Fail Bigger, Fail Faster with Andrea Waltz

If you were gonna fail bigger in your life, what would that look like? If you were gonna take something even bigger on and maybe fail at it, perhaps even go for a no go for a failure on it, but you were really gonna give something big a shot, expanding your vision, expanding what you'd want to do. What is that thing? What is that one thing that you'd want to be doing? What would it take to be able to go after that? What if you reoriented your perception? So instead of being scared of that, you were excited by that, you were driven towards it, compelled to move towards it.

Even if you were worried maybe it's.

Not going to go well, what if you could eliminate that fear and it just became all practice, all growth, all opportunity? That's what you're going to learn in today's show.

Coming to you from the center for Social Confidence in Portland, Oregon. Welcome to Shrink for the shy guy, helping men everywhere go from social anxiety to social dominance with your host, Dr. Aziz.

Welcome to today's episode, which is all about fail big, fail faster.

And you're going to learn exactly how to do that. We're going to continue with our interview with Andrea Wall. It's all about go for no. All about shifting your relationship to no.

To rejection, to failure.

Because think about this the more you can. So as you learned in the last week's episode, when you orient yourself towards no and you stop trying to avoid it, you become more resilient, become more confident. And you know, yes lives in the land of no. So you end up getting more yeses when you stop becoming so scared of no. But what if you turned it up a notch? What if you got no's faster, Right? So the classic example I do when I'm working with guys who are single and they want to get in a relationship is let's say you got a no once a month from a woman or you asked one woman out, let's say a month, whether she said yes or no, that's 12 opportunities a year. What if you asked a woman out every week? That's 52 opportunities in a year. You just quadrupled your opportunities. What if you asked a woman out every three days and so on and so forth? You can get up to hundreds of opportunities, and that's what happens when you're willing to fail faster. Can you see the power that can.

Start to come from that?

So that's we're going to learn more about in our interview with Andrea.

If you love to jump into the.

Conversation, go to facebook.com shrinkforthshyguy or shrinkforthshyguy.com and send me a message. I love reading them. If you're enjoying the show, if you're liking this, please rate the show on itunes. Give it a five star rating. If you are a fan of the show and want it to keep growing and continuing and so we can reach even more people.

People.

So let's jump back into that interview with Andrea now.

Expert interview.

Absolutely. I take that permission to, as you said, to fail and the permission for it to be a learning process. I see this often times in people that I've worked with. And there's a perfectionistic tendency in myself too, that if I don't catch it, can. Can get me where it's like I'm taking on something new. I'm learning. And this is the second time I've tried it and it didn't go exactly how I wanted to. And there's a part of my brain that's like, ah, come on, what's going on here? You suck. And I have to kind of pause and give myself some permission, like, wait a minute. This is a learning process. And of course, I don't know this yet. And I think that's so important. Whether it's in sales or even learning how to more comfortably talk to someone that you want to date. Any area, it's a learning process always. We can always be improving. And we certainly don't know everything from the get go.

Exactly. And, you know, I mean, I think it probably goes to so much of what you teach in just coaching people in building their confidence and in meeting new people and all of that. And I think so much of it, again, is that perfectionism and that not wanting to feel foolish and just giving somebody the permission and actually telling them. Like with go for no, we say go out there and get a no. In fact, we say go out there and find somebody that you are certain to get a no. Like, instead of just like normally when we're living in that kind of go for yes mindset, it's, you know, your sales manager would say, well, call somebody who you think you get a yes from and that'll build your confidence. Well, instead, from a go for no standpoint, our position is, well, why don't you call somebody who you're absolutely certain will tell you no? Maybe they've told you no in the past. Let's get that over with. Let's prove that you survived that so that you can continue to make calls and prove that you can survive so it's never in the avoiding that we build ourselves up. It's in the confronting and then surviving and then moving forward through that.

