Episode 102: What I’ve Learned from Failing with Hallie Bulkin

Quick Disclaimer all information, content and material of this podcast are the opinions of the speakers and is for the informational purpose only and not intended to serve as a substitute for the consultation, diagnosis and or medical treatment of a qualified healthcare provider. Welcome to the Untethered Podcast. I am your host, Hallie Balkan. I'm a certified orofacial myologist, feeding specialist and mentor. This podcast is all about getting your questions answered and collaborating with colleagues to bring you the most up to date information in the orofacial myofunctional therapy, tethered oral tissue and airway space. I challenge you to keep an open mind and join my mission to get this information out to the masses. Let's get started. Hi and welcome to episode 102 of the Untethered Podcast. Today it's you, me and myself and we are going to be talking about failures and really what what I have learned from failing over the years. Because yes, even though social media makes it appear as though I've had tons of success and yes, I have had success, I've also had failures. And these are the things that I recognize we need to discuss one of my values, something that I value and that's important. Part of my identity is also being transparent. Being transparent in terms of how I run a business, being transparent in terms of my experiences, being transparent in who I am, what I stand for. And you guys see that I'm a voice. I have no problem speaking my mind, especially in support of other professionals in our space and parents and of little ones who are experiencing things that maybe should be easier than what they're going through. This is really that advocacy side of me and I think it's very important that we have these types of conversations. So while this is a podcast where, where we focus a lot on myo and tots and airway and business as well now and pediatric feeding, I really feel that it's important that as the host, now that we're over a hundred episodes in, we talk about how I even got here in the first place and some of the really important life lessons I've learned because many of you continue to struggle as you've shared with me, with your identity, with calling yourself a myofunctional therapist or calling yourself a pediatric feeding therapists, you know, for you, OTS and SLPs for recognizing that you can be a successful business owner when maybe it doesn't take off immediately like you had hoped for or planned, right? There are always failures in life and anybody who tells you otherwise is lying. But really we need to one, I'm going to share some of my own failures in life so that you can see how I can. How I rose above them and what I learned from them. Because the biggest difference between somebody who succeeds and someone who doesn't, it's really just that person who chose to learn and continue plowing forward versus that person who allowed that failure to stop them in their tracks. So let's dive in and talk about some of my history as well as what I've learned from some of these quote unquote, you know, failures. And full disclosure, I won't necessarily say that looking back, I consider all of these failures per se. You know, it depends how you want to define that. But there were definitely events in my life that went differently than I expected, differently than I had planned. And in some places I did push forward, and in other places I actually hit pause for a very long time. And I am going to share that with you because I think that you all would be very interested to know that I tried to launch an online business back in 2000. Let's see, I think it was 2011. And it did not take off. And then it took me eight years to do it again. Now things happen in those eight years. I launched a private practice that's been successful. I had two children. I got married. I had two children. You know, there's been a lot of other really amazing great things where I focused my attention. So I'm not saying, but, you know, I'm not saying that I wasn't a successful person in general, but I. What I am saying is it definitely forced me to stop myself in my tracks. And I wanted to compare, you know, a college failure experience for you all to that quote, unquote failure of launching an online business so that I can show you the difference in what happens when you allow these failures to define you or stand in your way of doing what you're setting out to do. So let's chat. So let's go back to college. Right here I am, I graduate with this, you know, really great a GPA from, you know, straight a GPA type of thing. You know, if you talk about like the college level courses I took as part of a beta program in my high school, it was, I think I had like, my weighted GPA was like four point, whatever it was. I don't know, it was over 4.0. You know, my GPA, not weighted, was like maybe 4.85. Whatever. Okay, so I got some Bs. Big whoop. I prided myself on that. When I was younger, and I thought that was really important and really cool and, you know, great, whatever. Looking back at it now, it's just funny how much weight I put in to my grades. When I was younger, it allowed me to get into the University of Maryland, and I went to umd. I started with business courses. My goal