Discussing Failure with Failure Expert April Palmer

There we go. So, I mean, that's really how you start.

Oh, no, we started a little different.

We needed a B roll. There's gonna be some videos posted later of just. This is April Palmer, the queen of failure, to whom I'm only, like, a duchess of failure. I have a PhD in failure. But you have the complete ownership of how to learn from it and how to just, like, thrive from it. Yeah.

We harness it.

Yes.

Use it to power our success.

You're like the, I don't know, rainbow bright of failure.

I'm the Care Bear. I like Care Bear stare only as failure is fuck up across my stomach. It's gonna be amazing.

So we did put our adult warning, right. I still can't point at it. I know I'm not an adult. I still put. As soon as you're not warning me about me. Yeah, I still put the adult warning here because even though I c. April and I together, we bring out the cus in each other.

The sailor language.

Yes. So it's. We've been talking about failure. If you got the starfish story this morning, this was the star of the video that was in the starfish story. She's amazing. She's a serial entrepreneur. She is a recovering post corporate executive. And so I wanted to. And we did disrupt HR together, and she did this amazing failure speech that was literally nothing that we practiced, but she still nailed it. But what I really did practice. We did practice. The key, the five minutes prior to us going live in this really hot podcasting recording studio was building this. I'm gonna put it up and show you guys pictures. Building this, like, podcast surrounding with the microphone and these lights that are really hot and all of that. And then April realizing she's on this side of the computer and I'm on that side of the lights, the computer, and all of that. You can actually see it in my glasses. You can just see, like, we have this entire crew, so I had to crawl under the table. Don't worry, we recorded it for you so you can see this. Which resulted in, at least for me being the therapist, an increase in endorphins, decrease in cortisol. Like, I'm feeling great right now just because of the fast. The fact that we just went through all of that and we're like, this is living failure.

It is living failure, and we got to laugh about it. You get to roll with the punches and see the humor in it.

Yeah. So. All right, so I want to know, because you and I haven't even talked about this, like, where was your first introduction to a failure awareness? Not in the traditional sense of like, oh, should I failed?

Yeah. So I guess I can go back to when I was a kid. I would tell people that I was a serial quitter. And so I would try something and then for a certain amount of time, but then if it wasn't something that I loved or didn't bring me joy, then I would quit and I would try something else. And I always thought that that was a huge character flaw. I was like, I can't commit to literally anything, and I don't. I can't figure out who I am, like, what my thing is, right?

And.

And at one point, someone said to me, like, oh, my God, you've done so many things in your short life. That's amazing. And I was like, it is amazing, actually. I'm not a serial quitter. I'm a serial tryer. And so we had talked about this a little bit at hr. Like, I would always ask my parents these crazy questions, and I'd say, you know, do you think I can do this? Do you think I can't? My parents would say, you don't know until you find out. Or, you know, the answer's always known until you ask. And it would drive me nuts. I was like, just tell me, like, can I be the President of the United States someday? And what they should have said is like, no, because you're too crazy. But that doesn't count anymore. And I vote for you right now.

There's a lot of people vote for right now.

A lot of people. So for me, just reframing that, like, instead of failing at doing things that I was trying, just being willing to try and put myself out there and opening myself to failure made it okay for me to approach something new and be like, you know, what if I suck at it? Cool. At least I've done it. And at least I can check it off the list of things that I've tried. And so as I've gotten older, that's translated into my career. I started by studying international business in Germany. I became a nurse. I went into packaging and logistics, sales, bank finance. I was a business banker, became an HR consultant, worked for American Express for a number of years, working with all kinds of different entrepreneurs and startups that were really making things happen in the startup ecosphere, and fell in love with that so much that I became a consultant and started working with startups and helping them harness that great risk, great reward, but do it smart. And so that's. There's a TED Talk. I'll have to. I'll send it to you so you can send out the link. It's one of my favorite. I forget who did it, but the woman talks about she considers herself to be a multi potentialite. It means that you can. Right.

Can we update our LinkedIn right now?

Right. I know, dad. That's me. And when I heard it, I was like, oh, my gosh. I feel so, so hard right now. It's because you have the potential to be great or good or suck at literally anything, but you can try it and you can learn it and open yourself to it. And so that's. I, like, took up that mantle really fast. I'm gonna get a tattoo here. It's like multi potential light warning.

I like that.

Yeah.

Potential pioneer.

Yeah.

My computer's like, I like that, too.

Yay.

That's just my computer talking to me. One day. One day I'll figure out, while going live, how to tell my computer, like, maybe just. Just for a little bit. But I mean, I'm not on here that much. But I did want to hear without poking you, so I'm gonna give you that plug. So that's, like, one of your. A million things that you have going on right now. And we're also starting this. This is, like, on the DL, but it's for all of you. We are starting the most amazing resort coming soon, northeast of Boston.

