Welcome to Easy, Breezi.

Your friend who sends you a weekly update on what she's working on, reading through, and thinking about – in a list (ish).

Our natural instinct is to fear failure.

So we avoid it. Or if we can’t and we fail, we try to hide it.

But “There is no learning, no victory, no good story without a share of failures, scars, and the perseverance it took to overcome them” - Steph Ango.

I’ve never really talked about my failures but I should – in fact, I think everyone should.

When Breezi launches, let’s make “failure lists” a thing.

But until then, this will do.

My Failure List

1. In a third grade spelling bee, I misspelled the word immature by going “I-N-” before the bell went off.

2. Auditioned for Degrassi twice, didn’t get the role

3. During college, it was my dream to be a management consultant at McKinsey, Bain or BCG. I got to final round interviews for all three firms – they ended up calling one after another on the same day to let me know I didn’t get the job.

4. Had a crush on this boy in 7th grade and decided to bake cookies give them to him on his birthday. He took them and walked straight over to the trash can to throw them away – in front of the entire class while I was standing there.

5. Tried to pitch ClassPass to work with me as an influencer when I hit 20k followers on TikTok – they said no

6. Took me 3 tries to pass my lifeguarding exam because I couldn’t tread water properly.

7. When I was running my consulting agency Aderie, I convinced one of my clients to hire the contractor we were working with full time. He gave her a salary, put her through onboarding and spent days training her just for us to realize a month in that it was the wrong hire. He let her go and I felt like it was all my fault.

8. My goal for this newsletter was to hit 1,000 subscribers in three months. It took me six.

9. In sophomore year, I was part of a team that did case competitions representing our school. During a competition, I completely froze and took an entire minute to remember my part. We definitely lost because of that.

10. I emailed 10+ companies to try and get a sponsorship for this newsletter, they all ghosted me.

11. Spent 3 hours editing a TikTok, writing a script and recording a voiceover to tell a deeply personal story. It completely flopped and got no views.

12. Came fourth for the Loran College Scholarship for $110,000 in college. Only top 3 received the scholarship money.

13. Tried to get back together with my ex-boyfriend. He said no.

14. Tried to get back together with him again. He blocked me.

15. When I was leading growth at Three Ships, I suggested our team to move forward with an big influencer partnership. She had a 1M+ followers and her audience was aligned with our target demo. It tanked and she barely moved any product for us.

16. Applied for a full time job in NYC at the start of this year, didn’t work out.

17. Applied to YC S23 batch, didn’t get an interview.

18. Tried out for the varsity volleyball team in college, didn’t make it.

19. Wanted to start a business with my best friend in high school. We couldn’t even agree on the name so it never happened.

20. In 2022, I worked as a contributing editor for various online publications. One of them asked me to write a Valentine’s Day guide for the single gals. I was ecstatic, spent weeks researching and poured my heart into the piece. Managing editor thought it was too polarizing/ gave man-hater energy and ended up cutting it.

Now imagine reading this list again.

Except this time, instead of it being called “My Failure List”

It’s titled “Why I’m Fearless”.

If you found anything in this newsletter helpful, I'd love to connect on Twitter – tweet me a screenshot of your favorite part and let's chat 👋

I'll be back next week with more lists!