was to, you know, major in business, graduate as a business major, so on and so forth. I've always had that entrepreneurial spirit mindset, and that's where I thought I was going. And then I took the courses, and I remember giving a peer my notes from the classes that he was not going to. He took my notes, he studied them, he got an A on the test. I sat in those classes. I studied my own notes that I took, and I got a C on the test. When I reviewed the test, I remember going back and sitting with the TA and being like, why did I get 13 of these 15 wrong? Like, I actually know the answer. And so I started to look into why this happened. Like, if. Why would I know the answer two weeks after taking a test when I haven't studied? Clearly, I mean, this is college. We're going out and having fun. And what I realized was nobody had really taught me how to not note take. I was very. I really was doing what I thought was my best note taking in college, but nobody had really taught me how to study. Right. Both note take and study, I should say. But, you know, clearly my notes had enough information to help somebody else get an A on these tests who was not even going to class. Right. My friend was getting it, but I was not. And I was like, something's got to give. And so this was a general struggle across several of my classes and to the point where I was like, just under the allowable GPA to rush a sorority come springtime. Because at my umd, you could rush a sorority starting in the spring semester, so of your freshman year. So here I am, and I'm like, oh, gosh, like, crushed, right? This is not fun. Like, I have failed. Like, what gives? And I ended up going and getting tested for adhd, which has always been something that teachers told my parents might be, you know, a concern ever since I was the age of five. And really, I did well in school. And, you know, I was that chatty kid, surprise, surprise, who would get, like, S's on the report card for satisfactory, whereas I always get, like, O's in my academics, you know, for. Because they used to do, like, O's, S's and N's, where I Grew up. And O was like, I don't even know if it was outstanding. Maybe S was satisfactory. And N was like, needs work. And I don't remember if I got N's. Maybe I didn't. I've suppressed that. Like, I, you know, don't remember. I'd have to. I don't know, maybe my mom will listen and she'll tell me, but either way, I was that chatty kid who was getting in trouble in class for talking too much. Okay, again, surprise, surprise. So. But it never impacted my academics. At least not there were things that were harder for me. But I found ways to adapt. I found ways to compensate, and I found ways to do well enough in school to pull good grades and get done what I needed to get done. Okay, I know that's not how every child comes out of this type of a situation, but that's how it worked for me. And then I got to college and it kind of all fell apart, right? So here I am getting assessed, and this neuropsych ended up diagnosing me. She said, well, you've got add, but, you know, I don't know that we want to give you that diagnosis. This was actually what she said. Like, I don't know that we're going to attach that diagnosis, although the paperwork says that because your IQ is above what we would expect for somebody with adhd. And I was like, so people. You consider people with ADHD to have low IQs? Okay, interesting. Not my experience, but whatever. But you're a candidate for Ritalin, so you should. You should really consider, you know, starting to take that. Right? So they put me on Ritalin and I took that for college and grad school, and I cut it out in grad school. I think my. My last year, like, my second year of grad school, I stopped taking it unless I was just taking tests, because I really only took it for class and for, like, you know, involved tests because of, like, test anxiety and just feeling like, I know this information. What if I can't pull it out? Right? Like, I was not a test. Test taking was not. It's not that it was super anxiety provoking, or maybe it was. It was just that I really struggled in the way that they wanted to assess me, to show my knowledge. Right. Where there were other ways that maybe I would have been much better at demonstrating my knowledge. Which is also why, y', all, I'm really, really big on teaching things the way that I teach them. Teaching from the standpoint that we have multisensory learners who Sometimes they need to see, they need to hear, they need to touch. They also need things to be very functional. Enough with this, like, you know, too much information. Information you don't need information that is not helpful or information that you walk away with and you just don't know how to actually implement. I'm over it. Right. And that's what you see, in my courses I teach you functional information that you can use to assess, treat and help your patients. Because why else do you want to take that course? Isn't this to. To better your skillset and better your patients experiences? Yeah. So anywho, I digress. Going back to that college experience, I basically learned firsthand one, how it feels to fail at something really important to you that you've set out to achieve. That it can be really crushing. And you know, I decided