Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: If you want more time, money, freedom, and have a business that's not reliant on you, then you're in the right place. Each week, Mark Creedon, along with some of the very best business minds in the world, will take you through simple, practical steps you can take to create the business you always wanted. From his own practical experience, Mark will show you how to work less, make more, and get the business you always wanted, the one that you deserve.
Now here's your host, one of Australia's most sought after business coaches, Mark Creighton.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Welcome to the latest edition of the Mastermind for Business podcast. If you're listening to this podcast and you are thinking, I just don't know if I can get my business to the next level because I've failed, then you're in the right place because that's what we're going to talk about today. And as always, we've got Nick joining us. Hello, mate. Good morning, Nick. I think failure is a really underrated asset and I think that it has helped most of the people. In fact, all of the people I know have failed in one way or another. And mate, that's what I'd like to talk about in today's episode.
[00:01:32] Speaker C: Sounds good.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: A few episodes ago, we had Chris McNaughton in the studio, Nick. And Chris was talking about how he had failed. He'd failed in some of his business ventures and how much it taught him. One of the things that we talk about. So every year we go to the Gold coast with Michael Yardney and a bunch of other experts and we spend five days on wealth retreat. By the way, wealthretreat.com au have a look at it. It's an amazing five days and well worth going to. But we spend five days on the Gold coast and one of the things that often comes up is people talk about what are they afraid of in terms of their life or their business success? And people say they're afraid of failure, but in fact, often people are afraid of succeeding. And the reason they're afraid of succeeding is because they've been lucky in lots of ways. They made their own luck and they've succeeded, but they've never actually failed. So they haven't had that lesson of failure. And I want to talk today about that, the importance of the lesson of failure. I was talking to Rons Lee Vaz from we are podcast the other day and he was telling me about Philip McKernan. Now, Philip is a highly sought after leadership coach around the world and he's got this great quote and it says, your greatest gift, your greatest gift lies next to your greatest wounds. Want to make sure I had it right?
[00:03:13] Speaker C: Greatest gift lies next to you. Greatest wounds.
[00:03:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Your greatest gift lies next to your greatest wounds. So in other words, the hurt that you've suffered, the wounds that you've endured, in fact, are your greatest, the greatest gifts are right there.
What you can learn from it and what you can teach from it is right there. If you look hard enough for it.
[00:03:38] Speaker C: If you let yourself.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: Yeah. And so I thought there might be some people listening to our podcast, Nick, and they sort of go, yeah, that's all good, but I've failed in the past, and it hasn't worked for me. And I've tried this and I've tried that, and I just wanted to spend some time talking about the importance of failure.
And you made a comment in the last episode where you said, there's no losses, there's only learning.
And I think that's one of the things that we're not really taught. So we're taught, let's not even talk about the way sort of systems work now. But when I was a kid, and even when you were a kid, we never talked about failure.
What you were talked about was achievement. What do you want to achieve? You get recognized for your achievement. I mean, I know that today everybody gets a participation award, but we'll leave that conversation for another time. But in your time and in my time, we were recognized for achievement.
We were never recognized for failure. And yet failure, I think, has been the greatest teacher of me. And pretty much everybody I know, pretty.
[00:04:59] Speaker C: Much everyone that's ever created something or built something or invented something has.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: You look at, if we look at some things around history, I think Sylvester Stallone took the script for Rocky to countless number of producers and studios before he got to the point where his, that broke, sold his dog. Right? He did. So for him to get to the point, Colonel Sanders was knocked back by countless numbers of investors. He was 70 before he finally got Kentucky fried chicken up and up and running.
But even around us, some of the most successful people I've known have had countless failures beforehand. They're either failures in business or sometimes they're just failures in life. Right. They've kind of really screwed things up.
I certainly fall into that category as well. But I often think that the failures that I went through were absolutely the best teachers I had because they taught me a number of things. And so if you're listening to this podcast now going, do you know what, Mark? It's good that you guys are talking about all of this success, but everything I've turned my hand to, I failed.
What I want you to do is instead of thinking, you know, I'm a failure, first of all, the idea is not to attach the failure of a thing to you.
Right. So it failed. You didn't.
But the other thing, I think, is to remember that what you have to do is work out what was the lesson, what was the teaching that I got from that failure.
[00:06:39] Speaker C: Embrace it, right?
[00:06:40] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%.
