August 25, 2025 • 25 mins
Failure might be the most misunderstood concept in our success-obsessed culture. The world’s best innovators—from Booking.com to Jeff Bezos to Michael Jordan—have shown that failure isn’t something to avoid, it’s the very foundation of success. In this episode, I unpack powerful stories that reveal why doubling your rate of “unsuccessful attempts” might be the most important move you make toward growth.
Key Takeaways:
- Failure and success are inseparable twins—every miss is a step closer to the breakthrough.
- The world’s most successful people and companies deliberately create space for failure to accelerate growth.
- By reframing setbacks as opportunities, you can transform failure into your greatest competitive advantage.
Thank you for tuning in! If you feel led, please subscribe & share the show to others who you believe would benefit from it.
Keep in touch below!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I believe that we are the best place in the world to
fail.
We have plenty of practice.
Failure and invention areinseparable twins, so what that
says is on the other side offailure are the things, the
greatest innovations, the thingsthat, oh man, because we messed
(00:22):
this up, now our eyes areopening to this completely new
concept that we would have neverthought of had we not gone down
this route.
Some of the greatest businessleaders and companies that we
look at today are a result of aquote, failure or someone saying
(00:46):
this is never going to work.
You can't do this.
Do hard things, help one person, be good and do good.
Live a life of discipline andyou will always win.
You have all the tools that youneed to succeed.
Welcome to win today to them intheir lives.
(01:25):
Every week, you're going tolearn from either myself or a
renowned expert in their field,and we're going to unveil pieces
of our playbook to help you wintoday.
Please, if you love this show,subscribe and share it with
somebody that will benefit fromit.
Let's dig in.
I'm thinking about a newbusiness idea, a new product,
and it's either going to be ashirt or a sticker, something
(01:47):
that says I heart failure.
I love failure.
Where are we going with this?
I've long said that failureequals opportunities, and
through recent conversations andstudies and books that I've
been reading lately, the topicof reframing failure and the
(02:10):
importance of that continues tocome up, and so I'm bringing
this up as a reminder, asreinforcements, that this is how
you reframe and use failure asa positive force.
Because, with the exception ofthe word simply creating context
(02:33):
, that's really the only reasonwhy I believe the word is useful
is so that it creates context,because I personally don't even
call it that.
It's an opportunity.
But for the case that itchallenges this norm, or maybe
what we see out in the worldtoday, that failure is a bad
thing and that there areshortcuts to success, in that
(02:55):
there are ways in which we cango from zero to 99 without going
through 30, through 50, and wecan just move all the way up to
the top, maybe something thatsocial media is falsely
encouraging.
I'm not sure, but this is howwe develop a stronger
(03:17):
relationship with the concept offailure.
This came apparent to me againthis week as I was listening to
the diary of a CEO the 33business laws.
So this is the book version,not the podcast diary of a CEO
(03:40):
highly recommend that.
But the book version thatStephen Bartlett wrote I highly
recommend that.
But the book version thatStephen Bartlett wrote, the
Diary of a CEO 33 Business Lawsthat Can Change your Life, and I
believe it's law number 21.
And it's double your rate offailure.
(04:00):
There was a story aboutbookingcom.
Maybe you've used bookingcom,maybe you haven't, but when I
heard about how bookingcom hasbecome what it is today, it
almost makes me want to startusing them, simply because of
(04:20):
what is ingrained in their DNA,which is, hey, failure is a good
thing and we're going to failoften.
The more that we are failingquote failing the more
successful that we will be.
Bookingcom today is a roughly$24 billion company with about
(04:41):
24,000 employees as of 2024.
10 years ago they were about a$10 billion company with, I
believe, 4,000 to 5,000employees, so they've really
grown into a powerful force inthe travel industry.
But what really stood out to meabout Bookingcom is that they
(05:07):
createda role called theDirector of Experimentation, and
this role was simply intendedfor Bookingcom to run hundreds
and thousands of experiments asto what works well, what gets
more people onto the site andbooking their trips, their
hotels, their rental cars, theirflights on there versus what
(05:30):
doesn't.
So think about this.
Hundreds, and now thousands,and multiply this out over the
years, tens of thousands of betatests to stand out as a force
to get people to use their siteover Kayak or Priceline or
Expedia.
