In this motivational talk, the speaker argues that mistakes are inevitable and essential for entrepreneurial growth. Rather than trying to avoid errors, leaders should learn quickly from them, celebrate both victories and failures, and foster a transparent culture where team members feel safe to take risks and admit missteps. Drawing on personal anecdotes—including early hiring misjudgments, a costly acquisition of an investment bank, and challenges faced as a woman in business—the speaker illustrates how owning up to mistakes, seeking criticism, and surrounding oneself with smart people accelerate learning. He uses analogies such as language acquisition, riding a bicycle, and chess to explain how continuous analysis of errors sharpens decision‑making. The talk concludes with a call for viewers to share their own business mistakes in the comments, emphasizing community learning and ongoing belief in progress.
Chapters
Mistakes. Mistakes. Mistakes. Your mistakes. Mistakes. Mistakes. Mistakes. Mistakes. Mistakes. 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 going to 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 see, the difference between a schoolteacher and an entrepreneur— in school, they punish you for making mistakes. Entrepreneurs know you're not going to learn anything unless you make a mistake. So I've made so many mistakes. I mean, last year I made a lot of mistakes. But each mistake I make, I get smarter. It's like standing up and falling down, standing up and falling down. It's like learning a language. You make a lot of mistakes. It's like riding a bicycle. It's like flying a plane. You make a lot of mistakes. And hopefully you live through it. You don't have to hold yourself hostage to who you used to be or anything you ever used to do. Because 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. I've said for years that, that you have to celebrate your victories and really celebrate your mistakes. And what I mean by that is that you have to learn from the mistakes that you make, and you've got to create an environment where people are not afraid to take a risk and not afraid to do things that are beyond what the expectations are. At the same time, you've got to set up a framework for how those things are managed and judged and evaluated? Well, I was tumultuous in the early career. I was totally impetuous. I've always had a stammer, so that's a weakness from the beginning to the end. I think that'll be there. I think if I go at it, I made mistakes on deals. I'd openly admit it. I'd walk around talking about it. If I can make this big a dopey move, anybody can make a move. Don't be paralyzed. I made lots of mistakes on people. I hired people in the early days, I hired them almost always on resumes and slickness, which is probably inversely proportional to talent. So, I did a number of these things on a fairly frequent basis, but I talked about it. I think the thing is talking about what your mistakes are helps an organization enormously. It allows them to feel free to make them. I mean, I bought an investment bank here at PBD. No one could make a mistake bigger than that. Boo-boos that we had, we didn't know how to run it, we had breakdowns in the system. We ended up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal 17 times. In 14 months, right-hand column, being called dopes. That's not fun. And we went through that because it was a cultural error that I personally made. And I owned up to it, talked to everybody about it. I needed people telling me no. I needed people to not get it and look at me cross-eyed for me to really figure out exactly what I was gonna do and how I was gonna do it. It's something I had to learn as a woman in business is A, to ask for help and to not be afraid of criticism. And, and when you don't know what to do, to be okay with not knowing but learning and also to not be defined by your mistakes. There's challenges, there's roadblocks, there's mountains, and you just have to figure it out. You just have to be malleable. You have to surround yourself with really smart people. And I didn't think I was smart for a really long time. Do you think you're smart now? Yeah, I think, I think I'm— We agree. You know, I'm not the smartest, but, but I try. Mistakes are good things. Mistakes are good things, meaning if they're made in learning. In other words, so Mistakes are how we learn because mistakes produce pain. And if you produce that and you convert that to learning— like, for example, punishing people for mistakes is bad because they hide things. Where if you were to say to your kid who makes a mistake, "The only thing you have to do is tell me what would you have done different in the future and then we'll be good," that makes that a learning process. Or weaknesses. Everybody has weaknesses, has a number of weaknesses. The great people that I've seen in almost any area always have weaknesses. They just have known what their weaknesses are and have ways of getting around those weaknesses. Because when we win, we forget that there are a lot of people who are losing. And those who are losing, they are analyzing, they're trying to find out the reasons for their loss, the mistakes. And if we do nothing, if we rest on our laurels, they'll come back after us. The next time. And I was on top of the world of chess for 20 years because I was very good, even relentless, in challenging my own success. And did you go over all your games? Absolutely. The ones you succeeded and the ones you failed? Absolutely, yeah. Because even the game we won always contained mistakes, inaccuracies. It's inevitable. It's— I, I can hardly imagine one brilliant game with no mistakes, which means that on both sides— yeah, on both sides. But the trick is noticing when the other guy makes a mistake. Absolutely, yeah. If we won, most likely is because our opponent made the last mistake. But he made the last mistake, and he's definitely analyzing the game, and he'll find what we did wrong in the previous stage of the game. So what is important is to find it first and to make sure that next time when he's trying to actually surprise us with something, we'll be one step ahead. Se você não erra, a gente não ia ter como ver o que você tava fazendo de errado. A gente consegue ver algumas coisas as quais você faz errado, mas a gente corrige. Mas teve uma coisa muito maior que você fez errado, que é de repente tá 100% focado e deixar as coisas que supostamente vão te afetar dentro do treino fora do treino, para que você consiga ir lá e fazer o que você sempre fez bem feito, né? I think we can always learn from other people's mistakes. I mean, being in the public eye for so long, I've made a ton of mistakes and everybody knows about them. But I don't look at— I look at my mistakes and any sort of failure that I have gone through as a lesson to be learned. And I work through it. And success follows. Thank you guys so much for watching. I'd love to know which of the clips meant the most to you, had the biggest impact. Leave it in the comments below. And I'd also— I'm curious what your thoughts on mistakes are. What are the mistakes you've made in your business? Are they good? Are they bad? Have they helped you grow? Share your thoughts. Leave it in the comments. I'll join in the discussion. Thank you so much for watching. Continue to believe, and I'll see you soon.
