik, editor-in-chief at space.com, put it in a blog post shortly before Perseverance's landing, "A large proportion of the 50-odd missions launched towards Mars have been lost due to failed components, rocket glitches, or grievous areas that sent probes crashing into the Martian surface or missing the planet altogether."

Karen:
Mars rover failures have been expensive, even grievous, but hardly tragic. No NASA failure, meanwhile, has been more tragic than the launch of the shuttle Challenger in 1986, which exploded shortly after liftoff, killing all seven astronauts on board.

Karen:
Allan McDonald was an engineer at Morton-Thiokol, a NASA contractor that developed Challenger's solid rocket boosters. The night before the challenger launch, McDonald had refused to sign the launch recommendation over concerns about the integrity of the O-ring seals on the rocket boosters that would carry the shuttle into orbit. But the launch went ahead anyway, and McDonald's worst fears were realized.

Karen:
In the years that followed, McDonald tried to draw attention to the engineering failures that led to the disaster. And as a result, he suffered retribution by individuals at NASA and from his employer. After that losing his job, thankfully, he was eventually vindicated by a presidential commission. He got his old job back at Morton-Thiokol, and was even put in charge of redesigning the faulty boosters that doomed Challenger.

Karen:
Years later at an October 2012 colloquium at NASA's headquarters, McDonald shared maybe the most important lesson he'd learned from the Challenger tragedy and its aftermath. In a lecture, he said, "In my career, I don't know how many times people have raised their hand and said, 'This may be a dumb question.' I always stood up and said, 'In my entire career, I've never, ever heard a dumb question. I've only heard a lot of dumb answers.'"

Karen:
Today's guest probably could have benefited from asking some dumb questions early on in her entrepreneurial journey. She even spent time herself in the heart of NASA, where she learned lessons about embracing failure that she would eventually appreciate and put into action in her ventures, but not before trying to launch an ill-fated mission of her own. Thankfully, that mission involved no tragedy. Her rocket took off, but sadly, it was a mission no one wanted to join, with no real destination. The Rocket to Nowhere, today on Flops.

Ray Sylvester:
So today on Flops, we're going to be exploring the relationship between passion and business building. In the episode earlier this season with Trudy Rankin, we talked about the difference between having a passion and building a business out of that passion versus finding your passion through the process of building a business.

Karen:
Yeah, that's right. And Trudy's journey helped her figure out what she was passionate about when it comes to building a business she could be excited about. And anyone who wants to listen to that episode should definitely go back and check it out. It's Flops episode four.

Ray::
Right. So today though, we are going to explore what can happen when you let your passion take the reins and start building a business out of it without validating whether it's actually a good idea. So today's guest is Sasha Korobov. Sasha is a coach and an entrepreneur who took the thing she was passionate about and plugged it directly into a business idea and then built and launched that business in what you might call a very frictionless way.

Karen:
Well, that sounds like a good thing, right? But I'm guessing it wasn't?

Ray::
No, not so much. In this case, friction was exactly what Sasha needed upfront, but she didn't go looking for it. And so she had to learn her lesson, as we say so often on the show, the hard way. Let's take a listen.

Ray:
Welcome Sasha to Flops. Great to have you

Sasha Korobov:
Thank you so much for having me.

Ray:

So, thank you for joining for joining the show today. Looking forward to hearing your failure story. I know it sounds a bit weird to say that I'm interested in or looking forward to hearing a failure story, but yours sounds pretty intriguing. But I was hoping you could just start by telling me a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Sasha:
Yes. Thank you. So my name is Sasha Korobov. I am an ex-pat living in London and what I do as my business is I help my coaching clients build their rosters through podcast guesting, actually. So that's a little about me and where I am.

Ray (00:44):
Cool. So you help people essentially get clients through podcasting?

Sasha:
Yes, yes. Making those connections and getting that visibility.

Ray:
Awesome. And what kinds of clients do you work with?

Sasha (00:56):
Lots of coaches, definitely lots of coaches. So whether it's a health coach or, you know, other business coaches, things like that.

Ray :
Okay, cool. And how long have you been doing that for?

Sasha:
I have been doing that for about two years now.

Ray :
And is this your first foray into coaching?

Sasha :
I have been a certified coach since 2016, so I did sort of offline coaching and workshops, stuff like that, but I made the migration into online about two years ago.

Ray:
Very cool. And I know that from some of our correspondence before we started talking today that you worked at NASA for a little while. So I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about what you were doing there.

Sasha:
Yes. I was a contractor for NASA for about eight years and I worked to help them with their education programs. So I did sort of program support and I also did communications specialization stuff. So helping with campaigns and different things so that other people in the business knew what we were doing in my office.

Ray:
Okay. Very cool. And you were in, you were at NASA headquarters in Washington, DC?

Sasha:
Yes. Shout out to Washington DC.

Ray:
I love DC; lived there myself. So you were at NASA for eight years. That's quite a while. Did you ever get glimpses or inside looks at any cool space gear, shuttles or meet any famous people?

Sasha:
Yeah, I mean, I had a boss for a few years who was an astronaut, so it's like, you can sort of ask your geeky space questions too, to them, whether they want you to ask them or not. And yeah, I saw two shuttle launches. I was actually on staff for the last shuttle launch. So sort of these pinch yourself, I can't believe that I get to do this type experiences. I definitely had a few of those for sure.

Ray :
Yeah. How did you end up working with NASA? You said you were a contractor.

Sasha:
Yes. So oddly enough, I showed up to DC after my first masters degree. It was in the big, first economic crash in like 2008, 2009. I know I'm dating myself, but I showed up with no job and I filed with a temp agency to just get some work. And I was on a panel doing just admin support for NASA. And my future boss met me and just brought me on board from there. It was really surreal.

Ray:
Wow. Did you have the same role at NASA the whole time, or were you doing different stuff while you were there?

Sasha:
It started definitely more as project support and morphed into the communications piece as I took a little more interest in it. So luckily I had the freedom to evolve while I was there.

Ray:
h. And what led you to your next endeavor?

