INBOUND 2016 Bold Talks Bryn Drescher The 3 Fs to Success

How's everybody doing? It's the last day of Inbound. Did you guys have a good week? Yeah? All the marketing people got all the knowledge they needed? All the salespeople got what they needed? All right, so how many of you want to be successful? Anytime I've ever posed that question to an audience, just like you guys, a majority of the hands go up. But what I found also is many people aren't necessarily willing to do what it takes to be successful, or they don't quite completely fully understand what success is. This was definitely me several years ago. I was a seminar junkie, going from event to event looking for that magic bullet that was going to make me successful. Or at least a lot of money, because I was poor and I needed it. So at one particular event, a call came from the stage to work with a highly successful multi-millionaire type, Gary Vaynerchuk's kind of person, you know, do amazing things and go to his mansion in Hawaii. And I was all excited, I was all in, until they said the words it was for people who had experienced a certain level of success. I just knew that didn't mean me, so I didn't stay to find out more. I found out that those that did stay, he told he would never work with any of us who left. This made me mad. That wasn't fair. He said a certain— and before I could finish my statement, it hit me. He didn't disqualify me. I did. And so I In that moment, so much passion was born for how many times we disqualify ourselves from this idea of being successful. And I didn't want anyone else to go through that and help them broaden their definition of success. My aha, aka Vincini moment— any Princess Bride fans in the room? Yeah? Yeah? All right. Helped me see that I was all wrong about success. But I wanted to help others do the same. So it began with a problem. How many of you have ever had from time to time an "it's not" or "that's not fair" moment? Yeah? Maybe some of them showed up this week. You were in the food truck line, it was about to be your turn, and then that one guy in front of you just had 10 of his closest friends that he was saving a spot for show up. Or maybe that one session you really wanted to go to was happening at the same time as that that other session you really wanted to go to? Now, these are simple examples, but it can cause us to freak out. How many of you have ever seen a full-grown adult have a meltdown? Right, it can be entertaining or even comical on some level to see an adult have a tantrum. But it's also sad when you think about what it's costing them, right? So when we want things to be fair and that becomes a mantra for us, it causes us to complain. And that is costing us the fare, F-A-R-E, the price of admission to our next great idea, the thing that was going to transform your company, revolutionize your industry, make you a hero, save the world, have people hoist you up on their shoulders, have parades in your honor. Okay, so I got a little carried away. But at the very least, it's what I call your golden ticket opportunity. Much like Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, it can be the very thing that opens up the world to you and your wildest dreams. One such real-life example is CEO and founder Ama Marfo of a company that you probably haven't heard of called Airfordable. It provides airfare to people on layaway. So, and this was born out of her own "that's not fair" moment. She was a college student in— studying abroad from Ghana, and she wasn't able to afford the airfare to go home for the holidays to visit with her family. Anybody ever been in an empty dorm over the weekends or on the holidays? Yeah, that is not a place to be. So she created an opportunity for other students that she had found out to not go through the same thing. See, some people can complain, right? And they see the closed doors and they're constantly thinking about all the things that are wrong with the situation. And others campaign. They find a way to get in that closed door, go around through all those things. So stop complaining long enough to see the opportunity in the lack rather than the lack. In the opportunity. Now, once you have a big idea, the next thing that hits you square between the eyes is fear. This one is big. This is the one that we all come up against, right? They say— many schools of thought say that it's all about conquering your fear, overcoming your fear. But you've also heard that courage is acting not in absence of fear, but in spite of it. So some people say— Bruce Lee says, "Be like water." I say be like Kevin McCallister. If you know the story, in the movie, he was afraid of his neighbor, he became friends with his neighbor, and the neighbor saved him in the end. And fear is your friend. It's designed to keep you safe. You know, not jump off a cliff without a parachute safe. But avoiding it can also keep you stuck. And it also