302 - Is Failure Real?

0:05 Good morning podcasting morning chat. Today is Monday, May the 12th. Happy belated Mother's Day to all the moms out there. We hope you had an amazing day surrounded by those people that you love the most. Today we're talking about why failure is not real. Give us 30 seconds and we'll get this conversation started.

1:25 Good morning again podcasting, Morning Chat. I'm Sid Meadows and I am your host for today's conversation. As most of you know, Mark has taken a couple of weeks off and the crew and I are taking over the show. While he is enjoying a much needed vacation. I believe he is in Spain having a good time. Joining me this morning are our Co hosts. We have producer Ashley Dan, who's holding down all the tech Dr. He's making sure everybody's accountable and on time and Jonathan Howard, Hopefully the rest of our crew will be here later this morning. So today we're going to talk about why failure is not real. And we're going to start with a clip of a conversation that Mark had with somebody. So Dan, take it away. Let's then talk a little bit about building resilience for for the long haul, because we know podcasting and even YouTube it, it's a long game, right?

2:16 And what are some habits or or mindsets that you'd recommend to help build resilience and, you know, keep that fire going even when the times are more challenging? Yeah. So we as a society have accommodated especially for young kids. And this is going to be controversial, but I think that we're not teaching people resilience enough. We're not right. You are not going to make steady progress using the strategies that I'm saying you're not. You're going to have weeks and months where you're going to want to give up and you're not learning that on Instagram by following these social media content creators that are like, oh, I made 100,000 followers overnight and you can.

3:02 And to just buy my product. Yeah, like they don't tell you all of the struggles that they've gone through to get there. It's not going to be easy. So expect it to be hard, but you have to look over the long haul, right? How many months are you going to give this? Are you going to give it six months? So look at the small progress, but look at the overall progress too. It's going to have its peaks and valleys. But just like training your body right, like you are going to plateau, you are going to gain weight, you're going to lose muscle, but then you're going to gain muscle, you're going to lose weight. Like whatever your goals are, it's going to be up and down. But it's like the stock market, you're hoping that it's just going to keep going up.

3:45 So expect to fail. Yeah, that's such a great slip. I'm not sure who the guest was, Ashley or Dr. Do you know who the guest was that he was talking? To I believe it is Mark's, the therapist. I'm not sure if therapist is the right word, but she helps him with his ADHD and her name is Brooke Schmidtman SCHMIDTMAN Schmidtman. Well, I think that one of the things she said the very end there was it's going to be up and down. And I think all of us that are on this content creation, podcast creation entrepreneur journey can understand all the ups and downs that exist in the world of business, building a business.

4:26 So the icebreaker question for all of you today is what's 1 moment on your podcast or behind the scenes, if you will, that felt like a total failure at the time that it happened, but now makes for a great story or a great lesson. Who wants to go? And you know, I'm going to call on you if somebody raises your hand. So somebody needs to get their hand raised up so. I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm thinking so early on in my producer career, I would, I would just edit the show and load it into at that time, my I only had one client, so it was loaded into Lipson and e-mail the client and say, OK, it's loaded. There we go.

5:11 She likes to listen to it before. So I always put it in draft mode. She would listen to it and then release it. And she came back and said, yeah, something's something's wrong. Something's wrong with it. What did you not hear that? I'm like, Oh my God, my rose quiet. Oh my God. And I took a listen to it and sure enough, I mean, it was, it was terrible. It sounded great before it was loaded in, but it was terrible once I loaded it in. And my lesson is once you load it in, always push that play button to hear what it sounds like on that platform.

5:53 Always. And so that's some it just completely depleted all my street cred and everything but the little St. cred I had at the time. So I'm curious, I'm for all of us non editors in the world, what happened? Like what was the difference between when you were listening to it and then when you put it out there on the player, What what happened? What was the? Issue there, there were some points that were like screaming loud and other points that were like normal sounding and it was just something about the platform. So I took I took the whole thing down. I think I put it through levelator or through a phonic. And once I did that and I reloaded it and I listened to it thoroughly, it turned out to be OK. But man, what a huge lesson it was for me. Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that, especially for the non techie out here.

6:48 Once that happened relatively recent, I had this interview scheduled with this guy named Doug. And Doug's not somebody I'd ever met before, but we I knew of him and he knew of me our paths across many times we'd actually like see each other in a hallway, like he'd be in a showroom, I'd be in the hall, we'd wave each other, but we'd never actually met or really talked. And so I reached out to him say we can be a guest, my show. And he's like, absolutely. We had a really great pre chat and I was all excited about the podcast and the recording. And I kind of knew what I wanted to talk about where I wanted to go. And after the recording, I ended the recording and thought that was awful.

