Bouncing Back After Failure: Tools for Entrepreneurs in Stressful Situations (with Gina Phillips)

Summary

Podcast Summary: Bouncing Back After Failure: Tools for Entrepreneurs in Stressful Situations (with Gina Phillips)

Introduction

In the episode titled "Bouncing Back After Failure: Tools for Entrepreneurs in Stressful Situations," Jenna Warner hosts Gina Phillips, an actor, journalist, and personal trainer currently featured on CBC Radio. The conversation delves into handling high-stress environments, overcoming failures, and building resilience—crucial skills for entrepreneurs navigating the unpredictable landscape of business.

Personal Experiences with Failure

The discussion kicks off with Gina sharing a recent challenging experience from her live radio show:

"I pressed down the cough button, but I finished the last sentence, pressed down the cough button, and I went in Alberta, and my voice just broke... I started the second story, and I was like, for somehow something happened." (03:56)

Gina recounts how an unexpected coughing fit during a live broadcast left her feeling vulnerable and exposed. Despite having a "cough button" to manage such interruptions, the situation escalated, leading to emotional distress and audible strain.

Jenna relates by sharing her own experience of almost failing a pop class during her musical theater studies:

"I started failing that class, or almost failing it so hard. I remember one time I was singing a song, and I just got really emotional during it, and I was just like, oh, I don't want to... I failed the song." (07:15)

These personal anecdotes set the stage for a deeper exploration of how failure impacts mental well-being and professional performance.

Handling High-Pressure Situations

Gina emphasizes the inevitability of failure in high-pressure roles and the importance of resilience:

"Every time you fail, you have the opportunity to bounce back or you have the opportunity to be like, well, there's another one I'll remember forever." (13:15)

She discusses the mental shift required to view failures not as permanent setbacks but as stepping stones to future success. Gina also highlights the difference between her live broadcasting experience and social media, noting that high-stakes environments like radio push individuals to continue despite mistakes, fostering a mindset geared towards perseverance.

Developing Resilience

The conversation turns to strategies for cultivating resilience. Gina shares her journey of overcoming perfectionism and learning to reset emotionally after failures:

"Meditation taught me recently how to clear your brain of, like, your emotions... start from a place of neutrality for the next time." (12:47)

By adopting practices such as meditation and yoga, Gina learned to manage and release negative emotions associated with failure. This mental cleansing allows her to approach subsequent challenges with a fresh perspective and renewed confidence.

Jenna adds her perspective on the misconception of perfectionism:

"Perfectionist is like somebody who tries to reach for it and then you kind of give them feedback. Then they beat themselves up for not knowing it in the first place." (10:12)

Both hosts agree that self-compassion and the ability to accept imperfections are vital components of resilience.

Strategies for Overcoming Failure

Practical advice is exchanged on how to handle moments of failure effectively:

1. Allow Emotional Release: Gina narrates an incident where she encouraged a stressed intern to take a break and process her emotions:

   "I said, hey, go to the bathroom. Cry. Get it out. Come back strong." (16:12)

   This approach underscores the importance of acknowledging and releasing emotions rather than suppressing them, which can lead to burnout and decreased performance.

2. Adopt a Neutral Starting Point: Both Jenna and Gina stress the significance of beginning each new challenge without the baggage of past failures:

   "Start from neutrality because... it's actually what's going to be best for you." (13:15)

   This mindset allows entrepreneurs to approach each task with a clear mind, enhancing their ability to perform under pressure.

3. Continuous Practice: Jenna suggests that consistently putting oneself in pressured situations, like live broadcasting, can enhance one's ability to handle stress and reduce the fear of failure.

Conclusion

The episode wraps up with a reinforcing message on the inevitability of failure and the importance of resilience:

"You will not let yourself be mad at yourself or beat yourself up, because that is not gonna help on that journey to perfection." (11:15)

Jenna and Gina encourage listeners to view failure as an integral part of growth, advocating for the development of a robust set of tools to navigate and bounce back from setbacks swiftly. They highlight that resilience is not a trait one is born with but a skill that can be cultivated through intentional practices and mindset shifts.

Key Takeaways:

• Embrace failure as a learning opportunity.
• Develop practices like meditation to manage and release negative emotions.
• Maintain a neutral starting point for each new challenge.
• Allow yourself to process emotions to maintain long-term performance.
• Continuously expose yourself to high-pressure situations to build resilience.

