Failure is Your Biggest Asset: Entrepreneurship Simplified

Entrepreneurship is hard, but the process can be simplified. You can achieve success faster, sooner, and easier. I'm Mike Michalowicz, and I'm on a mission to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. My goal for this episode and every episode is to serve you on your journey. Let's start right now on Entrepreneurship Simplified. You've got a situation where someone's gonna do something, then you stop, but they see you starting, so they stop, and you're just stuck in this like Yeah, I do that a lot with people in, in, um, stores.

You know the dance where you're trying to get out of somebody's way but they keep moving into the way that you were trying to get out of their way?

Oh, I totally get it. I do it with handshakes. Like, like, I'm really cautious about physical touch because some people don't like it, right? Especially since COVID I historically prefer no touching.

Oh, you do?

Prefer it. Oh, it's interesting. But over time I've become acclimated to it, so I think it's gracious. So a handshake, touch on the shoulder, Hugs, I could avoid them. Oh my God, if I don't need to hug anyone, I'm set. But it's kind of become a business standard.

Gotcha.

But then when COVID happened, it's like, do you do it? Do you not? And so it causes this awkward, like, I don't want to— it's just weird.

I'm getting close to you. I'm not getting close to you. I'm getting close to you.

We had an event here, two, uh, it was the Reignite event for Prosper Group, and at the end we came to our offices so people could tour it, right? Two people hugged. I had a few handshakes, and a couple people were like kind of like weird bows.

And I guess you have to get used to everything. It's so Weird. So weird in the public figure biz.

So you, my friends, are listening to Entrepreneurship Simplified.

Kind of—

let me say again— Entrepreneurship Simplified. And we're here to talk about, uh, failure today and maybe why it's your biggest asset. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I think it is.

Uh, and this, folks, is Mike Michalowicz, author of Profit First and Pumpkin Plan and Clockwork and Many more business books to come. How many more do you think you have in you?

I think I have 20 total.

I don't know.

I was like, you know what, I'm going to do 20. We're at 11 now, 11 books. That's 9 more.

I don't know.

Yeah, I don't think it's about the churn, it's about the quality. And, uh, the next one I'm writing is probably the most important book on the broad impact it can have. I don't want to give more details yet, um, but I was thinking a book on sales, how do you sell. Okay, a book on customer service. And I had another new idea yesterday, like, oh, that could be an important book. I'm not gonna share what that is, but so we'll see. All right, we'll see. And I'm joined in studio by Amy Cartelli, an extraordinary friend, a matriarch for our company. And thanks for that great retreat you wrote.

Oh, thank you. That was so glad everybody enjoyed it.

It was a blast.

Good.

It always came out with— so we always come out with such good stuff.

Yeah.

When we go to those events, there's a 3 or 4 hour block dedicated to working on the business. And in my head, I typically go, well, we're here for 3 days, half day, full day, half day. Maybe we should put in more.

No, I get that thought too. That comes to me too. Like, should we be doing— should we be more productive at this point? We have this together time.

Yeah, but, but we are very productive in that window.

Yeah.

And the rest is connecting and building trust. Yeah, it works.

It goes a long way.

It really does.

It does. It goes a long way. Agreed.

All right, so let's talk about failure.

You, uh, just to get us here, you are a big fan of going to— and you've done it a few times with a couple different masterminds, I think— the Thomas Edison, um, uh, Museum. Yes, in West Orange, New Jersey.

Yes, and there's another one in, um, south of here.

What's the town?

Um, not Saddle Brook. Oh darn it. But Wouldn't it be funny if it's called— if it's Edison, the town of Edison?

It could be Edison.

It could be Edison. It could be Edison. And this is shameful. I wonder if they named the town after him. If it had—

sure they did.

Yeah, gosh, of course.

But I don't know why the museum isn't there.

There is a museum down there, but it's very small. Okay, so the factory was in West Orange, and it's my favorite place to visit because you actually get to walk the old factory. There's multiple buildings.

Wow.

There was where they Simply brainstorm and create ideas. There is the office that Thomas Edison maintained, which is nothing like I see in modern offices, packed with books. That was his computer, his— that was his Google, his library. His home was across the street and up the hill. Um, you see where they mechanize things, you see where they made the first movies.

Wow.

Uh, it was unbelievable. I love going there. To me, it's so inspiring on what he and his community, his team built, assembled, tried, tested. But really the most intriguing thing is the embracing of failures.

That's it. That's it.

