https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTgJ0mQi0uU

1 00:00:00.000 --\> 00:01:00.000 what's going on everyone i think one of
the best things about entrepreneurship is the lessons that we learn from
failure right and i try and share as many as i can uh on this on this
you know vlog podcast etc um because i think that if i can help you not
have the failure to learn the lesson then you can get the lesson without
the scar that being said one of the hardest things is learning the right
lesson from failure and so let me let me unpack that because i think
it's one of the most profound things that we as entrepreneurs or just we
as people have to learn is making sure that we're we're getting the
right takeaway so let me give you a couple different examples to show
you the wrong takeaways um and then kind of maybe walk through a
framework that might be useful so let's say uh you know you're in middle
school and you're dancing with someone of the opposite sex or whatever
you're attracted to whatever right you're dancing with someone you like
and uh i'll just use the guy girl example because that's what i'm used
to so it's like let's say i'm dancing with a girl and uh and she she
breaks my heart whatever right if i said ah girls aren't for me right
girls don't work right that would

2 00:01:00.000 --\> 00:02:00.000 be ridiculous right of course it would
be it would just mean that that didn't work in that one instance but if
i took the wrong lesson from it then i might swear off women all
together right and what's interesting is that that's an incredibly
ridiculous example but people do it every single day right it's like a
business owner who hires an employee and the employee doesn't work out
and says ah employees they all suck they're not for me right it's
learning the wrong lesson from the failure and so i think it's just as
dangerous maybe even more dangerous to learn the wrong lesson because
now you have a story that you've told yourself that reinforces the
incorrect lesson and then from that point going forward you you operate
under this false guise this false belief that you've told yourself that
you believe is right because you have experience right and just because
you have experience doesn't mean we took the right lesson from it and so
i'll tell you one that's uh that's been really that's been really
interesting for me to learn um is over the last uh you know over how
many years right

3 00:02:00.000 --\> 00:03:00.000 i have succeeded a lot based on inbound
marketing all right so that means paid advertising to generate demand in
inwards right and what's interesting about that is a lot of my successes
come from it but what's interesting is that i think that i've had a
really long-term perspective when it comes to my health right health and
fitness like when i work out and how i eat i've always tried to pick
really sustainable things that i can do forever right and i've been in
pretty good shape for you know almost almost 20 years um and so that's
that's been a successful action that i've been able to repeat over and
over again to the same degree my marriage is actually probably one of
the better things that i've done i picked that rationally my partner
laila and we both said we want to go this way we have this mission we
have these values and we'll figure out the love stuff as we go and we
actually got married before we were really in love um mostly just
because we thought we were so aligned and we've learned the love and
every year it's actually gotten better and that was a rational decision
that

4 00:03:00.000 --\> 00:04:00.000 was made by you know by both of us but
and it was based on long-term thinking but what's interesting is that
i've like been able to observe my own actions uh over the last decade
you know in business and i actually even think that i've still been more
short-term skewed in my thinking because of the thing that i got really
good at which is inbound and inbound you can immediately gen you can
snap your fingers and make money tomorrow and you can make a tremendous
amount of money in a very short period of time and i think in some ways
i may have learned the wrong lesson from my early success which is
success should come big and should come fast right for me right because
that's that's my own it's for my own belief and um as i look at the
things that i've done that i've done really well for a long period of
time none of them follow that that path right and so i've been you know
strategically or deliberately kind of deconstructing my beliefs around
what i think success should look like and what growth should look like

5 00:04:00.000 --\> 00:05:00.000 and i'm finding myself more and more
trying to move in the direction of sustainable growth which i remember
hearing when i was younger and being like ah that's horse crap but now
as you know i feel like i've gotten more scars and more experience i
actually think that if you're really looking on an endless horizon which
is what i try to shift myself towards then you only do things that you
think are worthwhile and your obsession my own obsession with the hurry
and the rush you know i would love to say disappears but at least it
decreases right because if you're like you get from the finite to the
infinite you go for the can i do this until i die i know that what i do
in fitness i can do until i die i know that you know the way that layla
and i run our marriage i can do till i die like the way that we we've
we've we've done this we can do so i don't know you might be like oh
you've only been married for five years sure maybe yeah maybe like maybe
maybe i'll have to keep saying this and then it's like you've only been
married 10 years only been married 20 years i don't know we'll see right
but it feels the same long-term way the way the other ones did because
we have there's way less volatility