And they made a rule that theyknew was going to create a lot
(05:57):
of context failures.
Let that sink in for a minute.
Let that sink in for a minute.
It's not often that we canthink about a role, especially
(06:33):
in the corporate world, in doingwell while creating dozens, if
not thousands, of failures,unsuccessful attempts, and I
shared before that this has beena key enabler in them doubling
their revenue.
What does this say?
If it's not clear yet thatfailure is a good thing and
failure is not really failure,there's step number one in life,
then we must increase by two tothree to four times the amount
of failure that we areexperiencing.
(07:18):
You may have heard the quotefrom Michael Jordan that he has
missed thousands of shots.
He's been counted on to hit thegame winning shot and he has
missed it.
He has and I'm going to pull upthe quote because I believe
(07:39):
it's.
I believe it is, it is morepowerful.
You may have heard the MichaelJordan quote.
I've missed more than 9,000shots in my career.
I've lost almost 300 games.
26 times I've been trusted totake the game winning shot and
missed.
I've failed over and over againin my life and that is why I
(08:07):
succeed.
Folks, if we're not creatingunsuccessful attempts, rate of
unsuccessful attempts by a largefigure.
(08:45):
What followed that part in thebook was a quote from Jeff Bezos
in a shareholder letter toAmazon, and this is in the
earlier days of Amazon.
It is this.
One area where I believe we areespecially distinctive is
(09:05):
failure.
I believe that we are the bestplace in the world to fail.
We have plenty of practice.
Failure and invention areinseparable twins.
So what that says is on theother side of failure are the
things, the greatest innovations, the things that oh man,
(09:28):
because we messed this up.
Now our eyes are opening tothis completely new concept that
we would have never thought ofhad we not gone down this route.
Some of the greatest businessleaders and companies that we
look at today are a result of aquote failure.
(09:53):
Someone saying this is nevergoing to work.
You can't do this.
I've been also studying recentlyRaisin Canes.
You may have gone to RaisinCanes.
That is a fast food store andthey only sell chicken fingers
and they've now are worth almostfour billion dollars.
(10:16):
Think about that four billiondollars off of one item chicken
fingers.
And their founder was recentlyinterviewed on the school of
hard knocks and he rememberssharing this business plan in
college in an entrepreneurshipclass that he was going to
create a chain that only soldchicken fingers, had a great
(10:37):
business plan, great model, andthe professor actually gave him
a failing grade because hesimply didn't view the idea as
worthy and strong and there's noway that you're going to be
able to sell that many chickenfingers.
So he failed the, the coursefailed, the project almost
(11:06):
sacked a four billion dollarfranchise and, excuse me, I
believe they produced fourbillion dollars in annual
revenues.
I could, I could have thatmistaken, but $4 billion selling
chicken fingers.
One thing arose from somebodygiving a failing grade and
(11:26):
saying you can't do this,there's no way.
One thing that I'm rolling outin my mastermind group, the
Unshakeable Community tomorrowand we've been working together
for the entire year is ourfailure rate and our weekly
(11:49):
scoreboard of scary actions thatwe are taking that we are
taking, reason being is thatfailure is a muscle that we can
build.
The more that we are told no orattempt to do something and it
doesn't go our way, or met witha circumstance that we could
(12:12):
have never expected, the morelikely we are to eventually then
arrive at the destination thatwe've ultimately envisioned, or
the more likely that we are thento actually create and live in
our dreams dreams.
(12:39):
So the scary action scoreboardis rolling out tomorrow and one
thing I'm personally committingto is that I'm going to be
taking action of all theattempts that I'm making between
this podcast securing biggerand more iconic guests and I
know and look forward to the notright nows that I receive,
(13:01):
because I'm already saying it'snot a no, it's just not right
now, but that will happen theamount of newsletter sponsorship
actions that I'm taking, theamount of podcast sponsorship
actions and requests that I'mmaking, the amount of people and
the amount of attempts that Imake pitching the Unshakable
Mastermind and coaching, andsame thing for the amount of
(13:24):
pitches that I'm making to givekeynote speeches to schools and
organizations over the year,over the coming year.
I look forward to the peopleand the organizations that are
going to tell me no, and somewill tell me no just because
they don't believe in it.