I remember, Amy, I was walking down this one factory line, if you will, and they had some stuff on display. I asked, there's tour guides or park rangers, I think. I asked the park ranger, I said, "What is this?" That, like, I couldn't recognize the material. He's like, oh, that's an elephant's ear, like a real elephant, a part of the ear. I don't know the backstory, so I'm just going to assume elephant was deceased and they took the ear. And I said, why do you have that? It's like, it's something Edison and the team experimented with. And so they didn't necessarily find practical use, or maybe they did, but they had all this, these different variables that they kept on mixing together to see if they could find something out. I'm also reading his biography.

So are you really?

Yeah. So I'm half knowledgeable. I'm only halfway through the book.

Okay.

Of Edison.

All right.

What's interesting about this book, it starts with the end of his life and chapter by chapter reverses back to his age. But it did start off with a little insight when he was a child and he worked on a train and they used, I think it was Morse code to communicate some kind of ticker system. And he fixed it. He hacked it. As like a 12-year-old and said, "This is how you make it better." And he had discovered something he's passionate about. So that was fascinating. But throughout the journey, throughout the book is they list all of the successes, but all of the failures that led to the success.

I love that because this is his famous quote, right? He's like, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Yeah, yeah. I love that.

He invented a, battery to operate a car back in the 1900s. Like, this is like 1910 or 1911. So the automobile was about— he also made a battery that operated submarines so a submarine could go. He was the inventor of a battery for operations of machinery, like big batteries. I'm not saying those little ones we carry around today, but he also did that. But the, the— I think it was a lead acid and lead or something, and he found a new material that was lighter, more efficient, more productive. But there was problems with this battery. The residual, or the exhaust, if you will, was like hydrogen, which is highly explosive, or one of those gases. And it's very sad, a submarine had an explosion, which they had it in, it killed people. They knew of the problem in advance of this hydrogen. They were talking about ventilating, and the arguments were it wasn't properly ventilated, but, you know, there's fingers pointed everywhere. Then the government says, "Sorry, this battery is done. We're going back to these lead batteries," which also had explosion problems, were a greater risk, less output. It's interesting, in the world where Edison could have been unabated, he would have an accident like that, hopefully with no one hurt, and continue on and say, "What can we learn from this?" Isn't that crazy? Yeah, the general mindset and government's mindset was no accidents permitted. And we see it today. You know, the safest car, safest driver today in the world, hands down, is artificial intelligence. There's a car system called Waymo.

Uh-huh.

Have you seen those?

Yeah, actually we have a little bit of a news article about it.

Oh, I can't wait to talk about it.

Mm-hmm.

Chris and I were recently out in Arizona. We landed in Phoenix and we're sitting waiting for a car and a car goes by and Chris is like, there is no one driving.

It's not like there's no passenger.

There's no one in the car. There's no driver. There's no passenger. There's a cars went by. I'm like, oh my God, that's Waymo. I've seen— I've heard of it, I haven't seen it.

Yeah.

And another one came by. So I, as we're sitting there waiting for our ride, I go on Google, and Waymo argues, and I believe it, it is the most accident-free driver of all time, right? What they do is they have this hive mind of their hundreds or thousands of cars, and they're sharing information, and they're learning from each other rapidly, where an individual The only learning is I got in a car accident, I'll try to avoid that again. I cut the curve too short.

I'll look over my right shoulder better next time.

Yeah, it's a very slow process. Yeah, we need to have these failures to learn. And when we can expedite the process through a group mind, or in this case artificial intelligence, the better outcome comes so much faster, right? But ironically, there's still this hesitancy, like, I don't know if I feel safe getting into a car. But honestly, I question if I feel safe getting into one of these Ubers now, where the dude's like, like, what is— how are you driving? How do you even know an Uber anymore? I know, I know, Christopher.

Always says they're doing 40 in like a 65-mile-an-hour, we're gonna die.

Oh, I'm the reverse. They're going too fast for you. I'm like, they're doing 80 in the 30, like what the hell's going on?

Oh yeah, there's that too. There's that too.

Yeah, so we have to embrace failure.

Yeah.

We also have to admit it's scary and difficult, but Edison's framing of you find a way that doesn't work is something we need to embrace.

Yeah.

Now we can also mitigate failure. It's not just be Mr. Rando, try things out, and if this explodes, we'll see what happens.

Right.

Edison had cases like that. He tried mixes and concoctions that caused acidic responses, minor explosions. It almost caused blindness for him. Um, he had lung problems because he breathed into stuff. No, uh, he was notably deaf, like could not hear a word. Maybe also facilitated through some of the experiments he was doing. Maybe it was purely biological or, or genetics. But nonetheless, none of those impedances caused him to stop. If anything, it fostered a greater growing intensity because he's finding ways that don't work, he's that much closer to a way that does work.