[00:06:41] Speaker C: Embrace that loss. Embrace that failure and use it. Use it either as a lesson, as you said, as experience to learn from, or use it as motivation.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll talk about that in a second, but certainly use it as motivation. I think that two of the essential ingredients for success in business is resourcefulness and resilience.
If you don't fail, you are not going to learn resourcefulness.
[00:07:12] Speaker C: No.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: But more importantly, you're not going to learn resilience.
[00:07:15] Speaker C: Never.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Right. So if you've actually experienced some failure and you've come back from that failure, or frankly, you haven't necessarily come back, but you've just survived it. Right?
[00:07:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: You've just survived it.
[00:07:30] Speaker C: Like anything in life, if you get knocked down and you get back up, that is a win.
[00:07:37] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:07:38] Speaker C: That bounce back is part of learning from failure.
[00:07:42] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:07:42] Speaker C: And that builds that resilience.
[00:07:44] Speaker B: That's right. I get knocked down, I get back up again, you're never going to keep me down.
[00:07:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: Good one.
[00:07:51] Speaker C: Should write a son hit wonder, that one.
[00:07:52] Speaker B: Yeah, but it's true. Right. You learn resilience from that.
[00:07:57] Speaker C: 100%.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: And so what happens is the more you learn resilience, the more you're likely to achieve the next level if you actually embrace that resilience and use it.
[00:08:08] Speaker C: Yes, that's right. And not just feel sorry for yourself.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:12] Speaker C: And sit in that space of failure. You need to move on from it, learn from it and move past it. That's the only way that resilience is built.
[00:08:21] Speaker B: Yeah. So I want to talk about a process here, because I believe that when you've struck a failure, there's a process you must go through. And I think the first thing that you have to do is to accept it. Then the second thing is I sit with that failure for a few moments or a day or whatever it might be, but it's for a very finite period of time. I sit with that failure, I look at it, and then the next thing I do is I review and I go, okay, what did I learn. What has it taught me about that particular project or opportunity or thing.
But the second part of the learning is what has it taught me about me?
And what we often find is that people will fail in endeavors because they are trying to act in areas which are not sort of their genius.
[00:09:17] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:09:18] Speaker B: Right.
So one of the big things I love to do is. And I fail on things all the time, Nick. I give it a shot and I fail. And I like to go, okay, well, that sucked. Right? That was right. Proper shit.
[00:09:32] Speaker C: Horrible.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: Yeah. So I failed at it. And I'm going to sit for a few moments, and I'm going to let it wash over me. I'm going to let my mind accept the fact that I failed.
[00:09:42] Speaker C: And is that almost like. So you can recognize it? Yeah. So that then when it happens again, you can adapt to it. You've been through it before, almost.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: So you adapt to it. But the other thing that happens is that, yes, you adapt to it, but I think that you sit in that failure for a much shorter period of time. Yes. Because you go, okay, well, I failed. I'm bugger that. Let's move on.
[00:10:03] Speaker C: It's not as big of a deal as it was.
[00:10:04] Speaker B: No. Right. You pick yourself up 100%. It is actually building resilience. And we could talk about. There's a great book on it, too, by the way, called the Resilience Project, which is a brilliant book, talking about resilience. And they talk about young children living in poverty in India and how resilient they are and how grateful they are. Oh, yeah.
So what I like to do, if I've tried something or I've tried a project or tried a business venture, whatever it might be, and it's fail is stop. Number one, accept it. Number two, sit with it for a while. Number three, think about what did I learn? Therefore, what could I have done differently about that particular thing?
[00:10:43] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:10:43] Speaker B: And then number four is, what did I learn about me?
And was I acting or practicing or moving in an area which is really not my zone, not my flow, not where I should be?
And then the fifth step is to go, right, what am I going to do now? How do I pick all this stuff up, all of these learnings, all these things about what do I learn about the project, what I learn about me personally, and how am I going to apply that moving forward? How am I going to apply that in the next stage of whatever it might be? And I think if you follow that five step process, you just end up with this greater level of resilience.
[00:11:26] Speaker C: Yeah, 100%. I think when you've got something that goes wrong, too, like that, and if you sit in that space and sort of enjoy it, I guess, live in it for a bit, then you enjoy the success more when it comes along, too, don't you?
[00:11:41] Speaker B: Yeah, you do. Because you can reflect back on the failure and go, well, do you know what? It actually didn't keep me down.