That is such a key thing. And that's what you touched on when you said earlier, like, we can't sell anyone courage. We can only teach them how to craft it themselves. Because the key element is that confronting. And there's a definition of courage that I actually saw on a T shirt, and I loved it so much that I snapped a photo of it. And I want to read it now because I think it really relates to what you're saying. It says courage, also known as fortitude, is the ability to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation. It can be divided into physical courage in the face of physical pain, hardship, and the threat of death. Emotional courage in the face of shame, scandal, rejection, and discouragement. Its vice of deficiency brings cowardice, and its vice of excess brings recklessness. And one thing really stands out to me in that is that it's the confrontation of that thing. And what we're talking about now is mostly I'm imagining the emotional side. I guess someone could physically attack you when you offer them to sell your product. But usually it's the emotional side that we're afraid of, and there's the confrontation of it that I think is the key element that creates the courage.

Absolutely. Well, first of all, I love that. That is so cool, so amazing, and perfectly described. And you're right, and it is human nature especially. And I'm sure you see this with your clients. When people are shy and lacking confidence, you. You don't. You're not in confrontation mode. You're in run mode. So this is. This is all about facing that and pushing, pushing yourself and, you know, and being willing to be vulnerable. I've watched several times, actually, her TED talk, Brene Brown, you've probably seen this on Shame, and it's fascinating. And it's. It's all about being vulnerable. And I think that's a huge part of learning to build your confidence. Learning to go for no and learning to be successful by failing is, you know, getting over whatever shame you have in your history, your background, whatever, and being vulnerable in front of other people. People respond to that, but they won't unless you take a chance and take a risk.

Absolutely. And what have you seen? You know, one of the biggest fears that people mention is, okay, what if I try this thing and I fail? And then everyone's gonna, you know, think less of me? They're gonna point the finger and laugh at me. And what have you seen in your. As people start to go for no, and let's say they really throw themselves out there and try something and it doesn't quite work, do they. Does that really happen? Do people really laugh at them? Or do people have a different response? Or do people not even notice? What have you seen about the reality of that?

Yeah, I think. Well, I think the reality is what I've seen actually is amazing, amazing stories. And much of it has been. Much of the example that I've gotten has been sales examples. But we've had letters and people write us who, you know, had dreams of becoming artists, singers who end up going on auditions, and they, you know, don't make it, but they just are kind of living in a totally different mindset because. And they're so proud of themselves and they are able to live without that regret of, well, what, you know, I never tried to do this. Ultimately, even getting rejected and turned down has helped people be more successful because they attempted it. They did something that was, you know, a passion, even if they were rejected. So that's the one thing that we've seen and gotten really cool notes and letters about some people been successful and have gone on to do amazing things from a sales standpoint. We get these letters of people who are just blown away by the results that they get. They say, I started going for no, and I didn't think much of it. And all of a sudden I was getting yeses and I got a yes from somebody I didn't expect. And the next thing you know, this person became, you know, hugely successful. And they helped me in my business, and now I'm like a top leader. It's just amazing what happens when people take the risk and they try it. So we've seen miraculous things. And it's funny, we always get the credit. People always thank us. And I always say, well, you know, you're the one who took the action because it's one thing you. To go out and fail and to go out and go for no, but it does take courage. You have to put yourself on the line. You have to be willing to risk. So all of those people did. They're all better off for it. And living with, I think, much less regret of what could have been because they made the different attempts.

Absolutely. And less regret. And you said a word in there which I think is so important, which is feeling proud of regardless of the outcome, hey, I did it. I tried. I put myself out there. And I think what I've seen is not only can a person feel that natural Sense of pride in themselves for the successes, but also for the attempts and the no's along the way. But I've seen other people can actually respect someone who goes out there and try. That's consistently what I see when someone is bold. There might be a few haters who. Who challenge them, but most people tend to really admire and appreciate that demonstration of willingness and boldness and courage.