I think that's what I find fascinating is that he just kept going. Quite a few of the entrepreneurs we want to talk about today just kept going. I'm curious about that trait. I don't think I have that trait. I am somebody who feels like they quickly learn from a failure, "Okay, nope, was not supposed to do that," which is such a missed opportunity. It's exactly the missed opportunity for entrepreneurs.

I agree and disagree with like your own assessment of yourself, and, and I see this in myself. I think there's things that maybe a fear, or there's a reason that you don't take it on. But I also watch you with your own children, like not like stalky watching, but I, I observe, you know, from afar, right? And it is clear like you will not quit on your kids.

Oh no, that's true. I guess it depends on— that's the thing, I guess, right? I guess that's the thing. You find the thing that you, you know to be of value that you need to Like, this is your—

this is such a huge part of your life's purpose.

Yeah.

And so if anything got— any obstacle got in the way, any failure, any challenge presented itself with your children, if there's anyone I'm going to go to, it's, it's Amy Cartelli, because she's going to see it through.

Thank you.

And I wonder if Edison— and I wonder if all these entrepreneurs we're about to talk to had that visceral, profound connection with that thing. In any aspect of life, we may choose to have this profound connection that it's, it's part of us. Like, here's my assessment: your children are part of you. I mean, biologically, they're part of you.

Sure.

But there is this visual connection. I think we can have that same emotional connection with, with different purposes in life. I gotta do this. I need to do this. And then there's nothing that will get in your way, right?

Well, you could talk about toilet paper entrepreneur wasn't the success that you had hoped it was going to be.

Definitely wasn't the path I expected.

Yeah, but But the— that didn't dissuade you. You were still driven. You still knew that authorship was what you, you were meant to do.

My first day with Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, the launch, I didn't know what a launch was, right? I simply said, I guess you post on Amazon.

Yeah, we're good to go.

Yeah, good to go. And there was no sales. And there was no sales on that first day. And I'm like, what is going on? I spoke with an author later that day. I can't remember who it was, but I want to thank this person. 'Cause they said something funny. I said, I'm selling books today. And they said, oh, don't worry. That's simply the quiet before the quiet. Before the absolute quiet. Yeah. The quiet before the absolute quiet. And it was like, oh, it was such a gut punch.

Yeah.

And they were speaking factually. If I didn't take action, there was gonna be quiet. So I'm like, okay, this failed. It actually inspired me. I said, okay, I'm gonna get out here and start the grind.

Right.

And any single— I went to colleges all around here from CCM down to where we happen to have an Ivy League in our state, went down to Princeton. I went to Rutgers and William Paterson and all these different schools. I started traveling across the country, going to school after school and just pushing books.

Yeah.

I was getting speaking engagement, often speaking for free and seeing if I can get the school or the students to buy books. I sold 1 or 2 here. I sold 3 or 4 there. And that was it. And I felt so called to do this. I'm like, If this doesn't work, yeah, I'm not stopping, right? I don't care.

So that doggedness like pushes you past the, the whole, the whole failure thing. That's what keeps you going, still going.

But I think we have the courage to say that that was dumb, or that failed, that wasn't the way, right? I, I think the misguided doggedness is, it needs to be on Amazon another day. So there was no sales on day one, tomorrow there will be. Or, or, yeah, I went to this, the college gig, and no one bought a book. I gotta speak more enthusiastically or do more.

Right.

So doing more of what's not working is not leveraging failure.

Right.

It's identifying what failure is, cognitively learning from that and say, what can I use to spin forward? Or what should I avoid in the past or going forward?

Right.

But it's a cognitive learning. And I don't know if some people have that. Some people have blindsided— blind faith, I guess.

Yeah.

Blind faith in a path that ain't working.

Right.

And then they won't quit it, and that's even more dastardly. Yeah.

Well, this is— I'm going to skip that. I'm going to go out of, out of order here a little bit, but I was reading, I was reading about Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post. So before founding the Huffington Post, she faced numerous rejections. Almost 40 publishers turned down her second book, and her run for governor of California ended with less than 1% of the vote. However, she used those setbacks to propel herself forward, applying lessons learned from her political campaign to create one of the internet's most successful media platforms. But I'm thinking about 40 publishers. You get that like 38th, 39th, 40th. No. How do you know that you're— I don't know. I guess, I guess it's really feeling integral, but you know what your message is and you know what you need to get out there.