Some it might not be inalignment right now, some may
(13:47):
say follow up later, but everytime that that happens, what
that is doing is it's buildingthis resilience muscle, it's
building this.
Okay.
You know what?
Sure, maybe we got punched alittle bit, but we're so strong
now that the punches just rollright off and we keep moving
forward.
The higher our rate of quotefailure, the higher our rate of
(14:16):
success.
Next week we have a reallyexciting guest on the podcast,
dr Sindra Kampoff, and she is amental performance coach.
She has worked with theMinnesota Vikings, usa track and
field, and there was onequestion that her dad used to
ask her as a kid and it was thishow did you fail today?
(14:40):
How did you fail today?
And Cintra went off to become aD1 track athlete and at the
time she was one of the bestrunners in the state of Iowa,
used to winning all the time,but from a young age.
In her household, her father isposing the question how did you
(15:03):
fail?
And, as a positive force too, Icouldn't imagine at the time.
I grew up, and I don't fault myparents for not doing this, but
I couldn't imagine coming hometalking about how did I fail
that day?
Now, I believe there was aconversation around that it was
(15:27):
related to sports Like, okay,hey, I struck out twice at the
plate or I got beat in PE class.
Okay.
My dad especially said okay,well, as long as you're giving
your best effort, you'll learnand you'll get up.
Now, if it was, how did you fail?
Because I wasn't the beststudent and didn't really care
(15:47):
too much for school at the time,that would not have gone very
well, but it made me make amental note that that is
something that I certainly wantto infuse into my family at some
point in time and, god willing,kiddos at some point in time
(16:08):
that, hey, it's okay if thingsdon't go your way, as long as
you're not carrying that weightfor an extended period of time,
(16:40):
and you can quickly look at whatit's giving you and how it's
making you better.
And you train yourself toinstantly ask those questions
and look that way.
So the more reps you're making,the more no's you're receiving,
the stronger you are becomingand the more destined for
(17:06):
success you are.
For success you are.
I'll give a couple examples ofone time where I felt like the
biggest failure ever, and thiswasn't necessarily as a result
of putting in reps, but more so.
Hey, there will be times wheremaybe you feel like you're
(17:30):
worthless or you haven't figuredit out yet.
Therefore, you suck.
Going back to 2016, I thoughtthat I had my life figured out.
I was in the corporate world,had just moved out to St Louis
Missouri to begin my career withthe Boeing company, going to a
(17:52):
Fortune 50 organization straightout of college, which was a
dream of mine to be able to workfor Boeing cool apartment.
I've got the woman that I wasdating at the time for the last
two years of college and she wasgoing into graduate school at
(18:14):
Washington University, which isa great private institution for
her master's degree and I feellike I've got the world at my
hands.
I've got the job.
I'm going to move all the wayup the chain in the corporate
world At least I thought so atthe time that that's what
(18:35):
winning was and I don't have toworry about the dating games.
I've got that figured out andthis is what my future is going
to be.
And about a year and a halfafter being there and we had not
long before this had just movedto a new place, adopted a dog,
(18:56):
and again I'm more convincedthat I've got life by the balls.
Like this is it?
The plan is all coming together.
Next thing, you know, in betweenher first and second year of
graduate school, she goes andtravels the world for about five
weeks, and which was which isawesome and I, come home from
(19:18):
work, had a bad gut feeling asto what was leading up that week
, but anyway, me mr positiveshrugged it off, came home from
work thinking that maybe it'lljust be a long conversation, and
everything in the apartment wasgone, all of her things cleared
out, no conversation.
(19:39):
I'm left speechless on my kneesin the living room, with the
dog of course, and crying, and Iremember thinking how
embarrassing I was, soembarrassed of myself and
thinking how could this possiblyhappen to me?
(19:59):
Not knowing that at the time.
The question you are wanting toask is how is this happening
for me?
It's what I know to be true nowand what I've conditioned and
what I encourage you tocondition into your mind as well
.
When something doesn't go yourway, how is this happening for
you?
Or when you fail, how did thishappen for you?
So I remember thinking, man, Idon't want to tell anyone about
(20:22):
this, especially with how ithappened.
It was very traumatic and I'mthinking, man, am I really not a
good person?
And all these things.
Now, what I wish I knew at themoment, and what I can clearly
(20:43):
answer now, are these questionshow did this make me better?