Sasha:
I knew I wanted more training. I knew that I wanted to develop in my career and while I loved everything about where I was, I just knew that I hit like a little bit of a ceiling for what I could do. And so I made the decision to leave and go to school, the program that I wanted happen to be in England. So I had to fully uproot and once I came here, not just a couple months in, I met my husband and set down roots here, so I couldn't go back.

Ray:
Cool. And you've been in London for a few years now.

Sasha:
Yeah, about three and a half years.

Ray:
Cool. It sounds like you're in the place where you'll be probably for a little while, it sounds like. So what are you studying?

Sasha:
It's funny because I studied before and I'm at it again. I studied corporate communications, so just wanted to lean more into that expertise and you know, got things sort of up and running and going with my business. And now, because I do want to expand my portfolio down the road, in my business, more into the corporate side of things, I'm studying organizational psychology. So yeah, just can't get away from those universities, man.

Ray:
Where are you hoping to take that business in the next couple of years? Do you have specific goals for it or . . .

Sasha:
Yeah, I'd like to still be doing what I'm doing, but just be able to add on. You know, you gotta be careful to not be too multi-passionate and start something every month. But I do want to tack on that as a separate, but still, you know, me, I'm part of the businesses working on the corporate side, so coaching leaders and, you know, consulting.

Ray:
Awesome. It sounds like you're on a pretty good path. But as you know, that's not the main reason we have you here. So I understand that you at one point tried to turn a passion into a business and it didn't quite work out the way you would have hoped. So, could you tell me a little bit about that?

Sasha:
Yes. So the long and the short of it is, after the election of 2016, there was just a lot of energy around, you know, activism and making some changes, just getting more proactive about things that you cared about. And I wanted to be more involved in that. And so what I thought I would do is get a business off the ground on coaching budding activists and trying to help people get more involved. And I put a lot of resource into it. I certainly, I did the sort of, you know, get involved in a group coaching program to refine my package and my offer. I paid to have a website built. Like I went through all of those motions and after a while it became very clear that it was not the right business for a nber of reasons. And I did end up pulling the plug on it.

Ray:
So were you an activist yourself, and were there particular areas of focus that you had that you were trying to work into this business idea?

Sasha:
No. And that's part of the problem. It's just something that I decided I was intensely interested in and therefore I would try to become an expert overnight and turn that around and help other people. But I had the experiences that most people have. They'll donate privately, or if they want to do, you know, fundraising or a march or whatever it is, if it's outreach with a nonprofit, stuff like that. I had some of those experiences, but I was not an expert and I didn't do enough research into the space to really get legs in that business.

Ray:
Yeah. And I'd love to dig more into kind of the research you did and then the research you, you didn't do and you should have done, but wanted tojust kind of get a sense first of like, how did, how did this interest or this idea coalesce? Like, what was the moment when you said, you know what I can, I think I could make a business out of helping people become better activists.

Sasha:
I still remember it was about what I am lying in bed on the sleepless night. And I kept thinking about things that I wanted to do. And also I had a little bit of the entrepreneurial itch clawing at me. I knew that I wanted to go from offline coaching as we, as we discussed to online coaching, but I knew that you had to get really specific if you were going to do that, to be able to speak to your audience. And I wasn't quite sure what that would be. And so I took this interest and was like, Eureka, that's it. I can get specific on it. And it's what I want to do. So that was my rationale at the time.

Ray:
Got it. So it was, this was kind of your bridge from offline to online coaching. What else was happening in your life at this time? It sounds like you had the offline coaching gig, but you were maybe unsatisfied with it or just, did you see a lot of opportunity in the online world you wanted to take advantage of like, what was driving that for you?

Sasha:
Well, I had just, all of my referrals and opportunities that I had built in DC were abruptly gone because I had actually just moved to England. So that was just sort of pulled out from under me. And I was like, okay, I've got to set up these roots now, how do I do this? So a blank canvas is both a good and a bad thing as you're thinking on some of these things.

Ray :
Okay. So, okay. So I realize now that it had to do with your uprooting and you needed to, you needed a new opportunity. Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. So were the very first steps you took after that sleepless night?

Sasha:
Well, it happened to be around the time that a group coaching program was launching that I was interested in. So I joined that and I got to work knowing that I needed to do research, but I was speaking with the wrong people and I was asking the wrong questions. So what I wanted to do was talk with experts, basically, so that I could become an overnight expert so that I could draw on their skills and experiences and see if I could quickly translate them into things that I knew so that I could help. What I should have done was speak with who my target client would be and see what they would want out of a service like that. And the second thing that I should have done as part of that research was see if there was a demand for it. I never asked anyone the question about whether or not they would want to buy the thing or work with me in that way. So that's where it fell flat.

Ray:
So it sounds like you were excited about this idea. So the group coaching that you did how did you find that?

Sasha:
Well, I sort of went down the Facebook rabbit hole, you know, you, you join one group and then it's like, Oh, you might like, or someone tags you in something else someone else has done. So I, I can't even remember the exact way I found this person and their group, but I know it was the Facebook rabbit hole for sure.

Ray:
What sort of coaching did you get in the group? You said it was, it was a group of experts?

Sasha:
Yes, it was, it was a business coach. So basically they were going to take you through from idea to package, to promotion, sort of all in one, six week timeframe.

Ray:
But it didn't involve any kind of reaching out to your target audience or anything like that?

Sasha:
It did, but it was a big enough group that I couldn't get the support and direction that I needed from the leader of it. I mean, I could get a couple of Facebook replies in the group every now and again about like, no, do that instead, but it wasn't enough. And I think when you're sort of feeling around in a newer business, you need that support and that han being on the other side.

Ray:
So it sounds like you were, you were doing something that was pretty new to you and you probably could have used maybe another level of handholding, of support to kind of tell you what you needed to do and how to approach building a business based on, on this passion.

Sasha:
And to see if it was even the right thing to do. If I should have been doing it in the first place. I realize that now. It would have been nice to have had more of that in-depth support.

Ray:
And the other people in this, this coaching group, was there any sense of if other people had businesses that were most likely to succeed?

