The Secret to Moving Forward When Failure Feels like the End
18 Sept 2025 · 12 min
Lori Harder talks about moving past failure and fear. She shares her own setbacks, including a failed business pivot, and argues that hardship is where faith gets built. She's launching an Audacity challenge and encouraging people to pursue bold goals in 2026.
Chapters
You have to have the audacity to believe that you could win. Especially, especially when you're failing.
Not on a good day, not when.
You wake up with a ton of energy, not when you feel awesome. This is where the real ones are made. If you aren't willing to walk through this part, you aren't ready to carry the weight of your dream. Straight up, you guys buckle up or step aside, because that's what you're signing up for.
Hey, everyone, welcome back to the podcast. It's time for another quickie because there's.
Always to fit an inspiration. And today I just wrapped up my fourth Audacity challenge call for the month that I had. And I am excited to tell you that we are continuing those calls. We're actually going to do a once a month Audacity call with this incredible group of women. We had thousands of people sign up. We've had hundreds of women connect. We've had hundreds of women move forward.
On their big audacious goals.
And we're doing big things in this group. And when I say big things, I mean massive things. You can't quite understand it until you come in. And it doesn't matter if you're intimidated, it doesn't matter if you're like, I don't even know if I feel like I'm capable of doing, you know, making these big bold moves like, do not be intimidated. You are stopping yourself. Get in this group. It's going to change your life. Like, we are the biggest group of most welcoming, amazing, incredible women. Just saying. I'm just saying, like, truly, you're gonna find your friends in there and if you are holding back, you are just sabotaging yourself. So you need to get in this group. It's gonna change your life. I put it in the show notes so that you can join up below. And once a month, we're gonna be moving forward. And I literally can't wait. So today I wanna talk about the fact that ready is not a feeling, it's a decision. And faith is built literally immediately the depths of darkness. Faith is not built on the mountaintops. So here's the truth. I've never actually ever in my entire life, of all the things that I have done, felt ready every single leap. Whether it was writing my book or whether it was raising money for light pink, which pivoted into glossy, or even starting my first business was made while I was terrified, while I had anxiety, while I was doubting myself and mentally listing all the reasons why I was not qualified. So in my head, it was, you're not smart enough. You did not graduate. You don't have supportive friendships. Your family doesn't support you. In fact, it's something that is frowned upon to really reach for money or success, especially in the religion that I was raised in. And I want to be real that after investing a million dollars into launching my original idea, which was light pink during the pandemic, for two years of blood, sweat, and tears and fear, and literally doing everything that I took to try to get that off the ground, and then having to pivot, I felt like a complete failure. So imagine years of work, all the money, all those dreams, all of that disappointment, all of the disappointed investors, and having to walk away. I want you to picture carrying that and telling people and letting them know that you weren't able to get it to the finish line and you needed to pivot. You guys, I had more sleepless nights than I can possibly count. I think I've blocked them out. I had nights where my chest was so incredibly heavy with dread, where I was staring at the ceiling in the dark, literally praying over and over and over to God, like, please, God, help me. Please, God, take this from me. Please, God, I feel so alone. Please, God, show me the next step. Please, please, tell me what I should do. I felt so disconnected from God. I even felt abandoned by God. But what I couldn't see at the time was that all of that darkness, all of those feelings, all of that distance, and all of the failure didn't mean that I was off track. It literally was the initiation for something so much bigger. Because faith is not built on the mountaintop. Moments when everything feels good and you feel so aligned and you've got all the energy and everybody's excited and everyone's cheering for you and leaving. Nice comments. Faith is forged in the silence. Faith happens when God feels really far away. When you've convinced yourself that you can't go on or that you're a complete failure or a loser. You don't know why you can't get yourself out of this slump. You don't know why you can't get yourself motivated. You don't know why you can't stop binge eating. You don't know why you can't stop drinking wine every night. You don't know why you can't get off your phone. You don't know why you can't stop scrolling. You guys, when nothing looks like it's working, that's where surrender is born. That's where you lay down your plans, your pride Your timing, and you hand it all over to God, and you start praying and say, I need help. I got to figure this out. But, God, I promise that I will act on what you show me. I promise that I will take massive action. I will go to the meetings. I will get the mentors. I will join the programs. I will listen to the podcast. I will read the books. I will show up boldly. I will do the embarrassing thing. I will trust that no matter what those comments are or what my family says, that I am on the right path because you put this in my heart. You have to surrender it and hand it all over. And in those moments when you feel like you've lost everything is when you discover you've actually never been more connected in your life. And that obedience to the call, even when you hear a single word back, is the highest act of trust. And that is where faith is born. So without walking through the dark, I don't actually believe that you know what faith even is yet. That's why some people get lost forever in that place, is because you think it's supposed to feel a certain way, and it actually feels like you've been abandoned or you feel like you cannot do it on your own anymore. And that is when you have to start believing that something bigger than you could give you power, could give you strength. Because until that moment, you don't actually have to rely on God. And it's the people who keep on going that are going to be given the reward of a lifetime. Sometimes it's money. Sometimes it's a soulmate. Sometimes it's simply a miracle of someone you never saw coming. But you will always, always get something rigged in your favor. And everything will finally make sense to you after you have walked through this dark period and truly learned what faith is. So here's what I've learned. There's no other way to learn than on the job. And I fully trust that if God gave me the vision, then whatever shows up on the path, even the ugliest, the darkest of nights, it means that it was for my evolution. And that trust has never failed me. Not once. Not even when I convinced myself that my entire life was falling apart and I was a failure.