Absolutely. And you'll get a kick out of this, too. So a few years ago, we decided to write a little controversial press release because we were like, okay, how do we get the word out of go for no? How do we just continue to market this concept and have people find out about us? So when American idol was really big at its height, this was like 2006 or something. We did a press release and we said, I think we call ourselves failure experts on this press release. And we said, failure experts claim that rejected American idol contestants are more successful than most Americans. And the whole point of the press release that we wrote up was that most people are sitting on the couch eating potato chips, mocking, you know, these bad contestants. And some of the people were bad. And some of the people were just, okay. They weren't good enough to, you know, go on. They didn't have the talent. They had the tenacity. But they, in our minds, they were success, More successful than most people being rejected on the show because they're the ones who are going out and risking and attempting and, you know, auditioning and putting them themselves through all of this potential rejection. And that press release went, I mean, wild. We got so much press. I ended up going on a talk, American idol talk show, to talk about it all, because people thought that was so interesting, that that was our position. But that is our position.

Yeah, absolutely. That's a great story. I mean, even in that self, there's just a sign of you being willing to put something out there that's going to get no's. People are going to disagree with it. People are going to have something to say about. But that's where the energy comes from. And actually, that's a great question I have if you'd like to share. How would you say you most currently apply go for no in your life, in your business or other areas of your life? Where is it showing up now? How do you keep using this philosophy?

We're going to pause and take a quick break, and then we're going to get back into that interview with Andrea Walts.

Are you ready to take your confidence to the next level? What would you do with that confidence, meet more people, find a girlfriend, excel in your company. Hands down, the most powerful way to truly transform your confidence long term is to work with someone who knows exactly how to do it. Join Dr. Aziz and seven of your peers in a life changing group coaching program called Total Confidence. Work directly with Dr. Aziz on your challenges, learn from your peers and get the support you need to make that next big shift. Go to socialconfidencecenter.com coaching to find out more.

Oh, gosh. All the time we go for no trying to get speaking clients. And we are constantly reaching out to people to do work with. Whether it's, you know, have us on an interview like this or doing a training call or all of the kind of ways that we share. Go for no. So we continue to sell and market our products and our services all the time. And then Richard and I are trying some really, I guess I call it crazy, off the wall, interesting projects. We just launched a Kickstarter campaign for a paranormal suspense series that we're launching. He's kind of taking the lead on that. So that's a dream project for us. I don't know that, you know, without go for no and knowing that we've got to put ourselves out there and take a chance, I don't know if we would be trying some of these wild things that we try. So we definitely live it all the time.

That is great. What I love about it is it can help someone who, and I have a range of listeners, someone might be listening and they're kind of really stuck just to go start a conversation with someone, just to develop more friends or maybe even meet someone they're interested in. And the go for no is tremendously powerful for that. Someone might be further along, more successful socially, but they're held back in business, in creating their own business or in marketing themselves or they're a salesperson. And that's tremendously useful. But what's beautiful about this philosophy is no matter where you are, you could be at a place like where you and Richard are, where you're successful. You have a business that is teaching something that is of tremendous value. You do speaking conferences and trainings, sort of like the high level stuff, but you're always looking for the next thing, like, okay, what's the crazy project we can do? What's the next way that we can get? No. And so there's really no limit to how far you can expand with this approach to life. I love it.

Yeah, you're so right. And I'm glad that you Said that, and I do appreciate that for sure.

So the question I have, and some listeners might be having this as well, is, okay, so success, achievement, glory. That sounds great. But how many no's do I need to get before that fear starts to go down a little bit? Like how many do I need to get? And I know it's probably different person, history, situation, but just, you know, general sense. Is it like five no's? Is it 500 no's? How much do people need to really put themselves out there before it starts to go down?

Yeah, that is a great question. And it's so hard to say because like I was telling you earlier, you know, we have all of these different levels. I see these different levels of people. And again, some people just take it and they. It's like they get it intellectually and they can kind of get it emotionally quickly too. I think about 60% of people fall somewhere in the middle. And so how many nos it takes to really kind of get over the. Some of that? It really depends upon the person. One of the things that we do, which is kind of fun though, and it's a great way to I think, accelerate the process, is we do a. This is like just totally informal. I do it through a Facebook group and sometimes I'll do a webinar around it. We do a 30 day go for no challenge. So we challenge people. Get as many no's as you can get for yourself in 30 days. Now some people come up with these crazy goals. They'll say, well, I'm going to get 1000 or 500 or whatever. Now a person who, maybe they're super shy, they're online all the time, they don't talk to people. They, they haven't gotten a no since, you know, 1997. They may say, well, gosh, my, my 30 day challenge would be to get 10 no's. Well, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. It's whatever would really challenge your comfort zone. And so for 30 days we just tell people, get as many nos as you can, or set a goal, challenge yourself and see what happens. And I think by accelerating that. And we have a thing that we mentioned in our book called the 5 failure levels. Level 4 is fail bigger and fail faster. That allows people to do that. It's, you know, make something challenging, try to fail fast. And if you can do that in a short period of time and do that fast, I think that will really accelerate your progress. Not to say that there won't be somebody down the line that you want to ask out that scares the heck out of you, where you're just like, oh, my God, this is my dream person. I'm really scared. But I think it would help.