Sasha:
Yeah. It was a mixed bag. We were mainly newbies trying to flesh out our ideas and, and trying to get some traction. I was in good company in that we were all in a similar space of not knowing what we didn't know.

Ray:
So tell me a little bit more about, about the business itself. What did that all look like?

Sasha:
Oh, Oh, you're asking me to dig deep. I love this. So I think it was called like Activate Your Activism or something like that. Yeah, you know and it was the website. I just wrote the copy based on what I thought the copy should be again, instead of talking to my target customer and I paid a developer to make it look really pretty. And I had a freebie about how to get started, even though, I mean, my knowledge in the area was tenuous at best. And what I would offer is one-on-one coaching basically teach you how to get traction in your own desire to be involved. But the truth is, is that when people want to get involved, they either donate money personally, or they join an organization that's in alignment with their beliefs and then they go to them and get more guidance and hop onto existing activities. So that's a hint as to maybe why it wasn't working for me.

Ray:
Yeah. When I think about just the term activism, that can mean so many different things, right? Like you could be an activist about almost anything. So did you have a sense of like who your target audience was?

Sasha:
Well, that was the mistake. I just, you know, anyone basically with a passion and a heart is who I was targeting and, you're right about the activism point. It can bring up depending on who hears it and what context, it can bring up a lot of feelings, that word. And I hadn't dug into that either, but I was mainly targeting people who just wanted to do good, but didn't know where to start.

Ray:
What did you provide in terms of education or content? What was your approach to help people become better activists?

Sasha:
Good question. So what I would do is try to help people identify a particular organization or initiative that was closest to their heart and, teach them how to pool their resources into that. Instead of being all over the board and being multi-passionate and the truth is people can get involved in as many or as few activities as they want. There's no reason why they need to limit themselves, but for me, I was like, I'll help you find the thing that's gonna make you make the most impact. And to just, well even talking about it now, I realize I'm just, I'm getting the feelings back.

Ray:
I would love to hear a little bit more about how the business launched, you know, did you get any clients? How did it go?

Sasha:
Oh, , well, as you may expect, the show is Flops, so it didn't go very well. , I did where I did the thing where I told everyone I knew that this was something I was starting. I started an email list and I tried to get people on that. I paid to run Facebook ads, like all of these things that I think when you're starting out, just don't do, I did. And I had eight strong and proud email subscribers by the end of it. And so I just tried to get the word out through all of the means that I was being told on social media that I should be doing. And in terms of clients, I didn't get a single one. Ouch.

Ray:
That's a good data point if you don't get any clients. So apart from the coach that you found by going down the Facebook rabbit hole, who else did you have kind of guiding you or giving you support during this? Did you reach out to any other mentors or friends to ask for advice?

Sasha:
I did. I reached out to the people in my circle who were particularly supportive of the idea, but who didn't know much about the online business space. So I had a lot of people cheering me on and talking about how valuable and how noble what I was doing was, and that did not translate into business acumen, shockingly. And so, I should have probably looked more into, okay, what can I really lean into business -ise? What is the one thing I can focus on that can give me traction right now? But instead I was just trying to go to advice from people who were maybe not as acquainted with the business side, but side, but were very happy with what I was doing just inherently.

Ray:
Yeah. How did you try to find clients with this business? You had a website; how did you recruit people?

Sasha:
I tried to do the asking for referrals thing, mainly. I mainly went to people that I knew who were supportive of the idea and said, I'm so happy that you're supportive. Can you help me? Can you refer people my way? And they tried, but there wasn't a demand. There wasn't a demand for it. And because I hadn't done that pocket of research, I didn't realize until after the fact what happened. So I did try to do the warm contact and referral way in addition to the Facebook ads that I was running.

Ray:
And what kinds of feedback did you get from those requests for referrals?

Sasha:
Great idea, but it wasn't for them. Consistently across the board.

Ray:
So not, not a lot of detail as to why it wasn't for them.

Sasha:
I mean, they thought that it was a great idea, but they weren't interested in making a larger investment. The people that I spoke with were more like, well, I think I can just do a little bit more by just donating. I don't have the time, which is another thing I didn't factor in is that people don't want to like, create a whole separate career of this necessarily. Some do, and some will, but many wouldn't. And so they didn't want to invest the money. They thought, you know, that money actually would be better spent just donating. Why don't I just do that? And, in terms of the time, it's like, why do I need this complicated structure for how I go about this? I can just do as much or as little as I want by going to the organizations I care about.

Ray:
Yeah. So in terms of like what you were offering in terms of products, were you offering like one-on-one coaching or did you have a course or, PDF content? Did you have different packages? What did you actually offer people?

Sasha:
I started with yes, one-on-one coaching. And that was my only offer. And I did have PDF content. I had three different freebies that I was running ads to, to see which one performs best. And the spoiler is really none of them performed well at all.

Ray:
If you don't mind sharing, like what kind of pricing were you using?

Sasha:
Yeah, I think it was $1,600 or something like that. So, you know, it's somewhere in between, it's not super high end, but it's also not a couple hundred dollars.

Ray:
Yeah. And obviously, there are a lot of ways to be an activist. Anybody can be an activist. But it does seem to me that that might exclude a lot of potential activists who may not have deep pockets and a lot of people get into activism out of a desire to change the world and may not have the resources to donate or to spend money on a course or a program like that.

Sasha:
I will say that I had a blog as well. You're conjuring up all these memories and it's so interesting to go down memory lane here. I did have a blog which had some content that was shared pretty well. But again, bite-size free content that people could grab file away and then get on with their lives.

Ray:
What were you talking about on the blog? It sounds like that resonated with people.

Sasha:
Yes. I was going against my own interests because so much of what I was talking about is, you know, you don't need to invest a ton of time and money, but then I'm asking for people to invest time and money with me. , I was like, where you shop will be an active activism. And, you know, don't fight with people on Facebook about stuff. Here's why, here's how that actually hurts you. And all of this stuff. It never really had a call to action. And it was all stuff that basically reaffirmed like, you can just do your little bit every day to make a difference. So why would anyone then buy a coaching package if that's what I'm getting across?