Yep.

So just wait for that. It's gonna be like our. Yes.

Oh, my goodness. We're just failures. We just made something.

We're. Boom, there we go.

We're cultivating failure.

There we go. I had two questions for you. 1. Okay, so in the work life alignment space, like the space that I live in, my mom was one of those people who was like, I will love you even if you snail race. So this is what I was told. This was the message, like, over and over and over again. And you had shared with me a little bit about your parents. But then when my mom failed, that wasn't the modeling that I was receiving. So since I'm raising my little super villains and you've got your superheroes, like, how do we do that as a parent? Like, how do we. Because if you fail in school, you have to repeat the grades. So it's really difficult to be this potentialite.

Yeah. In public school or private school, really, in society, we are built as a society to focus on the wins and always moving forward and always achieving. And there seems to be some sort of, like, algorithm that they don't ever tell you what the pieces are for what success looks like. Maybe it's fast cars or an amazing title or your kids go to Harvard or something like that. And so I think the first thing is that we all have to look in the mirror and say, what does success really look like? For me, as I started to have children, I wasn't planning to have kids. I wanted to be kind of footloose and fancy free. So being a parent was a little bit of a surprise to me. I had no idea what I was doing. Probably a great thing, right, Because I got to write the book for it, but for us, for what works for our family. And so the first thing that I had to do was really look in the mirror and say, how much do I care about what society thinks is successful? And how much do we want to just define this for ourselves? So I have two rules for my kids, literally. Number one is don't be an asshole. Okay, Right.

That's kind of like Bunny's don't be a dick, right?

Yeah, exactly. So that comes in. It's like that encompasses be kind. Treat others the way you would want to be treated. More importantly, treat others the way they want to be treated. So we call that the platinum rule at our house. Speak to the people who are in service industries the same way that you would speak to the CEO of a company. Be curious about other people's lives and listen to what they say. Touch people the way they want to be touched, touched, touched, touched. I like it at the shoppies, all of a sudden, we became the Renaissance Fair.

I don't know.

So number one is just don't be an asshole. Right? And that doesn't mean that you have to go out of your way to be kind, like to be nice to people who aren't nice to you or who aren't contributing to your happiness. You don't owe anybody a smile if you don't feel like smiling. So that's where kind of the differences. And the second is be a contributing member to society. And so I don't. For me, I think it's just important to have people who want to be the best at their job. If they're picking up trash, writing tickets for cars, curing cancer, doing brain surgery, running, you know, multibillion dollar businesses, you need to have a plan to contribute to society. And every single person is an important part of who we can be as a world community. And so we have to just appreciate everyone. So for my kids, what that's meant is that when traditional school didn't work for them. We thought, well, we're not really that traditional. So my oldest, who's now 18, did cyber school for a while because she's on the autism spectrum. She doesn't like to be touched. The drama of high school was a little bit much for her. And so we said, okay, let's go pull back and do something different. It was very out of the box at the time. And a lot of other parents were like, you know, I think that you're setting her up for failure. Well, I think that her saying what she needs and setting boundaries and having a solution that works for her sets her up for success. And now she's on the dean's list. She has a full scholarship to college. She loves it, and she's pursuing the thing that is going to bring her joy in life and fulfillment. What that's meant for my son is a little bit different. We've had to try different schools and, you know, just look at things outside of the box and say what's good for you rather than what's expected by society.

And I love that your son's school, we won't plug it on the Facebook live, but I love that your son's school has also met him, where he's at, because that changes each and every day as a teenager and as a human. But some of the things that you've shared with me, you know, is just making sure that they're. That his needs are prioritized and communicated and continued to be not evaluated. Because I don't want that to be, like, in a clinical setting. Right. But heard, heard.

And that's what. So they even do, like, their. Their parent teacher conferences are actually called student parent teacher conferences. They're led by the student, and they tell the teachers and their parents what's happening in their lives and where they need help and those types of things. And then the last thing that I think that we do as a family that's really important is you have to walk the walk and talk the talk. And that's kind of what we had talked about. I am just as open with my kids about my failures as I am about my successes. And we talk over the dinner table and on the way to school in the mornings and all those things. And I specifically ask them, what did you try today and fail at? And so the expectation becomes the norm. And in fact, sometimes we get more excited. Oftentimes we get more excited about the things that we tried. Like, I'm. Like, I tried to walk down the stairs while I was texting. Totally failed. And went ass over teakettle. And like, fine, I won't learn that lesson actually. But so they'll do things like, they'll say, you know, I tried soccer and I had tried it before and I wasn't very good at it. I tried it again. I still wasn't very good at it. But this thing happened. Like, I connected with a kid. I usually haven't. Or one of the teachers praised me and it made me feel great about going into science class later. And so if you start to make it the norm that you try things that take you outside of your comfort zone, that's when I think that you have the biggest successes. And so we talk about that, we cultivate those conversations rather than just saying, what did you do really well? Or what did you like? Or what was amazing about these different things.