It's a great story because we have to distinguish rejection and failure. Those are two different things.

That's true. That's true.

So you have to be staunch in when facing rejection. You have to learn and be flexible when you face failure. So you got to categorize the two.

Okay.

I think what you can do, I think in Arianna's case with when it came to publishing, you look at the content you're producing, say it's a book.

Yeah.

And one self— one thing you can ask yourself is, have others gone before me successfully with books? And if the answer is yes, that is a historically proven path. Other people have published books. Have other people published books through the publishing outlets she was considering? Yes. Okay. These things work and I can see it in observation that it works. Maybe there's even data behind it. I just need to be rejection-proof. By the way, there's a book called Rejection Proof. Gotta freaking read it. It's one of my favorite books.

Really?

Yeah. It's a kid. It was an Asian kid. And that's significant because he moved into the US out of Asia. So he was uncomfortable with the US culture.

Okay.

Kind of our maverick style here. And he had a very diminutive personality.

Okay.

And he realized, I'm not going to get ahead in the US acting this way. And he's like, I'm so afraid of rejection because that's the way I've been raised culturally. So what he decides to do is intentionally get rejected. And I think it was 100 Days of Rejection. So day 1, he knocks on a stranger's door and says, may I play soccer in your backyard? And so he starts going through this experiment and some people are like, "Are you weird or crazy?" Yeah, yeah, yeah. "Are you well?" And he's like, cha-ching, got rejected. Some people, and the majority of people said, "No, but..." What was so interesting, often with rejection, and I wonder if Arianna experiences this, "I'm sorry, we won't do it, but have you considered this?" And they started opening other pathways.

Right.

So, "No, you can't play in my backyard, but here's a soccer ball and you can play in the front yard." There was like this compromise or negotiation people had there giving the rejection.

Right.

In other cases, He was shocked that people said, "Yeah, go play in the backyard." Yeah. And he went through these rejections. So first of all, qualify rejection versus failure. You have to see through rejection and you can leverage it. Failure is a learning experience. That's what I got out of her story.

I love that. This just brings to mind a little bit, might be a little off topic, but you very kindly came to my son's school and spoke to his academy group. And he said that you had done this The money exercise, yeah, where you held up a $20 bill and you said, "Who'd like this $20 bill?" And the kids just kind of sat around looking at each other nervously. And one kid I think finally came up and said, "I do." After a lot of egging. Yeah, a lot of egging. And took it. But like, that was it. That was just the lesson. Are you gonna move? Are you gonna go? Are you gonna do? Are you gonna take that step? I love the idea of kind of desensitizing yourself to the aspect of rejection.

I'm so happy John Henry saw that or landed with him. There was another experiment we did that same class. Here's what you do with the $20 or $50 or whatever nomination is. I hold it up and say, "Who wants this?" Because what you know is the cultural behavior is to raise your hand. We're in a classroom environment. "Sure, I want that." And then I just repeat the question, "Who wants it?" And there's a little bit of confusion and they raise their hand higher maybe it was. And I repeat, "Who wants it?" And it's by the third or fourth, they're like, "Okay, what's going on with this game?" What's so interesting is I can't remember that one specifically, but I think it took me 10 or 15 tries. Who wants it? Who wants it? I'm shaking it until someone's like, oh, maybe I don't have to follow this historical rule.

Wow. And that goes even deeper.

Yeah. That's the problem with, with failure. When something doesn't work, we double down. So when I raise my hand, say I want it and I didn't get it, or I don't understand what's happening, I raise my hand higher. I don't try to break the rules. Really embracing failure is to say this didn't work and what's the new rule set I can consider?

Yeah.

So it's actually modifying the rules. And then finally a student came up and grabbed it. It was also interesting is that once the first one started moving toward it, everybody started to get up for seats. It was a mad dash.

Yeah.

And it, it, I've done this before. So what's so interesting about that experiment is once someone else gets it, the other people come into alignment. And I've done this experiment at Harvard.

Yeah.

And I've done it at Newton High School.

Mm-hmm.

And the exact same response. So I don't care, it doesn't matter about education, right? Right. Any of that stuff or whatever your credentials are. What matters is social significance and consequence, and then someone having the courage to be the first to redefine the rules, and they win.

Yeah.