What did I learn and what am Idoing differently because of
this?
So what I can tell you nowabout that moment and something
that didn't go my way is thatI'm a 1,000 times better man
(21:09):
leader, friend, family man,observer, everything and it made
me better.
It gave me more things to lookout for and be more cognizant of
for the future, for wheneverthat time comes, and be more
(21:30):
cognizant of for the future, forwhenever that time comes.
It helped me dig deeper intomyself and be able to reassure
myself that, hey, here are allthe great things I bring to the
table.
Not to dive too deeply intothis, but when something isn't
going your way or, as you're onthis journey of embracing
failure, when you get the no'sor when the unexpected things
(22:03):
happen, how did this make mebetter?
What did I learn?
What did I do or what will I dodifferently because of this
famous story in the corporateworld about a man that blew up a
factory and got to keep his job.
You may be familiar with GeneralElectric it's probably one of
the light bulbs in your housevery well may be a General
Electric light bulb and JackWelch was the legendary CEO of
(22:28):
General Electric for severaldecades and he came out of
school with a chemistry degreeand he was working in one of the
petroleum plants.
Jack was mixing some compoundsas a early career chemist and
made a mistake and literallyblew up one of the buildings.
(22:51):
Literally blew up one of thebuildings like through the roof
and everything, because thecompound that he mixed up
clearly wasn't the right mixture.
And he walked into at the time,the CEO's office and he was
ready to give his badge up, givehis computer, everything and be
(23:13):
fired right there on the spot.
And the CEO says hello, jack,why would I fire you?
I just paid $16 million totrain you.
So that was a CEO thatunderstood that, hey, it's okay
to make mistakes.
Now, jack wasn't being careless, he just was doing the best
(23:36):
that he could and made a mistake, blew the roof off a building
and now, well, at the time thenbecame the CEO of General
Electric and helped GE becomeone of the most powerful
companies in the United States.
So I'm wrapping it up with thisFailure is a good thing.
(24:01):
By increasing your rate offailure, you become more
resilient, you move closertowards your dreams, you
discover things that you orrather, routes that you wouldn't
have considered going down, andyou become a better version of
you.
The best version of ourselveslies on the things that we don't
(24:25):
want to do and the things thatwe're scared of doing.
So take inventory.
How is this growing you?
How is this?
What are you doing differentlyas a result, and how is this
moving you closer towards yourdream destination?
So fail forward, fail fast, andthat is what's going to allow
(24:47):
you to win today.
Thank you so much you.
I believe that we are the best place in the world to
fail.
We have plenty of practice.
Failure and invention areinseparable twins, so what that
says is on the other side offailure are the things, the
greatest innovations, the thingsthat, oh man, because we messed
(00:22):
this up, now our eyes areopening to this completely new
concept that we would have neverthought of had we not gone down
this route.
Some of the greatest businessleaders and companies that we
look at today are a result of aquote, failure or someone saying
(00:46):
this is never going to work.
You can't do this.
Do hard things, help one person, be good and do good.
Live a life of discipline andyou will always win.
You have all the tools that youneed to succeed.
Welcome to win today to them intheir lives.
(01:25):
Every week, you're going tolearn from either myself or a
renowned expert in their field,and we're going to unveil pieces
of our playbook to help you wintoday.
Please, if you love this show,subscribe and share it with
somebody that will benefit fromit.
Let's dig in.
I'm thinking about a newbusiness idea, a new product,
and it's either going to be ashirt or a sticker, something
(01:47):
that says I heart failure.
I love failure.
Where are we going with this?
I've long said that failureequals opportunities, and
through recent conversations andstudies and books that I've
been reading lately, the topicof reframing failure and the
(02:10):
importance of that continues tocome up, and so I'm bringing
this up as a reminder, asreinforcements, that this is how
you reframe and use failure asa positive force.
Because, with the exception ofthe word simply creating context
(02:33):
, that's really the only reasonwhy I believe the word is useful
is so that it creates context,because I personally don't even
call it that.
It's an opportunity.
But for the case that itchallenges this norm, or maybe
what we see out in the worldtoday, that failure is a bad
thing and that there areshortcuts to success, in that
(02:55):
there are ways in which we cango from zero to 99 without going
through 30, through 50, and wecan just move all the way up to
the top, maybe something thatsocial media is falsely
encouraging.
