In this interview, the speaker (SPEAKER A) argues that no life experience—especially failures—should be dismissed as wasted. Drawing on the metaphor of a seed, they explain that setbacks must be intentionally nurtured through reflection, healing, and purposeful action to grow into future opportunities. The conversation cites historical examples: Thomas Watson Sr. refusing to let a senior IBM sales executive quit after a million‑dollar loss, framing the loss as an education; and Theodore Roosevelt overcoming childhood asthma, personal tragedy, and wilderness retreat to develop resilience, anti‑corruption zeal, and a legacy of national park preservation. The speaker also references Steve Jobs’ famous “connect the dots” quote, suggesting that superior backward‑dot‑connecting can reveal future possibilities. Personal influences—Peter Drucker’s prolific writing, a mother’s sustainability values, and a father’s emphasis on respect—are highlighted as guiding principles. Practical advice includes asking specific reflective questions, treating failures as seeds that need water, sunlight, and soil, and deliberately applying learned lessons to future endeavors, ultimately positioning failures as hidden pathways to wealth and leadership.
Chapters
Steve Jobs said you, you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can connect the dots looking backwards. But if I connect the dots, if I do a better job than most at connecting the dots looking backwards, I'm actually going to see some of the future dots.
How do you know which life experiences you should place value on? And the reason I— so When I think about this point, what I think about is I had a negative experience, I learned from it, or I have a negative experience and now I never want to experience that again. Are there certain life experiences that can benefit, or are some just like net negative? When you say defining life experiences that can contribute to your success, what do you want people to look for?
Great question, Scott. I see why you're such a good interviewer.
So I just ask things that I think of, like, that I would find interesting. I just want to, like, you know, double down and pull it out because defining life experiences could mean so many things. And there's sometimes when I see a negative life experience that technically could be a positive because it's taught you something that can contribute to your success in the future, and you wouldn't have had that perspective. If you didn't have that negative experience.
So yeah, yeah, exactly. So I, I don't think any experiences in life are wasted. Napoleon Hill is famous for saying behind every setback is the seed of an equal or greater opportunity. So if I look, you know, losing a million dollars, I'm like, all right, well, that's going to set the stage for me to make $10 million or make $100 million because of the life lessons I learned from that. But the thing that we have to do with hard life experiences, and not every life experience is hard, but is look at a seed. When you think of that quote, what do you have to do with a seed? Let's say I've got a walnut. I have to crack that seed open. I have to bury that seed in the ground. I have to give it water and sunlight and fertilizer and good soil and make sure that it's not choked out by weeds. So you have to apply a lot of intentionality with the seeds of your failures, with the seeds of your mistakes, with the seeds of your setbacks. Most people think, oh, it's just going to automatically come to me. No, you have to heal. You have to reflect. You have to ask questions. What did I screw up in? What opportunities does this present? What valuable lessons does it give? One of my favorite stories, Thomas Watson Sr., in the middle of the Great Depression, Founder of IBM, this senior sales executive comes to him and he had just lost a million dollar deal for IBM, which is a lot of money in the middle, in 1933 I think it was. And he comes and hands in his resignation to Thomas Watson Sr. And Tom says, "Son, I'm not letting you resign." And he's like, "What?" He's like, "I just paid a million dollars for your education." get back out there.
He didn't want to.
Why? He's already lost the money.
Yeah, why did you learn something out of this? You're never gonna do it again.
Yeah, he's like, you know what, versus he would go to another company and use that education for that other company's benefit. So that's the first thing. And then if I look at defining life experiences, Theodore Roosevelt, one of my favorite examples. All right, so he's born with asthma. You know this story? So he's born with asthma.
I don't know this story, no. I knew the last story, I didn't know this story though.
Yeah, so he's born with asthma and he's like, you know what, I don't wanna be a weakling. His dad, his family used to think he was gonna be a weakling. And this is before they had advanced treatments, you know, it's like 1800s, late 1800s. He decides, hey, I'm not gonna let this hold me back. Starts training outdoors, like weightlifting, working out. Before they had real weights, you know, and he's lifting bricks or whatever he's lifting and riding horses, you know, that was a big workout. And he built, he overcame asthma through that. Then eventually, and that also helped him fall in love with the outdoors and with woods and hunting, all right? Then 22 years old, his wife dies after giving birth to their first daughter. 24 hours later, his mom dies in the same house. So he's distraught, just forlorn, right? And he does— he's incapable of raising an infant daughter when he's suffering with such deep grief. So he hands off his daughter to his aunt and goes out to South Dakota and North Dakota and lives in the wilderness, retreats into his place of solace for like 6 months, hunts, lives, you know, with the settlers and different things. And lives with nature, um, kills animal after animal. He was a great hunter. And all right, let's rewind. Comes back to New York, is in a much better mind space, cleared his head, eventually runs for office again, eventually becomes police chief of New York City, cleans up the corruption because he had saw his dad was a big proponent against corruption in the New York City, uh, in New York in general. And fought against corruption. So that seed was planted. Then eventually, obviously, he gets elected or becomes president when the president that he was elected with— he was vice president— the president he was with dies. I forgot the name of the president that died. And then he was elected for a second term. While he was in office, guess what he does? He preserves more national parks more of America's greatest nature parks than any other president, or really all the rest of the presidents combined. Secondly, um, he also sets up our anti-monopoly laws. He had enough courage and gumption to take on, you know, Standard Oil, U.S. Steel, break up these massive companies that would make some of the monopolies of today look like, you know, peanuts. And he breaks them up. He takes them on. He takes on anti-corruption because he had had practice. His life experiences pointed to both of those things. Amazing.
I never knew that story. So that is— and, and I don't know if you can say with 100% certainty he did that purposefully, but it is an incredible example of how your life experiences, especially if you're very self-aware of your life experiences and, and understanding what these life experiences can add on to your personality and your proficiency, like just being aware of that is just huge. So I don't know if he was or not, but it shows you what you can do if you do sort of take these and let them build onto who you are as a professional and a person and let them, even if negative, like there's always a positive out of it.
100%. And the thing is, we can all connect, you know, Steve Jobs said you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can connect the dots looking backwards. But if I connect the dots, if I do a better job than most at connecting the dots looking backwards, I'm actually gonna see some of the future dots. I'm not gonna see all the dots, but all those, like if I look at my life, I loved reading growing up. I loved, one of my inspirational figures is a guy named Peter Drucker. He wrote, 38 books up until the time he was like 98 and then passed away. So I have him as an inspirational figure of like writing great business books. So I want to be like Peter. I want to, um, uh, if I look at my passions for business, certain things around sustainability, those were clues that my mom infused in my value set. Um, how I lead people, my dad was always very strong in emphasizing respecting others and creating space for others and being kind and thoughtful. So now I do that as a boss and as a leader.