The second experiment I did, which I think was interesting, I said, okay, I said, who can reach the highest on a wall? So this was the next contest. And so I have someone come up, I say, how high can you reach? And they put their hand up there. I said, okay. I said, uh, who can reach higher? So now there's a comparative, right? So we put a mark. Well, the second person, even though shorter, found a way to stretch higher. Then I said, well, who can go higher than that? And they're kind of sitting, and someone's like, oh, and they come up and they jump and slap a piece of paper. I'm like, okay, now we got it. I said, can we go higher? And people are jumping. No one can do it. I said, well, what if we have to go really high? And I get on a— I use a stepping stool and I go up and I put a $20 bill up on the wall. So now there's an objective to get to, right? And they're sitting there. The tallest kid is just on my floor. So they're like, John! Everyone's cheering John Henry. He jumps. He can't get to him. I thank God. Because he had ruined this experiment. I said, "Well, what can we do about this?" And then all of a sudden, John Henry grabs the lightest person in the room, picks them up, and they stretch and they grab it. They high-five and they share the money. And I'm like, "That's how you break the rules." So what happened is there's a sequence of failure. We set a standard and say, "I think it's good enough," until someone beats you and is like, "Oh, I can go further." And so we have to see the outcome we want to get to with some clarity to navigate through these failures. And it was interesting when we hit the hardest roadblock, That's when this team mentality came in. And that was just a profound learning. When we face failure, I challenge people, uh, first identify where do you want to go? Because maybe a direct route is not going to get you there. And maybe you're gonna have to team up and someone's gonna have to carry you or lift you at some point, or you're lifting them. But there's always a way around, over, through, in between the obstacle. But we have to identify where we're going first, not just look at the obstacle.

Gotcha. So I wonder if Steve Jobs had any idea of what his path was going to look like because in 1985, he was forced out of the company he founded. Fired from his own company. However, instead of giving up, he launched NeXT and later acquired Pixar, which became a major success. Eventually, Apple bought NeXT, leading to Jobs' return to the company in 1997. Under his leadership, Apple experienced unprecedented growth, launching iconic products like the iPhone, iPod, and MacBook. So I wonder You know, such a, um, such a crazy— such a zigzag path.

Was he the one who said, in— it's only in hindsight that the points or the, the dots make connections?

I think that was him.

Something like that.

Yes. Yeah.

Here's what I find interesting. I did not know that Apple acquired NeXT, bringing him back in. I didn't realize how that happened.

That's how that happened. Yeah.

Thanks for sharing that.

Thanks, Kel. Well, thank you.

Thanks, Kelsey, for researching.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah. I've done a lot of reading on Steve Jobs. I've not read his biography yet. I have to read that. That's fascinating. What is also interesting is that Steve Jobs was vehement about a standard for, at least for Apple, I assume for Pixar too, but for Apple, it was, how I define it is the blending of technology and art. Where every other organization, IBM, all these other companies that made technology, it was about the best tech, so to speak. Steve Jobs said the most artful tech. And I'm not saying that was his words, but you can see the products he made became a representation of who you are as a consumer. The Apple phone is not just a phone, it's an expression of who I am. The first Mac I had had an orange kind of shell to it, wherever the computer was off-white or black. He was the first to add color, figuratively and literally. I wonder if having this, again, beacon of where you head allows you to navigate failures. NeXT was a failure defined as it was not a sustainable business. Sustainable company. Kudos to them. It was acquired by Apple. Um, Steve Jobs was a failure according to the Apple leadership when he was first fired.

Crazy, crazy, right?

What are they doing? But in the moment, they were probably right, like, based upon the rules and expectations and all the stuff they had. He wasn't a fit.

Yeah.

In retrospect, it's so obvious. Why are you— were you idiots?

Yeah.

So a failure failure can simply be a setback. And it could be because the judgments around you are wrong. It could be because the instruction set you followed wrong. Or maybe it's just everyone's following the generic instruction set of make it a black or white computer and someone's got to be the first to say, "That is a failure, the way we've been doing it," and introduce something new.

I love that concept. That's great. Another failure, Walt Disney. Early in his career, Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for supposedly you're not going to believe this, lacking creativity. R. R. Disney. His first animation company, Laugh-O-Gram, went bankrupt. And despite these early failures, Disney continued to innovate, eventually founding the Walt Disney Company, which grew into a global empire. And his name is synonymous with creativity now.

Totally is.

Yeah.

I just took a picture. Christie and I were on a trip. We went to a wellness resort, a dream resort of hers, and it was a blast. And it was out in the desert. We went walking and there was a cactus in the shape of Mickey the Mouse. And I'm like, come on, like even nature is like a Mickey fan. Yeah, but there's something about that Mickey, uh, emblem we have to recognize is with constraint comes opportunity. Mickey Mouse in the logo is 3 circles. That's it. Yeah, it is profound. Yeah, uh, was it Picasso was famous for this. He's drawing a bull, right, with one swoop of a line and it's like boom, there's a bull in front of you. I find that constraint helps you navigate failure faster.