shackles your genius. Okay? The actual formula for genius is creativity plus fear. If fear is there, you know it's real. It's something that you're meant to do. And New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love and The Big Magic, Creative Living Beyond Fear, agrees with me. She says creativity and fear are conjoined twins. And to paraphrase, she said that fear is always going to be along for the ride, so make space for it in the car, just don't let it drive. Right? And when we let fear drive us, we usually end up beating on ourselves like a piñata at a child's birthday party. And after spending a lot of time with my 5-year-old niece, I've discovered that that signifies the end of the party, so you can extract your child and leave. But there is no party if you abuse the greatest resource that you have, which is you. So, and then what happens to your great ideas is they end up here, in the danger zone, the place you do not want to go that a lot of our ideas go. You guys might be familiar with it. Coulda, woulda, shoulda land. And then you're at a party taking credit for Facebook, and you had that idea much longer before there was a Zuckerberg. Don't be that guy. All right? So embrace your fears, make friends with it. And here comes the big fear, the one we all love to avoid: failure. Anybody else have any anxiety about that big red F on the screen? Yeah? Get some flashbacks from school? Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's all about doing our best, right? I mean, they say that every dog has its day, it's always darkest before the dawn, you know, it's about sharpening the saw, we've heard it all before. In fact, this week, how many of you heard from Serena and countless others how many times failure was such a component to their success? I think Anna said it. I think Alec just said it, right? But all those people say fail often, succeed sooner. It helps you. All right. Now, I was always paralyzed by this idea of fear. I cannot tell you how many times I did not want to fail. So much so that I didn't even want to play the game. Now they say that people love to be right. I submit that they just hate to be wrong. How many of you guys remember Guitar Hero? Where are my Guitar Hero fans? All right, yeah. I sucked at that game. So I spent a lot of time on the sidelines at parties not wanting to play because I was like, "Oh no." But as this quote says, "If you only do what you know you're going to get right," then you're leaving a lot of opportunity on the table. And I gotta tell you, you don't have a lot of time to have fun at parties if you're sitting on the sidelines. How are you putting yourself on the sidelines in your own life? Who said that? Jeff Bezos. I mean, think about it. Whoever thought that Barnes Noble and Borders would no longer be a thing? Right? He changed the way we did business. This is how I spell success. First, you gotta be willing to suck. Yeah, pretty much everything you've ever learned, you learned from sucking. In fact, I saw a lot of you guys come in here— excellent walkers, by the way. It was amazing. I wanted to clap, but I didn't want to embarrass you. But if we go back to those videos that I'm sure your parents undoubtedly took, you kind of sucked at it at one time. You were a little wobbly and all that. But that's the thing about toddlers. They just pop back up. I mean, if adults— if we had to learn how to walk as adults, oof, it'd be a lot of crying and complaining. It's really sad, right? But then eventually, you're gonna stop sucking. And even though there's probably some word nerds in here, I like the "cess" part to say that it means cessation. It will stop. It will get better. But that's not exactly the etymology, so don't look it up. All right? And here's the thing. I was always taught to underpromise and overdeliver. So I'm gonna give you a bonus F. If you— you will fare far better in life if you stop complaining, look for the opportunities, if you befriend your fears, neutralize them, know that they're there as a marker in the direction of where you need to go, you fail frequently— it's coming up right now, there it is— Fail frequently. And then finally, the final F: keep going forward. If you know anything about football, you're going to gain extra yards by keeping your legs moving even when life tackles you. And I don't know if you guys remember the Hair Club for Men commercials. Anybody? If you don't, he always held up a picture of himself half bald and said, I'm not all so. The president, I'm also a client? Well, me too, I've been through all this. I'm standing here right now on the BoldTalk stage telling you to boldly go where no one has gone before? Nay, I say. No, you has gone before. And the thing is, you need to broaden your scope of success, know that it's all possible, and that everyone Everyone has experienced a certain level of success if you be but willing to look for it. Thank you.