I'm not sure, but this is howwe develop a stronger
(03:17):
relationship with the concept offailure.
This came apparent to me againthis week as I was listening to
the diary of a CEO the 33business laws.
So this is the book version,not the podcast diary of a CEO
(03:40):
highly recommend that.
But the book version thatStephen Bartlett wrote I highly
recommend that.
But the book version thatStephen Bartlett wrote, the
Diary of a CEO 33 Business Lawsthat Can Change your Life, and I
believe it's law number 21.
And it's double your rate offailure.
(04:00):
There was a story aboutbookingcom.
Maybe you've used bookingcom,maybe you haven't, but when I
heard about how bookingcom hasbecome what it is today, it
almost makes me want to startusing them, simply because of
(04:20):
what is ingrained in their DNA,which is, hey, failure is a good
thing and we're going to failoften.
The more that we are failingquote failing the more
successful that we will be.
Bookingcom today is a roughly$24 billion company with about
(04:41):
24,000 employees as of 2024.
10 years ago they were about a$10 billion company with, I
believe, 4,000 to 5,000employees, so they've really
grown into a powerful force inthe travel industry.
But what really stood out to meabout Bookingcom is that they
(05:07):
createda role called theDirector of Experimentation, and
this role was simply intendedfor Bookingcom to run hundreds
and thousands of experiments asto what works well, what gets
more people onto the site andbooking their trips, their
hotels, their rental cars, theirflights on there versus what
(05:30):
doesn't.
So think about this.
Hundreds, and now thousands,and multiply this out over the
years, tens of thousands of betatests to stand out as a force
to get people to use their siteover Kayak or Priceline or
Expedia.
And they made a rule that theyknew was going to create a lot
(05:57):
of context failures.
Let that sink in for a minute.
Let that sink in for a minute.
It's not often that we canthink about a role, especially
(06:33):
in the corporate world, in doingwell while creating dozens, if
not thousands, of failures,unsuccessful attempts, and I
shared before that this has beena key enabler in them doubling
their revenue.
What does this say?
If it's not clear yet thatfailure is a good thing and
failure is not really failure,there's step number one in life,
then we must increase by two tothree to four times the amount
of failure that we areexperiencing.
(07:18):
You may have heard the quotefrom Michael Jordan that he has
missed thousands of shots.
He's been counted on to hit thegame winning shot and he has
missed it.
He has and I'm going to pull upthe quote because I believe
(07:39):
it's.
I believe it is, it is morepowerful.
You may have heard the MichaelJordan quote.
I've missed more than 9,000shots in my career.
I've lost almost 300 games.
26 times I've been trusted totake the game winning shot and
missed.
I've failed over and over againin my life and that is why I
(08:07):
succeed.
Folks, if we're not creatingunsuccessful attempts, rate of
unsuccessful attempts by a largefigure.
(08:45):
What followed that part in thebook was a quote from Jeff Bezos
in a shareholder letter toAmazon, and this is in the
earlier days of Amazon.
It is this.
One area where I believe we areespecially distinctive is
(09:05):
failure.
I believe that we are the bestplace in the world to fail.
We have plenty of practice.
Failure and invention areinseparable twins.
So what that says is on theother side of failure are the
things, the greatest innovations, the things that oh man,
(09:28):
because we messed this up.
Now our eyes are opening tothis completely new concept that
we would have never thought ofhad we not gone down this route.
Some of the greatest businessleaders and companies that we
look at today are a result of aquote failure.
(09:53):
Someone saying this is nevergoing to work.
You can't do this.
I've been also studying recentlyRaisin Canes.
You may have gone to RaisinCanes.
That is a fast food store andthey only sell chicken fingers
and they've now are worth almostfour billion dollars.
(10:16):
Think about that four billiondollars off of one item chicken
fingers.
And their founder was recentlyinterviewed on the school of
hard knocks and he rememberssharing this business plan in
college in an entrepreneurshipclass that he was going to
create a chain that only soldchicken fingers, had a great
(10:37):
business plan, great model, andthe professor actually gave him
a failing grade because hesimply didn't view the idea as
worthy and strong and there's noway that you're going to be
able to sell that many chickenfingers.