not to let this whole thing. I didn't want to admit defeat, right? So I decided, okay, well if I want to rush the sorority in the spring, I need to take another class and I need to get an A in that class and then my GPA will be where it needs to be to rush. So I did that. I took History of Rock and roll with Dr. His name was Dr. King, the teacher, and he was amazing. And it's a course everybody wanted to take, but that all the seniors, you know, seniors and the sports teams always get to register first at umd, which I'm sure is similar across many universities in the United States. But it was just impossible to get into that course because it was a fun course that everybody wanted to take. So if you weren't a senior or you were not on a sports team, you were not getting access to that until your senior year unless you took it over like a summer or winter master. So I took it over the Winter Master and it was basically a short semester, like a three week semester. It was a great course. I absolutely loved it, but it allowed me to jump my grade up. And actually now that I'm thinking of it, I might have taken two courses. I think I took that one. Plus I took the History of Baseball, which also is a really cool course to take. So here I am, I'm taking History of Rock and Roll and History of Baseball and I can't remember. I have to go back. I don't think I did more than one wintermeister during my college, my four years in college. But so it probably was at the same time. And I'm just not remembering because I'm old and it was a long time ago. But anywho, what that allowed me to do was it gave me the opportunity to step into rushing that sorority or these sororities going through sorority rush if I wanted to. And I did start. And I very quickly learned that this was not for me. And through this entire process of failing and having to work extra hard toward what I thought I wanted, taught me how internally referenced I am. And if you're not familiar with the term, like internally versus externally referenced, somebody who is internally referenced is someone who really can make quick decisions for themselves and doesn't always need to talk to somebody else about whether or not this is a good idea or should I do X, Y or Z? Right. Um, basically, someone who is externally referenced might hear something on TV or hear an advertisement or hear somebody else's opinion and quickly shift their opinion based on what they just heard. Someone who's internally referenced is not going to do that. They're going to stand very strong in their convictions, they're going to stand very strong in their thoughts and beliefs, and they're not going to be easily shifted by the opinions of others around them. Um, now, does that mean I don't change my beliefs or I don't change what I like based on what I learned? No, I do. But when I'm paying you to take your course or to take. To learn from you, or to consult with you, or to do something together, collaborate, I'm open to that. Right. I'm not just going to change my opinion, though, based on what somebody else's somebody else says. What I say is very internally part of who I am, what I believe. And that's why you guys have probably heard me come out very strongly with my opinions and my thoughts and even some, like, you know, helping people kind of reverse some of their thoughts just in terms of getting into the space that we're in. Right. Myotots, airway. We know how that goes. Pediatric feeding, so on and so forth. So the bottom line here is that that experience taught me a huge life lesson. That one I'm internally referenced. I hadn't really. I mean, maybe I recognized it, but I didn't realize how strong that internal reference is factor in value was for me. And what that also taught me was I sorority life was not for me. And I am not judging anybody who is in a sorority or who loves a sorority life or who has, like, lifelong sorority sisters like, you go, girl. Like, that is all you. But for me, it taught me that I am too internally referenced to be told what to do by somebody else just because they're senior to Me in age or in a. You know, which also admittedly makes it very hard to work for somebody else. Because when someone is internally referenced, like, you need to be your own boss. So another life lesson learned, right? Need to be internally referenced would function better as my own boss, which I already kind of knew. That wasn't really a main lesson learned out of that. It just kind of solidified that. But it also just showed me that, you know, what was important to me was more so the ability to step into doing what I wanted to do, even if I decided not to do it. Right? So that's important to me. Having the opportunity. Right? Having the opportunity and not having something stand in my way of that became also a value of mine. Something that I realized was important to me. You know, I don't like when people withhold things or they are not as willing to open opportunities for you. And that's why I have tried to, again, open opportunities for others who really struggle to step into the pediatric feeding space or the orofacial myofunctional therapy space. Of course, all within scope and all within reason. But at the same time, why do we make these things so difficult? They shouldn't be right. Now, let's