Why Failure is the Best Thing That Can Happen to You

Failure, the great purifier. I think what I learned through a lot of these failures was they were kind of necessary, you know, crucibles of reinvention. These failures, often, even though they were uninvited, unintended, still kind of wished I could have avoided them. But in the end, as I stepped outside of my emotional participation in them and looked at them from kind of an outside observer, objective observer lens, I realized that they were burning off things for me. They were burning off waste. They accumulated faulty ways of thinking, faulty foundations. Old thinking had to die, new thinking had to emerge. And it was in these moments where I really learned over time to take the energy of the chaos of my failure events instead of seeing it as an oncoming head on threat to take it and step aside, shape it a little bit, use it to my advantage, figure out how it could bring me into a new version of myself that expanded my existing identity out into new identities.

You've been super successful in fintech. You've had some, some bestsellers. You've done a lot of really cool things already. What made you decide to really dig hardcore into this concept of this position of failure in general? What's missing from the marketplace?

Yeah, so, you know, I was taking this beach walk in 2013, so it took me about seven years to write this book, but the genesis was on this beach walk. And I was walking through a business divorce. So I had these twin failures kind of hanging over my head. This business divorce where I had to exit from my partnership in an online lending firm, caused me to have to rethink my financial life, my pursuits, and how I was going to like, you know, reorganize that whole tapestry. And I was on what I knew to be the precipice of a marital divorce at that point. And I was thinking about all this kind of what I would say would be, you know, off road, entrepreneurial adventuring that I had gone down my 20s and my 30s. So, you know, everything from running a gym to starting record labels to, you know, this online lending business to. And other things I've done as a creative. Being a bodybuilder. Yeah, things like that. Writing a spy novel. And I was thinking about all the, the kind of lessons I've learned from taking unorthodox paths and, you know.

And failures. Right. And I was thinking of the Winston Churchill quote. Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. Listen to punk rock, some big punk rock. I was listening to, you know, Lemmy from Motorhead, Ace of Spades. Just listen to The CRO Mags Hard times singing for the CRO Mags John Joseph, who's triathlete freaking frequent Joe Rogan guest. He wrote the forward of the book. And I just became convicted that I had to write a book on the value of failure because I felt like I had learned some things and I wanted to make them and write them down and that's where the journey began.

No, that's awesome. It's crazy to me because as I was making my way through the work, right. It was interesting that it almost leads like a laws playbook. Like it's a, you know, a failure law. Like, do this right? Don't do this, like. And I. And I think that's kind of a. It's an interesting pivot that I've. I haven't seen anybody else do. Like, we've. I've heard. I've seen people talk about failure and the importance of, you know, applying it to your life and importance of getting comfortable with it, stuff like that. Whereas you go the extra mile and you're like, hey, no, I want you to do this. Like, do this one thing first and then let the other thing build on it. In fact, one of the things that I loved about the book specifically is Failure is the Great Purifier. Talk to me about how failure is the purifier from your own words. I mean, obviously we want to encourage the audience to grab the book and kind of read it for themselves, but I want to hear it from you.

