Ep 661 | The Dinner Table Question That Built a Billionaire

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. I think that most families, when they have a family dinner, they, they'll sit around the dinner table and have all different sorts of conversations, but oftentimes that family will talk about maybe what went right during the week or during the day, the good grades or the achievements or the wins. But in the Blakely household, things were a little different. Every week, Sarah Blakely's father would look at her and her brother and he would ask a single question. He would ask, what did you fail at this week? And if they didn't have an answer, he was actually pretty disappointed with them. That one question, the simple reframing of failure, might be one of the most powerful parenting and leadership strategies I think ever practiced because it built in, in Sara Blakely a mindset that would one day lead her to create a small company you may have heard of called Spanx. And become the world's youngest self-made female billionaire. See, Sara Blakely grew up in, in Clearwater, Florida, and her dad was a trial lawyer. Every week he'd ask his kids about their failures, their failures in school, sports, social life, anything, anything. And if Sara said she hadn't failed at anything, her dad would say, 'Oh, that's, that's too bad. That means you didn't try anything new.' He didn't celebrate failure for failure's sake. He celebrated effort. He celebrated risk and experimentation. And it, it seems to have worked out okay for him. By the time Sarah had reached adulthood, she had a completely different relationship with fear than most of her peers. Failure was not something to avoid. It was something to collect. That's what she was being taught from a young age. It meant she she was playing at the edge of her ability. Now fast forward to her mid-20s, she was selling fax machines door-to-door. Many of you probably are aware of this or heard this story. She was selling fax machines door-to-door, which was not exactly the, the glamorous future she had envisioned. But she did have an idea, and her idea was about women's undergarments that were comfortable and, and a bit more flattering without, without the visible lines. Now, most people probably would have stopped at the first or even second no. Sarah heard hundreds of them. The hosiery mills turned her down. The patent attorneys laughed at her. The retails were not— the retailers were not interested in her product. But all of that early conditioning, that dinner table question, it had really rewired the way she thought. Because failure didn't scare her. Not trying actually is what scared her. So eventually one mill, I think in North Carolina, decided to take a chance. And then she wrote her own patent. And she hand-packaged her first orders. And when Oprah put Spanx on her favorite things list, her entire world changed. Sara Blakely became a billionaire. And when she was asked what made the difference, she didn't credit luck or intelligence or connections. She credited her father who taught her to be proud of failing. Now, no surprise, this story isn't really about ladies underwear. It's actually about mindset. See, most of us were probably raised to believe failure is not a good thing or failure is even final and that it means we did something wrong. So we, we have a tendency to play things safe. We stick to maybe what we're good at. We avoid embarrassment. But I think that conditioning kills curiosity and creativity, and it certainly kills growth. Sarah's father, I think, did a great job flipping the script. He made failure the evidence of engagement, and that, that single shift from avoiding failure to collecting attempts that turns that fear into, into fuel like it did for Sarah. So, you know, I hear this story, I think about what, what Sarah did. No surprise, I ask, how can I use it in my own home? How can we all use in our own home if we have, if we have kids? And if you don't have kids, stick with me for a moment. Here's what it might look like. Number 1, make failure a weekly conversation. Maybe it's at dinner or in the car or before bed or whatever. Ask your kids, hey, what did you fail at this week? And let them talk and then celebrate their attempts. It signals that, that effort matters more than outcome. I think we could also share some of our own failures. When you share a mistake you made, a deal that maybe fell apart, or a speech that you gave that just didn't land, your kids learn that even their parents, even grown-ups, are still experimenting. And what does it do? It normalizes risk. And then lastly, I think as a parent, you have an opportunity maybe to reward courage, not just success. When your kid signs up for a competition or tries something new, like a new sport, or applies for something they might not win, acknowledge that courage, you know, publicly. I'm proud that you tried. I think those words build a bias toward action. By the time they're adults, they'll have, maybe have a more creative range. They'll certainly have thicker skin. And they'll have a higher tolerance for uncertainty, at least a higher tolerance than most people will ever develop. Now, if you're, if you're not into the parenting side, I think you could apply this to your business team as well. I think we could take the same principle right in the business. Most organizations talk about innovation, but they have a tendency to punish failure. It's kind of a, I don't know, hypocrisy, if you will. If you want imagination and experimentation and ownership inside your company, you need to build what I would call a failure-tolerant culture. How do you do that? I think you ask for lessons and not excuses. Like when a project flops, don't start with what went wrong. Let's start with what did we learn? What should we try next? I also think it's great as a leader to model it yourself. No surprise. You know, as a leader, share a recent miss and what you learned from it. I think it signals to everybody else that growth matters more than perfection. And then lastly, within your team, reward the smart risks. Celebrate the experiments, not just the wins, right? When someone tries something bold, call it out in front of the team. Over time, I bet that you notice something start to change or shift within that team. People will stop hiding their mistakes. They start owning them. And once that happens, I think innovation starts to accelerate. Sara Blakely's billion-dollar idea didn't start in a boardroom. It actually started at a dinner table when her father was more interested in her effort than he was in her outcomes. And that, that small reframing, the reframing from this don't fail attitude to maybe fail forward attitude, It took this little girl's curiosity and turned it into a global empire. So I think you got to ask yourself and the people you lead, what did you fail at this week? Because in every failure, behind every failure is, is proof that you were at least in the arena. And that's, that's when, where the good stuff tends to happen in life. That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.