Ray:
Yeah. So when you were writing stuff for the blog, obviously your business was focused on activism in general, but did you ever talk about specific forms of activism or talk to specific kinds of activists, or were you always kind of talking about this general concept of activism and how you can apply it and whatever way?

Sasha:
Yes. Very much a generalist.

Ray:
And do you feel like you would have had, it's hard to say in retrospect, but had more success if you had found more of a niche, talking to a particular kind of activists?

Sasha:
Yes. I mean, I, and I don't know why I didn't draw on that. It's a good question. I had personal experience when I was living in DC for like three or four years in animal rescue. And I was just a volunteer. I mean, that's something that I did have real experience and then could have leaned into, but I made the ages old mistake of, well, I don't want to alienate other people by just saying I focus on this. And as a result, of course, I was talking to really no one because I was so general. No, it's a good point. And you're absolutely right. It's something I could have and should have done.

Ray:
So how long was it from start to finish? Like when you launched the, or even when you had the idea and started working on it to the moment you decided, okay, this isn't working, I need to shut it down.

Sasha:
It was about a year. Yeah. I mean, I really cause I did sort of like a course-based group program, but then I did like a group program with just 10 people. I was a member of one of those. Iterations to my website, endless iterations to PDFs, all of this time and resource. It was, I just worked myself into the ground for about a year before I was like, you know what? I just am done. I can't do this anymore. I'm doing more harm to myself and I'm not doing the good that I want to be doing. I can just make more impact doing those things as an individual than I can trying to turn this into an entrepreneurial pursuit.

Ray:
What else was happening in your life at the time? You had moved to London at that point. Were you in school? What else were you up to?

Sasha:
I was in school and this was right before I had to write my dissertation for my master's. So there, my time was about to be really spoken for in a really big way. So I had to decide, you know, am I going to continue to try to push this, you know, fuel-less car down the road at the expense of my energy, my mental health, my money, or am I just going to be okay with saying, you know what? This was a good run. I know why you did it. Your heart was in the right place. It's okay that this isn't it.

Ray:
And what was the, what was the point where you started having doubts about the viability of the business?

Sasha:
If I'm honest, probably from when it started, but I only admitted it to myself probably six to eight months in when I'm like, Oh, I listened to the nice man and the nice lady on social media who told me to do all these things that nothing happened. You know, you just, you start to really take stock of the money and the time and the tactics that you invest. And you're like, you know, there's the time that it takes to set up a business naturally, and there's throwing anything you can at the wall to see what sticks. This feels like the latter, and it doesn't feel good anymore.

Ray:
And so when you, when you hit that moment where you realize it just didn't feel good anymore, and the doubts kind of all came up to the surface, , did you decide, realize right then and there that it wasn't going to work or did you try to try to make it work for a little while longer?

Sasha:
Well, you know, ego factors in a little bit, doesn't it? You sort of try to fight the last little threads of your pride that you have over these things. But the moment that I really seriously said to myself, I don't think this is working, I felt simultaneous sense of sadness and dread and relief because finally from all of the stress and all of the money and all the time, I saw a way out that still felt like it was an integrity. I was being honest with myself finally. And that was, I felt like I had finally given myself permission to do that.

Ray:
Yeah. Yeah. And that's something that a lot of entrepreneurs we've spoken to on the podcast have said some version of that, that these things that had been churning and then that they knew for so long that they finally acknowledged, and it was like, Oh yeah, of course. And the great relief that can come from that. And obviously you're not in a great position, but you at least have that kind of clarity and that honesty with yourself about, okay, this hasn't worked. So what do I do now?

Sasha:
Definitely.

Ray:
So what did you do next? Did you shut it down? Did you keep it going for a little while?

Sasha:
Well, I immediately like disabled the website. I didn't want to run traffic anymore. I pulled the plug on the email list. I took down all of the digital assets. And I didn't really like announced that I wasn't doing it anymore, which is fine beause there were a ton of people knocking down my door, asking for the service, so it petered out as a result. But once I just pulled the plug on all the assets, I started to regroup a little and think so, luckily, well, luckily I would say unluckily, but happily, it didn't take a whole lot to just break the thing down.

Ray:
And what did the business take take out of you? Whether financially or otherwise, like, I guess to be sort of blunt, what did you lose as a result?

Sasha:
I lost a year's worth of sanity, a year's worth of time and it probably all the investments that I put into the two, like coaching groups that I had joined and the website and just continuing education on how to build digital assets. I probably lost between five and $6,000, which for me was a substantial chunk of change. It's an expensive lesson, but that I would say yeah, a year of time and heartache and, and five to six K.

Ray:
Right. And yeah, the year of heartache is something you can't put a dollar sign on, but that's significant. So, what happened right after that? And what did you do after you shut everything down? Did you take some time to reflect or did you have something else to jump right into?

Sasha:
Well, luckily I had a few distractions, , but I definitely took a little time to lick my wounds. I mean, I would say probably took something like four to six months to just regroup and think a little. The first month or two was definitely some pouting I will admit. And can I share a little bit of like a nerdy NASA metaphor with my regrouping?

Ray:
Are you kidding me? Go for it.

Sasha:
So I thought back to the NASA days because they weren't that long ago at the time, and I was still freshly no longer working for them. And I thought about those geeky engineers and it was so interesting to watch them at work when you're either witnessing discussions that they're having, or if you go into like mission control and like, see how they're managing everything on the international space station. And at the time we were talking about building the next rocket to Mars and going back to the moon and all this stuff, those nerds are so excited about failure. They go into a room and they purposely set out to fail as quickly and fantastically as possible in their designs because they know that the faster and more fantastically they do that the quicker and closer they are to good data and building a good product.

Sasha:
And so after the time period of licking my wounds, I was like, how can I think like a NASA engineer here, like how can I sort of reverse engineer and unpack, like sort of autopsy of sorts, like what happened and thinking, changing my thinking just in that way, allowed me to take the emotion out of it and allowed me to no longer think of it as something I had like done bad or done wrong. Like this was just a thing that didn't work, look at it like an engineer, unpack it, dust it off and see what you do differently next time. And once I was able to do that in a sort of passionless way, it was so obvious, the lessons. So that's what I, that's sort of the recouping phase.