7:29 Sid, you were off your game. Were you nervous? Like, I'm asking myself all these questions. Like, I just did not feel good about that recording, right? And so the editor got it. I listened to after she got it and get her part. And then I listened to it. I was like, OK, that's better than I thought it was going to be. And then it turned out really nice. And then I sent it to him and then we published it. And so far this year, it is my most downloaded episode of the year. He's gotten tons of people that have reached out to him about it. Several people have reached out to me talking about what it's a great episode. I think I mentioned I'm interviewing my listeners and several of them have mentioned that that was their favorite episode that they've listened to.

8:15 And so my lesson is, is that just because I speak something went bad and I feel like something went bad didn't actually mean that the that it was bad, right? So I had this perception. I just didn't feel good about it. So there's a definitely a good lesson in that. So who else wants to share Ashley Day and Jonathan? I'll share so, and this is also very recent, I've been recording some episodes for my new podcast to get some stuff done and ahead of time before July when it's supposed to release. And I recorded two of them and I didn't like either of them when I first listened to it. And much like you, I went back and I listened to the first one again this past weekend after having taken about a week and a half off from recording. And it wasn't bad.

9:08 So I edited it. And actually upon editing, I might actually move that episode up in the in the in my season just a little bit too, because it actually turned out quite OK. I'm going to go with quite OK. I haven't published it yet, but it turned out quite OK. I think we can all be our own worst critics, right, Jonathan? And listening if he just says, but I remember you're talking about a solo episode. I remember my first solo episode that I did like, Oh my gosh, well, how awful was that? And I think what I learned through that process of creating my first solo episode was I have to relax. I have to take a deep breath.

9:50 Yes, I have a script in front of me, but not to read the script, right? Like don't read the script. Use the script as a guide to guide you. You know, guide me talking and kind of make sure that I'm in injecting me into it because when the first time I did, I was just reading it like I was reading a page from a book or something. It was absolutely. Awesome. Can we talk about that for a second? Because when I have a script in front of me and I know mentally, yes, I'm just going to use this as a guide. It's tough to use it if, if it's a script in front of me, it's tough to just pick out some things versus having just highlights in front of me that I can talk about. You know what I'm saying?

10:39 It's hard not to see all the other stuff on the script and just zero in on a highlight here and there. I, I understand that. I mean, I have the full script. Don't get me wrong, the full script is in front of me and I am following it, but I'm ad libbing along the way, right? I'm injecting my personality along the way and saying things that a lot of times the way you write, it's not necessarily how you would speak. So I'm injecting my speak into it and adding words and things of that nature. And I end up having to do sometimes two or three different takes of certain sections. So I'm like, oh, that sucks. And I like, I'll talk to Kayla, my editor on the mic and like, OK, we're going to do that again, right? So. Yeah, but that's an interesting concept as well. And because when you said I don't necessarily write like I speak because I can remember from several years ago, because I used to write like newsletters for the places that I used to work in.

11:35 I used to work in a lot of call centers and stuff. And I'd say, well, let me do a newsletter, you know, to for team, team building. So I would write the newsletter and even people who didn't know I was involved with the newsletter all knew it was me because they said we know GR did this because it sounds exactly like her. Well, I mean that means that they recognize your tone and your messaging and how you say things, so I guess that's good, right? What I would say about solo episodes and scripts or non scripts is practice makes perfect. Jonathan, I'm curious, how many times has it taken you to get comfortable with using a script or a guide and doing a solo episode? So I use a guide because that's what I use for any Instagram lives that I do and that's where I'm comfortable.

12:21 So I will like have a guide. And I threw out my first two episodes three times before I was happy with something. So it took some time and it took some time And it's very different for me because doing, I'm not used to doing solo episodes of anything. It's like here we're a group of people on my podcast with Mimi. It's a podcast with Mimi or Mimi and a guest. So I'm not used to doing solo episodes. And it's, it's been a little bit, no, a lot of bit of an adjustment. It's crazy. I think of the time that takes, get comfortable with it. And Ashley, I'm coming to you before I do. I do want to invite anybody that is down in the audience to raise your hand and come up and join us. You are all welcome up on stage as we have our conversations when we'd love to hear from some different voices this morning. Ashley, what do you have to say about this? Good morning and thank you.

13:13 I was just going to say in terms of using a script, since that's what we're talking about at the moment, what's really helped me is how it's formatted. Just how it looks on the page makes all the difference. For example, I try not to write out long paragraphs because like Dr. was saying mentioned earlier, it kind of gets lost. I tried to lean on bullet points and italics and bold print because that helps me emphasize points and remember, and sometimes I'll even put out like some extra words to the side to kind of remind me of things. It becomes more like visual cues, if you will.