Absolutely. And I love that the fail bigger, faster. The idea of failing your way to success, that you can really accelerate your progress by just being willing to go out there. And I teach that sometimes I'm working with a man, he wants to, you know, find a partner, meet a woman, and he's like, well, I'm willing to get rejected, you know, once a month. It's like, well, that's, you know, the likelihood of finding your love of your life on the first chance. Good luck. And so if it's once a month, maybe you're looking at 10, 20 months before you really click with the exact right person for you. Whereas if you're willing to get, you know, one no a day, then who knows, you might really be able to. To make that happen so much faster in your life.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

So that's really helpful. And one question is, have you noticed, does the fear ever really just kind of completely go away? Or is there always kind of something that you need to just. It doesn't stop you, but you still feel it in your heart or your stomach or your chest or something along those lines.

For me personally.

For you personally, and maybe what you've seen in people that you've taught and worked with.

Yeah, you know, I think. I think, well, for me personally, I can say, yeah, almost entirely. Unless there's something for some reason that. Just something I really want to have a yes. You know, I really want it to happen. I can get super nervous over it. And I've heard from a wide variety of people who say that their fears are greatly diminished. I don't know if anybody is completely fearless. You know, it's. It would be. Emotions really guide us. And I think to try to rid ourselves of emotion entirely is not necessarily a productive thing. It's when it inhibits us from living the kind of life we want to live, from achieving our dreams, from living a great life is when our emotions become a problem. Right. So it's about being able to manage them in such a way that we can continue to move forward even if we have a little bit of that nervousness. And the butterflies, which is what I get in the pit of my stomach. So I think no one has ever said to me, no, it's completely. I'm perfect, I'm good. But lots of people have made 180 degree turns.

Absolutely. I think that's the biggest real outcome is to not be inhibited by that fear, not to be held back by it, just to have it be an energy that is there, but it no longer has such a control over. There's one last question I'm really curious about is how does this work? If you're going for no's, where's the role of changing your approach? Because you might be going for no's, but you might be, say your sales approach might be ineffective or maybe when it comes to dating and relationships, you might be approaching some people in a way that is getting you no's, but it also is going to consistently keep getting you no. It's like, basically, how do you get better at whatever it is you're doing while you also are going for these no's?

Yeah, I'm so glad you said that. And I always forget to mention that. I'm so glad you brought that up. Very important because, yeah, you don't want to just keep doing the same thing over and over again. And we all know that's the definition of insanity. So clearly your goal is to get go for no. And yet at some point you if it's just no, no, no, and you're not seeing any yeses, which I've had people tell me that before. They say, you know, I've done this and I feel like I'm not getting anywhere. My advice is always okay, so at this point you need to seek help from an expert in your field, in your endeavor, if you will, of whatever it is you're trying to do and change up your approach and get, maybe it's just get creative. Maybe it's do something a little crazy. Maybe it's just take a look and see what the best people are doing. You know, see what your, if it's getting. If your best friend has a ton of dates, see what they're doing. If it's this top sales guy in your company, you know, find out how, what his approach or her approach is. So definitely learning from those no's and being able to fill in the gaps. But here's the interesting thing about that and I had a lady write me and I loved what she said. She did a 30 day go for no challenge and she said it was only by really getting out there and forcing myself to go for no was I really able to see where I was getting no's and where my gaps were so that I knew that I needed to get more training in these particular areas. So she was actually seeing, okay, this is the point where I'm not able to close the sale. This is the point where the person's telling me, no, they don't want to meet with me. And so she saw where her opportunities were. I think for a lot of people, especially if somebody really lacks confidence and they're not putting themselves out there at all, they don't even get to that point to analyze it, you know, so if you can go for no and you can start getting those nos and maybe see, maybe learn a little bit about what you're doing and what they're telling you and figure out, okay, how can I change this up? How can I get creative and do it a little differently? I think that goes a long way in teaching you where your gaps are.