[00:11:46] Speaker C: No. And here I am now. So the achievement seems greater. The sense of achievement seems greater.
[00:11:52] Speaker B: Yeah. I spent some time with. Yes. Yeah. So Jordan's one of our members in our mastermind program, and Jordan tells the story about he's a plumber, and this isn't failure, but this is judgment.
So he tells the story that he went to a restaurant and somebody said to him, made a comment, which was a demeaning comment about the work that he does, and he went, that's all right. I just took that as a great motivator.
Now, that person that made that demeaning comment means I'm just going to make more money than you.
[00:12:24] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:24] Speaker B: I'm going to be more successful than you.
I'm going to have a better life than you.
[00:12:29] Speaker C: It.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: And so I think you can take failure, and you mentioned this before, you can take failure. You can take all those things we said. We can follow that five step process and look at all the lessons we learned about it and what we might do differently. But I think the other thing you can then do is use it as a great motivator.
[00:12:42] Speaker C: Yeah. 100% losing or failing in any way in any life. Like I said, there is no losing.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: Right.
[00:12:51] Speaker C: There's only learning. But it does motivate you, and you can use it as fuel. But the other thing that it does, too, is that it pushes you into, I guess, this mind frame or this mindset where you feel more motivated to take that risk that you probably wouldn't have taken before. You may be more likely to want to sort of take that step that you might not have been willing to before because you are motivated to go that extra length, take that extra step.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: Whatever it may be, resilience and resourcefulness, because you're going to go, all right, well, shit, that didn't work.
[00:13:28] Speaker C: Maybe I have to step outside of my comfort zone a little bit.
[00:13:30] Speaker B: Yeah, that was crap. So what do I need to do differently? Or maybe I need to get different people around me. Yes.
How do I change my plan and my structure so that I'm not working in zones or areas that are not the best for me? Not my genius zone. Yeah.
[00:13:47] Speaker C: And I guess that goes back to, it's doing the exact same thing as one great space that it puts you in. There is it helps you create, doesn't it? Like failure. And the recognition of failure helps those creative juices flowing, helps you think of ideas or step out. Like I said, step outside of your comfort zone. Think of something that you may not have done before that you could do differently that you wouldn't have seen yourself doing until you'd failed.
[00:14:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:15] Speaker C: You probably could have never seen yourself trying that or implementing this within your business if you hadn't had that failure experience.
[00:14:23] Speaker B: And I think the other thing, too, Nick, then, is when you look at a failure. And so what I'd like our listeners to do now is to think about this.
Go back and think of something that you've failed at, and stop and follow that process. So think about, okay, I tried that, and I failed. What did it teach me about the thing? What did it teach me about me? What can I do differently, and how am I going to use that learning?
And the final thing on that is just remember, with failure, failure comes at a certain point in a journey. If you were to draw a timeline of a project or whatever, it might, failure comes at a certain point. But just before that, failure was a point of success. Yes.
[00:15:13] Speaker C: And just after it, there will be as well, right?
[00:15:15] Speaker B: Correct. So it's only if you got 80% of the way and then you failed, or you got 40% of the way. At the 39th percent mark, you are still a success. At the 79th percent mark, you are still a success. So go back and identify what was that 39th percent mark? Because I succeeded that and give thanks for, be grateful for, show gratitude for, and critically examine that 39. 1% steps. Right. That you actually achieved something. And so if you failed at a particular project, the trick, I think, is to go back and go, all right, at what point did it fail? What was the step immediately preceding that? And do you want to go back to that step? Is that step good enough?
But more importantly, consider that step to be a fork in the road.
[00:16:04] Speaker C: Yeah. And that's what that failure is, isn't it? It is a stepping stone to the next success.
[00:16:10] Speaker B: It is, absolutely.
[00:16:11] Speaker C: The previous success was there. It's not the end of the road.
[00:16:14] Speaker B: No.
[00:16:14] Speaker C: And that's a problem when you fail or you feel like it's everything. You feel like it's the end of the road. There's no light at the end of the tunnel, but really, all it is is a stepping stone to the next success.
[00:16:25] Speaker B: I can remember, Nick, when you used to do a bit of telemarketing work, and I remember saying to geez, how do you do this? Telemarketing calls, outgoing telemarketing calls, because it can be just be draining. And ultimately it was. And you only want to do it for a short period of time. But the truth was every no that you got in the outgoing call was one step closer to the next. Yes, you got. And that was the thought process that kept you in.