fast forward. Okay? I ended up getting put on. I took Ritalin. I did it for my courses, and I did it for. And we can talk about that a separate day. But because adhd. People with ADHD are generally creative geniuses who are being, you know, forced to conform to societal norms that they just don't fit in that box. So stop trying to fit them in that box. Okay? But again, that's a whole other conversation for another day. A lot of creatives out in the world who are very successful were diagnosed with ADD or adhd. So just a little side note, I've written articles on this in the past. Anywho, I didn't know what I was truly capable of until I tried. That's probably another thing that came out of this, right? I didn't know what I could do until I tried and realized, oh, hey, look what I can do. So that was another learning experience. Now, let's fast forward, right? So I end up. Well, in case you're interested, I ended up going from business courses. I said, let's go to education. Like, I want to work with kids. And then I realized I really don't. I value teachers and I love them. I don't know. I'm too ADD to be in the same classroom every day. I feel like I need movement. I need to, like, be Moving around. I need new challenges. I just don't think that being a teacher is the right path for me. So. And having worked in the schools as an slp, I can't tell you how much I value our teachers because holy crap, like, they should be paid way higher than they are for the stuff that they have to deal with on a regular basis, especially this past year during a pandemic. But here we are. That seems to be true of a lot of, you know, professional spaces where a lot of time, effort, love and all kinds of, you know, things go into it and people are just overworked and underpaid, unfortunately. And that's a whole nother episode as well. But let's fast forward, right? So I go. I ended up going to UMD for grad school and I agreed to work for the county school system for three years in turn for them paying for, they're supposed to pay for my full education, but they didn't. They paid for most of it, but that's another conversation for another day too. And I agreed to work in the schools even though I really never wanted to. I kind of knew going in like, like this is not what I want. And you know, it was a good experience. And I did fulfill my contract because again, staying in integrity and fulfilling what I have signed off on, fulfilling is important to me. But that could have been looked at as another failure. Right? That's the second failure we're going to talk about. And I've got one more for you coming. So why was that a failure? Well, I cried probably for two years of my life. The first two years I was in the preschool education program and, and I was so sad by all of the politics, the bureaucracy, the watching teachers have to lie to qualify kids, watching teachers lie to qualify a child so they could keep a program running when the child didn't actually qualify for the program and I didn't think the child would benefit or needed it and should be, should be mainstream, all kinds of behind the scenes stuff. I was taught by the, one of the heads of the speech department how to not give parents services their child need and deserves. And I was like, no, that goes against my, my, both my ethical boundaries and my, my licensure and everything I believe in and stand for and a bunch of other terms I'm probably forgetting. I was like, yeah, no, if I get a kid who needs the service, I'm going to qualify them for the service. And it's the school's job to figure out how to find the SLP to cover that if it's that, that SLP is not me. So there were certain things that I was very clear like I will not do this because this is completely unethical and really illegal. And it just, I was miserable. I would have. So I had like 563 to 5 year olds between two sites that came. One set of those kiddos came for four mornings a week and the other set came for five afternoons a week. I was not allowed to pull them from lunch, from breakfast or lunch if they were kids who had free and reduced meals. I was not allowed to pull them from gym or any of their other specials or even plug in to work with them. So basically I had to work with all these kids 30 minutes. I sometimes had to do a 30 minute speech circle with 123 year olds and the teachers would often walk away and I would say, you need to stay here. And they would just disregard. And it was lovely. Let me tell you. It was not speech therapy. It was, it was not speech therapy. You know, there's a way to do. And I did have older groups with smaller numbers in the afternoon where I had like 74 year olds and, you know, 5 year olds and they could manage sitting in a group setting like that. But 123 year olds, absolutely not for 30 minutes. And that was legally so I could get in their minutes. And I was like, this job is not for me, this job is for somebody else. So finally, when the county allowed me to go work with the infant and toddler program, I started doing that my third year and I was much happier. However, there were a lot of people there who basically said, I've been here my whole life. The benefits have changed drastically. If you have other options and this is not something that interests you, run. I