13:54 Yeah, I love that. One of the things that I've done to help me is to make it the screen, the document on the screen, right? I blow it up to like 150 so that I see it better, right? I see the words better. I don't know why that helps me if it does help me and I see Mark is active down in the chat. Good morning, Mark, welcome. I hope you guys are having a great holiday. I see you're in Portugal, so hope you're enjoying your time over there. Alex, good morning. Great to have you with us. This is a great topic. I use the script. Well I used to use the script. Do you want to call it that? You know, everything is on there and now use more of a guide. And I think especially when you're first starting out, I think it's very important and just to keep you on task. Now when I do our lives, I actually kind of post script on the OR the guide on the green because we just do kind of a rundown of topics we have like both, if you want to call them different segments.

14:53 And, and I think that that's important because, you know, people know where you're at. And I think it's also important, especially if you're doing video, you're doing YouTube video, you can kind of time stamp it and people can go to those different types of whatever the topic is. But in terms of solo episodes, I've never actually done a solo episode. So I don't really know anything about that, but I'm kind of scared to do it because it's just that I'm just not used to it. And it'd be interesting to try. Well, I will say I understand the fear around them today. I don't know how many I've done, but I really enjoy them. I don't know why I get a lot of energy out of doing them and it's it's a lot of fun for me. So I want to keep us going. So thank you all for playing along with the icebreaker question.

15:36 And today, as I mentioned at the top of the hour, we're talking about why failure is not real. So I want to talk a little bit about failure for just a minute. And so you know, what if I told you that failure doesn't really exist, that really what failure is, is feedback, is feedback on how you performed, what you did, How does that make you feel at this moment when I tell you that failure isn't real? What are your thoughts about that at this very moment? Anybody have anything they want to add to that before I keep going my? Initial thought is. I don't believe you, because it certainly feels that way. No, I totally understand that. Go ahead, Jonathan. And my my initial thought is, yeah, absolutely. Because if I hadn't failed, I wouldn't be where I am now. I wouldn't have learned the lessons and I wouldn't be wearing any.

16:23 I think that that is a really, really great, important point there, Jonathan. And failure has a lot of negative connotations to it. And part of this conversation today is to talk about understanding what failure is and what it means to you and how you deal with it. But before we keep going on, I want to welcome Amanda. Go to the stage. Amanda, good morning. How does that make you feel when you hear that somebody say failure isn't real? Good morning. Failure isn't real. I guess if you want to put your expectations before learning experiences, then you could say you know, failure is real. But if you are wanting to learn, if you're wanting to gain the knowledge and the wisdom to take with you through throughout your game of whatever it is that you're trying to do, specifically podcasting, I'm always failing forward, right? I'm always taking from my experiences what I need to add to my tool belt in order to improve my game. So for me, it's not failing.

17:21 We're just learning as we go. You're speaking my language there. And I think it was John Maxwell that wrote the book Failing Forward. If any of you have read it, I think it was John Maxwell. I've read that book. I just can't remember the exact author. It's a really, really great book, but I want to keep moving forward. So really what I'm talking about the moment is that failures really just feedback. It just gives you information that is going to allow you to move forward. It's not the end, right? It's actually information failures, just depth in the process. So whether it's a what you're, whether you're your podcast, content creation, being an author, whatever it is, it's literally just like steps in the process. And it's not a definition of you or your capabilities.

18:04 And I think so many times when we feel like that we failed, we look internally and say, I'm not capable of doing this. I can't do that. I'm not good enough to do this, right? But at the end of the day, failure is just data. I mean, every failure, if you will, is a result that tells you what didn't work. And that's really valuable in your in your podcast is super valuable in your business and in your life, right? And I think real success is built on iterations. The quicker that you fail, the quicker that you learn. So I have a question now that I want to open up to the group, which is what data have you collected about your podcast or content that is helping you grow and improve?

18:49 Who'd like to go? I'd like to ask my audience. I'm a hotline, so I'm always encouraging them to call in to give their opinion on the segment. I asked them to call in if there was something that they want me to touch on because that way I know if they're vibing with the flow of the episodes for that season, if they're wanting a little more of this, little more of that. I also utilize my Instagram stories and I will do polls. Just kind of like getting a feel for whatever it is that I'm putting out there, especially if it's an upcoming segment on my episode that I want their opinion on. Sometimes I don't get many hotline call in.

19:30 So I've been utilizing my stories to get people's opinions and then I will incorporate that into my show and either debate that or, you know, say I agree with that. I disagree with that. Here's why. So you know, I I use outreach, right? Like I'm actually speaking to my audience and asking for their opinion. Do you share the outreach on directly on your show that somebody said that they didn't like this or they didn't like that? Do you share that out loud? Yeah, I'm pretty sure they know the name of the game. I make it clear. Like if they leave me a voicemail, I'll play their voicemail like live. If they have something that they want to keep on the DL but they still want to get off their chest, I'll just read it and leave them as like an anonymous.