[00:16:50] Speaker C: Yeah, 100%.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: So if you're listening to this and you go, yeah, do you know what?
I think that I really want to move things to the next level, but I've tried a few things and they've failed. Go back and look at the journey. Go back and go, okay, so at what I failed, at what was the point immediately beforehand, and then consider that to be a fork in the.
Maybe to quote M. Scott Peck, now is when you need to take the road less traveled. So when you get to that fork in the road, you made a certain decision and it didn't work. Okay?
That shit, life happens. It didn't work. Now let's go back to that step just before the failure and go, what were my options and what other choices could I have made?
[00:17:36] Speaker C: I've done differently.
[00:17:37] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's the time to critical examine. But you don't have to examine, like we said before, about look at what could I have done differently. You don't have to go back to step one.
[00:17:47] Speaker C: No.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: Unless you failed at step two.
Right. But if there's 100 steps and you failed at step 40, then just go back to step 39.
And if you sit at step 39 and go, yeah, you know what? When I look backwards, I've done pretty damn good job to get to this point. And then you look at that as the fork in the road, that's how you're going to move forward. That's how you're going to embrace the failure, and that's how you're going to learn from it.
[00:18:15] Speaker C: It's hard, though, isn't it? It's hard in that space and in the time. It is hard. It's hard to see that, to have that mindset in that time. But it's like the old yin and yang, isn't it?
[00:18:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:28] Speaker C: Like anything in life, there has to be negative events. There has to be failures and losses, and we have to, I guess, be in a negative space sometimes to be able to achieve and enjoy the positive space that is just life. Unfortunately, we do take steps backwards. Bad things do happen. Bad things sometimes completely out of our control can be things that just happen. You could have been doing really well. You could have made some really good inroads into some progress and some growth. Then something happens and it gets you down at peak, but that is all part of it. Embracing that, being kicked down at peak actually helps you then enjoy the positive, enjoy when you are having that success. Like I said before, it makes it sweeter.
[00:19:18] Speaker B: Well, it does, because otherwise you won't appreciate the value of the success. And, you know, Nick, you're talking about something coming along. We've got people in mastermind program who were travel agents. And then Covid hit. I mean, there could not be two more opposing forces, right? Massively opposing forces to be. If you're going to be in any industry during COVID I mean, hospitality was rubbish. There's a whole bunch. But I mean, travel agent, jeez, just the.
So there is always going to be something that came along, but they're actually a really good case study, because what they did was they went, okay, we're not going to pivot and do something different. We're going to work out. Up until the day before COVID came, what had we achieved and what we were good at?
And then we go to the fork in the road. Well, we're going to take that road because that's the COVID road. So what's the other alternative that we can now take? And that's exactly what they did. They went through a rebranding and a different value proposition and actually niched down their market and changed who and what they are.
[00:20:20] Speaker C: I think that's what you were saying before, is use it as an opportunity.
Sit in that space, learn from it, and then use it as an opportunity to either grow, learn from, go back and see what you've done properly, or use it as an opportunity, like they have to make those changes that you may have probably needed to do anyway.
[00:20:39] Speaker B: Yeah, look, it was actually on their mind. They were going, maybe we should do this, maybe we should do that. And so when Covid comes, you could either go, holy crap, Henny Penny, the sky is falling, or you go, well, it's a rubbish situation, but now is a real opportunity for us. And I think that gets back to what you said, to be fair on what you said in our last episode, too, that there's no losses, there's just learning, 100%. So if we take the learning and we work out what we're going to do with it. So the whole concept of today was really to say this. If you're listening to this podcast and you're wondering whether or not you can achieve the success that you want in your business. And what's leading you to wonder that is the failure you've had in the past. Then know this, that failure is simply a stepping stone. It is actually not a roadblock. It's not what's stopping you from achieving success.
It's what's stopping you from believing that you can achieve success.
And the minute that you realize that that failure is a learning opportunity and you go through that process that we said where you got you sit in it, you think about what it taught you about the particular project or concept, what it taught you about you and what you can go about doing differently. And then you go back to the point just immediately before the failure and work out that you were successful up to that point in time and use that as a fork in the road. You are going to take those learnings, that resourceful, that resourcefulness and that resilience away from that failure and push it into your next level of success.
[00:22:23] Speaker C: And I think the important thing to remember as well when you're saying you learn about yourself in that space is to not be so hard on yourself. Turn this around, use it like we said, use it as motivation, use it as a learning experience.
