Being Motivated by Failure

One of the greatest gifts of being an entrepreneur is failure. Although the very thought of it as a younger man was abhorrent, today I have learned to harness the gifts of failure, learn from the mistakes, and apply them to my business and subsequent successes. We all must consistently fail if we are to succeed at all.

"Success is moving from failure to failure with no lack of enthusiasm." I had to learn this from really a lot of hard knocks. And I learnt that failure is actually my friend (I know, that sounds like a hashtag). Failure, once upon a time, was the enemy. It was something that kept me up at night.

But really failure is a way to reset the compass. "Success is moving from failure to failure with no lack of enthusiasm," is a quote by Winston Churchill. "Success is not final," was also said by Winston Churchill. That's really important to know. "Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It's the courage to continue that counts." Right?

Success is not final. We have this, or maybe I had this illusion that once you reached success that you're done, right? Game over. You're set. You're living in the mansion. You're getting fed Glacier cherries while having a pina colada served to you every half an hour next to your pool. I think that's just some kind of illusion that may occur in rap videos. Or maybe it's real, I don't know. I've never met anybody that's done that in their life, and I've met a lot of wealthy people.

But success is not final. Success is only ... This too shall pass, right? There's an organization that I'm involved with. I've been sober for a long time, and it plays a very big part in who I am as a business person. And one thing I have learned is “this too shall pass.” Right? Bad stuff, this too shall pass. And good stuff, this too shall pass—as much as we try to cling on to it.

I want to go over a couple of anecdotes. Then, I'm going to get into some bullet points of how to cope with failure. Or really in the words of our President's press secretary, these would be “alternate successes.” They're not failures--they're alternate successes, as President Trump's press secretary would say.

My Failure in the Music Industry

?The first story is this. Several of my stories come from the music business, because I was in that business for a long time before I did real estate. I remember when I was trying to start my career as a young music person, I wasn't really sure if I wanted to work in the back room being a record producer. So, when I was in London trying to break into the music industry, I wasn't sure which facet of it I really wanted to be in. I loved song writing. I loved producing. I loved singing and playing and pretty much all of it.

I auditioned for a band to be a singer. I was new to London. I auditioned to be in a band, as a singer. And I'm like, "I've got this. I've got this. I'm going to be in that band. Oh, yay. Here we go. Top forty here we come." And I failed. I didn't get the gig. I was so crushed because I'd spent so many years trying, playing in other bands. I found it so crushing that I had these thoughts of, "Well, maybe I should do something else," which is what happens when we fail. We begin to think, "Do you know what? I'm no good at this. I shouldn't do it." The debating society that I referred to chirps away in the background saying, "Yeah. You're no good. You're never going to succeed at this. You should just give up, right? Just give up and go drive a bus." Not that there's anything wrong with driving a bus.

I found it so crushing and I went down a little bit of a black hole. It took a minute to get out of it. Then, I discovered that I really enjoyed the engineering part of making records, and I got my job in a studio and I did really well. I rose quickly, and then I was hired by this crack team. I was only about 18 and I was hired by this crack team of record producers in London who were knocking out loads and loads of hits. I wasn't working for a studio; I was working for them. I worked with them for a few months, and then I got fired.

I got fired. They just said, "We don't think you're cut out for this industry my lad." I went home with my tail between my legs. I just couldn't believe it. I could have sworn that I had some kind of talent for this industry. I went home and then I hit another black hole of despair, and thoughts of giving up again crossed my mind. I was very young. I was around 20 years old.

I didn't listen to the voices. I didn’t listen to the debating society that always tells me that I will fail. I just dug in. Here's something that I have lived by: if I'm going to fail, I would rather fail of my own volition. I want to make my choices so that if I crash and burn, I can say, "Well, great. I did it on my terms. That isn't going to work out, so let's move on." I have a pretty profound belief that there is a mother universe taking care of all of us, certainly taking care of me. I've had this spiritual connection for many years now. I don't really worry about the future.

When I got fired, I thought it was the end of the world. However, I (soon after) had the opportunity of going and putting my application in a whole gang load of recording studios in London. I managed to get into this B grade studio, because all of the A grade studios were really hard to get into. You needed so much experience. This B grade studio that I got into, I somehow managed to walk in on the right day. They gave the job. It was the birth of the electronic music scene because I straddled traditional records going into digital records, and I happened to be a bit of a computer nerd. Eventually, I managed to capture all of this business from all of these really cool British artists, many of whom you will know if you remember records from the 90s. And I created this really great career because I failed.

8 Bullet Points for Handling Failure

Failure isn't the end. It's a recalibration of direction. I want to give you some bullet points of how to handle fear. These are how I handled failure.

Don’t Make it Personal.

Even if it is personal, make it personal. When you don't get a listing, for example, or if you go for an interview for a job, or you're auditioning for a band and you don't get it, don't take it in. Don't think that you are the problem. Don't make it personal. It just happens on that day that someone else needed to get that job that you didn't. That's it. The universe said, "Well you know what? This woman that's going in before you on a listing appointment, she needs to get this listing more than you do today. So, she's going to get it." That's how I handle it. I never, ever, ever make it personal.