20:15 But for the most part, I'm reading what they say out loud. I sometimes don't add their names, but if they know that they wrote in like, it's still a shout out for them. Just for time purposes, you know? But. Yeah, for the most part I read everything out loud. So what I really like about that and appreciate that is you're sharing publicly, you're kind of building in public and you're sharing publicly the feedback that you're getting and then you're addressing it or talking about it, making the change or not making the change, and then incorporating or telling the listeners why you're not making a certain change. So I think that's really good. What a great way to build and strengthen a community. So kudos to you for doing that. I'm doing that now, but differently, right? I'm surveying my community through a forum and then I'm doing one-on-one interviews with people and I'm getting some amazing feedback that's helping me formulate what I want to do for Season 7.

21:10 So I think talking to your audience is a really, really good thing. Ashley, Dan, Dr. Jonathan, any of you like to answer this question? Which as a reminder, the question is what data have you collected about your podcast or content that is helping you grow and improve? Well this is of course not my show. It's going to be one of my clients shows. She has just created a community for her listeners and for her followers I guess. And she did a whole series, like maybe 7 or 8 different episodes, all on forming the community. And it was a good vehicle for her because she learned from each and every episode that she did. And because this forming a community is new for her, for herself.

22:06 She's formed communities for other, for clients of hers, but she's never formed a community for herself. And also technology has advanced so much since she was working for other people basically that it has changed the game a little bit. So what we learned from doing this theories is that people just loved it. I mean the analytics were through the roof for all 8 episodes. It was amazing. And so I think that she will want to be doing some more of that. So when you say she was doing community building, can you explain that just a little bit further? Like she's building a new community for herself? And she talked about it in eight episodes of that. Did I hear that correctly?

22:55 She's a business coach and up until recently, she's just had her clients and her podcast. And now she has built this community on the Mighty Networks platform, which by the way, is great. For some reason I have a problem with the name, but the Mighty, it's a, it's a great platform for community. So a lot of her, of course, she's mainly female, so a lot of her followers have joined this community. And in this community, she has an expert on finance, an expert on transitioning from corporate to being an entrepreneur, an expert on, you know, all the different things she has an expert on.

23:44 I happen to be the one for podcasting since I'm her producer. And so people will people in her community will come to us for questions and stuff like that. I just recently gave a presentation all on being a guest and finding guest and it's a great concept for for community not and she also has her LinkedIn newsletter. But there's something about being in a community and a virtual community that is so empowering. Yeah, I think that's great. Thank you for sharing that. And I think that's a room topic for one day when Mark comes back about building community and how do you do it?

24:27 What do you do when you've got your community built? What platforms can you use? I think that would be a really great topic and understand how she's doing it so that we could all understand how we could build our own community. So I think actually, if you'll add that to the list, I think that's a really, really great one. Jonathan, I saw your hand up. What do you have to add? So I was just going to share one my notebook trick that I tell all of my clients and also how I'm using my social media to help me figure out what people are looking for so quickly. The notebook trick is you need a notebook and you need to write down everything that anybody ever asks you because that's going to be your content on your on social media. Please have a notebook and don't rely on your phone.

25:10 Don't just have a notebook because you're going to get distracted as soon as you go onto your phone and you're going to lose track of what you needed to write down. And I'm using that as I'm building on my podcast because I'm not exactly sure what everybody what they want because I haven't put it out yet. And I'm doing, you know, I've done my research. I know what I want to be. I know how I want to show up, but I don't know exact questions I can answer for people. So I'm putting that out on in my stories, on Instagram, on LinkedIn a little bit and asking people directly if you know. If you were to. Have to tell stories. What are your problems with that? What do you run into when you're doing storytelling in your in your on social media and all those sort of things to try to get some feedback as to what I can answer in the podcast. So, Jonathan, you're telling us to go old school pen and paper? No technology I believe.

26:07 A lot of people that's that's freaking people out right there. Old school. I got to go get a notebook. A notebook. A real notebook, yeah. And a real pen service. OK, so let's keep moving forward. So now let's talk for just a minute about let's that we get to define what failure means. We've talked a little bit about is it real? Is it not real? How do you use it? So, you know, society teaches us to fear failure, but we get to assign the meaning to it. And whether it's a good outcome or a bad outcome, we get to assign what it means to us. And I think what one person sees as failure, another person might see as redirection or as an opportunity because it's all in the perception of how we're viewing it.