Turn it around and make it beneficial for you. Don't sit in that space and feel sorry for yourself and let it break you down and let it get to you that much. Go easy on yourself. These things do happen. Life happens.
Unfortunately, these things just happen.
[00:22:56] Speaker B: So we just have to deal with it.
[00:22:57] Speaker C: But it's the response. It is the response that's key.
[00:23:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And taking back and going, you know what? Things are going to come along and there's always an x factor. Right. And I think it was Eleanor Roosevelt that said, I forget the quote, nick, but it was about the man who's bloodied and mud, but at least he's got in the ring. Yes. Somebody listening to this podcast will know exactly what I'm talking about. The man in the ring. I think it is Eleanor Roosevelt, but it's all about the concept that it's better to get in the ring and copper belting than to never get into the ring at all.
[00:23:35] Speaker C: 100%. And you will feel better for it, because if you walked away from not getting into the ring, you would be so distraught and hard on yourself.
[00:23:43] Speaker B: Well, you wonder, right? You wonder what if constantly questioning. And I think the last thing, Nick, is that, and I don't want this to be a shameless plug in any way. But I think this is the great value of a mastermind. Right? It's the great value. So I know that in our mastermind group, our mastermind business accelerator, I know that in there, people share their wins, their losses, their fears, their frustrations, their failures, as much as their success.
And having that group of people around you, and it's got to be the right group. Right.
This is not the tall, poppy group that celebrate when you failed. No, this is the group that sort of pick you up, dust you off and go, okay, let's go through this process. What do we learn from that? Well, shit, let's not do that again.
[00:24:28] Speaker C: And isn't it reassuring or comforting to know that someone else has been through it?
[00:24:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:34] Speaker C: When you're in a real spot of one of the worst spots you've ever been in, feels like that at the time anyway. One of the most comforting things you can have is knowing that someone else has literally been in that position before.
And there is probably no better people to talk to than people who have.
[00:24:50] Speaker B: Been there before, 100%. And that's the great value of, I think that's the great value of mastermind groups. So, guys, by the way, this is not like a networking group. I'm not talking about going to a business networking group, talking about going to a true mastermind group. A group of people who are similar to you. Some are further along their journey, some are further behind in their journey, but people who are where it's a safe place to openly share. And I think that's one of the things that I love about our mastermind group. It's also one of the things, Nick, that happens at wealth retreat. You get like minded people in a room for five days, and lifelong friendships are joined, come about as a result of wealth retreat.
[00:25:27] Speaker C: Yeah, I think one of the things about wealth retreat, too, is that mindsets are formed, great mindsets are formed. I've seen plenty of people come away from the intensives and the wealth retreats, especially with completely different mindsets. Talking before about Jordan and his mindset of saying, oh, well, I'm just going to make more money than you. You can say whatever you want, I'm just going to go work harder, I'm going to go make more money than you, and that's how I'm going to get back at you. And that mindset is really big key to achieving any of these things right now. And going through those values and being able to get back up is having the correct mindset.
[00:26:01] Speaker B: And it's funny you should say that because I actually met Jordan at Wealth Retreat. There you go. So guys, we've spent a lot of time talking about wealth retreat today.
It is a metropole product, but it's not a shameless plug. Having said that, wealthretreat.com au this is going to be really exciting because we've got Mark Burris coming along as a keynote speaker. Super excited about that. Wealthretreat.com au worth having a look at. Hey Nick, thank you for today.
[00:26:24] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:26:24] Speaker B: It's been good fun guys. Just keep this in mind. Failure is not final.
It's not fatal. It's not final. Failure is neither fatal nor final. It is a learning opportunity. So if you've had a failure, please, I hope that you learn it and apply it. And if you would like to know a little bit more about how a mastermind group can support you with that, Metropolmastermind.com au. If you like what you've heard in today's podcast, please like us. Please subscribe. Makes it easier for other people to find us. And if you know someone who you think would benefit from it, please share this podcast with them. We would love to help as many people as we can on our mission to help people to have the business that they always wanted. I'm Mark Creedon, your host. Between now and when we speak next, please make sure you spend time with those who matter most.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: Thanks for joining us on the mastermind for Business podcast. If you're ready to have a business that you're not a slave to, check out Metropolemastermind.com au or have a chat with Mark and the team at all the W's. See what's possible today.
