Lessons Learned

Often in the world of content marketing, we witness what people did well, what their successes were, their wins, what worked.

But when we only get messages about what worked, it leaves behind the beauty and the lessons learned from what didn’t work and what we would do differently today.

And as we get clear on our values and integrate them further into our lives, they also inform how we might choose to do things if we had them to do over, and the choices we’ll make for the future.

Erica Courdae joins India for a discussion about failure, what they’d do over if they could, and why they’re actively viewing some of these events in a different way.

Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:

• What Erica and India wish they had done sooner

• How fear of failure and self-trust have impacted their decisions

• Why curiosity and willingness to experiment are essential to doing things differently

Shifting Career Paths

On the Flaunt Your Fire® podcast, Erica Courdae (she/her) says that one thing she currently wishes she had done differently is making the decision to give up her salon space sooner.

She says that maintaining the physical space of the salon and the decision-making and responsibilities that come along with it has taken away time and energy from the work she wants to put more of her energy toward now, like consulting and working on Pause on the Play®.

She says she doesn’t at all regret being in the industry, and certainly having the space has had advantages, like having her kids be able to do remote school from her office, but she won’t miss the decision fatigue.

“As somebody that has recognized that decision fatigue is real, having less decisions that I have to be the person to actually make…I am okay to have some things come off my plate and get some space.”

India says she felt similarly when she decided not to continue working as a professional photographer.

She says that when she reflects on that, “I wish I had paused long enough to acknowledge and appreciate the things that I provide for other people as a service provider and see where I can preserve some of that for myself.”

She says she wishes that she had been more intentional in asking herself why she was picking up a camera, or why she went to school for art and design.

“Is it to get this grade so I can get this paper that nobody’s ever gonna ask me about?…Or is it, am I actually here for the experience and the journey of learning these new skills, having my hands in the paint, literally creating the images?”

She continues, “I loved the creation of it all. It wasn’t to make money, it wasn’t for all of these things that we feel like we need to do to be able to pay our bills…I really just enjoyed the process of creating.”

Unlearning Hustle Culture

Erica says that as she’s been considering her work in the beauty industry, she has realized that she was given the value that hard work is how you make money, and that hard work was specifically physical work, and now she is pushing back on that idea.

India says that her desire to connect with other people was part of what led her to makeup artistry and photography. But in making it her job and how she paid her bills, she says that “growing up with the rhetoric of hustle culture of, ‘it has to be hard,’ did play into, at times, intuitively knowing how to do something in a very easy way, and then feeling like I needed to overcomplicate it to justify what I was charging for it.”

Erica says it’s a journey to witness for yourself what you’ve done, what you're doing now, and how you want to go forward, and how things like hustle culture show up for you and where there is unlearning left to do.

And that you have to ask yourself what you want to learn in place of those old narratives. “Unlearning still leaves a hole. What do you put there?”

India says that right now, she’s thinking of that in terms of reclamation. “Like how can I reclaim some of these things that were a part of capitalism and bill paying and hustle for myself?”

Erica notes that in her perspective, capitalism is a structure, and problems arise when people use the structure in problematic or harmful ways. “It’s become more and more important to make sure that people are taking responsibility for where they are using a system in problematic ways, as opposed to offloading the responsibility to the system being the problem.”

Valuing Lived Experience

India says that she wishes she had been able to recognize earlier when she was subscribing to the notion that there is no “just because” creativity and treating herself as a “human machine designed to produce things that can then be used for some type of gain…If there isn’t some exchange purpose of this, then it doesn’t have value and shouldn’t take up space and time in my life.”

Erica agrees but says that she has also experienced doing labor of all kinds that she has downplayed as not being worthy of being compensated for.

India says that downplaying her labor is another thing she wishes she had done differently. She says that for almost her entire career as a business owner, she provided consulting and strategy essentially without charging for it.

“I would’ve valued my lived experience and my emotional labor sooner.”

Erica says there is immense value in being able to learn from the experiences of others so you don’t have to make the same mistakes, and that experience is worth compensating them for. We also don’t value mental labor like creativity and strategy in the same way we do physical labor, which leads people to share those things for less than they’re worth.

India adds, “There’s immense power and transformation and evolution that happens when people have access to feeling confident about who they are, about their abilities, about what they know, what their experiences are, how they show up in the world,” and that confidence and pride plays into how they perceive their work consulting, coaching, and doing emotional labor.