26:56 And, you know, like my podcast episode that I mentioned with my friend Doug, I saw the recording as, yeah, that's not really good. That sucked. I'm not going to say it was a failure, but it wasn't my best work. But yet my community and the people listened to it said completely the opposite and how much they loved that episode. So I'm curious, for those of you that are here with us today, how have you or your podcasts been redirected so? This wasn't so much with my podcast but it's still podcast related I recently. Lost a client? And at the time, my knee jerk reaction was to see that as failure. I saw that as a reflection upon myself and after processing that for a few days and you know, of course some good reminders from friends such as yourself that it really wasn't failure.

27:46 It was an opportunity to direct my focus to improving my business. Now I've got all this extra time. I don't want to say extra time, but I have time that I'm more aware of to work on my website, work more on my own podcast, just general self improvement. And that's really a great thing because there's things that really needed to happen. So, Ashley, thank you for sharing that. And yes, I saw your video and yes, I did comment on your video and talk about the courage that it took to post that video. But you are actually a little bit of the catalyst for today's conversation, correct, Dr. That is right. That is right. Because I think it's so important to reframe things that happened in our lives so many times we see them as failure when in fact, it's just a redirection or a higher power telling us we're not putting our efforts in the right place and we need to go this direction. And so I think there's so much to be said about the perception of failure, but I want to go to Janae. Good morning, Janae, thanks for joining us. When's the time that you or your podcast have been redirected? Good.

28:51 Morning. Morning. Thank you for that question. I, I love it, you know, talking about failure and how is it real? Is it not? And really, you know, what you guys have been talking about is, you know, we get to define what it is for us. As long as we're up for making changes, we're moving forward. I think we're learning from whatever we did wrong. And failure is an awesome word because it's, it's helps us fail forward because we continue. So where have I failed with high podcast? Great question. What I've seen is that it's been an evolution through time from being a solo podcast to then interviewing people to then interviewing really long.

29:33 And I'm like, OK, maybe I don't want to do that. And then, you know, continually adjusting the steering wheel because when we're driving to a destination, we're continually adjusting our steering wheel even if the car is going straight, there might there might be an accident. So then you're adjusting that steering wheel so it's never failure until we claim that it's a failure and we're no longer going to do it. That's when you fail. But if you continue to make improvements, continue to go forward and do good with what you've started, then absolutely there's a love. The driving analogy. Go ahead. There's a book called Rejection Therapy by Jia Jiang and he did 100 days of reject and and he started to look at to see what was that first failure look like and why did I stop or why run away, right.

30:28 He goes and asks $100 from this guard and he's like, no. And he's like, all right, thanks. And he just runs away. But he just thinks to himself, I should now, you know, take a look at it differently. And after those 100 days, he's no longer fear, has a fear of rejection. So I love that we get to fail. We get to, we just take that time back, re evaluate and come back even stronger. Thanks guys. Yeah, I really appreciate the we get to aspect of this. We get to fail. We get to refrain how we think about it. We get to decide how we're going to think about it because literally failure is just a stepping stone. It's not a wall.

31:08 How do you think for a minute about the people that you admire, that you look up to, that are having what you believe to be is the ultimate success in life and business? Maybe they're content creation or their podcast. What have they gone through? What you see is success, but what you don't see is the path or the journey that they walked and the stumbles and the setbacks and the failures that they've had. So let's think about Oprah Winfrey for just a minute. Do you remember that she was told she was unfit for television? Did you know that Michael Jordan didn't make his high school basketball team? And Thomas Edison famously said, I haven't failed. I just that I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. So here's my question for you.

31:53 What's an experience that you've had that you see now as a stepping stone that's had a positive impact on your podcast content creation, your life or your business? What's something that's happened to you that you now see, let's call it a blessing, that you see as a blessing in your journey? So I would say honestly, the biggest thing that ever happened to me that was really hard at the time, but has helped me in incredible ways because it allowed me to uncover my love of what I do, was actually when I was attacked in Boston. But it was one of those things that I wouldn't want in any other way. It was such a an important part of my development because it really did set me on the path I'm on now. Jonathan, I appreciate you sharing that. I've heard you share that story before, and it is a very powerful story because of what you were able to accomplish out of it.

32:50 So thank you for bringing that and for the path that you're on and the leadership that you're sharing with all of us here on a regular basis about how to show up on socials and make a positive impact in the world. So thank you, buddy. Ashley, I saw your hand up. Yeah, 2 events, the first being Hurricane Michael, which happened in 2018, and the second one being COVID, which was in 2020. Both of those events were traumatic and I would say that they had the biggest impact on me and my podcast because I don't think without either one of them, I would have ever have started. My podcast was the direct reflection of the things that I was feeling at the time and how I felt about the community and my desire to help.