Okay, wait a minute. Let me hear that again. Constraint helps you navigate failure faster.

Yeah. Constraint. When there's less variables, you navigate failure faster.

Okay.

At our retreat, I don't know, was it your idea doing that airplane contest?

No, that was Kelsey's.

Kelsey did it.

Yeah.

So we have an airplane contest. Plops down a table, markers, paper, glue, stamps, like all these different things.

Yeah.

There's so many variables. What I was watching on the corner of my eye is how many do we use? About 6 markers of the 700 or whatever it is they were used. And I wonder if we would have produced faster and better if we had less resources made available in front of us. Because what happens is all these distractions, we do this, well, maybe could be kind of scenarios. Well, how about that? And we don't just plow forward to that failure. We're constantly dancing around the failure in consideration of the options we can choose. Yeah, but when you constrain what you have, you got to find a way through with that one thing. So with one swoop of the pen, how do you make a Mickey Mouse or a bull, right? I challenge our listeners is to intentionally give yourself constraints. Profit First is based upon invoking failure. So when you implement Profit First, you take a small portion of that money, or a portion, it doesn't have to be small, and allocate it to— well, first to profit, hide that, and then the remainder A small portion goes to your operating expenses. So before, in having the whole suite of your money, you have a constrained thing, and now you got to become selective. So the path forward becomes much clearer. So when it comes to fighting through failure, sometimes the lack of variability, the lack of input, serves you in navigating faster. It's the only path forward.

Okay. All right, thank you for that. That makes sense. Go wall. Go wall. All right, next failure: Colonel Harland Sanders of KFC. So Colonel Sanders, the founder of KFC, faced over 1,000 rejections while trying to sell his secret his fried chicken recipe to restaurants. His persistence paid off when one small restaurant finally gave him a chance, which led to a massive franchise success of Kentucky Fried Chicken. His story exemplifies perseverance in the face of constant failure.

Whoever rejected KFC—

I know, who would do that?

Who would do that?

Who would do that?

Is it the best chicken on the planet?

So good. It's finger-licking good.

It is finger-licking good. It's funny, I would rather go to KFC for chicken than have my own barbecue. Like, yeah, I love it. And I know how bad it is for you and all that stuff.

We don't do it, but we really love it.

And there's not many KFCs around here. I can only think of one in Rockaway.

Yeah.

So I'll traverse to another town, fight traffic, sit in— it's not like the most well-kept store. No, you've been there.

Yep.

And I'll go there because it's KFC. So, so kudos to the Colonel.

Yeah.

I think there's a lesson around, uh, this rejection and Yes, there's the, the stick-to-it-ness, but also, um, there is a template of trials— or, or I shouldn't say template trials— there's an opportunity for you to test it out. Toilet Paper Entrepreneur followed a similar path. The names that were out there did not want to buy the book, so finally I said, I gotta put this out there myself. Trying to partner with other people, they are also afraid of failure, particularly if they're quote unquote successful. So once you figure out your thing that's working for you, you're a publisher and we got books that are selling, to take on a book that's not potentially going to sell is a big risk. It could start bringing you down the wrong path. So I think as an organization becomes more successful, however they define that, they are less likely to take on the risk of potential failure.

Sure.

And so therefore, when you try to partner up like like the Colonel did, Colonel Sanders, I'm not surprised that it was a small kitchen that tried him out. The second thing is once you overcome failure, and this, you know, we're blending failure and rejection.

With rejection again, yeah.

They are two separate things. But when you overcome failure, and I suspect leading up to the rejections was he had to figure out that finger-licking good recipe.

Right.

It probably wasn't like first try. He's like, oh, I got the oregano perfect.

Yeah.

He had to figure it out.

Right.

That was just, uh, you know, there, um, there's a TV show we just got. Did I tell you about this? Oh, so I got invited to do a TV show.

Oh nice.

Yeah, so that's them calling. Um, but I don't know if I'm interested anymore. No, isn't this crazy?

Wait a minute, why?

So it's with a fast channel. Fast channel is the new media. So, uh, the, the current most common or in-demand media is called streaming— Netflix, YouTube TV.

Sure, sure.

The new things are called fast channels. Fast channel is where the device provider— you have a Samsung TV or a Sony TV. Yeah, those companies Sony is making their own content and skipping out on next—

on all the other streaming type. Yeah. Okay.

