The EPIC FAIL I Didn’t See Coming…Plus a Few Unexpected Wins

If you've ever felt overwhelmed by your goals or stuck in all-or-nothing thinking, this honest, unfiltered episode will remind you that you're not alone—and that it’s never too late to pivot with purpose.

In this candid solo episode of Redefining Fabulous, host Jessi Cabanin shares the raw truth behind the scenes of Season 2. From struggling with perfectionism and burnout to rediscovering clarity and purpose, Jessi opens up about what’s been going on in both life and business.

She reflects on the challenges of overcommitting, the lessons learned from launching a new community platform, and the behind-the-scenes work on her upcoming podcast BloxFam Breakthroughs—a project inspired by her time on a reality show for entrepreneurs.

Jessi also previews exciting things ahead: a summit speaking engagement, new awards for her work, and the upcoming launch of her signature offer, The Magnetic Brand Formula. 

Join the Virtual Summit that I'm speaking at in June!

Transcript

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(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) This year has already been such a freaking challenge and you know, I really just want to make sure that I come back to the foundation of why I built this podcast to begin with. And that was truly to have a space where we can talk about the shitty parts, right? Like let's be transparent about the shitty parts of being an entrepreneur. Hey, hey, hey, welcome to the redefining fabulous podcast. I'm Jessi, your host and ultimate hype woman. One size fits all rules for success have no freaking place here. We're all about taking risks, owning our quirks and collaborating our way to the top. Think of this show like a weekly coffee chat with your business bestie where we spill the tea on the messy truths and unpredictable ride of being an entrepreneur. After 15 years of building numerous creative brands from the ground up, it's time to get real about what actually goes on behind the scenes of building your very own empire. We don't hold back around here. So if you're ready to ditch the rule book, step into your power and create a life that lights you the hell up, then yes, you are in the right place. Let's get real. Let's get honest. And together, let's redefine fabulous. All right. All right, guys, welcome to the very first solo episode of season two. Now, I have just a little bit of a an announcement I supposed to make. This is going to be a really messy episode. I hope you can appreciate it for what it is. It's, you know, something that I have been struggling with a lot. Actually, a lot of things I've been struggling with. But, you know, I feel like we always have really good intentions. Right. We set these goals. We make these plans and we have really good intentions to make them happen. But sometimes a life has other plans. And April has basically been the month of living that. So I, you know, I am behind. Not that you've noticed, but, you know, I got really behind on publishing podcast episodes. And, you know, I know that you probably didn't even notice. But the reason I want to bring this to light is because I really want to make sure that we're having the conversations about perfectionism and kind of like the all or nothing mentality. I struggle with all or nothing mentality a lot. I think a lot of that does come from growing up as an athlete, playing collegiate sports. And it's just kind of something that's ingrained in me. But as I get deeper and deeper into my business and my career and this, you know, entrepreneurship life, I'm really learning so much more about having grace and compassion for myself. So earlier this year, I decided to relaunch season two of this very podcast. And I will be completely honest and say I was very excited about it. I am still very excited about it. However, I will also be transparent and, you know, let you know that I had the best intentions. I even set this up to be a biweekly podcast instead of weekly, knowing that I would not be able to, you know, keep going at the once a month thing. And it was going great at first. Right. I opened up my calendar. I got all these people on the on the calendar and recorded a bunch of episodes with some really fabulous people who obviously you're still going to hear from. But in that, I realized that I truly overfilled my calendar. I got really excited about something and just overfilled my calendar with all of the things. And why am I telling you this? Well, mainly because I want you to know that if there is a goal that you set for yourself recently and you feel like you're struggling with it, you're like, oh, my God, I messed up. So like, that's it. I'm here to tell you that that's not it. All you have to do is, you know, get back up and keep going and pick up where I left off, because I think a lot of times that we don't even realize when we really, truly need a break. And, you know, this year has kind of already it's only the end of April right now. This year has already been such a freaking challenge. And, you know, I really just want to make sure that I come back to the foundation of why I built this podcast to begin with. And that was truly to have a space where we can talk about the shitty parts. Right. Like, let's be transparent about the shitty parts of being an entrepreneur. And unfortunately, saying yes to everything, not having boundaries, all of those things are things that we have to learn along the way. No one can really fully teach them to us, in my opinion. You really kind of have to be able to hear it multiple times. And you have to be in a place where you are ready and willing to, you know, hear it, accept it and make change. So I have a lot of, you know, updates for you guys today. And like I said, this is going to be a really messy episode because I don't even have an