Notable Quotes:

• "Learn to clear your brain of your mistakes and go in with full confidence." — Gina Phillips (11:09)
• "I'm not being a perfectionist. I'm interested in improving." — Jenna Warner (10:12)
• "Every time you fail, you have the opportunity to bounce back." — Gina Phillips (13:15)

Follow Gina Phillips: Listeners can connect with Gina Phillips on Instagram: @ginalouisephillips

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This episode serves as a valuable resource for entrepreneurs seeking strategies to handle stress and recover from failures, reinforcing that resilience is achievable with the right mindset and tools.

Transcript

[Jenna Warner]

Welcome to Shiny New Clients, the marketing podcast that helps you attract shiny new clients to your business. We'll talk about social media, what makes people buy, how to go viral, and marketing psychology all in 20 minutes or less. Whether you're a coach, a stylist, or a wedding planner, if you've got a service based business to sell, this is the show you need to fill your calendar. I'm Jenna Warner, your new marketing coach and this is Shiny New New Clients. You guys loved the last time that we had this guest on the show for the episode called Mustering.

[Gina Phillips]

The literal audacity.

[Jenna Warner]

A handful of people like not to have the bar too high and stress you out. Dear guest, but before I reveal who you are, but a few people literally told me that that episode changed their actual lives. Like I was getting messages from people, including my sister who, who said those words. She's like, I think that just changed my life. So I'm gonna link that appearance down in the show notes. But we are back today with Gina Phillips, two L's, actor, journalist, currently on CBC radio. My, my personal trainer, but that's kind of, that's a private matter. But we're back with her today talking about handling high stress environments and high stress experiences, which is one of those things where she's developed a special skill by necessity.

[Gina Phillips]

Yeah. Oh, truly. By failing so many times, being like, I gotta figure out some tools here.

[Jenna Warner]

So this topic actually came to mind because of an experience you had yesterday.

[Gina Phillips]

Yes. Oh my gosh. I was. Okay. So I always do hourly updates on the radio. Four and a half minutes of here's the news today. Basically this is what's happening in the world and you're completely live. So if you make a mistake, it's just out there for everyone to hear forever.

[Jenna Warner]

Yeah, it's most people's worst nightmare.

[Gina Phillips]

And yesterday I read the first story, so I was about 20 seconds in and I just started thinking, I really need to cough. And there is a cough button for this exact thing right when you say button. Okay. So there's. When I'm in the studio, there's like a set of buttons and the audio person who's across the glass from me, who's watching my every move, and he's playing my clip and music and everything and adjusting my volume and I can talk to him so I can press down a button to be like, hey, Mark, are we heavy? And he goes, yeah, you need to fill 12 seconds. So he's timing out the show and we're discussing what when there's a Clip playing or music playing? We're talking about how the show's doing. Do I need to read faster? Do we need to drop a story altogether? So it's kind of this, like, collaborative back and forth with the audio person. And for this particular day, I was halfway through that first story, and I couldn't even stop to think what I could do because I had to finish reading the story. And I thought, okay, I could. I know once I get to the end of this story, I can take a beat. Like, maybe it's okay just to kind of take a minute. I'll just clear my throat. I'll press that cough button. So I. I pressed down the cough, but I finished the last sentence, pressed down the cough button, and I went in Alberta, and my, like, voice just broke. And I started the second story, and I was like, for. Somehow something happened. It was like someone had taken a vice to my vocal cords, and my eyes started streaming. It truly felt like maybe I was having an allergic reaction or something. So I continued. So I pressed the cough button back down again, and I just coughed the hardest I've ever coughed for probably 30 seconds straight. And Mark is just looking at me through the glass, panicked.

[Jenna Warner]

Yeah. But somewhere the inventor of the cough button is, like, tipping his hat.

[Gina Phillips]

Right. The fact that it literally says cough.

[Jenna Warner]

Right.

[Gina Phillips]

It made me feel better. Right. Because obviously this is something that happens.

[Jenna Warner]

Or sneeze.

[Gina Phillips]

Yeah, or sneeze or something. Just clearing your throat. I don't think they mean all out. Like, on the floor, you're almost dead. You're coughing so hard, which is what happened. I could release the cough button and try to come back just to see how my voice was doing. There was no saving it. The listener's just hearing silence at this point.

[Jenna Warner]

They're just adjusting their dials, thinking that their radio's broke.

[Gina Phillips]

I'm hoping they're just like, oh, is it my connection? You know? But I ended up clearing my throat enough that they could tell something was wrong. But I got through the stories, and I got. I managed to throw to the next clip that we could at least get into some audio that plays itself. And then I could really cough and. And then kind of get out of it. It was kind of scary, you know.