33:39 And you know, I, I was on tour playing in different venues around Florida during COVID and I was forced to come home and I had all of this time. And I always knew I wanted to start a podcast. And I knew I wanted it to be about the tragedy we went through of Hurricane Michael and how we were getting through that. And there couldn't have been a better time. And if I hadn't started any of that due to those two tragic events, then I would probably just be playing Mustang Sally by the pool somewhere. I think 20 to 20 and COVID impacted a lot of us, but actually I dance along with you playing Mustang Sally by pool, that's for sure. But I think we all have had impactful stories of things that happened to us in 2020 and how that actually became a stepping stone for where we are today. That's a really, really great example. I'll tell you guys a quick little story after we got back from our vacation, because we were on vacation when that happened and realized we were going to be shut down for a bit longer than the couple of weeks that was promised. And then the government started handing out the money. What's the, what was the money?

34:44 There's an acronym for the money that they were handing out. Anybody remember what the acronym was? PUAII used to work for the Economic Department of Opportunity for Florida, so I got to help dispense some of that money. So at the time that happened, I did not have a podcast, had five people on my team. And through the course of about two weeks, we lost every customer because everybody was like, OK, we got to come back to this later. We need to stop spending. And so all of a sudden, I held on as long as I could in paying people and keeping the business afloat, but I needed to start it cutting back. But I applied for the money and I got denied for the money. But every member of Congress got the money. But real entrepreneurs like me that had people that were going to be struggling to feed their families because I had to lay them off, right?

35:34 Or to furlough them, whatever you want to call it, couldn't get the money to support that team, right? So that's another bone of contention for me. But I remember I asked my wife to come into my office for a minute and I was in tears telling her about what I was about to have to do and that I didn't get the money. And that, you know, here we were all these people that they rely on me to help be their family. And this was, she said this with the most loving intent, right? And with the heart of trying to support me. But it was absolutely the wrong thing to say to me at the time. She looked at me and said, well, you can always go get a job. I was crushed like.

36:17 I was crushed like. And I looked at her, I mean, we've been married almost 30 years now. And I looked at her and said, that's not what I needed to hear, right? I mean, I think she got it now or then. She got it after realizing what she had said. Because when you're losing everything that you spent years building and having to lay off people that work with you that you really care about, right, is crushing. But that's became a stepping stone for me. Like it became a catalyst for me to do things differently, to do things better, to start my podcast, to start creating more content. And so I think we all have a 2020 story or a 2021 story that's had an impact on us in one way or the other.

36:57 That was truly a stepping stone that helped us move forward. And that is really the important thing here is constant forward progress. Does anybody have anything else they would like to share about what was the stepping stone for you into your business or your podcast or content creation? I'm going to keep going. So remember last week that I shared when we were discussing mental health with Dominic that I shared a personal story, which I'm not going to go through it again, but I wanted to share the framework that I came up with and one more time just to make sure everybody has it. But I want to tell you a little story about it. So I got hired to be a coach for a car dealership and I was coaching the ownership team and then eventually ended up coaching the leadership team and I worked for that car dealership for 3 1/2 years. One of the greatest engagements I've ever had, people that I've gotten to work with.

37:52 It was really, really good. And so it had this group session with the owners and then I was doing one-on-one session with the owners and the general manager of the dealership. You know, car dealership people are a little bit of a different breed at times. And this is a big burly guy and bald headed and very loud and boisterous and in your face. He was an authoritarian leader is how I would describe him, right to command and control leader. And he looked at me, we were talking about something. He goes, there's either only success or failure. And I challenged him. Like I said, I don't believe that. I believe there's only success in learning. And I grabbed my flip chart out that I had with me and we started talking and I drew a quadrant on the flip chart and I said, let me explain.

38:38 And I gave him these four questions, which those four questions again are, is you looking at something that went bad in your life or your content creation or your podcast? The first question is what went right? Because something went right. You just didn't get the outcome that you want right. You didn't get the success or the result that you were directly looking for, but something that you did in that process went right. So acknowledge what went right. The second one is what went wrong, because if you didn't get the outcome that you wanted, then something went wrong. So what went wrong in that? It could be a dozen of different things, but trying to identify and acknowledge what went wrong is really important. The third question is, and probably the most important question, what did I learn? What did you learn from this process? Kind of use a stepping stone example again, How can this be a stepping stone for you?

39:27 What did you learn from this process? And write those down. And then the last question is, what am I going to do differently the next time? Said this the other day with Dominic. Brush off your big boy pants or big girl pants and get up and go do it again because the world needs you to do it again. And he looked at me with an amazement of like, I've never thought about this this way. This is genius. And he then took that and implemented it in the entire dealership and every leader in his dealership. And he called it the leadership Foursquare. And whenever they came into his biz, into his office with a problem, he asked them and went through these four questions with them. And so his name is Charlie.