6 00:05:00.000 --\> 00:06:00.000 it's just a slow and steady progress
and so when i think about what i like how i'm trying to build things now
it's different right uh in the beginning it was just like short hard
fast like let's go let's go let's go um and i feel like now as i've
gotten more experienced or more weathered it's more like okay this is
our current growth rate can we just sustain this right because if we if
we can just sustain this for 10 years we'll be at 100 million plus we'll
be at 200 million plus if we just do this and what that's forced me to
do is is increase the time between my thoughts and my actions which
entrepreneurship is so interesting because you have to kind of unlearn
some of the things that got you started in the beginning you can't do
anything because you're so paralyzed so you do need to decrease some of
the time because you start taking action right but at a certain point
you start becoming so good at taking action that you end up breaking
things right so you actually have to start increasing that time and what
that does is it gives you more space to make decisions that are in a
that are rational instead of emotional

7 00:06:00.000 --\> 00:07:00.000 and so that's when you see a competitor
run an ad or you see an employee leave with clients or whatever happens
and you want to have some reaction and most times no reaction is the
best decision and this is just like it's been this repeated trend that
i've had and so my current the current lesson that i'm trying to see is
is actually not from failure but making sure that i learned the correct
lesson from my success um and thinking it might have actually been bad
for me that i was that i was so successful so early on uh and it might
have been that i took the wrong strategy from it and so what i the
things that i'm trying to build now are far more enduring uh and more
stable and do not require me or my skill at all and by doing that i feel
like i'm getting closer to the first time in my life where i actually
have businesses that truly run without me um like actually not as in
like oh i don't do the day to day that's definitely one level and one
component of it

8 00:07:00.000 --\> 00:08:00.000 but when it can get to the point where
it truly grows without me and i'm really just there to guide direction
and be a sounding board for the leadership team that's in place i feel
like that's that's where i should go um and i feel like the things that
i'm building now are in alignment with that and it's been it's taken
years to get here um and so anywho my goal is if you are if you are in
it and you're not growing as as fast as you want but you are growing
then extrapolate that over 10 years right extrapolate over five years
and say can i just grow at 10 every every every quarter that's huge
growth right can i just do this every quarter can i just make this
sustainable can i make this consistent because what i'm seeing is the
richest people in the world just look for reliability they look for low
volatility which means less of this and so if i can decrease the
volatility of the business by making things more consistent and not
going for the big the big win that's like right there right

9 00:08:00.000 --\> 00:09:00.000 and i just stay patient um it continues
to pay dividends and so that's kind of the chapter that i'm in right now
um in the lesson that i'm trying to learn or or walk uh and so i figured
i would just share that with you and also just the thought process
around looking at your successes and your failures and making sure that
you learn the right lessons from them because i've definitely taken
lessons from my successes that that were not that were not correct and
i've taken lessons from my failures that were not correct and each each
of them is equally dooming or damning right and a fun final thought that
i'll leave you with is what if everything that you did when you were
successful was not because of you but because of outside forces and
everything that you've done to fail was your fault i've taken this
perspective and tried to apply it to my life and i've had an amazing
amount of inferences and thoughts that have gone around it that have
been completely new so it's like what if what if when you were
successful that one time maybe it wasn't because of you at all maybe it
was just

10 00:09:00.000 --\> 00:10:00.000 maybe it was just chance right maybe
it's just coincidence and i think a lot of times we apply those
frameworks to other people but never to ourselves so someone does
something bad we say it's their fault something good happens if we don't
like them we're like oh that was because they got luckier only because
of this outside circumstance that wasn't because of them but we never
apply that to ourselves and i think that if we do if you reverse it
because we always want to say we take credit for our for our wins and we
say our losses are because of outside circumstances but if we flip that
a lot of times i think you get some really interesting lessons that can
come from it and just just walking through the thought process what if
this wasn't because of me what other things happened that didn't line up
for me that were not my doing and by doing that you'll start to you'll
start to see different trends and different patterns then maybe you
cannot you can you can take advantage of opportunities when they aren't
because of you but you can still take advantage right and so anyways i
wanted to share this thought process with you for me it's been
incredibly valuable um and i hope it is valuable for you too so uh enjoy
and i'll see in the next

11 00:10:00.000 --\> 00:11:00.000 \[Music\] \[Applause\] you
