Learn How to Embrace Mistakes and Succeed in Life

Mistakes.

Make tons of mistakes.

Made mistakes.

Make mistakes.

Make mistakes.

Making mistakes.

Make mistakes.

Make mistakes.

Make mistakes.

Make mistakes.

What's up, 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 thing that you have inside here come out and explode into the world to make it a better place. And so to help you on your journey today, we're going to learn how to make mistakes. And as always, guys, as you're watching, if you hear something that really resonates with you, please please leave it in the comments below and put quotes around it so other people can learn and be inspired. And when you write it down, it's much more likely to stick with yourself as well. Enjoy.

What one thing we've failed to do in the educational system is alert people that if you're doing what no one has done before, stuff goes wrong. And in fact, if nothing ever goes wrong in what you're doing, if you make no mistakes in your job, in your— in whatever task you've brought upon yourself, then you are not on the frontier. Simple.

Mm-hmm.

It's true in science, and I heard it applied to car racing. There's a quote that I'm told was spoken by Mario Andretti. He said, "If you are in complete control of your car," You're not in the race.

Oh wow.

There's something that you're just not completely in control of.

I take that to heart.

And only then can, and that's the same thing I'm describing for when you are on the frontier.

So many things go wrong when you're starting a company, and often I think people ask, you know, what mistakes should you avoid making? And, you know, my answer to that question is don't even bother trying to avoid mistakes because you're gonna make tons of mistakes, right? And the important thing is actually learning quickly from whatever mistakes you make and not giving up, right? And I mean, there are things every single year of Facebook's existence that could have killed us or made it so that it just seemed like moving forward and making a lot of progress just seemed intractable, but you just kind of bounce back and you learn, and nothing is impossible. You just have to kind of keep running through the walls.

You don't have to hold yourself hostage to who you used to be or anything you ever used to do, 'cause who has lived and hasn't made mistakes? When I think about my 20s and what a foolish girl I was and how I would give over my power to men who really didn't mean me well, but now I hold no grudges against them either because I realize I'm the one who gave over the power because I didn't know any better. And now that I know better, I know I don't have to do that again. It's one of the most powerful lessons any of us can ever know.

Before you succeed, you must first learn to fail. Uh, you know, a lot of people that fail, they get down on themselves, but the, the best of sports stars learn from their mistakes. You know, I should have did this. Okay, we'll do that next year. And just keep learning until you get to the point to where you're the champion, and then everybody has to come beat you. Took me 8 years before I got my first championship. Then after that, we won 3 in a row, lost 2, and I got another one, and then kept losing. So it's It's not easy, but it's not a specific time period on how long it takes. You just have to learn from your mistakes, if you make mistakes, and then just try to capitalize on that.

So many people come up to me and say, Gary, it's so hard. I look at their Instagram, and they're not posting any of their content with hashtags, which is a by accident way to pick up exposure in a world where they have no money. When you have no money, when I took over my dad's business, it did $3 million a year, 10% gross profit, $300,000 before expenses. My first year marketing budget was $14,000. When you have no money, and I built that business from a $3 to a $60 million business in 5 years. I had to make every penny perfect. So I was right about email marketing in '96, and I was right, and because of that I had 91% open rates. When Google AdWords came out, the day it came out, I paid 5 cents a click for words before anybody bid me up, and I was super right, and that worked.

How much is that luck versus preparation, and do you ever get anything wrong? What do you do when you make a mistake?

I get everything wrong, it's just that I can't recall it because once it's wrong, I'm moving on to the next thing. Dwelling on what you fucked up on is the quickest way for the next thing not to work.

Right?

[Speaker] Yep.

[Speaker] So I think I do everything, I mean you know this, this is a fun thing to say, some people in the back know this, I was a breakout YouTube star in the first year, 2006. I decided that the right strategy was to leave YouTube completely and go to Vidler because Vidler offered me equity in their company and I've left an enormous amount of attention, I deviated from my intention thesis to do short-term economics and equity in a company, and I lost. I lost. When DRock finally came in my life 2 years ago and we started to try to build up my YouTube for the first time, I was sitting on 40,000 user followers in a world where I could have had millions if I just stayed the course. So I make mistakes all the time. I'm reorging VaynerMedia every day 'cause it's based on a mistake I made the prior year. I just don't give a fuck about my mistakes. Everybody else cares about your mistakes. If you're worried about your own mistakes, you've already lost.

Making it through that first performance, I guess, was in many ways a relief. But we also quickly realized there was a lot of work to be done and a lot of improvements that had to be made. With the full-scale festival tour throughout Europe just 8 weeks away, well, we really had to get our grind on.

I was so super nervous. Yeah, I was like, "Oh my God, I can't believe I'm doing this." We basically had all the festivals that we wanted that summer. Tomorrowland, Creamfields, Lollapalooza. We had a solid plan for the whole summer.