was like, noted and I did. When my contract ended, that was the last day that I worked. I gave my notice with due time and said on my last day of my contract, I'm out of here. So that was probably the happiest day of my life because for me that was freedom because I'm internally referenced as you just found out. And so working for somebody else, especially under subpar conditions, was just awful. It was, it went against everything I believed and it literally ate me alive. But again, we can look at that as a failure, right? So what did I do? I accepted money as a grad student who wasn't making anything yet towards my grad program in turn for working for a school system for three years, which I knew went against what I wanted to do ultimately, but I wanted to be Smarter about the monetary side of things. And this was a life lesson lesson for me, right? I could have stayed in the schools and I would continue to feel like a failure as an SLP if I did because this was just not the setting for me. But what I learned from it was flexibility. I learned how to advocate for my clients. So I ended up taking, I ended up joining a network marketing company, replaced my school based income so that I could quit my job, did that for about eight months, decided I really missed the kiddos, went and worked for a private practice for a year and then after that opened up my own private practice. And what I will tell you is that was the most glorious day of my life. June 1, 2014 was the first day I opened my private practice. And I will tell you, it was like the cumulative effect of all of my past failures coming to fruition into working for myself. Because, hey, I am internally referenced, as you have recently learned, allowing me the freedom and the flexibility, which were things that I also learned about during the process of other failures, other failed experiences, other experiences didn't go the way that I had planned. This all led to me being able to do that and step into my own right? And I also learned you really don't know what you're capable of until you try. And of course you have to be willing to want to try. And it has to be agreeable with who you are down at your core, right? Your subconscious identity, who you are, does it match? Are you in alignment? Are you? You know, it's one of those words people throw around a lot these days. Are your, are your values aligned with what you're doing on a daily basis? For me, it was not. So that was a big failure and it was a big learning experience, right? But I also took away from it the advocacy ability so that when I did have patients who are also being treated in the schools, I knew exactly what to ask for and I knew exactly what language to give them and how to help them and how to now sit on the other side of the table and make sure that my parents of my patients got what their children both deserved and needed and was legally required in the schools, regardless of staffing availability. Because that is not a determining factor. But that is what they use, at least in our county here to determine who gets what. So big win on that one, right? Learned a lot from that. Now let's fast forward. Right, so here I am in the network marketing industry and I decided, you know, it's, it's not really for me, I left the company that I was with initially that I had a lot of success with, and I went to another one. I had a lot of success there, too. And. And decided, like, this just isn't for me because, again, it still feels like working for somebody else who's telling me how to run my business, what to do, what to say, you know, when you do it. Here's this deadline, that deadline, that deadline. And I was like, this is just not for me. So again, I left that. And like, as I mentioned before, I opened up my private practice now in. And along that way, I also attempted to start an online business. And goodness, I was trying to remember earlier what year this was. I think it was 2011. It was about two years after it might have been 2012. So somewhere around 2011, 2012, I decide, especially because I was working with a lot of families with children on the spectrum, and I really loved working with those kiddos. I decided I was going to create resources, like some social stories to put out there and sell, and I was going to create some free resources for parents that would really help them with advocating for their children, helping them take their kiddos out into the community and how to advocate for their children, especially if their child is having a meltdown in the middle of the grocery store or, you know, if they couldn't communicate with somebody because of, you know, their language delay or whatever. Right. All these different ideas, things that I put out there. And I put this stuff out there, I didn't hold it back. I put it out there. And then I created my first course. And my first course was teaching parents how to navigate the IEP process, because I had now done it both as, you know, having worked in the school system, but now is in private practice setting. And so this. This course might have come around like 2013, beginning of 2014, as I was like establishing my LLC and everything, but it failed. It flopped miserably. And I was working with a mentor. I paid her a lot of money. Okay. Like, I was