[Jenna Warner]

It almost sounds like when we're in situations like this, it's almost a blessing that for me, theater and singing on stage, for you, acting, being under the pressure of having a crew around you in the news, we have to go on. And I think that's how we learned to go on, because Someone else, like a listener who might be doing social media, you almost have the opportunity to fail. Like, you can be hard on yourself and you can just go, ah, screw it. And, like, and not keep going if you had to.

[Gina Phillips]

I know. And you know what's weird is I've done so much live stuff in my career. I'm actually better live if you don't give me an option. I'm better if I'm just staring at myself in my phone and I'm creating a reel and I'm doing a little bit of an intro. I will mess that up over and over and over again. But if someone was like, you're live on the radio. I would probably be able to, you know, get a clear sentence out.

[Jenna Warner]

Yeah. So maybe part of being better on social media, being stressed stronger on social media, is just really forcing yourself. And I give the advice all the time to avoid recording when somebody can hear you, like, when your partner's in the next room. But maybe we sometimes need to in order to push yourself to just keep going. Because also, a lot of the times when you think you look dumb, you don't.

[Gina Phillips]

Right.

[Jenna Warner]

You stutter over a word and you think that it's so obvious, and it's actually not.

[Gina Phillips]

There's this term in tv. So when I started in TV broadcasting, we do live to tape all the time. So that means. Yeah, it's set up like it's live because there's no more time to redo it. Like, you could redo it if something goes really wrong, but the idea is that you're taping it, but it's all live. It's all live.

[Jenna Warner]

It's the same with the late shows. Like the late shows on tv, they film it in the afternoon as if it's live, but if somebody does accidentally drop an F bomb, they have enough time to clip it out.

[Gina Phillips]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So live to tape. Maybe if I were to think of my Instagram reels or whatever as, okay, I'm giving myself one shot to do this, maybe a little bit of pressure.

[Jenna Warner]

You know what? I just thought of a time that. Where I would bomb heavily and nobody bailed me out. And it's almost like you have to learn also that quitting isn't cute, you know? So I almost failed pop class in college. Did I ever tell you this?

[Gina Phillips]

What's pop class?

[Jenna Warner]

So it's like a wait.

[Gina Phillips]

So back up.

[Jenna Warner]

So I went to school for musical theater.

[Gina Phillips]

Yeah.

[Jenna Warner]

And they also wanted to teach us how to, like, perform in kind of a club vibe or pop Music or in a band, that sort of thing. It's actually something that a lot of other theater schools don't teach you. And then people graduate, and they don't know how to hold a mic or sing on a stage in that kind of a setting. So it was great that it existed, but I sucked at it and also believed that I sucked at it. Look at me still saying I suck at it. And I probably actually didn't. But I was trained classically singing, and I love musical theater. It was hard for me to even find a pop song that I could sing. And so I started failing that class, or almost failing it so hard. And I remember one time I was singing a song, and I just got really emotional during it, and I was just like, oh, I don't want to. I don't want to go on. I remember looking at my best friend, and she was like, keep singing, keep singing, keep singing. And I kind of thought the teacher would let me try again, and she didn't. And it's like, I failed the song. And that, like, really affected my grade. You know what I mean? And, um. And there was another time in college, too, where I just got really overwhelmed, anxious, and just gave up on the number and then failed and. Cause I always kind of felt like, somebody's gonna bail me out. I don't know if this will be relevant to a lot of what, like, other people are listening are hearing. But the thing that I ended up having to do in that case was because I knew I was bombing that class so hard. And I also knew I was doing what I could. Like, I was trying as hard as I could. I would sing, and the teacher would fill out the rubric with notes and grades, and I would pass it to my best friend, and she would hand me back the notes, but not the grades. And the rule was, tell me if I fail. Tell me if I actually. Because if you actually failed at my school, you got you sent home, right? And 60 was a fail. And if I was close to failing or failing, I was like, tell me. But other than that, the numbers are just getting in my head. They're making me upset. And I'm only gonna by the comments and the feedback, and I can't do better than I'm freaking doing right now. So we did that forever. And one time she was like, you almost failed that one today. I was like, what was. It was like, 62 or something. Okay.

[Gina Phillips]

There's also something to, like. You always have next time. Because when I fail at my hourly newscast like that coughing Attack was a horrible fail, but I was like, well, thank God I have next hour. You know, there is that element of you're only as good as your last newscast. You always have more chances in your life to do the next thing. So you'd gotta just pull up your bootstraps and keep going, I guess.

[Jenna Warner]

Where do you think that mentality comes from in your head, other than the. The. Other than the news. Like, we've talked about that. How come you're so okay with handling not doing amazing? Because also people are like perfectionists.

[Gina Phillips]

Right? I am a perfectionist. I think you're not.