Then came the phone call. Hi guys, we got a call from the US. Does Alan want to do support on Rihanna tour? I was like, okay, can't say no to this. Do I really dare to say yes? I think every rookie makes mistakes, and certainly so did Alan as well. The big difference though is that most people are fortunate enough to do that within, you know, their pre-production rehearsals or whatever. Alan did it on his first show on the first leg of the Rihanna tour in front of 70,000 people.

I was unlucky and actually hit the cue button on one of the songs and then I messed up.

I can't calm down, searching for—

Okay, that wasn't supposed to happen, but— Alan in that part of his career that he was, should be doing Mistakes. I hate myself for every mistake that I make, but I also know that making mistakes and learning from them is an important part of the process. If I didn't make any mistakes, then I probably wouldn't have been where I am today.

Every man in this room, you met— you blew your 20s, you spend all your 30s trying to make up for your 20s. That's the truth, dog. Every dude in this room blew their 20s and at 30 trying to fix what they should have did in their 20s.

Yeah.

And so, so and so on. You turn 40, you trying to recover from the mistakes you made when you 30. Now at 40, man, it's time you start— really at 30, you need to start buckling it on down and just realize, man, everybody make mistakes. And if the mistakes you going through are gonna help you become the person you need to be later on— Steve Harvey— all them mistakes, dog, yeah, they cool to make.

Yeah, you—

I needed to mess up every marriage. I needed to get arrested like I did. Yeah, I needed to get shot. I needed all All this, dog. I needed to be homeless. Yeah, let's not bring it up because all the people that be talking about, man, you get shot, it don't hurt, it just burn— that's a complete lie. I'm telling you, shot ain't what you want. I needed all them things to happen to turn me into who I am today. So when you're young and you make mistakes, don't let them eat you up, because everybody that made it done made 'em. You got to fail in order to win. Hey, look, man, to understand how to hit the game-winning shot, you got to miss the game-winning shot. Steve Harvey, baby.

You got to miss it.

But what I think is important is not dwelling on mistakes and not trying to play so safe that you don't make any mistakes. I think that's the biggest thing that a lot of entrepreneurs do wrong and get wrong. They're so worried about fear and so worried about making the wrong step and making every little tiny mistake that they're spending so much time focusing on the negative and avoiding the negative instead of spending your energy, your time, your resources on the positive and how you can do something amazing. You have to understand that making mistakes is part of the process. You will make mistakes. It's normal. It's natural. It's inevitable. And through the mistakes, you'll learn and keep going and make it better the next time and better the next time. And so it's adopting a mentality that making mistakes is okay. It's gonna happen.

I've had lots of bad luck in my life, but I think having bad luck is equally as important because when you have bad luck in life, you have to reflect. You have to take the knowledge from the experience. We've all been treated badly. We've all made mistakes. We've all had bad luck. So what we have to do is reflect, take the knowledge from that experience, and then allow it to enrich our life. It's as simple as that. And let's be honest, when people say, 'Do you have any regrets, Marco?' I say no, because had it not been for all those mistakes I made, you wouldn't be here. I wouldn't— I wouldn't have the knowledge that I have today. I won't have the experience that I have today, because mistakes are fine as long as you take the knowledge from the mistake.

I continually learn from my mistakes and other people's mistakes. See, entrepreneurs think that, hey, to create that billion-dollar company or $100 million company or even million-dollar company, you have to be really smart. And sure, brains is part of it. Luck is a huge component. But what I've learned over the years is everyone, no matter how smart you are, you're going to fail many times and you're going to make mistakes. Just look at Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook worked out. His version of Snapchat that was a copycat did not work out, right? So there's other areas in which Facebook failed, but Facebook overall as a company has done great. Just because you're smart doesn't mean you're always going to succeed with everything you try or touch. But every time you do something, you will learn new things, you'll make mistakes. And if you learn from these mistakes and avoid making them over and over again, you'll actually increase your odds of succeeding as time goes on. And the best way to do this is not just to learn from your mistakes, but it's also to learn from the mistakes of others. Rockefeller, Carnegie, all these people who were entrepreneurs years ago in the 1800s, 1900s, they themselves used business principles and concepts that are still applicable in today's world. Sure, we have the internet, but the same strategies and concepts that they used are still applicable, right? So learn from their mistakes, learn what worked for them, what didn't work for them, why and bring that into what you're doing today.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed. I'd love to know what did you think of this video? What was the message that stuck most true to you? What are you going to immediately apply somehow to your life or to your business? Please leave it down in the comments below. I look forward to hearing what you have to say. I also want to give a quick shout out to Celia Lopez. Celia, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, and taking that picture and posting it to Twitter. 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. I'll see you soon.

So 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.