So he failed the, the coursefailed, the project almost
(11:06):
sacked a four billion dollarfranchise and, excuse me, I
believe they produced fourbillion dollars in annual
revenues.
I could, I could have thatmistaken, but $4 billion selling
chicken fingers.
One thing arose from somebodygiving a failing grade and
(11:26):
saying you can't do this,there's no way.
One thing that I'm rolling outin my mastermind group, the
Unshakeable Community tomorrowand we've been working together
for the entire year is ourfailure rate and our weekly
(11:49):
scoreboard of scary actions thatwe are taking that we are
taking, reason being is thatfailure is a muscle that we can
build.
The more that we are told no orattempt to do something and it
doesn't go our way, or met witha circumstance that we could
(12:12):
have never expected, the morelikely we are to eventually then
arrive at the destination thatwe've ultimately envisioned, or
the more likely that we are thento actually create and live in
our dreams dreams.
(12:39):
So the scary action scoreboardis rolling out tomorrow and one
thing I'm personally committingto is that I'm going to be
taking action of all theattempts that I'm making between
this podcast securing biggerand more iconic guests and I
know and look forward to the notright nows that I receive,
(13:01):
because I'm already saying it'snot a no, it's just not right
now, but that will happen theamount of newsletter sponsorship
actions that I'm taking, theamount of podcast sponsorship
actions and requests that I'mmaking, the amount of people and
the amount of attempts that Imake pitching the Unshakable
Mastermind and coaching, andsame thing for the amount of
(13:24):
pitches that I'm making to givekeynote speeches to schools and
organizations over the year,over the coming year.
I look forward to the peopleand the organizations that are
going to tell me no, and somewill tell me no just because
they don't believe in it.
Some it might not be inalignment right now, some may
(13:47):
say follow up later, but everytime that that happens, what
that is doing is it's buildingthis resilience muscle, it's
building this.
Okay.
You know what?
Sure, maybe we got punched alittle bit, but we're so strong
now that the punches just rollright off and we keep moving
forward.
The higher our rate of quotefailure, the higher our rate of
(14:16):
success.
Next week we have a reallyexciting guest on the podcast,
dr Sindra Kampoff, and she is amental performance coach.
She has worked with theMinnesota Vikings, usa track and
field, and there was onequestion that her dad used to
ask her as a kid and it was thishow did you fail today?
(14:40):
How did you fail today?
And Cintra went off to become aD1 track athlete and at the
time she was one of the bestrunners in the state of Iowa,
used to winning all the time,but from a young age.
In her household, her father isposing the question how did you
(15:03):
fail?
And, as a positive force too, Icouldn't imagine at the time.
I grew up, and I don't fault myparents for not doing this, but
I couldn't imagine coming hometalking about how did I fail
that day?
Now, I believe there was aconversation around that it was
(15:27):
related to sports Like, okay,hey, I struck out twice at the
plate or I got beat in PE class.
Okay.
My dad especially said okay,well, as long as you're giving
your best effort, you'll learnand you'll get up.
Now, if it was, how did you fail?
Because I wasn't the beststudent and didn't really care
(15:47):
too much for school at the time,that would not have gone very
well, but it made me make amental note that that is
something that I certainly wantto infuse into my family at some
point in time and, god willing,kiddos at some point in time
(16:08):
that, hey, it's okay if thingsdon't go your way, as long as
you're not carrying that weightfor an extended period of time,
(16:40):
and you can quickly look at whatit's giving you and how it's
making you better.
And you train yourself toinstantly ask those questions
and look that way.
So the more reps you're making,the more no's you're receiving,
the stronger you are becomingand the more destined for
(17:06):
success you are.
For success you are.
I'll give a couple examples ofone time where I felt like the
biggest failure ever, and thiswasn't necessarily as a result
of putting in reps, but more so.
Hey, there will be times wheremaybe you feel like you're
(17:30):
worthless or you haven't figuredit out yet.
Therefore, you suck.
Going back to 2016, I thoughtthat I had my life figured out.
I was in the corporate world,had just moved out to St Louis
Missouri to begin my career withthe Boeing company, going to a
(17:52):
Fortune 50 organization straightout of college, which was a
dream of mine to be able to workfor Boeing cool apartment.