Learn and Adapt

When I fail at something, I always ask this question. This is to my real estate people, or this can be to any entrepreneur out there. If you don't get a position that you're going for, or a listing, or a job, I very politely ask (and it's happened to me a million times in my career) the person or the entity, the group or the business, "So I can learn and grow, can you tell me why you chose someone else and didn't choose me?" “So that I can learn and adapt, or learn and grow, can you please tell me, if you don't mind, why you chose someone else over me?” And you need approach it in a way that's really from the heart. Saying "Well, why the F did you choose them?!" will never work.

Don’t Obsess

We all have a million clients that love us, right? We've got clients that just love us. They will work with us all the time. We never really have to chase them down and beat them with a stick into submission so that they actually work with us. And then there are the two or three that are really slippery. So, what do we do? Well, what do I do? I obsess on the people that don't want to work with me rather than focusing on the people that do. It's so counter-intuitive. If you don't get hired by someone, don't obsess on it. Just realize that it's par for the course and move on. Obsessing is taking it very personally again.

Thoughts Become Things

I got this from The Secret. This is something that I live my life by. Thoughts become things. If you think you're going to fail all the time, guess what? You're going to fail. You are going to have a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now you can sit here and go, "Well, I want to be the President of the United States" all day long. And that probably isn't going to happen either. But if you focus on the three things that I just said, and then you focus on your goals, and focus on the big picture of where you want to be, thoughts most certainly become things. Even when it comes from left field. You know you might think, "Well, I want to be the number one real estate agent in San Diego," and it ends up that somebody from Canada says, "Come up and run my company for me." Whatever. The universe will figure out your plan.

Don’t Look for Approval

This is a business. It's tough. It's hard. Sometimes it's going to feel really icky, and you're going to want to have that slap on your back. I'm going to give you an analogy. I worked with a guy. I never really worked on that much rock, but I worked with a guy called Danzig, Glenn Danzig. I produced an album for him. I remember being in the middle of that mix room and looking at him like, "Dude, you haven't said anything while I'm here." (Because I was looking for loyalty as he was interviewing other mixers). And he looked at me, and said, "Dude, if you want loyalty, get a dog." And I'm like, "Okay. Fair enough."

It's a business. Yes, of course, our business people can become friends. But don’t look for approval. The only person that needs to give you approval is you, right? The only person whose opinion you should care about is you. The only person, when you put your head on the pillow at night, that should matter is yourself. And if you're not going for it and if you're not giving it 1000%, guess what? I believe you're betraying your own destiny. Because if you play safe, or you play in the middle, you just are betraying the future you.

When you play in the middle, when you play it safe, you are betraying the future you. I'm not saying risk it all, and sell the house, and go and grow peanuts in Georgia. But I am saying, "Go for it", right? We've only got one shot. We've only got one life. Gary Vee says that all the time. Don’t betray the future you.

Stand in Their Shoes

When you think somebody has made a wrong decision, when you think that they've got it out for you, or you want to understand why they went with someone else—stand in their shoes. De-personalize it. Look at the situation through their point of view and see, "Okay. It makes a little bit more sense right now that they picked their auntie to list the house rather than me."

When a situation goes wrong—own your part in it. We all like to go, "Well, he was a dick. I hated working with the guy. He was just an egomaniac. He was just a nightmare." But what was your part in it? What did you do? Did you bring anything to the argument? Did you bring anything to the table? Calling yourself out on your own shit is so massively important, and so healthy, and so cleansing. Digging out that dark stuff from within that we kind of ingest and hold on to forever. It's toxic. But when you figure out what your part in it is, your failures will decline. It's that simple.

How Can I Better Be of Service?

How can I better be of service? Sometimes you can lose the gig even if you are potentially the right person for the job. However, you don't take it personally, and you look at what your part is in all of it, and you figure out how better you can be of service.

Sometimes you're going to win. Sometimes you're going to lose.

But I guarantee you if you look at all eight of these points and refer them to your failures—you absolutely will go up. Your business will improve. Your income should improve. And the ratio of failures to wins will go up.

I'm going to finish with one last anecdote. Guys have sat in my office, I'm going to rattle off three of them, JC, Noah, and Nick. They are three guys that work in my office, and there are many others. They sat across the table from me and they said, "How long is it going to take?" And I said, "It could take up to two years to break into this industry." All three of them worked their tails off and they risked everything, and they sat in there grinding away with no guarantee that this was going to work. The only guarantee that they had was that they were going to get up every single day and give it everything. I'm happy to say that all three of those guys now are massively successful agents. I couldn't be prouder of them. I couldn't be prouder of everyone in my office. Failure can come really quick. Success takes a long time. And it takes doing the same thing over and over and over again.

I'm going to finish with this last phrase: Failure and fear are bullies. And if we stand up to them and don't let them in, and don't listen to the debating society, they will never win.