Ray:
Yeah. Well, it's great you had that experience you could draw on. I can imagine it would have been hard just given that you were trying to turn a passion into a business to maybe have that perspective or to look at it in an objective way, perhaps because of the nature of the business you were building.

Sasha:
It was absolutely. And, and I think you're right. That's a very good point that I, it almost felt like I was turning my back on something important and what I had to be honest with myself about is I can still help. I can still do things and actually I don't have to lose my sanity, time and money over this. Like I can do things very directly that will make an impact just as a private citizen. Not every passion needs to turn into a business and that's okay.

Ray:
Yeah, definitely. You mentioned that process, that the autopsy, it seems like that that is something that perhaps a lot of other business entrepreneurs or business owners who've tried and failed could benefit from is, even just the process you went through, like here's how to, here's how to analyze the business that failed, so you know what to do better next time.

Sasha:
Definitely. Especially the question around making sure that there is demand for what you're trying to do. That is the singular most important lesson. It's not enough to just gauge interest and validate your idea. You have to see if there's a market for what you're trying to do.

Ray:
So I know this is a big question, but looking back, what would you have done differently? Would you have started this business at all? Would you have focused it a little more?

Sasha:
Oh, it is a good question. And you know, how much time do we have of course, , if I were to do something differently, I would have just tweaked, and this is why I teach the so hard to my current clients. I would have tweaked the research to focus more on the target customer and the demand, because I think we get so excited that we overlook those things or, you know, people just gloss over the market research part because it's not as sexy or it can be intimidating or it takes up time that, and they're really excited about the marketing. A lot of my clients, you know, just want to get to market market. So, what I would do differently is just make sure that my market research is just airtight. And as a result, I probably wouldn't have started it. Had I done the research correctly, I would have realized very quickly, this is great noble, good, for you for being a good person, not a business.

Ray:
So it sounds like even if you had niched down and found like a particular type of activist to work with that, just the general idea of instead of, you know, telling people to spend money with you rather than going donate, it just maybe was fundamentally not that that sound.

Sasha:
It did feel that way a little bit. Yes. And, it also just sort of felt like, and this is hard to say, like, I think if I said this to myself a few years ago, I'd be upset, but now it feels more, okay. Maybe people shouldn't be spending that money with me. Maybe they should give it to the people who know what they're doing and who have established this as a well-oiled machine. And that's okay. You know, and, and that's not to discourage if there are other coaches who want to get involved in this field and they have that experience, go for it. Good. Just for me personally, maybe it's better that they didn't spend that money with me.

Sasha:
Which feels counter, now that I'm saying that out loud, I'm like, wow, that seems counterintuitive, but it's true.

Ray:
Yeah. Well, and you mentioned being out that money and that was like a significant hit for you and obviously, you know, the months and worth of stress and heartache. Did you have folks in your life that you could lean on, that helped you through that phase and other systems of support that softened the blow?

Sasha:
Yeah. There definitely was support and it was really important for me to surround myself actually, during this time with other entrepreneurs, I mean, you would think it would be like, yes, my partner, my family, my parents, it was, it was actually because they got it. They understood. And what I needed in that time was not just to have comfort, but I needed to be around people who understood. Because otherwise, what do you get, like a pat on the head like, Oh, sweetie, I'm so sorry. But I felt like I needed to air it out in order to make peace with it. And so it's really important to find other people who are in the space of business that you're in, so that you can swap stories and realize that sometimes these things happen. Not because there's something inherently wrong with you, but there was just something a little off in your approach or the data and that's it. And that's okay. So it was definitely, it's funny because the people who helped me through that time, the most are people I've never met in person, but people out there in business land. Thank you.

Ray:
I could see how that would be more helpful than just someone who kind of broadly gets that you've started a business and it didn't work versus maybe an entrepreneur who's like, yeah, I see exactly what, what went wrong there, and I've been through something similar and, I got your back.

Sasha:
Sometimes because there's a lot of energy to explain yourself to people who don't get it, isn't there? And when you're feeling like you're already so depleted having done so much, you don't want to spend even more energy airing out that laundry with people who don't get it. So I it's even now, I always make sure I prioritize having relationships with other business owners for those reasons.

Ray:
Yeah. Yeah. And that's, again, another thing we hear so much, you know, not just on this podcast, but from entrepreneurs in general. So tell me a little bit more about how you have brought what you learned through this flops experience into what you're doing now. It sounds like, it sounds like there's some things you're doing that are a lot smarter and informed by what happened.

Sasha:
Yes. And magically, when you do things smarter, they start to work better. Who knew? So again, I teach my clients how to build their own client rosters through the power of podcast guesting. The podcast guesting is sort of like the last piece. I hold my client's hands a little with doing market research and sound market research. And one of the things that I teach is actually how to onboard clients during that phase. So by doing market research interviews, you're building trust with people. You're onboarding people support, you're learning more, , you know, about them. So I spent a good amount of time with people on the market research piece. And from that, making sure that their target messaging is crystal clear. Because again, it goes back to my time in that old business when I was a generalist and I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, you have to be specific.

Sasha:
You have to make sure that you are speaking in your copy on social media as if you're speaking to one person who has the problem that you're trying to solve. So I work with my clients on making sure that they are crystal clear about the problem they solve, what their expert topics are, and then, and then, and only then, when they have that foundation, can they go and shout from the rooftops on many podcasts, you know, about their work and who they serve and how. So I would say actually that that flop has been flipped into something that is the foundation of what I do now. So actually, yeah, I'm not sure I would change going through any of that.

Ray:
That's awesome. I'm really glad to hear that. I was curious do you ever get deja vu working with clients now back to your old experience, like maybe seeing someone making the same or potentially making the same mistakes that you did?