outline. I really don't even have a subject line title picked out yet. But I did feel like it was important to check in and, you know, kind of let you know where I'm at along this journey. So first and foremost, I am not shutting down the podcast. Like, absolutely not. I am super excited to be here. I do, however, I will say that I don't know if it's going to go back to bi-weekly or if it will go to monthly or what exactly I'm going to do with that. But it is not going away. I promise you that. And I guess a little bit of a sneak peek as to why the calendar got so full earlier this year. So in the next couple of weeks, probably by the 1st of June, there is some news coming out and I actually won't go into it in full depth here. But long story short, I actually went on a reality television show last summer for entrepreneurs and our season is getting ready to air. Yes, it took forever for it to air, but it's coming. And so, you know, what I did was I decided that I wanted to be able to, you know, take what we learned there, take the people I met there and really kind of make something of it. You know, not just notes in a book, not just phone numbers and random text messages and, you know, the group, the Facebook groups and stuff. But I really wanted to amplify what that experience was like. So what I did when I opened my calendar for podcast interviews earlier this year, I was actually secretly behind the scenes creating an entirely separate podcast. It is called Blox Fam Breakthroughs and you will get to listen in to that pretty soon. And it is essentially a podcast of my castmates and we're really just talking about our experience while filming the show and really kind of trying to amplify the breakthroughs that we had while we were there, as well as the breakthroughs that we had since we left the show. This is almost 10 months post filming. So it was almost a year ago, which is insane to think about. But anyway, so, you know, that really filled up my podcasting schedule. And when I decided to do that, I didn't really think deep enough about it because that podcast is not actually going to be launching until the show airs. And so I have all of these recordings and I've been sitting on them because I'm not publishing them until our show airs. So, yes, there is a lot more to come on the podcast that also doesn't have to do with the Blox. But I just kind of want to let you know that it's really easy sometimes to say yes to everything. And it's really easy to just kind of like keep going when you're in a momentum. But if you do kind of feel like you're starting to wear thin, you know, I encourage you to kind of take a step back. Maybe have a workday outside, maybe in a hammock. Yes, that's my go to when I'm feeling stressed. And really just kind of think about all of the things that you have open right now. Best case scenario, write them all down because it's very easy to forget them. But truly, that was one fail. And I don't want to stay on that for too long because there was another very epic fail that I truly did not see coming. So at the end of last year, I decided that I was going to start a community. And at first I thought I wanted to be a paid community. Down the road, I decided I wanted to be a free community. I was already running one on Facebook, but I just really hated Facebook. I really hated that I had to be on there. I really just I really just hated the social media aspect of it. I really just hated how noisy social media got. And so I made the oh so brave decision to create a community outside of social media on its own platform. And let me tell you, I had the biggest fucking dreams for this community. Like, I'm not kidding you. I literally had everything planned out, all the little things, all of the details, all of it. And, you know, we did it for a couple of months. And every month I lost a little bit of that spark, which is funny in hindsight because it was called the Spark Society. It still is, actually. But so long story short with that, we opened it, we put content in it. We really tried to get the conversation and engagement going, and it just was not sticking. And so last week I was actually traveling with a client, which is a story for in a little while. I was traveling and, you know, I got on the phone with Brianna, who is our community manager. And I was basically just like, Bri, I have no idea what to do. You know, she's trying to get information out of me. She's trying to get everything planned and all of the things. And I am just like, on the verge of tears, like, Bri, I don't know what we're doing. I don't know what this looks like anymore. And so what I did is I actually went back into the old Facebook group, which we had turned off at that point. So I went back in, turned that Facebook group back on and, you know, posted a post in there and was basically like, hey, you know, here's what we did. It seemed to have failed. Like, you guys let me know. Is it easier? Like, do you prefer Facebook groups or do you prefer to be away from Facebook? And I mean, the amount of messages that I got from that one post was more messages that I got the entire time that we had Spark Society open in its own community space. And, you know, I think this is a lesson that I want to share with you because, one, the landscape of digital marketing and being visible and showing up online is drastically changing. But the most important part to remember is that it's not just changing for us as business owners. It's changing for us as consumers. And I really think that we need to take the time to make sure that we are, you know, talking to our peers and our clients and our customers and our communities and we make sure that we know how they're feeling. Because for me, I will be 100% honest, because hindsight is 20-20, I was making this decision for me. I know this. I mean, this is not even a