40:13 He's a great guy. We got to be really, really good friends, right over the course of time that we work together. And I actually had the pleasure of going to his retirement party when he retired from the business. And it's just a little things like that that I think can have such a big impact. So I wanted to share those four questions again for you as you're thinking about what may not be going right in your life or in your content creation or in your business and how can you potentially look at reframing them? So just remember that to think about it rather than to be so down on yourself, right? Because to me, it's about the process and it's not just about the outcome. So I want to ask, skip ahead of my notes a little bit to something the story that I heard. Yeah, go ahead, Janae.

41:01 Good morning. Morning. Yes, beautiful, beautiful set of questions. I need to write them down so I can ask them myself. And something I wanted to bring up was the the growth of trees in two directions. And this is something I learned from Myron the other day because he says the tree is always growing in two directions. And if you look at that in our lives, right when you sow the seed in, immediately it pops open and then it's growing those roots to build that foundation so that it can support the tree. So if you think about how large a tree is, the root system is that strong. Now again, it's continually to moving forward, continuing to grow in both directions. And what does that show about us? All the accolades and all the cool things that we get to to celebrate.

41:51 You know, people think that's that's success. But anytime that we're working inside a deep feeling down, that's also growth. That's also something that we're continuing to do. So if we think that those down times is failure, then I love I love to reframe and say, Hey, no, that's actually learning. You're learning so that you can stand that foundation and you can be better person moving forward. So thank you so much for, you know, telling us those questions again and the story of Charlie. I I want to meet this guy now. He's a good dude, but I really appreciate the tree analogy because you're right, it grows in two directions. It goes up and it goes down and the roots are strengthening it, which is what our lessons do for us, right? It's what we go through, strengthening our roots and making us stronger as we keep reaching for the stars or for the sky to do new things and new different things. So I really, really appreciate that, acknowledge it, it, that analogy.

42:48 I'm curious if any of you listening have ever heard the story of Molly Bloom. Anybody. No. No, no, OK, Nobody's heard the story of Molly Bloom. Well, I'm going to tell you a quick story about Molly Bloom. I got introduced to Molly Bloom. Gosh, I remember when a friend of mine heard her speak and sent me a copy of the speech and said, you got to listen to this is so good. So Molly actually was a Olympic skier who got injured and couldn't ski anymore. And she was looking at what to do, how she can make money, and somehow she fell into high stakes gambling, illegal high stakes gambling, where she ran an underground poker game in LA and in New York. In 2013, she was arrested and charged with money laundering and illegal sports gambling.

43:39 Now, she pledged guilty and actually got off on probation. I'll tell you why in a minute. But there's a podcast episode that Ashley has the link to that she was interviewed on the show called First Contact with Laurie Segall, where she shared this quote that says, I had parents that taught me that it's OK to feel fear, but it's important to walk through it because fear will rob you of your dreams and of a full life. So it's in that practice of, OK, this scares something out of me. I'm going to take a deep breath and summon 20 seconds of courage, and I'm going to walk through and see what happened.

44:22 And you can watch this episode of Molly. But if you're really interested, Molly has such a fascinating story. Hearing her speak about her journey and watch what she did, it's really encouraging. Aaron Sorkin actually made a movie about Molly that you can find. It is called Molly's Game. And she ended up actually working with the FBI to get a whole bunch of people arrested, which is why she got off on probation. So it's just a really, really powerful story of how she went from being an Olympic athlete to running an illegal gambling scheme to being arrested working with the FBI. And now she's a public speaker sharing her story on a lot of different platforms.

45:02 But here's my question for you is we got about 10 minutes left in today's conversation. If you knew that failure was a stepping stone and part of your journey, if you knew that you weren't going to lose everything, you and if you just knew that there was really no such thing as failure and that it wasn't real and you could summon 20 seconds of courage to do something that you just really wanted to do, that you felt like it was going to be hugely impactful. What would you do if you could summon 20 seconds of courage? You know, Sid, this is hard because I've summoned those 20 seconds of courage to do some stuff a couple of times.

45:43 Give. Us an example. Give us an example. What have you done? Standing up and and speaking, you know, sharing my story for the hate crimes bill. I mean, that was that was scary. My story was used on the Senate floor, the United States Senate floor. Like that was scary. And I didn't know who was going to, you know, retaliate. Being one of the first people to get married in DC, that was a scary moment. Not something I wanted, not something I was expecting to be on the cover of The New York Times. But it was one of those things that I had to do. And I'm. Sure, there'll be other lots of amazing examples in your life, and I'm sure there are even more as you think about it.