I've got the woman that I wasdating at the time for the last
two years of college and she wasgoing into graduate school at
(18:14):
Washington University, which isa great private institution for
her master's degree and I feellike I've got the world at my
hands.
I've got the job.
I'm going to move all the wayup the chain in the corporate
world At least I thought so atthe time that that's what
(18:35):
winning was and I don't have toworry about the dating games.
I've got that figured out andthis is what my future is going
to be.
And about a year and a halfafter being there and we had not
long before this had just movedto a new place, adopted a dog,
(18:56):
and again I'm more convincedthat I've got life by the balls.
Like this is it?
The plan is all coming together.
Next thing, you know, in betweenher first and second year of
graduate school, she goes andtravels the world for about five
weeks, and which was which isawesome and I, come home from
(19:18):
work, had a bad gut feeling asto what was leading up that week
, but anyway, me mr positiveshrugged it off, came home from
work thinking that maybe it'lljust be a long conversation, and
everything in the apartment wasgone, all of her things cleared
out, no conversation.
(19:39):
I'm left speechless on my kneesin the living room, with the
dog of course, and crying, and Iremember thinking how
embarrassing I was, soembarrassed of myself and
thinking how could this possiblyhappen to me?
(19:59):
Not knowing that at the time.
The question you are wanting toask is how is this happening
for me?
It's what I know to be true nowand what I've conditioned and
what I encourage you tocondition into your mind as well
.
When something doesn't go yourway, how is this happening for
you?
Or when you fail, how did thishappen for you?
So I remember thinking, man, Idon't want to tell anyone about
(20:22):
this, especially with how ithappened.
It was very traumatic and I'mthinking, man, am I really not a
good person?
And all these things.
Now, what I wish I knew at themoment, and what I can clearly
(20:43):
answer now, are these questionshow did this make me better?
What did I learn and what am Idoing differently because of
this?
So what I can tell you nowabout that moment and something
that didn't go my way is thatI'm a 1,000 times better man
(21:09):
leader, friend, family man,observer, everything and it made
me better.
It gave me more things to lookout for and be more cognizant of
for the future, for wheneverthat time comes, and be more
(21:30):
cognizant of for the future, forwhenever that time comes.
It helped me dig deeper intomyself and be able to reassure
myself that, hey, here are allthe great things I bring to the
table.
Not to dive too deeply intothis, but when something isn't
going your way or, as you're onthis journey of embracing
failure, when you get the no'sor when the unexpected things
(22:03):
happen, how did this make mebetter?
What did I learn?
What did I do or what will I dodifferently because of this
famous story in the corporateworld about a man that blew up a
factory and got to keep his job.
You may be familiar with GeneralElectric it's probably one of
the light bulbs in your housevery well may be a General
Electric light bulb and JackWelch was the legendary CEO of
(22:28):
General Electric for severaldecades and he came out of
school with a chemistry degreeand he was working in one of the
petroleum plants.
Jack was mixing some compoundsas a early career chemist and
made a mistake and literallyblew up one of the buildings.
(22:51):
Literally blew up one of thebuildings like through the roof
and everything, because thecompound that he mixed up
clearly wasn't the right mixture.
And he walked into at the time,the CEO's office and he was
ready to give his badge up, givehis computer, everything and be
(23:13):
fired right there on the spot.
And the CEO says hello, jack,why would I fire you?
I just paid $16 million totrain you.
So that was a CEO thatunderstood that, hey, it's okay
to make mistakes.
Now, jack wasn't being careless, he just was doing the best
(23:36):
that he could and made a mistake, blew the roof off a building
and now, well, at the time thenbecame the CEO of General
Electric and helped GE becomeone of the most powerful
companies in the United States.
So I'm wrapping it up with thisFailure is a good thing.
(24:01):
By increasing your rate offailure, you become more
resilient, you move closertowards your dreams, you
discover things that you orrather, routes that you wouldn't
have considered going down, andyou become a better version of
you.
The best version of ourselveslies on the things that we don't
(24:25):
want to do and the things thatwe're scared of doing.
So take inventory.
How is this growing you?
How is this?
What are you doing differentlyas a result, and how is this
moving you closer towards yourdream destination?
So fail forward, fail fast, andthat is what's going to allow
(24:47):
you to win today.
Thank you so much you.
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