secret. I took a big break from social media this last year. And actually, earlier today, I thought to myself, I was kind of like scrolling through my Instagram and was like, oh, wow, my, you know, my 2023 recap and my 2024 recap are pretty close together. And I looked back and I only posted 20 times in 2024. Now, I'm not saying that that is the best decision. I'm definitely not saying that that is the decision you need to make. But I will say that it was something that I needed to do. And I can happily say that we are in the middle of Q2 and I am already at 60% of what our projected income was going to be for this year. So I am ahead of the game. And I truly think that big reason why I am in this position is because I took a break from a space that was not serving me. Okay, so I'm not anti-social media. Well, I'm not anti-social media. Okay, social media is a tool and it is a very valuable tool when used correctly. And when used in moderation and when it is used for the right purpose. But social media is also a bad thing for some of us. It is an absolute assassin to mental health. It is an absolute assassin to focus. It is an absolute assassin to pointing us in the direction that we should be going. We are all so obsessed with like making sure that we're moving. Don't get me wrong, movement is good, but you need to make sure that your needle is pointed in the right direction while you're moving. Now, don't get me wrong, I am all on board with, you know, five steps forward, two steps back and that's still moving. But I wanted to make sure that I was moving in even the right vicinity of where I wanted to go. It was very easy to mistake revenue and clients and all of these things as success as like I was doing the right things until one thing happened last year where we had an opportunity to open a space. And in that moment, in that entirety, as we start talking about funding and, you know, all of the things that have to happen. I realized how far away I was from that goal that I had set, and it wasn't because I wasn't working hard or hustling, right? It was because my needle was not pointed in the right direction, not even fucking close. Okay, I'm talking like I was basically going West when I needed to be going East and then I took a circle and then I went West again and then I went North. I mean, like I was, my compass was fucking broken. And, you know, you guys will hear a lot more when the season of the blocks comes out. But last summer was definitely the catalyst of, you know, really kind of putting my foot down and making sure that I was clear on what I was trying to do, who I was trying to serve and where I wanted to go. And, you know, in that a lot of things slipped through the cracks. You know, I was changing my direction, I was clarifying my direction, but there were still open things that were just kind of floating around. And so things just felt like they started to fall off and fall off and fall off and fall off like I was on a train to nowhere and I couldn't get off. And so I had to make the decision at the end of the year, actually decided to close my calendar for Q4. And I say this because I think it's important to recognize that I did not just close my calendar for Q4 because I had, oh, so many clients and oh, so much revenue. I took a big ass revenue cut. Okay. But I did get to a point where I recognized that my mental and physical health were more important than a number, than a dollar sign. And in that process, I suddenly started to become who I knew I needed to be. I started being in the rooms I knew I needed to be in. I started having conversations with the people I knew I needed to be having conversations with. And in that came so much fucking clarity. Q1 was like, holy shit, what happened? And then April came and I mean, I literally got slapped two times in both directions. I mean, it was a wild, wild month. And here we are listening to Jesse go on and on and on in all different directions about God knows what. I promise there's a point to this. I really just kind of wanted to be transparent about what entrepreneurial life is like for me right now, because I know that social media can be a highlight reel. Whether I'm showing up there all the time or not, I know that it can often come off as a highlight reel. And I want to make sure that in the coming months and in the next year that I am getting back to staying true to being transparent and showing up to serve and not to sell. That's a big, big thing. And that's actually another big topic for another day. Because truly, that has changed my life. But yes, you might have seen it recently. I closed my calendar again until Q3. Now, this time, this time is a little bit more based on revenue and client count, which obviously play into my mental health. But, you know, in the last, I'll say six months, but truly in the last two months, I have leaned very heavily into the mentality and really shifting my focus into serving my current clients deeper and to stop chasing new ones all the time. To be honest, I haven't chased a client in over a year. Like I have not sought out to find a client in over a year. They're coming to me. But that's that's from a lot of years worth of, you know, planting seeds and building relationships and having conversations and getting in the room. But people see that I am hunkering down on that. I am doubling down on making sure that I can help other people find the clarity that they need in their brand to explode like this, but in the right direction. Right. To make to get them moving, but to make sure that they're moving in the right direction to make sure they don't lose sight of the longer term goal and the underlying reason of why they're doing what they're doing to begin with. So other than all of that fail, fail, fail, I've got a couple of exciting things just to kind of bring you up to speed on. So