Sasha:
Yes. And that's when I have to say to them with love, that's fine. If you don't want to take it from me, cause sometimes they don't and that's okay, then back it up with the data, show me something contrary to what I'm telling you that tells me why I'm wrong. Bring back that research, you know? And then once they set out to do that, you know, it's confirmed and I don't have to be the bad guy. So, yeah, I see it come up. I see myself in them quite a bit. And I think that's why it's fairly easy for me to say, you know what, like don't personalize this. It's okay. You're just refining like a good engineer. You're just refining right now. And even when you're no longer working with me, you will keep refining. Your business will continue to evolve as long as you keep looking at the data. And if you don't evolve your business, you know, evolve or die, basically your business has to keep taking that shape and evolving even years down the road.

Ray:
Yeah. That's that's great advice. Do you ever, do you use your flop story as a case study of any kind or is it more just kind of in the back of your mind guiding the way that you work with clients?

Sasha:
I do when I'm working with my clients and they're feeling pretty down and out about results, I'm like pull up a virtual chair, let's have a little chat and I think it humanizes the experience a little bit. And that's why I'm, I'm so glad that this show is happening. We have to put more into the narrative that failure is a normal and common part of the process and actually it's necessary. It's necessary to get to that working product. So it should be embraced, not feared.

Ray:
Totally. And thank you for mentioning that. And one of the big things we're trying to do with this podcast is yeah, is just show the real side of entrepreneurship. You know, I think there's, there's kind of a survivorship bias, maybe a little bit in the stories that get told, like we see the ones that made it. Of course, you know, failure gets highlighted from here and there, but we want it to just put a little bit more of a spotlight on it. Which brings me actually to my next question, , which is how you look at, you've kind of answered this a little bit, but how do you, how do you look at the prospect of failing again? Like, it seems like you do welcome failure in a way, but I'd love to get a little more nuanced on like what failure means for you and as you continue building your own business and helping others do the same.

Sasha:
I wouldn't say I throw confetti every time I fail or, you know, throw a party. But I think because I've become a little more zen about failure in a way, I see it coming sooner. When I take out some of the emotion from looking at what my business is doing, it's much easier for me to say actually, instead of doing these three things, let me channel my energy into this one thing that's getting traction and stuff like that. So, I embrace failure. I'm not always happy about it when it comes, but I just, my market sophistication has moved along enough that I understand now that it's not personal and it's not like a dark mark on my soul. It's just something that I've got to tweak. So, I sort of see it coming down the road and I say, okay, I see what's happening. Let's take a look. Let's dissect before this goes too off the rails. It's always sort of in my brain a little, because I know that you need to be aware of it as a learning thing.

Ray:
In what ways have you failed since the failure?

Sasha:
Why everything's been perfect since then. What are you talking about now? Well, for me, this is such a good question. How I have failed since is not checking in with what my intuition is telling me. If you hire a coach or you're taking in a lot of content from a thought leader, it's not gospel. And there isn't one way to do business, especially in online land. A lot of the marketers like really need to convince you that there's only one solution and it's too complex for you to get it on your own, so you need to hire them. But, and I have failed in that respect since is that I've bought into that a little. Since then, though, I have definitely been like, you know what, actually, you can grow your business however you want. And it might mean that you have to experiment more instead of like, just following a guidebook, but then it's more sustainable because you've gone through and dusted off the parts that were or were not working. So, , I believe that that is where I have have failed is not questioning enough how or why I've signed up to certain things or made certain investments in things. You cannot market your way out of a foggy business idea nor can you course purchase your way out of a foggy business idea. So I think since then I've scraped my knee a few times.

Ray:
Got it. What other advice would you share with, with folks who are specifically trying to turn a passion into a business?

Sasha:
First of all, good, it's noble, congratulations. So, you know, blanket, make sure get that out there. You must ensure that there is demand. Ask the question point blank. Do market research and ask the question, specifically: if this program was offered, is this something you would buy? Ask that bluntly and specifically because if the answer's no, then it's okay. You can still go and do that good thing for yourself, but maybe it's not a business. So if I had to pick one piece, it's asked that one specific question.

Ray:
Love it, love it. Well, Sasha, thank you so much for chatting with me today. It's been a pleasure to, to hear your story and glad that you have come out on the other end and you're building a business that's working and that you're feeling pretty good about. So congratulations on making it work.

Sasha:
Yeah. No, thank you for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure to chat with you today.

Ray:
Great. Thank you. Where can folks find you if they want to learn more about what you do?

Sasha:
Sure. Well, you can come find me on Instagram at @sashakorobovbiz (B-I-Z). And I also have a free training on how I made $1,500 with no email list, no website, or no social media following. Head on over to sashakorobov.com and the trainings right there at the top of the website.

Ray:
Cool, awesome. And we'll drop that stuff in the show notes. Great. Anything else you want to share with our listeners before we sign off today?

Sasha:
Oh, so much. Embrace failure, business failure is not personal to who you are as a person and just keep going because even when you're successful, you're just going to have to keep going anyway. You can do this.

Ray:
Love it, love it. Well, thanks again, Sasha.

Sasha:
Thank you.

Karen:
Ray, how cool would it be to work at NASA?

Ray:
Pretty cool.

Karen:
Yeah. Fun fact. My father-in-law was an aeronautical engineer and he worked for a company that helped to develop the tail section of the space shuttle.

Ray:
Right on. That's awesome. Yeah. My grandfather was a master carpenter and he helped build scale models of some of the early space modules for NASA.

Karen:
Oh, wow. That's cool too.

Ray:
Yeah.

Karen:
Yeah. Lots of NASA connections here, but we're getting a little off track. So back to the interview, what struck me in your interview with Sasha was how she had good intentions, but as we've learned from some of our previous interviews on Flops, having good intentions and wanting to help others, isn't always enough when it comes to starting a business.

Ray:
No, no. And for Sasha, it definitely was not enough, but at the same time, I think her failure taught her exactly what she needed to learn. And it sounds like today she's absolutely locked in when it comes to knowing who her target audience is and what they need and how she can help them. And she's helping her clients figure this out for their own businesses as well, so they don't end up making a similar mistake to Sasha's.

Karen:
Right, right. And she learned that she needed to know her audience better. And that's just a great takeaway from this interview, something that we can all learn from.

