S2 E13 - Step up or step out

Have you taken the time to understand that failure is one of the essential key elements on the checklist to greatness? Have you figured out how to normalize it in your life, in your business, and in your circle? We'll tell you how. Stay tuned.

Brittany, you and I have been talking about success, about the journey to success, about becoming awakened and what that looks like in the journey and all the things we have to do. One of the things that is the biggest piece. Don't know why that accent came out. One of the.

Keep it fresh.

One of the biggest pieces of the successful ingredient pie, if you will, is failure.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Part of the checklist.

You have to fail. And we were discussing and talking about some of our favorite entrepreneurs who failed and they just failed miserable and how they failed. And I would like over the next episode or so to just discuss some of our failures, some of their failures, how we learn from it and what we can do and what our next big failure might look like.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

Wow.

Because we're going to fail again, aren't we?

Well, if we're not, then we're not trying enough things.

Exactly.

Google talks about that all the time. If we're not having enough failures, then we're not innovating enough. And when you can adopt that mindset, then, especially with your staff, because when you fail with your staff, they're like, we're losers. We're nothing. And it's like, hey, we have to keep trying. Going for it, going for it. So creating that safe bubble for going for it is massive in your life. So we've got part of every G Force call, the bad section. And bad stands for before any delays. And we have a whole, you know, 10 minutes or 15 minutes of people sharing. What are they just going for this week? Whether or not it works out.

Yeah.

Like, let's just do it and do it bad then not do it right now. We're not promoting, like, not terrible work. Yeah. Or not trying. We're just saying, like, get out of your freaking comfort zone and go for it. So I love that. And I think it's so important just to normalize that.

Yes.

So that you don't give in to the pressure of quitting when things don't go exactly how you planned.

We reverse. Say that for other people. We have to normalize failure. Let that one sink in for just a moment. That's fine, my dear listeners.

It doesn't mean anything. Just means you got try something else.

Birdie, I failed it.

Just try it again.

But it didn't work.

Try it again. Try it again.

Normalizing. That initially sounds like a crazy person. Sounds like a crazy person.

It's part of the formula, though, for all the greats. So even it affects the way that I invest with people. If I'm going to invest with someone, my first question is, when have you lost it all and what did you do? And if they're like, I never have. I'm like, sorry, call me after. They're like, what do you mean? That means I have the perfect track record. You don't know who you are until you're faced with losing everything. Because it's in that moment, you actually understand the kind of decisions that you'll make.

I'll bring up a personal story. I had no idea the impact of that exact statement until, like, after all of our episodes and podcasts were over. Because you said that in season one, like, two or three times, and then you said it once or twice and other keynote presentations you run for my class and my company. You know, you were there in person saying this, and I was like, man, that's so wild. And I was like, wait a minute. She works with me. Oh, shoot. She was interviewing me across the table, and she asked the question, so tell me how it felt when you lost it all? And I answered. I was like, you know, that. That was a moment I realized, oh, my gosh, I just failed miserably. And I gave her the formula for how I overcame it. And that's why we became friends and dual investors together and business partners. And now you and I have so many things commingling together.

How do you treat. How do you treat your partners? How do you treat your investors? How do you treat your spouse? How do you treat your body? Who are you? When you get squeezed? You know, that's what you. That's when you find out what kind of fruit things are many times when you're squeezed.

So that's a cool.

I learned a lot about myself, actually. It's the revelation of knowing when things get hard, do you step up or step out? I think is really what I'm trying to get to, because historically, I think that's what I'm most proud of, is when things like the worst of the worst, when that guy stole a million dollars when I didn't have a million dollars to steal, and I'd put my boots on and repay all the contractors and repay all the investors and lost everything I'd have worked for in seven years. But I did the right thing. And you got to hear what do People justify when they start losing it all, you know, what starts being excused? Or do they find a way? Not an excuse.

Mm. An example would be. Let's use one of my examples where there's a moment in time that I borrowed some money as well from a friend to get my trading career back under. Right. Getting lawsuits and having all this money just being. You know how lawyers and lawsuits are. They're amazing. And being able to go, okay, here's what I need to do. I'm blocking out 10 hours a day where I'm studying and practicing and charting and, like, I'm matrixing. I'm going in this to win this. There are moments where that balance where you might not be able to have that balance. You might not be able to have that balance. And so that's why you want to be flexible. You want to be able to have the ability to, like you mentioned, normalize that mentality of, I might totally fail at this. And you mentioned the comfort zone piece. There is a 100% chance that you will fail eventually if you go far enough out of your comfort zone. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. But is the lesson, don't go out of your comfort zone?

Nope.

What's the lesson?

The lesson is the comfort zone expands to an entirely new level of comfort. And during that expansion, when you're on the other side of that fence, so to speak, you'll be able to look back at where you were and pull yourself forward with the lessons that you've learned from those failures. Because in my mind, they are failures. They're lessons to go, I failed at this. It did not work out. It was a zero. Right. I developed a company that was a great idea where you could just mirror any trades that people took. So I would have a group of traders, and those people would follow the traders, and it would just be a tip service. So you get this trade, and if it works out, I have to do is tip the person and go, hey, thanks for the trade. Boop. And it tipped it. And, you know, we split the revenue. Total failure just didn't work. Why? Because it all depended on me, right? There was not other traders that I reached out for. And, like, it wasn't built that way. And it was just all about me and what I could do and how I performed. I was like, I don't want this to be built around me. I need this to be built around other people. And it was just center, you know, center was me. And it was an amazing failure. Just didn't work at all. Tons of time, tons of money. Tons of energy. All other businesses. Right. That I've created where partnerships just don't work out. And you get other people who see something totally different than you. And I would love to tell people, man, in those moments, you can learn early on and only lose hundreds of thousands learning that lesson. Like, I shouldn't work with this person ever again.