[Jenna Warner]

You're so good at learning and you're so good at trying again. If you tried to lift something and I was like, you know, just because that's the first thing that comes to my mind. We, like, tried to reach for something and did it wrong. And I was like, oh, Jean, if you do it this way, it's better. You take that feedback and change. That's not a perfectionist. That's, like, interested in improving. Perfectionist is like somebody who tries to reach for it and then you kind of give them feedback. Then they beat themselves up for not knowing it in the first place.

[Gina Phillips]

Or they.

[Jenna Warner]

But if you.

[Gina Phillips]

If you beat yourself up, then you're not going to be able to get perfect at it.

[Jenna Warner]

That's true too.

[Gina Phillips]

Like, I. Maybe I've experienced that side of things where I'm like. I'm like, I'm so bad at this, and I just, like, get down on myself. And I've just recognized that as, like, I will not be as successful as I want to be at that low frequency, beating myself up mindset. So I've. I've done a lot around clearing my brain of my mistakes and going in with full confidence and just trying to, like, redo everything over and over again.

[Jenna Warner]

Oh, wait, okay, so I really like that. So it's like, because you want to be perfect.

[Gina Phillips]

Yes.

[Jenna Warner]

You will not let yourself be mad at yourself or beat yourself up, because that is not gonna help on that journey to perfection. If every person had that attitude, I feel like it'd be a lot. It would be a lot better, a lot healthier.

[Gina Phillips]

You gotta clean the slate. You gotta clean the slate. I started at one point taking so stock of a lot of my failures.

[Jenna Warner]

What do you mean?

[Gina Phillips]

Like, remembering, like, I didn't get that job, I didn't get that audition. Taking stock in my brain, like, doing the math. And it was adding to my burden when I would wake up every day. I've experienced that. So when I started to meditate and do a lot of yoga and just, like, sit in silence a lot, and I started just being more like, oh, I can control my thoughts, which is very important. And I recognized. Oh, for some reason, I decided to carry around my failures that year. You know, I was, like, really holding on to them.

[Jenna Warner]

And so she's holding her hands.

[Gina Phillips]

She's got a little clutch bag, like a little basket. And so meditation taught me recently how to clear your brain of, like, your emotions. Whatever you're feeling about messing it. That thing up. Last hour, you need to truly wipe the slate clean and start from a place of neutrality for the next time. Yeah, meditation taught me that for sure.

[Jenna Warner]

That's fascinating when you say it like that. I'm a really visual person when you're saying that I'm picturing, like, a face cloth, like a white, glowing face cloth, and just, like, scrubbing clean. Yeah, start from neutrality because you know that it's actually what's going to be best for you. And then also, you're kind of telling us the thing that we didn't want to hear, which is that there isn't a quick fix or a cough button to solve. And we actually. It's more of, like, a lifestyle and a lifelong journey and finding a whole bunch of tools to keep in your tool belt.

[Gina Phillips]

Well, and it's resilience. Like, learn. Teach yourself how to be resilient. So actually, every time you fail, you have the opportunity to bounce back or you have the opportunity to be like, well, there's another one I'll remember forever.

[Jenna Warner]

Yeah, right.

[Gina Phillips]

And I've. I've experienced both mindsets. That one, I was not successful in that mindset, meaning I was not good at my acting auditions at that time. Time, I was not being a very good listener to other people because I felt very burdened by my own. I don't. I. If someone gave me, like, lines to memorize, I didn't. I was kind of filled up with all this stuff already. So it's like, how do you take on a character? How do you learn something new if you're already, like, filled up to the top?

[Jenna Warner]

That's probably the place most people are living in, I would say.

[Gina Phillips]

I know, I know. I. I really hate that feeling. And I've decided to, I guess, as much as I can, get myself back to that neutral place, because I will be a much better, not just like, person, but also truly on air. It shows, I think.

[Jenna Warner]

Wow. Yeah, I think that's really helpful. Do you want to talk about that. That thing that you said.

[Gina Phillips]

Oh, my gosh.

[Jenna Warner]

I just. Well, we're just gonna tell you one more story really quickly because. And I almost feel like it's an affirmation, especially if you. She'll tell you in one second, but especially if you don't feel like you are at that. We'll call it Enlightened Place. Yet if you don't have a lot of tools in your tool belt, like. Cause this is a story about someone who didn't have a lot of tools in her tool belt and how she recovered very quickly in a stressful moment.

[Gina Phillips]

Yes. And this came from my own experience of being an intern in television and being quite stressed out at a very young age, surrounded by people I admire, trying to do my best. I almost didn't have my own personality, if that makes sense. I would show up and just be, like, nodding and, like, wanting to do good.