Oh, that's— So Netflix and—

I should have known that would be the next step. It's incredible to me.

I didn't even think of it.

Wow.

Isn't that funny? And maybe this points back to failure.

Yeah.

Is the TVs had success and you become blinded by your own success and you're like, okay, we just provide other people's stuff. And then someone said, my God, we're starting to lose business.

Why aren't we doing this ourselves?

Yeah. Why not make our own stuff?

Yeah.

Device company. I just don't want to shout her name. It could have been one I said, or it could be a different one. I reached out and said, we'd like you to do a TV show. Um, the thing is, I don't know if it's going to serve us on our mission anymore, so I'm just being very cautious about this. Me 20 years ago, like, oh my God. Now, is it— which is so ironic, it's like something I'm like, this will be of such service to us now. Like, will it?

Yeah.

So I'm taking it with—

I hope this isn't a big fat failure, Mike.

Yeah, I'm an idiot. Oh, and that points to another failure.

What?

Another form of failure is things we didn't do. Ah, so, and we don't think about it. Like, like I didn't pick up the phone and call that person. I didn't, uh, try out that one thing.

Yeah.

We don't consider it failure cuz we didn't consider it. We didn't.

Yeah.

At the same, in the same breath, sometimes the greatest things, the greatest accomplishment you have in your life is because you had the discipline of not doing something.

Right, right. Yeah.

Because you didn't go down a fork down the, uh, down the road. You, you, you fought this path.

Yeah.

Yeah. You, you didn't miss something. Uh, you missed a distraction and you went forward. So there, there is this balance. My point back to Colonel Sanders before we got rudely interrupted by that TV show.

Sorry.

No, are you sorry? They're the ones calling me. Is I bet you it wasn't recipe one. It wasn't like, "Oh, I got that splash of oregano perfect." He's like, "I got to get rid of some pepper or add some salt." You had to play with it and play with it. The goal of failure is knowing that the first iteration is simply the first step to the right iteration. And he had to go through many before he's like, I nailed it.

Yeah.

And that's how we have to go into any situation. Whatever we're trying to do, there's the first iteration and then there's the perfect iteration, and they're rarely, almost never, the first iteration.

The first iteration. All right, last one. Uh, Brian Chesky of Airbnb. In the early days of Airbnb, Chesky and his team faced significant setbacks, including rejections from investors and challenges in attracting users. Instead of giving up, they restructured their business model and revolutionized the home sharing industry, turning Airbnb into a multi-billion dollar company.

So, you know, the rejections and the struggles they had is probably like, it's creepy. I want someone to sleep in my bed.

Could you imagine like, hey, yeah, come over to the Cartelli house, you've got this idea, put your home up, you, you just step out of it for a while.

Yeah, me and Chris head out of town, do what you want, it's our bed, have fun, you know what I'm saying? Like Like, like, how disgusting is that?

Yeah, I know.

So there's inherent or implicit restrictions that are going to present themselves, yet you have to have the fortitude to say, well, what if?

Yeah.

So I strongly suspect Chetki and the team at Airbnb said, yeah, yeah, it is creepy to sleep in someone else's bed, but what if, what if people did or willing to do this? Yeah, I think They also looked at these, these highlight moments of where it was successful in other areas. There has been house swaps where people are like, I know you pretty well. You come to my house, I'll go to yours. Now we're both having vacation without incurring the expense, right? So you have to look for these highlight moments or these little stars in this vast university of darkness. And then when you find that, I think that comes a beacon to get through these failures and challenges and to try things out. And when it doesn't work, You're like, okay, but it did work there in some way. How do we keep marching forward? So there's this, this fortitude, but there's also this understanding it will work at some point when we get it right, right?

This is inspiring, Mike. Thank you so much for this. You ready to move on?

I'm ready to move on.

Okay, all right. So we're talking about a teacher who quit teaching due to the rise of, um, large language models, LLMs, like ChatGPT, which have changed student approaches to writing. Yeah, I I've been thinking about this, and, um, you know, I'm pretty new to it and, and only using it here and there, and I've been absolutely gobsmacked by some of the wonderful stuff that I can create with that. I mean, the, the tool of simplifying things for myself, it's, it's fantastic. But yeah, from the, from the perspective of a teacher who's got to teach a student how to face the challenges of sitting with words and really learning how to cultivate words to come together to create something completely new. And you're not getting that with ChatGPT. I mean, it's not completely new.

Yeah, but this is the fate of humanity. It just always goes this way. I think there was a teacher who probably quit when the abacus came out. Oh my God.

Oh, if these kids, could they be lazier?