working with somebody who I paid five figures to to coach me. And here we are. I'm in this mastermind. And it's just like, you know, my Facebook ads are great. I'm building a Facebook following. I've got 60,000 families living with autism between, you know, the UK, the US, Australia, Canada. Great. You know, here's my market is there. And then I launched this course in crickets. I think I got one sale. Okay? One sale. And I knew this was good stuff, right? But I let that define me, you guys, for let's See if that was like, maybe 20. I'm trying. I don't remember when it was. I had to go back and look, but maybe six or seven years, I let that define me and stop me in my tracks without even realizing that's what I did. Right. So did I fail forward on that one? I sure did not for six or seven years. And how much money did I leave on the table by not trying something else out or trying to market it a different way? I just let it go. I let it go. I shut it down. And I was like, we'll just leave the freebies on here because it's helpful for parents, and I want to still have that offer, you know, to them. But nobody's buying the stuff that I'm selling, be it the social stories, be it the auto, the not the autism, be it the IEP course that I created for parents. And I could have let that define me for life and never come back online and never tried to sell anything. But what I realized was that maybe there's other approaches to selling and marketing that work better. And maybe if I hire some people who really excel in this space, maybe that are aligned with me and who I am and how I want to go about doing things, maybe that's what's missing, or maybe it's not. Who knows? But you will never know, and you never know what you're capable of doing until you try. Right. That's one of those lessons that I had learned. So here I go and I implement this. And I think it was back in 2019, and I was like, you know what? I really want to step into the online space again. Give this a go. Almost like I completely suppressed that last experience of failure in the online business space. And I realized that, holy moly. Like, I have tried to do this in the past, and all right, if we're going to do it this time, we are doing it right. And so I took a big chunk of money and invested it from the private practice into hiring a marketing team and a Facebook ads team and bringing on specialists other than myself to help create these courses. Because I wanted multiple perspectives, but also the people that specialize in individual areas, teaching on truly their expertise. Because could I come in and teach a whole pediatric feeding course? Sure, I could. Did I want to? Not really. Did I want to talk about, like, tots and mayo as it relates to the early years, like, birth of five? Because that is not what anybody else was really teaching. Yeah. Because that is what I was doing on a daily basis in my practice. So I curated a phenomenal team of specialists in this space, brought them in, and we have now honed our team down to three of us, who. And we have continued to revamp. You guys know feed the peds. That's the course I'm talking about. But that was. And you guys have probably heard me say, too. So my good friend Teresa Richards, she had said to me, hey, well, maybe you should create a feeding course. And I was over here going, like, I need to create this, like, myo thing people are asking for. And she was like, it should be a feeding course. And I was like, nah, that sounds like a lot of work. And then 24 hours later, I was like, okay, fine, fine, I'll do it. I'll do it. It is so needed. Because I realized how many of you were so afraid of even calling yourself a pediatric feeding therapist or you've taken all these courses, spent all this money, and you still have no freaking clue how to go out and assess and treat, or you're just not confident in your assessment and treatment because nobody's really pulled everything out there together for you in a very comprehensive way. And that's what I decided I was going to set out on a journey to do. And so that decision was made. I think, like, August 2019, I hired some teams and I think we started putting everything into play. Like, November 2019. We launched the free screener in December 2019. And then, yeah, the rest is history. Our first course launched March 16, 2020, as the world shut down with coronavirus. And again, I could have allowed that to stop me in my tracks, but I didn't. I said, nope, we have worked so hard on this. This is a go. Let's do this. And thankfully, the online learning space became a big thing at that point, which was actually on my radar before I ever got into it, simply because I have small kids. And so traveling to teach for me is just not on my value ladder right now. It's not something that I want to do, quite frankly. I would rather stay home, teach you guys, teach those interested in my courses, interested in whatever we are offering, and be able to leave my office afterwards and go hug my babies. And so that's what I decided I was going to do before it was the popular thing that we were all forced to do. But hey, I mean, what a crazy time, right? I saw people shut their businesses down and stop because they were afraid that people weren't going to spend money. Yet here we are in our