"FAILURE is a Stepping Stone to SUCCESS!" - Tony Robbins (@TonyRobbins) - #Entspresso

Good morning, Believe Nation! It's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe in you. I believe in your potential, and I want to see that great thing that you have inside you explode out into the world and have a big impact. So to help you on your journey, today's message is learn from failure. Over to you, Tony Robbins.

Failure is part of life. I mean, the difference for me though is I look at failure as a stepping stone to success. It's a speed bump. I know I'm going to fail, but it's not failure if you learn something. And so, gosh, I've made so many mistakes, I've screwed so many things up, but every time I do, it just becomes— it becomes a way for me to explain to someone else what it takes. You know, it's like, here's what I've done. I think I have ability to influence people because I talk about my failures. I talk about all the things that mess me up, but I show people that I didn't let it stop me, and you don't need to stop you. And I think, I think that's really the secret in that area.

And if everything you touched was successful, you probably wouldn't be able to relate to people as much.

No, you wouldn't be able to relate, and also it'd be total bullshit, and everyone would know it's bullshit. And also you'd be bored silly. I mean, think about it. If you just said, I want this to happen, I want this to happen, you know, people don't value what they don't fight for. You know, it's like you see kids sometimes, you know, your parents will say, you're not going to value this if you don't work for it. And you're a kid going, I'll value it, just give it to me. But it's true. You know, the things we've worked the hardest for, we value the most. So I think, you know, the purpose of a goal is not getting it anyway. The purpose of goal, you know, is who you become. Who you become is going to make you happier. It's going to make you sad. So I'm not looking for an effortless approach. There's no such thing.

It's time to change your mindset around failure. How you perceive failure will ultimately decide how successful you will become or how small you continue to live your life and run your business. You need to understand that successful people fail more than anybody else. That may sound a little bit counterintuitive, so say it again: successful people fail more than everybody else. And you might be thinking, well, how do successful people fail more, right? If they're failing so much, how are they having so much success? Because a lot of it is a numbers game. The more you fail, the more you learn, and the more you learn, the more you understand how to make it a success. Too many people try something and then realize after 1 or 2 or 3 attempts, "Ah, this isn't for me. I suck. I didn't make it the first time, and so I'm gonna quit." How many times has that happened? Now, if you try something and you don't love it and it was an experiment, that's great. That's a good failure. It's a good understanding. You know not to do that again. But if you really love doing it and you just can't produce the results yet, that's okay because you suck at anything at the beginning. And you need to fail and fail and fail and fail until you get better. Whoever you love, whoever— Tony Robbins or whoever it is that you look up to, they failed so many times, they failed more than you even tried. Successful people fail more than unsuccessful people even try. If you look at my YouTube channel, you guys are fans that you're watching this video, I've tried so many series that have failed, that haven't worked, that haven't pulled in the numbers, that didn't resonate with people, that we abandoned, that we quit, that we left. We've tried more series than most YouTubers even try, even attempt. And eventually some of them work, right? Like the Top 10 series worked, the En Expresso series worked, the Mentor Me series worked. To find a few that work and take off and you can really leverage, we had to go through a lot that didn't work. And it's only through those failures that we ended up becoming successful. And it's a never-ending game. I'm constantly launching more series, trying, testing, seeing, "Does this work? Does this not work?" I look at people who come into the studio and try to learn salsa dancing. Some people have always wanted to dance, or they want to meet friends, they want to connect, they want to do some kind of activity. And they may not get the move the first time, right? When I first learned salsa, I wasn't getting all the moves perfectly the first time. It's through practice, it's through repetition, it's through trying things and failing, and it doesn't work, and then you learn. You learn from that and you get better and you get better and you get better. If you're not failing, then you're never gonna win. If you're not failing and you're just staying so small that you never test anything out, then you're gonna constantly stay small. There's nobody who hits 100% every single time they go out. And so I would strongly encourage you, if you don't believe me, if you're having a hard time with this message, I would strongly encourage you to look at whoever it is that you love and respect and look up to and look at their career. Look at how they started, look at their middle point, look at where they are now. There's still tons of failures along the way, whether they were like massive failures or lots of little micro failures in little things and experiments that they did. Even now, your heroes are failing consistently every day, trying something new, trying to get better, because that's where the growth comes. If you're not failing, you're not growing, which means you're not learning, and you'll never understand how to build something that is super successful. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, what's the biggest failure that you have learned something from? Share your thoughts down in the comments below. I'd love to hear from you, and I think it could inspire other people who are watching this video as well. I also want to give a quick shout out to Thelma Saunders. Thelma, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, and tweeting about it as well. I really appreciate the support and I hope you enjoyed the read. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of en-spresso. I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going. When you think about your risk tolerance for failure, how far are you willing to fail?

Well, I mean, unfortunately and fortunately, I failed quite a bit. Yeah, you know, but I understand that's actually part of the process of succeeding. I'm not one that really believe in failure. I believe you have setbacks and, you know, you have to learn from those. You have to learn what are those landmines that can be avoided the next time, what are those pitfalls. You have to learn from that stuff. And so you're not welcome those things, it's a part of life.

But are you prepared to like really fail at something totally new?

Like what if you're just VC, then I'm a VC.

Yeah.

You know, and then I work at it and then I'm not a shitty VC the next year, you know, whenever it happens. Listen, my first year in the league on national TV, 18 years old, I shot 5 straight air balls in the playoffs in front of millions of people. Yeah, I think my tolerance is pretty high.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think I'm all right.

Right.

Not like it's so obsessed with praise and success and box office and stuff. I think for some reason I was just lucky that I wasn't obsessed with that stuff, 'cause I know a lot of actors that are. And I'm so thankful that I don't have that gear to be on Box Office Mojo the morning after a project comes out. But on the other side, I've been a part of some pretty massive failures. And I just don't really care. I mean, it's a bummer. Of course I would want every movie I've been a part of to make $100 million, and that would be so great, and everybody would win. I don't let the success of a project or the lack of a success of a project, which many have not made a lot of money, take away from the experience. I just think the experience is so much more important and I strive to stay in that headspace. 'Cause it's not natural. Of course you want all these things as a greedy human being. But I always remind myself like, hey, guess what doesn't matter? Anything other than the people you're in the room with.

What do you do when you start a business but it fails? Well, hopefully you can learn from all the mistakes, all the good things and all the bad things, and reapply it to your new business or reapply it to your new job or your new career destination. Look at Apple. Apple is one of the most prestigious, bankable companies in the world, and they had a lot of failures. They had a lot of launches that didn't work. They had a lot of things that just didn't click with the audience and their customers, but that didn't stop stop them from having a thriving business. You learn way more when you fail than when you succeed.

Let me give you the one word secret to happiness. One word. This is all you need to be happy. The most important word ever.

If you had to think of one word that's most important to you or that sums you up or that would be kind of like a little beacon. Hey, Believe Nation. If you want to know what the most important one word is for Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, Oprah Winfrey, will.i.am, and Howard Schultz, I have a very special secret video for you. Check the description for details.