Trust me, you will learn that lesson as soon as you can. So go after some failures, try to find your next one.

Do you think it's actually a failure if you learned, though?

It's a good question. I mean, I've been asked that a lot because it really does depend on you. And I have been doing an amazing job of defining certain words and saying, hey, you know, this is a new definition. I think we could easily come up with a super cool definition of failure. But there is a beautiful distinction between losing and failing. Absolutely. And failure to an absolute defined degree is, you gave up, brah. You threw in the towel, you weren't good enough, you didn't continue, and all the lessons that you learned up to then, you just quit and just changed paths totally. Right. That would be, I think, most people's definition of failure, including mine. So, in essence, is it a failure? Not really. It's a loss. It's an L. You got some W's, you got some Ls, and it's like, definitely took an L, you know, earned that loss for sure.

Yeah.

So, Brittany, do you think it's failure if you learned?

No, I guess I don't call it failure. If I look back at my life, I'm like, I haven't ever failed, but I've had tons of losses, tons of losses. Things did not work out over and over again. But I think God's just kind of shown me in my journey, never call something a waste. Never be like, I wasted all that time or wasted this or wasted that. Try to find that seed of equal or greater opportunity that came from that failure or that obstacle or that loss. And so I think that's just a perspective thing for me. I think I define failure as your only failure. If you, like, quit. Heidi Baker says, brittany, if you don't quit, you win no matter what happens. Just if you don't quit, you win eventually. So that's just what it is in my head. But when I am down or when things get hard, I read Elon Musk's book. I do that because he's been through hell. That dude, that guy. You know, whether you agree with everything he does or not doesn't matter. He is the bravest entrepreneur, like, ever. Yeah, he's been through so much. His entire purpose is to, like, save humanity by finding another planet and trying to innovate enough to where we don't. We can, like, slow down the destruction of this planet to try to make a way, even if all of that is just this crazy kooky idea that doesn't happen. His dedication is outstanding, unparalleled. Do you have some of his losses, like, memorized? Memorized?

I mean. Well, let's just talk about SpaceX for a moment, because space, SpaceX, it cracks me up. All right, imagine this. Imagine if I came to you, Brittany, and said, hey, let's start a privatized.

Rocket ship company that sends both people and supplies into orbit and connects with the International Space Station. Oh, and yes, we want to reuse those rockets and, and have them land on a moving platform in the ocean.

Would you like to do that Bet? I mean, like, initially. Initially? That sounds insane. Asinine. And what's incredible about Elon Musk also is that not only is he a CEO and like the visionary, he's also the guy that knows the things.

The things.

Like, he can go to. He can go to a. I have.

No idea how he does that.

Rocket propulsion specialist. Because guess what? He is a rocket propulsion specialist. He can tell the people who are working on the rocket science, hey, that formula's wrong. Like, he has the ability to do that. That's amazing.

My gosh.

He.

I know that when he sold PayPal, he made something like $140 million. And 100 million of it went to SpaceX, 40 million of it went to Tesla, and he had to sleep on his friend's couch.

Yeah, he borrowed some money, you know, to pay some rent.

Borrowed money for rent. Like, that's what kind of dedication he has. I love that so much. So it's normal to fail. If you look at any great CEO or any really big company that has made it massively, you know, it's riddled with, quote, unquote failures. It's riddled with things not going right.

Right.

And so I think that was so helpful for me to know or learn over time because I felt like I must be doing something wrong. Especially when you're trying to do something that's never been done before or in a way that's never been done before. Like we talked about with an abundance centered operating system, you know, that give operating system or being a force for good, or being the first woman to ever blah. Or being the first black person to ever blah. Or just being the not normal looking whatever you are.

Just because you hit obstacles doesn't mean you're wrong. Now always self audit. Do I have any limiting beliefs that are self sabotaging me? Do I have bad habits such as drinking too hard and then therefore you're too tired and you make bad decisions the next day? Or do I have any character flaws like I have an anger issue or something like that that is creating these obstacles? So do that audit. And once you realize that even though you're never gonna be perfect, I'm not causing them, they're just kinda happening, then you're like, okay, keep going, keep going. And if you are causing them, just fix yourself up. Don't get lost in any it. If the emotion you're feeling, such as anxiety, depression, anger, guilt isn't serving you or getting you out of that funk or that place or this obstacle faster, stop giving it energy.

Let that sink in. If the emotion I'm feeling isn't helping me get out of this bad situation faster, stop giving it energy. Yeah, we get so depressed or so scared or so afraid, we freeze and we want to do nothing. But doing nothing is not going to get you out of this. So you got to go. It's time.

Yes, yes. Stop giving it energy. In the next episode, can we talk about a few ways that we can specifically do that? As in stop giving energy what that looks like? All right, let's do it.

If you liked that episode and honestly, you want to come hang out with Brittany and myself and our team, our tribe of influencers, go to broketowoke.com and you'll notice there's a location where you can go to find out information on summits, where you can go, how long, which ones, what type, what type of influence you can create there, the people that you can meet, and the world changing application on how you can go from broke to woke. So obviously broketowoke.com, click on it and we'll see you there in person at the summits.