“I think for me, I would’ve taken more pride in what I know and what I’m able to help people with beyond just the end result.”

Self Trust, Fear, and Failure

On a personal level, Erica says she wishes she hadn’t waited as long as she did to have kids because she was afraid of not being a good mother. 

That fear of not doing something well, “would keep me from embarking on things that maybe I actually wanted or enjoyed, and I somehow told myself I didn’t.”

She continues, “I wish that I had trusted my lived experience and my intuition, and my inner guidance better…I think what happens–especially when people are marginalized and underserved and underrepresented–you don’t trust your own truth.”

She says that failure has actually supported her in learning to trust herself and let go of the fear of not doing things well. When things don’t go the way she wanted or expected them to go, and she has to redirect, she has learned that she can actually thrive in the action of the “messy middle,” and that chaos can be a major motivator for her.

“Having things not work out partially showed me that, okay, and? You’re still here. It wasn’t fatal…You can do something else. You can make another choice. Something else is possible.”

Even when it feels like the decisions you’re making will have consequences for the rest of your life, she says you can “recognize that you made decisions, and they didn’t work out for the rest of your life, and you can still choose other things. That opens up a lot of opportunities and it changes your mindset.”

India says she thinks about it in terms of survival, as in, “I’ve survived all of that and I’m still here, so I’m sure I can figure out the next thing.”

Stay Curious

Erica says that approaching life with curiosity and a desire to explore and experiment, as well as surrounding herself with people with similar energy, helps her stay open to doing things differently. 

Getting older has also given her more wisdom and less fear and apprehension. She says she’s more comfortable in her skin, in her voice, and in her ability to create impact.

“There’s an ownership that I think I can take of what I can do. It took me time to get here and there’s still more to go, but I don’t think I had that before in the same way.”

India says that experimentation also shows up for her, and that she asks herself if she likes how a new strategy or method feels, as well as if it got the results she wanted. 

She recalls her interview with Dr. Donny Jackson, where he discussed “making the decision, [seeking] out, in a way, failing spectacularly because if it’s something where you can fail spectacularly, it means that you went completely outta your comfort zone. And it’s either gonna be epic or it’s gonna be an epic failure, but at least you tried.”

Erica says that if anyone had told her five years ago when she was in her coaching program, that she was going to give up her salon to be a consultant, a coach, and to work on Pause on the Play®, “that that would be such an impactful way of feeling like I am creating a legacy and that I am going to do more of that, and let go of something that I’ve, as of today, been doing for over twenty-five years? I’d be like, ‘you lying. I ain’t doing that.’”

Planting Seeds

India says that the next step is figuring out how to integrate the impact that we want to have, the changes we want to make, and the transformation and evolution that we want to be a part of into all of our actions.

Erica says that because she wishes she’d had support in being able to envision alternatives, to go beyond the binary, and be more aware of what’s possible at a younger age, “one of the most important things for me right now is recognizing that I am planting seeds that I won’t be here to harvest. But that makes the seeds that much more important.”

Those seeds are about what’s possible for someone coming after her to have access to a reality that isn’t limited by societal indicators, age, race, gender, sexual orientation, relationship status, immigration status, familial status, income level, insert thing here.”

She says she’s also been experimenting with gauging how she reacts to things with “this is how I feel right now, but this is how the more evolved part of me would like to approach this.”

“There’s a lot of value in being able to one, move outside of myself and kind of take on a different perspective, but also knowing that even the smallest of things can be valuable to somebody else. And I don’t want to take away how impactful that could be, because I never know what might be your flashpoint. That moment when it’s like, ‘Oh. That!” I don’t wanna take that from you.”

Ready to dive deeper?

Knowing and being able to share your values helps you find your right people and guides your business and marketing strategy. A brand statement helps you succinctly bring that message to your marketing, your communications, your social media, and your bio.

Inside The Pause on the Play® Community, Helen Tremethick leads the workshop, Bring It Home: Creating a Brand Statement That Represents You. She’ll share how to get away from elevator pitches and fill-in-the-blanks and how to craft a statement for your business and your brand that expresses your values. This workshop will provide you the tools to express yourself and your values genuinely and articulately, so you connect with the right clients for you.

Community members get access to the evergreen replay of this and all of our other workshops and resources, as well as community discussion, Q&As with Erica and India, office hours, and more.

Learn more at pauseontheplay.com/community