industry, people are getting laid off and they're buying Courses because they're home and they have time to work right now, especially while they're not treating. So another important lesson that I had learned was, okay, in the past, Holly, you have quit. So maybe this time, instead of, like, seeing all the obstacles, we look at these as opportunities instead of obstacles, and we push forward. And, you know, I'm not a big reader. I will admit that. Like, I can't tell you the last time I read a book. I would rather listen to an audible, you know, audio of a book. And even that I don't do that frequently. So that's the truth about me. But one book that I did read, like, way early on in my entrepreneurial career was Failing Forward by Darren Hardy. And Failing Forward was one of those books where it just was really easy read, and it was one of the. It was just a. I'm sorry. Not Failing Forward was John C. Maxwell. I apologize. Not Darren Hardy. It was John C. Maxwell. Failing Forward. It really talks about how you take those mistakes and you turn them into successes. And that is probably one of the biggest reasons why I've had success in my life, because I have failed. We all fail. Most people don't talk about it. And when you go on social media, all you see are the successes. And here's this, and here's that, and this life looks, like, perfect. And that, this, that, and the other. No, no, no, no. Like, I am not the perfect mother. I am not the perfect clinician. I'm not the perfect business owner. I am not the perfect. Any teacher, mentor, anything. There's no such thing as perfection. And if you are, if you've hung around me a little bit, you've probably heard me say a quote that I got from one of my mentors, Jim Fortin. 100% success is failure. 70% perfection is success. The bottom line is that nobody. There's no such thing as 100% perfection. Okay? Did I say that right? 100% perfection is failure. 70% perfection is success. Make sure I said it the right way. Bottom line is that you just got to do the things, get them out there, try them, and then if they don't work, tweak it, Tweak it, try again, and you learn to be flexible. You learn to fail forward. You learn from your mistakes. You learn a lot about yourself, but you have to also be open to that. And. And so if there's anything that I can share with you all and the whole reason behind this episode and what I've learned from failing is failures are needed in life to teach you how to succeed, Right? The biggest lessons often come from the biggest failures. And really, it's the times when I flopped the hardest and things did not pan out the way that I had planned for them to pan out that has taught me the greatest lesson and has helped me even move forward with greater success. So I wanted to share that with you all because so many of you think I'm superwoman. You think I'm super mom. You think I'm super business owner. And I will tell you, no, we all have the same hours in the day. It's just how I choose to prioritize things and how. Where I choose to spend my time, put my time, and, you know, something that we can talk about more, you know, time and all of that and managing that, learning how to say no to things, learning how, you know, there's another. There's another person they follow online. And Kate. Gosh, what is her last name? It'll come to me in a second. She just sent an email today. I have to look her up. But she had said something like, just because you have the time doesn't mean you need to give it away. And I had this feeling wash over my body the first time I read that, and I was like, holy cow. That's exactly what I do. Kate Northrup. That's who said that. Oh, my gosh. Like, every time I have time open up, I give it away to somebody else. I give it away to that person who used to say, hey, can I pick your brain? Hey, can I? Well, no, you can't. Because at the end of the day, I have nothing left for me or my family. If I give all of my time away to you all, in addition to all the businesses that I'm running and the people who are in my programs who really, they command my time. So usually it's my family gets my time first, and. And then those of you who are in my friend circle, you get my time. And those of you who are in my courses and have become colleagues and friends in those spaces too, you all get my time as well. But that's where I have to really protect my time. Because in order to be the number one, whatever role I'm playing right now to the person immediately in front of me, that means I need to respect my own boundaries, my own time, my own self, right? And that's another lesson that's been a hard lesson to learn. That's been another lesson that I chose to let be hard. I could have let it be easy, but, you know, we talk so much about being in a giving profession. And it's one of those things where just because we're in a giving profession doesn't mean you need to drive yourself into the ground and give all of you to everybody else without taking care of yourself. You need to take care of yourself first or you will have nothing left to give to anybody else. And I know you've heard that before, and I know it sounds cliche, but please take it from me. I have shot my adrenals, I have run myself into the ground, I have overworked myself. I, I have done