Could they be lazier? Moving those seashells across a board. And then there's probably a teacher who quit when the calculator came out.

Yeah, you're right. That's true. I didn't think of that.

These are tools that are inevitable and we need to embrace. I wish the teacher would say, this is the future. How can you as a human being leverage it and play at a whole new level?

Yeah, yeah.

I love LLMs. We had this neighborhood barbecue and, uh, I'm like, okay, we're— oops, someone slammed the door in anger. That was the teacher. I don't know if they came up on Done with this.

This is bullshit. I'm out of here.

We just had like this neighborhood gathering and me and my neighbor George said we're going to put this together. So where we live, the houses are kind of spread out. I truly do not know two of my nearest neighbors. I've never even met them. I've tried to. I know one neighbor, Tim. He's amazing. But there are folks I don't. And in the greater community, I know very few people. So we decided to put this on. I'm like, well, we're going to do it in October. It's kind of going to be something where we, you know, some people have vegetable gardens and so forth. You can bring stuff.

We'll barbecue.

And I go into ChatGPT, I'm like, what should I name this thing? And ask some questions like, oh, where do you live? And it's a hilly area. And it goes, oh, it's Harvest on the Hill. I'm like, my God.

You didn't name that? AI named that?

No, AI named it. I did not name it.

I love it.

Harvest on the Hill. So I said, give me 20 options. And it gave me different options. And I'm like, Harvest on the Hill. I love the alliteration and so forth. It plays into the story I want. And I posted up there. And, uh, and then I got two neighbors who said it's— because I, I started calling it Harvest Hill. Like, we live on Harvest Hill, this hill's not been named. And they said, sorry, Mike, the hill does have a name from 100 years ago. It's Guinea Hill.

Guinea Hill?

Guinea Hill.

Like guinea fowl?

Like, uh, thank you. Good. Yeah, because that's also a slur.

Yes, right, right, right.

So I'm like, um, and they said, no, no, it's, it's the guinea fowls, and there were some guineas here, so it's Guinea Hill. Those neighbors showed up. And I'm not saying it's probably just a coincidence. I'm not coming back because my son will rename it. But there is this resistance that shows up. There's people that say this was the old way and therefore it is the highway.

Right.

And I wonder if this teacher had the same thing. Like, this is the way I've been raised and trained. This is my only belief. I wonder if the teacher is the failure here.

Yeah, I wonder. I wonder. She was saying, though, Let's see. She said, the author tried to teach students about the drawbacks of AI-generated content, but many lack the skills to appreciate the nuances of writing style and meaning. Students using AI miss the opportunity— this was her complaint— students miss the opportunity to deepen their understanding, engage in the critical decisions involved in writing. Because it is a, it's a critical skill.

But how could you have leveraged it? I wonder, and I don't know what the teacher tried to do, if anything. Did they just give up, or could the teacher say, I want everyone here to go on ChatGPT and have it write a story.

Yeah.

We're then gonna post it on the wall and we're gonna be, whatever they are, and we're gonna discuss it and we're gonna say, there's gonna be one story here that is not ChatGPT.

Mm-hmm.

Can you find it? Can you make it into a contest?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And now you're elevating their skill by becoming detectives. I, I maybe she did that. And so I'm being, I'm, I'm offering suggestions that was tried, but a lot of people give up when they're faced with failure.

Right, right. Yeah.

So this has been a joy as always, Amy.

And for me too. Thank you.

We did get our first, uh, viewer feedback because while we haven't broadcast—

released these.

Yeah, as a podcast, we are posting it on our social media outlets.

Sure.

And someone's like, oh, where's that new office you have? Same office, just a room that we never ever use.

That's right.

And we're actively, just a news update on our side, actively looking at a new space. Yeah, potentially. We'll know within the next, I think, 30 days if the space is appropriate for us.

Awesome.

And then we were gonna, we're gonna own our first building as a company.

Exciting.

And then Amy, you're gonna be decorating it.

Am I really? Yeah. Really? Yeah.

One person ain't gonna be, it's gonna be me. Like, we just put the people with the best talent. Yeah, we're gonna make it beautiful.

That'd be awesome.

Thanks for watching and listening to Entrepreneurship Elevated. I'd love for you to subscribe to the channel. So wherever you're listening in, watching, if it's a podcast, even if it's on social media, can you hit subscribe? Can you give us an honest rating for the show? Maybe it doesn't serve you to give us a rating, but it serves us. It serves us. So please consider doing that.

Please do.

And in the meantime, wishing you tremendous success in your business.

Bye.