The thing is, as a public figure you’re never supposed to call your shot. If you just keep your hopes and dreams locked up inside your mind or within a small trusted circle, then no one will be let down by your failures, because they didn’t know what the goal was in the first place. This tactic also means that the public can be surprised and delighted by any success you have. They never know what you’re working on, so any achievement feels like a happy little coincidence, fate smiling down on you again.
The issue for me with this way of thinking is that it feels disingenuous. It feels like faking. Here I am telling you to be courageous and brave and to do big things and dare to reach for something mighty. Here I am telling you that failure doesn’t matter and other people’s opinions are none of your business, but then simultaneously I’m just going to keep all of my big hopes close to the vest? That feels hypocritical.
I strive to tell you guys about everything I’m going through (or have gone through), because I don’t think it serves any of us to pretend. So, with Girl, Wash Your Face I did the thing an author is never supposed to do. I called my shot. Four months before the release of the book I told everyone (and by “everyone,” I mean you guys who follow me on social media) that I have always dreamed of being a New York Times bestselling author. This was my sixth book and I’d had years of dreaming about this, and so I talked about it—a lot. It became a rallying cry for women all over the world. Not only was it my dream, but many of you got fired up on my behalf. You dreamed my dream right along with me.
Then came the fateful day. It was Valentine’s Day, exactly a week after the book came out, and unfortunately for him, it was also my husband’s birthday. That afternoon I found out my wish hadn’t come true. Girl, Wash Your Face didn’t make the New York Times bestseller list.
I felt so sad, and honestly I felt embarrassed. I felt like I’d asked my tribe to buy into something that then I couldn’t deliver. It was crushing. I cried like a baby, and I spent a few days in the dumps. But I came to a conclusion pretty quickly. Even with all the sadness and embarrassment, I wouldn’t take my goal back. I go on social media every single day and tell other women to follow their dreams. I wake up and do live streams and tell you that your goals are important and worth chasing. I write over and over again that failure is a part of life. Failure means that you’re living. Failure means you’re trying. So what kind of friend would I be if I didn’t practice that in my own life?
I had called my shot, voiced my big, crazy, audacious dream. I had told 850,000 people I was aiming for something, and they had all watched me fail. But here’s the truth. If you aim at what you can hit, you’ll likely get there every time: never any higher, never any bigger, never any better. But if you aim far above your own head, even when you fail you’ll fly so much higher than you can imagine.
I would rather fly. I would rather dream. I would rather fall on my face over and over again. I will continue to tell you what I’m aiming at, because I hope that if you watch me fall publicly and stand back up again and again and keep going, then you’ll think, What if . . . for yourself.
What if you sign up for a marathon?
What if you go back to school?
What if you start that bakery?
What if you quit your job?
What if you take up hip-hop dancing?
What if you go into ministry?
What if you write a book?
What if you start a podcast?
You have dreams. I know you do, and I also know that many of you hold back because you’re afraid that others will see you stumble. Let them watch! Let them see what grit looks like! Let them see the mistakes! Let them watch the missteps! Let them see you dust yourself off again and again and again and keep going.
Do you know how many times I have failed as I’ve built my business and pursued my dreams over the last fourteen years? I’m sure most of you won’t remember, but I will never forget each and every lesson I learned along the way.
What does it take to get back up when you’ve been knocked down? As an entrepreneur I’ve been knocked down (or tripped up by my own fumbling) again and again. When I was younger I imagined that at some point I’d gain enough experience to avoid failure altogether. Bless my tiny, business-baby heart! This level of success only makes my failures much more public and much larger in scale.
Remember that time I launched The Chic Site in Italy?
Remember that time an employee stole money from me and I had no idea?
Remember when I decided to be a florist as well as a wedding planner?
Remember when I added on luxury gift baskets too?
Nobody wanted the flowers or the gift baskets, in case you’re wondering.
My list of failures is miles long. I’m totally aware of how much time and money they cost me along the way. But here’s the deal: every single one of those mistakes has taught me something to ensure they don’t happen again. Knowing something great can be mined from the ashes means I don’t beat myself up when I don’t get it right. It means I stand back up quicker, more determined than ever. A mistake that you learn from is how you build best practices. It’s only truly a failure when you’re so afraid to look at it that you can’t move forward. If you can’t move forward you will never, ever make it across the finish line.
Ten weeks after the book came out, the impossible happened—or maybe not impossible, but unbelievable to me. Girl, Wash Your Face became a New York Times bestseller. I can tell you that when the publisher called to let me know, I literally fell to my knees. I was so stunned. I called Dave at work. I made his assistant pull him out of a meeting.
“I made the list,” I whispered when he called me back.
His screams and cheers broke whatever dam I had up when I found out. I cried like a baby. That night we went home and had a drink we’d been planning for a decade. Ten years earlier someone had given us a very expensive bottle of Dom Pérignon. The bottle was so fancy I felt like we should reserve it for something special. At the time, I thought of the biggest, loftiest dream I could imagine and labeled that bottle with my goal: “New York Times Bestseller” scrawled across a piece of tape and stuck to the neck.
For ten years it sat in our fridge. It moved from our first townhouse to the little fixer-upper to the home I wrote all of my books in. The bottle was covered in dust and had been shoved to the back of cabinets, spending half a decade in the crisper of our beer fridge. And here’s the crazy thing: I labeled that bottle back before I’d ever written a single page of a book. I labeled that bottle half a decade before my first book was published. I had dreamed of being a bestseller since I was eleven years old. I had imagined what it would be like to celebrate by opening that bottle for a decade. That night, after ten years of waiting, we drank that champagne, and it was so much sweeter because of all the years from there to here. It was so much better because I had “failed” again and again on the quest for this goal, and if I hadn’t been willing to put myself out there, if I hadn’t been willing to let the public see me fail in a hundred different ways over the years leading up to this moment, I never would have achieved any of it.
I’m so grateful I was a failure. I’m so grateful it’s taken me fourteen years of mistakes to get to this place in my career. I’m so grateful that each book I’ve written has done a little bit better than the last, but not one of them has been an overnight success. My writing career—much like my entrepreneurial career—is a snowball rolling downhill. It’s only recently that the mass has picked up enough speed to make the ground shake.
I’m grateful for the small spaces I’ve inhabited; they taught me how to grow.
I’m grateful for every misstep along the way; they taught me how to run.
I’m grateful for every moment of insecurity; they propelled me to gain a lifetime of confidence earned through practice and study.