46:24 So Dan, you're a coach and you understand this and you've been quiet all morning, so I'm going to call on you. What's an example of 20 seconds of courage? Or what would you do if you could summon 20 seconds of courage? Well, I'm with Jonathan on this. First of all, it these are tough questions and I've been reflecting honestly this whole conversation, listening in and recognizing that somewhere along the line in the last 20 years, I ignored the word failure and only looked at opportunity. And you've described it as stepping stones. I believe the book that John Maxwell that was referenced earlier describes it as stepping stones.

47:06 Those mistakes, I like to call them, or are opportunities to learn. And as far as this question goes, 20 seconds. And what would I do is everything I've done, you know, from standing up on a surfboard for the first time to standing in front of a classroom full of soldiers to teach my first lesson on podium in the military, to stand in front of a group of people and describe why sexual assault and sexual harassment is a bad thing. And I don't want that to, I laughed at that. And it's because of the, the mandatory training side of it. I want to be very clear that the topic and the content, it was interesting how it was received sometimes.

47:49 So I laugh about that. But the, the content was really, it was bringing awareness and training to the military. There's so many things that I've done, I would imagine took 20 seconds of courage to stand up and do. Thank you for sharing that, Dan, But I have a, it's kind of a different question for you. Now that this is kind of in the forefront of 20 Seconds of Courage, what would you do? How do you think you'll react differently when you go about doing something and building your business? Well, I think that ties into where I was going. I, I don't know that anything will change. I, I, you know, embrace new opportunities and embrace things that that I embrace things that I don't know in order to challenge myself in order to move forward and to learn on a consistent basis. I love the idea of learning in everything I do. It takes a lot to get there right. It takes a, it takes a lot to understand what that means and how do you get there right.

48:54 And so I want to start to wrap up today with a couple of things. So I will acknowledge that these were difficult questions and especially so early in the morning and most of you are just barely getting your coffee. But I appreciate you going along this journey with me as we talked about failure and that understanding that, you know, it's really not real. It's just part of your process. It's part of part of your becoming of who you are. But I want to take a second and acknowledge that bad things happen, right? And it, it's just part of life, right? That bad things happen. And when they happen, you have to deal with them. You can't totally ignore them, right? You've got to deal with them. And so throughout my journey, I came up with two questions to ask myself that have been really helpful to me when I'm giving myself the grace.

49:44 Because that's what you have to do. You have to give yourself the grace to deal with whatever that has happened in your life or in your business. And this is permission. And one of those permissions is asking yourself the question, how low am I going to go? Remember the story that talked about I laid on the floor in the dark, and that was a really, really low point for me, right? So ask yourself the question, how low are you going to go? And the second question, probably the most important of the two, is how long you're going to stay there. What these two questions are doing is giving yourself permission to deal with whatever it is you might be grieving at that moment, right? And understanding that you get to you get to choose how you're going to deal with this and how low you're going to let this take you.

50:29 So it's how low am I going to go and how long am I going to stay there? And I think that you'll find those two questions when you're dealing with something bad in your life very free and very liberating that you realize that you get to make the choice nobody else does. It's to make the choice about how you're going to deal with this. So with that, I want to thank you all again for being here this morning, hanging in with me. The good thing for all of you. Go ahead, Janae. Yeah, one thing I wanted to mention is yes, failures are going to be in our lives there. That there's the art form that Japanese use, and you've probably heard of this called kitsugi, where they'll take the broken pot and they'll rejoin those pieces with gold to highlight the learning, the lessons learned.

51:17 In fact, in the in the episode 9 of Star Wars, he did a very similar thing for Kylo Ren's helmet, using red out of, you know, bonding because it shows that he's gone through failure. But we're still standing, we're still here. So this is an amazing topic. Yes, it's kind of early for the deep buses, but we enjoyed the session. Absolutely. So today, thank you for that. I think I saw Gary D poster image of a coffee mug, like a green coffee mug that had been put back together with pieces of gold. Did anybody else see that? And he talked about that same similar message, I believe.

51:58 Did you Harding it? Maybe you saw it. I think I saw it on LinkedIn or something. But thank you for that and thank you all for being here. The good news is this is my last time to host for the week because I am out of the office on a little holiday Thursday, Friday and Monday through the weekend headed to the wine country with some friends so you guys don't have to deal with my deep questions for the rest of the week. Mark will be back hopefully the on Monday the 12th but I appreciate you guys. Not the 12th. Monday the 19th. So I appreciate you guys hanging in there with me today and having this very important conversation. We appreciate each and everyone of you being here. Go out there and make today great, everyone, and we'll see you right back here tomorrow morning at 6:00 AM Eastern Standard Time.

52:41 Have a great day everyone.