all the things. And in the United States we tend to wear that as a badge of honor. Whereas in other countries they look at us like we're completely freaking crazy. So working around the clock and working like six days a week, seven days a week, it's a big no for me. I am not interested in that. I am not interested in cutting years off my life to produce anything. So for me now I have reset what my life needs to look like for me to be happy on a day to day basis and continue to support those in my circles. And I'm very open. I do respond directly to my social media messages. Now if you ask me about cases, I'm not going to respond to that because that's just, we can't talk cases in a dm, right? That's just a whole nother conversation for another day. But if you have general questions, I'm happy to answer them and I do pop on, but I limit my social media time as well because I need to again make sure that I am staying within the boundaries that I've set for myself on a daily basis. Otherwise you can get sucked into social media for four hours a day. And who has time for that? That is not. My primary job, is not answering questions in social media DMs, and I get a ton of them all the time. So all that to say, a lot of these lessons have been learned through my experiences, through failures, through flops, through some of my biggest failures. You know, as I mentioned, some of my biggest lessons have come from my biggest failures. And so what we need to do as a collective whole is look back on what has not been successful from me and what did that teach me and what did I take from that to push forward, whether it be into that, you know, tweaking that and trying to bring that to market or bring, you know, or carry out some task or project or whatever the case may be that I wanted to do for myself or my business or my family, you know or did I totally go, you know what? This is out of alignment. That's maybe why I. Maybe I kind of made it not work for a reason. So what is an alignment for me? Like, what works for me? And realize that there's never one correct way of doing anything. You learn this, and you learn to be flexible, and you learn that you will fail and failure is okay. And also, driving yourself into the ground and wearing that as a badge of honor is just not a. It's not a thing we should do. Right? We need to put a stop to that. So I probably. I don't even know how many different life lessons I've shared with you today, but these are a. You know, these are a ton of the lessons that I have learned from my failures over the years. And I did highlight three separate areas of my life, from college to my first job to, you know, my first time trying to go into an online business, because I wanted you all to realize that while you might see me having a lot of these successes, that did not come without a lot of effort and work and doing a lot of things the wrong way while driving myself into the ground in some of those scenarios to even get here. So it's not all unicorn glittery bells and whistles and all the fun stuff all the time. And I want everyone to recognize that, because I think that we lose sight of that when we look at how beautifully packaged things look on social media and on websites. And so you heard it here first. It is, you know, Hallie's not perfect. I am not superwoman of anything. I am the same as you. I have just chosen to learn from past failures and push forward and, you know, making sure that I truly live my authentic life the way that I choose to. I am myself. I don't allow others define me. I also don't allow myself to be influenced by, you know, other naysayers or people who might be intimidating to others in their space. Like, they have no effect on me. But I recognize that that's not true for everybody. And so, you know, I think that that that's another thing that stops a lot of you guys in your tracks, but also just feeling like you failed can be a big one. Right? Failure and fear of failure. Right. Fear of anything. And a lot of times it's fear of failure that can be really debilitating. So hopefully this episode was helpful and in showing you just how I've overcome some of that. I know this is not a traditional episode per se, but I felt like it needed to be discussed and it needed to be said. And so I would love to hear from you all if this was helpful to you, because I'd love to talk more about some of this stuff while we also dive into other episodes on a more clinical nature. So I hope everyone has a great day and let me know what life lessons you're taking away from this or what you've learned from some of your past failures. I'll talk to you guys soon. This is Hallie signing off. Thanks for listening to this podcast. If you want to hear more of these Myotots, Airway and Feeding related episodes, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or pledge a small amount on patreon.com the Untethered podcast. If you found value, others you know in this space will too. So be sure to share this episode on your social media platforms and join us over on Facebook on my Facebook page at Hallie Balkan Biz on Instagram at Hallebulcken. And you can head over to theuntetheredpodcast.com to grab a copy of the Show Notes, where you can also subscribe. 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