Ray:
Definitely. It's just a great thing to always keep in the front of her head as we're building our businesses. And there was one other thing I wanted to mention too with Sasha's story is that she said she lost around five or $6,000 in which is definitely not the biggest monetary failure we've covered on the season by, not even close.

Ray:
We've talked to people who've lost in the six figures with their failures. But that was a lot of money to Sasha at the time, as she said. And that's what matters. And of course, it's not just about the money. There was stress, there was heartache, her business failed. She had uprooted her whole life and moved overseas. So, it's all about context.

Karen:
Yeah. Yeah. I think success and failure mean different things to different people. One person's flop may look different from another person's flop, but in the end, it's all about getting to that rock bottom in some way and learning from that and picking yourself up and trying again.

Ray::
Well, we've come to the end of today's episode, which means that we have the pleasure of inviting in some guests today to share some mini-stories of failure. And I'm very happy and excited to welcome back David Grabowski and Mindy Peters, in no particular order, welcome back to Flops.

Mindy Peters::
Hello!

David Grabowski::
Thanks for having us back.

Ray:
Yeah, absolutely. We're super excited because, Karen, we are about to share something kind of in honor, of the very first meaning failure story on the very first episode of Flops, which was your parenting fail, the pinata story, which is an epic story of parents who failure. We just thought let's keep the party going, and invite Mindy and David back. And we could all share a little mini-parenting failure story because we are all parents. So, I'd like to ask you Mindy and David, if either of you would like to go first in sharing your parenting fail.

Mindy::
So I'm the newest parent of the four of us. So Fitz was born early. He was born just shy of 37 weeks. So I had sort of thought I was going to have a little bit more time before he arrived. He actually showed up the week before Thanksgiving and I had been still planning to host Thanksgiving because it is my absolute favorite holiday. So, super pregnant, no matter what, I wanted to host it. And we still hosted it. He was exactly a week old. John and I, still cooked the full meal for the family. Our house was an absolute disaster. But we still did it. It absolutely wore me out. It was maybe not like the wisest move for my poor body at the time, but I just really wanted to because it's my favorite holiday. So we host Thanksgiving. We totally kind of wear ourselves out. So, it's the day after Thanksgiving, we're exhausted. The house is a disaster, but we're so happy because we've got this sweet little baby and we've just had a great time with our family.

Mindy::
And we settled down into our TV room to just watch some TV with our tiny sleeping baby. And while we're sitting there, we start going, "Something smells bad." And then it was, all of a sudden, "Something's on fire! I smell burning. Do you smell burning?" John started running through the house trying to figure out where is the burning smell coming from. He put on slippers, went outside, ran around the house, in the snow to see... Do I see smoke coming out of anywhere? And it was getting just the smell of smoke was getting stronger and stronger. And it was that like awful, plastic-y burning smell. And in the TV room, I could hear crackling like that electrical sound of crackling.

Mindy::
John went down and checked the furnace, checked all of the things. And finally I said, we have to call the fire department. Something is on fire! I called 911 at the same time John is holding the baby, getting him into the car seat. And I'm trying to round up the cats. The fire department showed up and they were like, you need to get into your car, and go park across the street. John and the baby went across the street, but I was still trying to get the cats.

Mindy::
And finally, I got one cat. And he's like, you have to leave the house. I left the house, fire men with their like big shields over their heads are like going through our house. We showed them . . .

Ray::
I'm so intrigued right now!

Mindy::
. . . where was the worst. And after about 15 minutes, a fireman comes out of the front door, and he lifts his helmet and we come over to him. And he's like, "Do you have an over the air antenna?" And I said, "Yes." And John went, "Oh my God!" So reception in our TV room wasn't super great. So we got... We have one of those big over the air antennas, that's basically like a big plastic square that plugs into your TV. And the best for spot reception was essentially like right over the door. And so we had it on command adhesive. We would stick it over the door.

Mindy::
And so we would have to move it to open the door. John had taken it off, and he had set it on top of the lamp. I am shorter than John and so I could not see that, and I needed to change a diaper. So I turned on the lamp so I could change the diaper, changed the diaper, and then we all sat down with Fitz, and we were snuggling him and watching TV. And the light bulb was slowly melting a hole into this antenna, and filling the room with awful, plastic smoke. And we were just so tired that we were sort of working on autopilot at that point, because an eight-day-old baby plus a major holiday. And so the fireman was like, "We're not going to charge you for this call or anything, just be really careful when you put things on top of the lamps." And they packed up their gear, and they left.

Ray::
It's like an unintentional Rube Goldberg machine gone very much awry.

Mindy::
It was very bad.

David::
On the bright side of things, at least it wasn't the turkey.

Ray::
I just want to know how your TV reception is now.

Mindy::
We had to buy a new antenna.

Ray::
A big hole in it?

Mindy::
Yeah. We had to buy a new antenna. It was not good.

Ray::
Well, David, how do you feel now having heard Mindy's story? Have you got the tone and approach you're looking for?

David::
I have one story that's maybe a fail.

Karen::
Go for it.

David::
All right. So this is last year and as you all know, we were having an election, a big election. And so my son, Emmet, to back up a little bit, just turned four in March. Politics are heavy at the time, and obviously Tyler and I are talking about things a lot because there's lots to talk about.

David::
And so Emmet naturally starts asking questions like "Who is Donald Trunk?" Which is what he thought his name was for a really long time. And I would try to explain like, "Well, every four years we decide who's going to be our leader." And we sort of introduced him to the idea through, there were a couple of books where there's a mean stinkbug in one book, and all the other animals vote him out of office. And there's little stories like that. So he sort of gets the idea of what an elected official is. However, Tyler's mother is an ardent Trump supporter, and we are not.

David::
And he had picked up on this pretty quickly. And we tried to explain to him, "Emmet, it's okay to have different opinions. It's like music," I tried to explain, "it's like music, Emmet, like how some of daddy's music you don't like, and some of your music you like. It's okay to like different things." But I came to pick him up one day after he had been hanging out at grandma's for the afternoon. I'd been out hiking and fishing and she was very, very upset because Emmet put her in timeout because she was a Trump supporter. So they had apparently gotten into it, and he was like, "I don't like Donald Trunk. Go stand in timeout."