So your two rules are don't be an asshole. Be a contributing member of society and talk about failure.

Yes, those are my two rules. No, we just, we can do the other things by talking about failure. It's like a, then the Roman numeral.

2, and then there's like a C. So the last thing that I would love for you to give the difference makers community and all the starfish a little bit of homework. So when we did disrupt HR and I know you have the slide here, is there's a definition of failure.

Right.

So I want you to. Because I know you don't agree with that definition.

Yeah.

So if you can give the April queen of all things effed up definition.

Okay.

I'm sure we've got a better. We're gonna. That's like continuing to evolve. I may come back and edit this.

Yeah.

As we have like another.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I don't. I don't mind. Like failure expert. Yeah.

Well, I mean, that's great. It was right there.

Yeah.

Good, because you got a. We've got the radio show coming.

Right.

Soon. So the. Just the short current definition in society of failure. Your definition. And then like maybe just a little piece of homework on how we can kind of evaluate throughout the day our failures in a different light.

Perfect. So I would say that today we think about failure and as is defined by Webster's is a lack of success. And so that to me is really frustrating because it just puts a stop on it. Right. Like, failure is a bad thing. It has a bad connotation. I like to think of failure as the building blocks on the path to success. And so, you know, they look a lot like cobblestones, a lot like the Cobblestones down in shocko bottom that will like, knock your teeth out. Right. So if you think about putting every single failure together and the way that they. That they weave to build a path forward, then that's really exciting because you get to pave your way by trying things that are outside of your comfort zone and you know you're going somewhere. So that's my personal definition of failure.

I'm making you come over here so you're back in the ha.

The fail.

That's why I put you on a roller chair.

I know you can push me around.

These like, soundproofing things that are all over April's sitting on them so that.

You can be okay. I know I'm actually much shorter than this, but that's okay. And you're much taller than you are because you're down on your lowest.

I know.

So I would say that something that I've been trying to do this year is make sure that I take note of my failures. It's really easy to slip into old habits of saying, well, I wasn't successful at that, so I'm a failure. And that has a bad connotation. So if you have a self journal or some other paper planner or you're somebody who keeps track of everything on Google Calendar or Outlook or whatever, when you try something that doesn't work, put in something in your day, like put in a little calendar invite that's titled Failure and a little snippet of it and maybe just write out a sentence or two about what you did that you failed. What was fun is if you do it consistently day in and day out at the end of a week or a month, especially when things are really hard, you can go in and search your calendar for the word failure and it will pop up all of the things that you've tried and that have led you to where you are today. And you can actually get a visual of the journey that you've taken and how you're harnessing your failures to take the next step on your path to success.

I love how stoked you are about this.

I love this. I'm like, fail, fail all the time. Feel it literally every everything. Because statistically you're going to succeed. Like if you knock off all the things that you can't do well, you're gonna find the thing that you do right or you're gonna find a way to do it well.

And I put in the. I used all your things from the disrupt in the starfish stories about like post it notes and penicillin like these were all like documented failures.

Yeah.

So. And look what we have now. So if somebody has a failure and they want to tag you on social media.

Yes.

How do we do that?

Facebook. It is DC Fuck Up Nights and you can follow our group. It's amazing. There's also RVA Fuck Up Nights. That's a group here in Richmond and the people who run it are absolutely fantastic. They're actually having an event on February 20, I think at the HOF. You can follow them. It's such a fun night because everyone is there celebrating failure. My Instagram is. I am hot mess boss. No, it's just hot mess boss. I failed at that. Just hot mess boss. Hot mess boss. Yeah. And LinkedIn. So we share a lot of articles on LinkedIn because I think bringing a culture of failure to work is so important and allows you to also take that home with you and feel amazing at the end of the day.

And LinkedIn is April. She her Palmer or.

Yeah. And that will also link you out to the. To the Fuck up nights there as well. So lots of ways to reach me. I am so available.

Yes. Just don't email.

Just don't email. Please don't email.

It's okay. My Starfish community is well aware of the advertisement to email through that. It's so bad.

I'm like a 6 week SLA for responding to email. It's the worst. I can't help it.

We'll get her on the longer autoresponder. She has a baby autoresponder right now, but we'll get her on the longer autoresponder with all of those links that she just shared.

Yeah.

So thank you for being here.

Yeah. Thank you for having me.

We're rushing off because we are going to go get some amazing Thai street food. And thank you guys for making the world a better place. And look out for all the links that we're going to send and the B roll video of me crawling under a table as we set up our failure interview.

That's how you start failure is by feeling.

Bye, Starfish.