So if you guys want to play.
A big game, and I know that you do, if you're listening to this podcast, you can't keep blowing the small things out of proportion. You. You have to lock in on growth. You've got to learn to carry the fear. You've got to learn to deal with the failure the rejection and move anyway. You actually have to go for no. You have to look forward to the rejection and know that it's growing you and that it's going to be on your path. More than winning is because you can't win until you've been rejected multiple times and it's just a numbers game. And the most successful people know this and the people who will never even remotely touch the tip of the iceberg are going to be off put by the fact that they have to deal with failure and rejection. They're going to stay down for the count, they're not going to push through and they're not going to believe that that rejection was for them when God is literally putting that on your path for you. You have to have the audacity to believe that you could win. Especially especially when you're failing.
Not on a good day, not when.
You wake up with a ton of energy. Not when you feel awesome, not when you've got great plans for the week. But when things feel like you're failing, you have to have the audacity to believe you could win. And that means that you have to put your over and over and over and over and take action. Life is a participatory sport. You have to participate or life will not even meet you halfway. This is where the real ones are made. If you aren't willing to walk through this part, you aren't ready to carry the weight of your dream straight up. You guys buckle up or step aside because that's what you're signing up for. So ready isn't about how you feel. It's literally a choice you make again and again in the moments that you do not feel like it. So let me ask you right now, what decision are you putting off because you're waiting to feel ready? What are you pretending not to know about where you're sabotaging yourself? You literally have to do this for you.
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Year with Shopify by your side. And if you're ready for some massive accountability and the partners and the coaches to get you there, I truly, truly want to be the person who helps Pull you through some of the challenges that are coming with putting your business out there or taking it to the next level. I am so insanely excited to let you know that we are relaunching the mentor collective Mastermind. And it's been one of the coolest things I've ever gotten to see and be a part of. It has changed me at a level I can't even tell you because of the way that everybody in there is taking massive action using the eight coaches that we have in there that we pay for so that you get them for free. We have a social media coach, we have a marketing coach, we have an attorney in there, we have an AI coach. We literally have coaches for every single part of your business. If you have podcast questions, funnel questions, email questions, opt in questions, legal questions, anything that you could possibly imagine and is in this group and it's timely, we answer your questions within 24 to 48 hours. We call it on demand coaching, not to mention the live calls with Chris and I every other week, along with our coaches who are in there, along with teach backs. You guys, Teach backs are where these students, you who come in there. If you have a zone of genius, you actually get to apply to do a teach back to the entire group. So imagine if you had something to teach for 15 to 20 minutes, you get to go in there and be in front as a leader in front of the group for teach backs, which is absolutely incredible that you get the option and opportunity to use this platform and have a stage within this group where you also get highlighted and get to to teach this program. Truly, how it started is because we said, what would it look like to have the most supportive mastermind on the Internet? And Chris and I sat down and listed every single thing that we could possibly imagine that has changed our life on our trajectory of when we have mentored and used coaches and been in masterminds like this, which has been our whole career, if that says something to you, I will say I know that all of our success has come from mentors and masterminds and getting coaching and not struggling and wasting a ton of money by trying to figure it out on our own. We literally got directly into the groups of people who had done it before and followed their path and that's all there is to it. Success leaves clues. Follow the path. So, you guys, I hope that we get to work with you if you want to be one of the 30 people, because we can only take small groups, as you've heard, we have the coaches that we have to make sure can get to all of your questions within 24 to 48 hours along with a accountability coach just for you that you get assigned to make sure that your moving forward every single week with the tasks that you said that you were going to do. So you can go to loriharter.com waitlist and I hope I hope hope hope I get to work with you. You get to choose between six or 12 months and it is going to be one of the greatest adventures of your entire career. And get ready. Buckle up. If you are not someone who wants to move the needle big please do not join this because we are a group of action takers who are making things happen. We are breaking out of we are moving forward. We are moving out of stuck. We are no longer just sitting and wondering why something isn't working. We figure it the out and that's what this group is. It is massive accountability. So go to loriharter.com forward/waitlist and I hope that I get to work with you for the next however long you choose. And until next time earn your happy. Bye everyone. Sam.
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