number one is I was on reality television last summer, like I said, and that is looking to air in the next month or so. So I think that will air by about beginning of June. So I'm very excited for you guys to kind of see that and get more of a look at what it was like behind the scenes. And and I say that because I recorded the podcast and I have a lot of blog episodes queued up. But I say that more because not that I want to show you all of the behind the scenes of what it was like to film a reality show, which there will be plenty of that. Trust me. But truly, the experience was incredible on so many levels. And it changed so many things for me as a business owner, as a mom, as a human. And I really want to share that with you guys. So I'm super excited that will be dropping sometime in June. OK. I also just got an email this morning that I won some awards. So the Daily Herald in our area has a Reader's Choice Awards and I was nominated and won for the Best Photographer as well as the Best Marketing Agency in our area. So that was really exciting. I don't really know if that's a big deal, but I thought it was pretty cool. I also won Local Person of the Year on alignable.com. So that is also really awesome. It's another kind of business networking website that kind of fell in my lap right after recording that show last summer. It's been really great to connect with a lot of people on there. And so that was really exciting. And then I am actually speaking at an upcoming summit. It is in June. And, you know, just in case you are interested in it, I will leave the sign up link in the show notes. I'm super excited to be speaking at this. And my topic is going to be about how to build a magnetic brand that's ready to be seen. And it's really talking about discovering why brand clarity is actually your most overlooked visibility strategy. So this summit is the Effortless Impact Virtual Summit. So it is virtual. You do not have to go anywhere. But it is this amazing summit that has been designed to help entrepreneurs like you build a sustainable, profitable and energizing visibility in just five days. So there is a bunch of speakers at this. I'm super excited to be speaking at that. So I really hope to see you there. And, you know, last but not least, I am wrapping up my newest venture. So behind the scenes, I've actually been working on wrapping up my new signature offer. And it is called the Magnetic Brand Formula. It will be dropping in June as well. And I can't wait to share it with you guys because I really put a lot of, you know, sweat and tears into that project. And I truly think that it's going to make such a difference for those of you who are currently struggling with your marketing. You're currently feeling like it's really fucking hard when it shouldn't be. Okay. It truly shouldn't be. And the number one reason why you find marketing so hard right now is because you are lacking brand clarity. Okay. And I'm not saying you need new logo or any new colors or any new typography. Okay. Those are not what makes your brand. That's that's your visual identity. But that does not make your brand. And so inside of the Magnetic Brand Formula, we get deep. We dive super, super deep into the who, what, when, where and why of your brand. Because if you do not know the answer to all of those and in depth, you are lacking brand clarity. And if you're sitting there right now being like, oh shit, she might be talking to me or you're even questioning it, you're lacking brand clarity. And it's fine. You're in good company. You're in like the 85 percentile of entrepreneurs are lacking this level of brand clarity. And as things shift in the world and as it gets harder and harder to be seen online, algorithms are kind of controlling everything. Consumer behaviors in the digital realm have completely changed now more than ever. It is so freaking important to make sure that you have brand clarity and that your needle is pointed in the right direction. So I'm really excited to share all of these things with you guys. I really hope that if you are feeling like you are one of those people who might be lacking some of that clarity, do not hesitate to reach out to me. Shoot me a DM on social media, email me, whatever you got to do. Get in touch. I want to be here to help you find clarity and to really help you grab that confidence and soar to new heights. So that wraps up my super messy episode for you today. But I really, truly just, you know, I've been thinking about doing this kind of an episode for like weeks. And you know that all or nothing mentality continues to creep in like, well, you missed it last week, so it's over now. Oh, well, maybe you can just do it next week. Well, you didn't do it last week again, so it's over. Well, guess what? I decided in the moment I was going to sit down on the mic at 830 p.m. and just fucking record it. This is not my normal recording day. I try to batch record. I try to do, you know, things on certain days and times of the week. And guess what? It works like 75% of the time. But once in a while when inspiration hits and the depth of the heart and the thought are there, I'm challenging myself to just sit down and fucking do it. Just get it done. Stop thinking about it. Stop saying you'll do it tomorrow. Do it. Sit down. Get it done. You've got this, baby. And remember, you are never alone. I am always here rooting for you. All right, babe. I hope you really enjoyed today's conversation. I'm super curious to know what your biggest takeaway was from today. So go ahead and share this episode on social media. Make sure you tag me at This Way To Fabulous and let me know what you connected with. What did you learn from the episode and what action item are you going to take today? Until next time, guys, keep pushing, keep dreaming, and let's keep on redefining fabulous. Chat soon, guys.