Hi there,

I know I’m late to this party but I just started the book, “10x is easier than 2X” last week.

SO many people recommended it to me (devoured it) and then I promptly went down a Dan Sullivan rabbit hole (one of the authors) who has apparently coached more leaders and founders than pretty much anyone on this planet.

The man is 80 (but biologically 62… I got deep into some random podcasts he was on) and he said something on a podcast that has been playing on loop in my brain.

This is paraphrased but in all the years he’s coached groups, he can count on one hand the corporate leaders who swap failure stories.

They never do.

But the entrepreneur groups? They love failure stories
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And his observation – after watching this play out across thousands of clients over 40 years – is that the leaders who thrive are the ones who actively extract the lesson from every failure and use it to move faster.

The ones who don’t tend to stagnate. Or quit. Or crash and burn in flames.

You can’t extract the lesson from something you won’t look at.

Which brings me to this newsletter…..

I want to show you some photos from this week.

The first one: me at a vineyard in Portugal with my husband.

with this pool

And this family-run property all to ourselves..

Made possible by my mom and sister who were still in town from the States as of this week. (Also side note I’d think I’d be a certifiable negligent parent if I did live nearby family as it’s SO EASY TO LEAVE!)

A surprise 29-hour no kid (hallelujah) getaway –courtesy of my birthday and my husband’s flight or fight response to the month of May (so many Mother’s Days now in one month PLUS my “I don’t really care about my birthday but I CARE SO DEEPLY AND WILL BE MORTALLY OFFENDED IF YOU DON’T MAKE A SASHA FIERCE GESTURE) energy had my hubby really out doing himself this year🫠

But seriously, I had that moment when I was surrounded by friends, my kids’ friends, my mom, my sister, and the community we’ve somehow built in Lisbon — people who didn’t exist in my life 2.5 years ago.

I thought “yes, life is good.”

And then… 30 odd hours later…

This.

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-Lots of things going wrong.
-Overwhelming negative self-talk out in FULL force.
-Realizing an expensive experiment failed.
-Apology notes to write.
-Embarrassment
-Shame

The same person who basically a day before was marveling at how GREAT life felt..

I’ve been thinking a lot about this since this pic (which was Wednesday) – how we exist in so many layers at once.

Pain and pleasure.
Fun and hard.
Happiness and sadness.
Top of the world and lowest of lows.

Sometimes in the same afternoon.

But you don’t really get to see “this side” because it’s not as fun to write about or show on social media.

May has been a month of extreme multitudes (can someone teach me how to exist with BALANCED EQUILIBRIUM PLEASE AND THANKS.)

I debated sharing that photo.

I get why it’s weird — “why are you taking a selfie when you’re that upset?” But even in the moment, some part of me knew I needed to SEE myself in it.

Because this has been the real story of my business this month, and I couldn’t package it prettier and move on.

I’ve done that too many times.

Here’s what happened.

We did too much at once and lots of things fell through the cracks.

Not to bore you BUT I WILL BORE YOU…we ran our biggest My StoryPro product upgrade ever – basically a new tool– and launched it at the EXACT same moment a live workshop brought cold audiences into our funnel for the first time. 🤨

No proper QA (that is tech nerd speak for “fixing bugs” in the software before you release it to customers).

And while we do SO much on a small team because of AI backend systems and infrastructure. We were no match for what came our way.

Things broke. And then broke again.

People who had never heard of us — cold audience, perfect fit, literally wanting to spend money — couldn’t.

I have a folder full of notes that say some version of “I loved your workshop and your mission but the tool isn’t working.”

***INSERT THIS BAD GIRL AGAIN

I had to send two apology notes in one week: One to strangers I had zero reputation with. One to my community.

We also ran paid ads for the first time ever and it wasn’t great.

Wrong fit for everyone involved – a scrappy startup is not the same as a VC-funded one with resources to burn.

It made an overwhelming month feel more chaotic and a lot more expensive. We’ve since stopped.

What it DID do – and I’m genuinely grateful for this – is expose real gaps in our infrastructure that I wasn’t seeing clearly.

So we’re fixing them properly, before we spend another dollar on acquisition.

However, this also happened (again multitudes.)

After I sent the apology note to my community SO many came out and more or less said, “We’re not going anywhere. You’re going to have to F up worse. Sorry.”

One of our members voice noted me and said “she can’t live without My StoryPro” and it’s been rough but told me (as an exited founder herself) that if I wasn’t running into issues like this…than I wasn’t doing enough.
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Failure. Mistakes.
This IS the process she said.
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And then -as a paying member -she told me to “go make more mistakes”.

**I literally could paste the crying pic again because she had no idea how much I needed to hear her random voice note.

And she wasn’t alone.

I had members messaging me saying things like “we’re going to watch you get to the next level – make the mistakes with us.”

The attrition during this rough stretch was not what you’d expect.

People stayed.

That trust wasn’t built in May…It was built over years of showing up, being honest, sharing the crying selfies (thankfully I don’t force all the cringe upon you often) and the birthdays and the moves and the good stuff too…because I try and do my best to show you the real behind a screen that makes it so easy to perform to.

I don’t have a neat bow to tie on this one.

May isn’t over yet. (but almost!)

But I’m writing to you from the other side of the crying selfie (for today at least!), and I can tell you: the winery was real, the tears were real, and I’m still here.

I think there’s a reason I subconsciously avoided Sullivan’s book for over a year, even when people literally sent it to me.

I wasn’t ready to hear it or learn about him in order to go down my podcast rabbit hole.

One of Sullivan’s philosophy is that the difference between founders who make it and founders who don’t isn’t talent or timing — it’s whether you’re willing to look at the failure straight on and make a decision to use it to do better.

I’m sharing this because I couldn’t not and I want to do better.

If you’re reading this and you were part of the new audience that came my way this month — I hope you stick around.

As of the last 48 hours, we’re getting back on track.

And when it’s working, here’s what it actually feels like to use it:

Now please reply and share with me some of your war stories!!

Have a fab weekend.. I am doing… NOTHING. And couldn’t be more excited.

XO
Patrice

P.S. I know I just spent a lot of words telling you how broken things were in May. But we really are getting back on track — and honestly, the chaos forced us to restructure in ways we needed to. More on that soon.

P.P.S. We’re hiring soon! A part-time customer support + community role (10 hours/week, fully remote). I’d love to hire from within my network — someone who gets the mission and wants to grow with us. If that’s you, reply to this email or DM me. No boring days guaranteed. It won’t be until we get some of the house in order but I want to get ahead of this now.