[Jenna Warner]

Wanting to please.

[Gina Phillips]

Yeah, Wanting to please. And just like that, really, like, shaky puppy dog.

[Jenna Warner]

Yes.

[Gina Phillips]

Oh, my God. Golden retriever for sure. Which I still have to some degree. I was working recently in a newsroom, and there was an intern there that day. The producer given her some feedback that was like, quite. Quite, quite good feedback. But clearly she hadn't kind of succeeded to the level that she. She thought she needed to excel at, because she took this feedback in, and I just. She was sitting next to me, and I could hear her breathing, like, she truly was like. And it seemed like she was barely getting oxygen through.

[Jenna Warner]

I know that feeling.

[Gina Phillips]

She's got her hands on the keyboard, and she's really tense, and I could just feel. Feel that she was about to explode. And I turned to her and I said, hey, go to the bathroom. Cry. Get it out. Come back.

[Jenna Warner]

Come back strong.

[Gina Phillips]

Come back strong. And she went, okay, thank you. And she ran from her desk. Five minutes later, she comes back. She's a whole new person. Just back to her being herself. She was level, she was calm, and she has thanked me for that moment since. And I told her, like, I have been in your shoes so many times when you're holding that much emotion and you're kicking yourself and there's nowhere for it to escape, and you almost feel sick because of it. I think she needed to know that it's okay to be upset. Don't do it here, but go get it out. Like, deal with it. If she had just continued to keep it down, would have been a horrible day for everyone. Right. She wouldn't have been able to write. She wouldn't have been able to think clearly.

[Jenna Warner]

No, she'd be exhausted by holding it in all that people. You noticed. People are gonna start to notice. Like, there's a bunch of things.

[Gina Phillips]

I know, I know. And, like, no, I don't think she should, like, sit at her desk and bawl her eyes out. And she clearly didn't want to, so she was holding it in for that reason. But, like, I think if you just, like, really strongly embrace that you're upset at that moment and don't just push it down, then you can get it out. Bring it to the surface on purpose, intentionally, and then you will feel a thousand times better. You'll feel relieved. And I was proud in that moment that I had had the life experience to be able to pass that on to her and, like, see it translate in a workspace.

[Jenna Warner]

Yeah. And so it's that same thing we said. You come back to that state of neutrality.

[Gina Phillips]

Yeah. What do you have to do to come back to that state? Or what do you have to do to wake up or, like, start your day in that state? I know a lot of people have, like, really strong morning routines that help them just prepare for their day in that way. Little bits throughout the day. I think we all know what it feels like to feel like shit and. And beat yourself up and then fail because you're not totally present and you're not doing very well. And you know what it's like when you wake up and you're like, okay, so get yourself to that place as much as you can. You're gonna truly be able to rise to those. Those moments where you're really under pressure. You will be able to go, I've done this a thousand times. I have recovered so many times and been able to come back. So if you can do it right before that really scary moment. Right. You've got, like, a big job interview, and you can just. Just, like, focus up. Get yourself to that neutral place before that job interview. You will do much better.

[Jenna Warner]

I want to anchor that one because people, like, I can already hear people listening, being like, I. But I haven't recovered. So it's like, I love this idea. I've recovered so many times already. I know I can do it right now. And you're like, okay, but I haven't. Yes, you have.

[Gina Phillips]

It just took a day.

[Jenna Warner]

It just took eight hours. But you have recovered, and we're gonna shorten that and remember that you can recover, and you do recover, and you're good at it, and you're capable of it. And then we're just gonna make a lifetime effort of getting through it faster, processing it, moving forward, all of that.

[Gina Phillips]

I mean, I took, I think, a whole year to figure this stuff out. I really, like, made it a bit of a full time job for myself. Not a full time job, maybe part time job, because I really didn't want to continue in a high pressure industry without figuring this out for myself. You don't want to fail in moments. You want to rise in those moments. And so I think if you feel like you are failing in moments where you're like, I normally would do better than this. It's like, well, maybe you're filled up with stuff and you just need to figure that out and have those tools so that you can come in strong.

[Jenna Warner]

Gina, where can everybody follow you on the Internet?

[Gina Phillips]

Oh, well, I have Instagram. Gina Louise Phillips with the little AT symbol in the front.

[Jenna Warner]

Oh, that's how they work.

[Gina Phillips]

I know it's unusual. Yeah, I sometimes do TikTok and that stuff, but I think Instagram I'm on the most.

[Jenna Warner]

Yeah, they'll come say hi.

[Gina Phillips]

Okay, Come say hi.

[Jenna Warner]

Okay, love you. Bye.

[Gina Phillips]

Love you. Bye.