Mindy::
Oh dear.

David::
Maybe not fail depending on how you look at it, because I mean, that's pretty funny. But we had to, we explained to Emmet, "It's okay for other people that have different opinions." And so I'm not sure if the message got across, because he just turned four. But that's my story.

Mindy::
Putting grandma in timeout is maybe not the best long-term strategy.

David::
No.

Ray::
I was going to say, is that something he'd done before that? Or was it the first time you put grandma in timeout?

David::
No, so timeout is our go-to like, "Okay, you're out of hand. You need to go chill out, take some deep breaths." But also he eventually caught on to like mommy, daddy mistakes, like using swear words. And he would be like, "Oh, you said a bad..." We're like, "Go stand in timeout." And we'd be like, well, we would be in the wrong if we didn't model that we make mistakes too and mommies and daddies need a timeout. So I think he had gotten the idea that he also had the power to send people to timeout. So he decided to tell grandma to go stand the timeout for being a Trump supporter.

Ray::
So what was it your excessively good parenting that resulted in this parenting fail then? Modeling good behavior?

David::
That's all in the ear of the beholder, as it were.

Ray::
Well, thank you both for sharing your parenting failure stories. They were most enlightening and entertaining. And Karen, would you like to share a another parenting fail?

Karen::
Sure.

Ray::
Not sure if you're going to be able to top the pinata story, but why don't you give it a go.

Karen::
Yeah. Well, as many of you know, who are parents, when it comes to parenting, there are a lot of like backpacks and bags, and lots of things involved in parenting when it comes to carrying your stuff around. So when Desta was, I don't know, I think she was starting kindergarten. And she had been in summer camp during the summer at the Y, and I used to send snacks along with her in her backpack. And at the time she really liked frozen peas, so I would send these little bags of frozen peas, put it in her backpack.

Karen::
So she, when she was in kindergarten, she started going to a new school. It was a private school that she got into, and we were very excited, and she was so excited to start kindergarten and we wanted to make a really good first impression. So everything was going great. She loved her teachers. But about two weeks in, I got an email from her teacher that said, "Just want to let you know that I reached into Desta's backpack. And there was, there was like a bag of rotten peas at the bottom of her backpack."

Karen::
I was so embarrassed. The funny thing was she didn't them out. She just sent the backpack home. And so when Desta got home with her backpack, I had to like take the peas out, wash her backpack. It was kind of gross.

Ray::
I mean, that's kind of a perfect counterpoint to the pinata story, because in the pinata story, you forgot to fill up the container, and in this one . . .

Karen::
Yes, you're right.

Ray::
. . . you left it in there for way too long.

Mindy::
Just can't win.

Ray::
Cosmic balance has been achieved.

Karen::
Now I check her backpack regularly and her lunch lunch box. Yeah.

Ray::
Religiously.

Karen::
So that's my failure story.

Ray::
I mean, frozen peas are particularly, they particularly age poorly. I would say that you probably have a couple of hours before you don't want to approach them.

Karen::
Yes.

Ray::
Well, my parenting failure story is food-related. I like to call it blueberry surprise.

David::
Oh, boy!

Ray::
You'll you'll understand very quickly why it's called blueberry surprise. So this is a little over five years ago, so early 2016. Our little family had recently moved, relocated from Seattle to Western Massachusetts, where we are now. And we were renting a house and we just moved in. So we were about a week into our rental, and so our son, Finn, who else who goes by Flynn, now; but I'll go with Finn for this story. He was just shy of three years old, so he was mobile. He was exploring his world. He's always been a voracious eater, even when he was in the womb. I mean, the kid loved and loves to eat. And he would often, as young kids do, wake up early, and sometimes he would wake up before we did.

Ray::
And we had been in the house just for a short while. And so we hadn't had a chance to essentially kid-proof all of the areas. And so our kitchen area had kind of two entryways, and we hadn't blocked either of them off with the little kid gates that you use. So he woke up early one morning, and went downstairs. And he just opened up the freezer, and he went rummaging in the lower drawers to see what he could find. And so I'll pause the story there, and I'll switch the viewpoint to his parents. So I come down, come down the stairs a little bit later, and there's a bag, a two pound bag of blueberries sitting on the floor right in front of the freezer. And there's this blue mess all over the floor. And I inspect the bag, and it's half gone. So a pound of blueberries has been consumed by someone in the household.

David::
Oh, my God.

Ray::
He was just sitting there, basically sitting there. He's kind of in a stupor when we found him. He was just around the corner. He'd eaten a pound of blueberries. He just, there was blue everywhere. His hands, his face, his diapers is covered in blueberry streaks. And he was just in a blueberry super. And we cleaned it up. He's was too young to really understand it wasn't his fault. It was definitely a fully, a parenting fail. But yeah, there was definitely blue poop for the next week after that. And he didn't even throw up. This kid just keeps his food down. That was a particularly colorful parenting failure from our life together.

David::
You could say, as far as the colorful top parenting failure, it your blue period.

Ray::
There you go.

Ray::
All right. Well, thank you so much, Mindy, David and Karen, for sharing your stories. It's always a pleasure to get in into a virtual room, and hobnob with all of you. And thanks for joining us.

David::
You. Thank you.

Mindy::
Thank you.

Ray::
Awesome. Well, that will do it for this episode of Flops. We'll see you next time.

Ray:
Thanks for listening to Flops. For more information on today's episode, including links and show notes, please visit smartpassiveincome.com/flops.

Special thanks to Sasha Korobov for joining us on today's episode. Learn more about Sasha and her business at sashakorobov.com. That's S-A-S-H-A-K-O-R-O-B-O-V.com.

Join us next week for a conversation with someone who's made it their mission to curate famous failure.

Your hosts are me, Ray Sylvester, and Karen Beattie.

Flops is a production of SPI Media.

Our executive producer is Matt Gartland, and our series producers are David Grabowski and senior producer Sara Jane Hess.

Writing by Ray Sylvester and Karen Beattie.

Editing and sound design by Paul Grigoras.

Music by David Grabowski.

See you next time.