Absolutely. I love so much of what you said in there. And I'm thinking about the clients that I work with who make the most dramatic and rapid progress in their confidence. And then that translates into their romantic life, their business life, their social life. It's in our session, we focus on their mindset, their emotions that might be holding them back, specific strategies they could use. But the ones that really rapidly accelerate and grow are the ones who are in between sessions. They're out there trying it a lot.

We're going to pause and take one more quick break, and then we're going to jump back into the conclusion of this interview with expert Andrea Walt.

Have you ever heard the phrase feel the fear and do it anyway? Have you ever tried it in your life? While it is a key part of building confidence, it leaves out the most important secret of creating powerful confidence in every area of your life. Do you want to know that secret? It's self compassion, the skill of being on your own side no matter what. It's so important. Confidence unleashed has an entire module on it. Go to confidenceunleashednow.com to find out more.

And that's because you can. I think I've seen a couple errors people make. One is people get very, very little data. They'll try once in a month or couple weeks, and they'll try to make all kinds of conclusions about that. Oh, I should do this next time.

I should do that.

It's like, well, maybe you need to do five before you can start to notice any sort of trends. And another thing I notice people do is they'll take the wrong lesson. I was working with one fellow, and he was working on getting more comfortable with women and dating and wanting to find a partner. And he would sometimes get uncomfortable on the phone. He was a little better person. Face to face. But on the phone, he would get nervous or not know what to say. And so he sure enough was on the phone with a woman. And it had been going well via texting, he says. But when they got on the phone, they chatted for a while. It seemed to be going well. And all of a sudden, about 20, 30 minutes into the conversation, she seemed to really withdraw and shut down and get a little distant or cold and then. And quickly ended the conversation. And so we were trying to explore what happened. And it was like, what did he learn? What did he take from it? And he said, I learned to never talk on the phone with a woman that I'm interested in. I said, well, that is one possible lesson. And I think we often do that. The lesson we take is, oh, I should avoid. No, I should avoid failure. And that's what I love about what you're teaching is like, no, no, no. You can tweak your approach. You can see you can learn from this by consulting someone who knows more than you. But the takeaway is not to avoid, but to keep going into it completely.

Can I just add one thing to that, too? I think there's a tendency, and this goes for finding that your life partner finding. And this is going to sound really kind of horrible, but finding the next sale is. I know people believe in soulmates, and I get that and everything, but the reality is that if you don't get this one yes, on this one sale, your sales career is not over. If you want to date this one person and that doesn't happen, you're not dateless forever. This is not like this one person was it. And this is the one time and that's it. I mean, the reality is it does have to be the kind of the almost the quantity approach. And that's one of the things, actually we teach quite a bit is what. When you're going for no. You know, we said go for no, we said fail bigger, faster. Well, part of that is when you're trying this, if you can tell your story to a lot of people and whether it's just meeting people, relationships, and you're out there and you're sharing and talking to a lot of people, the rejection, the nervousness, the all. A lot of that goes away when you have a higher quantity of people you're interacting with. So, yeah, I guess it's not. And this, I apologize. This may dovetail, like, totally against what you teach, but it's kind of like if you're talking to, like, five women, you're kind of conversing with over a week. It tends to, I think, remove some of the nervousness as it. As opposed to like, this is it, she's the one, this is it. If I screw this up, that's it. I'm never getting married.

Absolutely. That is, I am in total alignment with you on that. I think that we can. The idea of a soulmate is an interesting one and we could have probably a fascinating discussion about that. But one thing I know for sure is because you saw her across the room and she was beautiful or had something about her that compelled you. First of all, that doesn't mean that she's your soulmate. And I wouldn't necessarily say, okay, this is the one. And you get all attached to the outcome. And then even if there isn't potential, you know, with that attachment and that anxiety of messing it up, you tend to not really be yourself. And then the next thing you know, you lose that opportunity, which could be a good wake up call. And it could also be just there's. If it didn't work out, then she's not your soulmate. Right. You know, it's like if she wasn't interested, then there's someone out there who will, who will reciprocate and you just need to keep working on yourself to find them. And I think that's so true. What you're highlighting is that the confidence that comes from abundance in terms of. And not necessarily an abundance of yeses. But I have five more sales calls or five more sales conversations or presentations in the next two weeks versus it's a ghost town out there and you're going to be so much more nervous and anxious and ultimately not be as effective if you don't have all that stuff lined up. And the only way to get lined up is to go for no.

Completely. Yes. I totally agree.

This is great.

I mean, I'm really enjoying talking with you. I feel like there's so much more we could jump into, but maybe we'll have to save that for a future conversation. But people that are listening and if they're intrigued and interested, what would be the best way to find out more about what you offer and books and maybe even opportunities to see you and Richard speak?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I would encourage everybody to go to go fourknow.com which is our website, and it's spelled out in the words G-O-F-O-R-N O dot com. If they're Amazon shoppers, they can find the go for no book on Amazon, Kindle and Physical book. So I'd say pick up the book. That's the best way to kind of get to know the concept. And we've got some free stuff on our website. I mean, we have videos, tons of blogs, and a fun little free no quotient assessment. So there's plenty of ways to interact with us without purchasing. So yeah, go to the website, check it out and see what you can learn.

Fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing with us today, Andrea. I really appreciate it.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

That brings us to the end of the interview and almost to the end of our show. But we have to end with one thing, which is what we always end.

With, which is your.

Time for action.

Today's action step is to do one of the A, fail bigger or B, fail faster. So pick one thing that you'd like to fail bigger at. What's up? What's a way to up your game, up your projects, up something, taking something on that you could fail at that's bigger than you've done before that's a little outside of your comfort zone.

So that's a.

Option A is to take that one on. Option B is continue with something that you're doing. Something a little bit smaller, but do it faster, get more no's more quickly, make more calls, talk to more people, whatever it is in your particular situation, whether it's sales, business, conversations, dating, relationships, public speaking. Let's say you're scared of public speaking. How can you fail faster at that? Well, how many speaking gigs can you line up can you find at Toastmasters when you go to a Toastmaster? You know, every time I went to a Toastmasters when I was younger and I was working on my public speaking fear, I wouldn't just go and kind of hang out in the back of the room and check out the scene. No, I was there to feel the fear and do it anyway. So I'd get there and I'd look for the opportunity and say, sure enough.

Someone'S like, so and so is not.

Going to be here today. Does anyone give an impromptu speech? And bam, my hand went up right away because I knew I'm here to fail faster. The more I can do this, the more uncomfortable I can be, the quicker I'm going to get the confidence that.

I need, that I want.

So that is what I encourage you to do in today's action step.

Take your pick.

A or B, or if you want extra credit, A and B. But whatever you do, remember to have compassion with yourself in this process to be on your own side, to not criticize yourself and to really learn how to accept yourself and be on your own side no matter what happens. Especially when you get those no's and then when you combine the going for no with self compassion, you got rocket fuel for your confidence boosters my friend. So thanks so much for listening. I enjoyed talking with you this week. I look forward to speaking with you more in the future. And if you're interested in that total social confidence group that you heard about earlier in this episode, by all means go to the website under the coaching section, look up groups or under the events section. It'll be in both of those places and you can find out all about the group there and look about filling out the application and so on and so forth. I'd love to talk with you more about that if you're ready to really up your game and handle this confidence area once and for all. So I look forward to speaking with you and talking with you in the future. And until we do, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know that you're awesome.

Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziz. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks, and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to Social Confidence center dot com.