Sure. I'll hold the book up just for your audience to see. In the book we're talking about is Failure Rules with an exclamation point, the five rules of Failure for entrepreneurs, Creatives and authentics. My name is Andrew Thorpe King. So, yeah, failure, the great purifier that stems from failure rule number one, which is Failure, purifies the idea that Phoenix must burn to emerge. I think what I learned through a lot of these failures was they were kind of necessary, you know, crucibles of reinvention. Whereas prior to certain failures, I might have had a real siloed view of my own skill set, a siloed view of what I could do in the world, and a siloed view of my own kind of flexibility in the world. Whereas these failures, often, even though they were uninvited, unintended, still kind of wished I could have avoided them. But in the end, as I stepped outside of my emotional participation in them and looked at them from kind of an outside observer, objective observer lens, I realized that they were Burning off things. For me, they were burning off waste accumulated, you know, faulty ways of thinking, you know, faulty foundations. Old thinking had to die, new thinking had to emerge. And that's a painful process. You know, it's just kind of like, you know, the caterpillar to the butterfly kind of thing, you know. And it was in these moments where I really learned over time to take the energy of the chaos of my failure events instead of seeing it as an oncoming head on threat to take it and step aside, shape it a little bit, use it to my advantage, figure out how it could bring me into a new version of myself that expanded my existing identity out into new identities, figure out ways it could forge me into a new lens of my portfolio of pursuits. And it really has been just a huge mechanism for growth. I mean, along the lines of the seem to leave and the antifragile concept of, you know, sometimes, you know that harm actually makes you grow. You don't just, you're not just resilient, you don't just restore, you actually grow exponentially because of the harm. Harm is actually can be good for you if you're that type of antifragile person. And that really was my experience. It was this idea that, yeah, you want to avoid failure. This isn't failure porn. I'm not saying go take uncalculated risk, but I am saying that you're doing difficult, unorthodox, meaningful things in the world. Just chances are that more failures are going to travel on that path than other path. So you better learn how to metabolize it, leverage it, anticipate it and optimize it.

Yeah, absolutely. And I kind of agree with you. I think the, it's an interesting thing is if you're doing anything worthwhile, you're going to knock some stuff over by accident, period. Right. Sometimes because of limiting belief, sometimes because you're in your own way. Sometimes it can be ego, sometimes it can be, hey, you're just in a bad deal, you partner with the wrong people. I mean, there's any number of reasons why, you know, failure can show up. And the one thing that I've seen consistently with high performers is they do not use failure to stop them. They use them to slingshot them forward in all cases. You know, and that's something that I've seen with your work specifically that you're very adamant about is making sure that people kind of surrender to that chaos, so to speak. So, you know, because you're in the chaos, you're gonna have to, you're gonna have to withstand it, go through it, go around it, go over it. You may as well just kind of lean into it and let it, you know, kind of put it to work for you kind of thing. What's an example of maybe one of the, I know you mentioned obviously the, the, the marital, you know, failure aspect and the business fair. What's another example of where you've used your own laws, if you will, or rules, if you will, to shape you that has now, you know, created a better version of you today?

Yeah. So I mean, this leans right into failure rule number two, which is nothing is safe. So you talk about leaning into those failure events and it's like, you know, what's the alternative to just resign to this safety file life where you things are just anesthetized, just give up, just.

Throw the cards in the air.

Yeah, you might have some sort of mediocre, comfortable life, but you're not really breaking any bounds. You're not really doing anything new from an artistic standpoint, from an entrepreneurial standpoint, you're not trying to make impact on the world. So you know, I talk a lot about avoiding that in failure rule number two, nothing is safe. So, you know, the time in my life just following, you know, those two failures events that business divorce and marital divorce. Once it finally came to fruition, you know, I found myself at an inflection point where I was rearranging my entire work life dynamic. And all of a sudden I was, you know, after being long married and long self employed, I found myself living in a hotel room and no office to go to by day, no family to go home to by night. It was temporarily separate, separated from my children. I could have wallowed in alcoholism or depression or self doubt and all that, but I didn't. I invoked what I call the divinity of purpose, which I write about in the book a lot. And I was able to reimagine, reinvent myself with multiple threats. So in that failure space, that empty failure space, you know, a lot of amazing things were born because of the vision I had. So I ended up using my skills in the online lending space to do some consulting work that then led into partnering with some folks in a proper lead generation company that was very lucrative for a while. I also then used my skills in that space, the online lending world, to transition into a proper corporate job in Fintech that's now been a long standing career going on 10 years in that space as an executive. And you know, that was quite a move because it was almost like from A perception standpoint. Yeah. Know that space versus corporate banking was almost like going from a porn star to a real actor. So that was a big deal. And then also I resurrected my record labels, ended up putting out some new record releases on my label, Sailor's Grave Records. Awesome bands like Booze and Glory and the Creek show. And then I also started writing Failure Rules and finished my first spy novel. All in that period.

I was going to. I was going to dip into the spy novel later or. Yeah.

All these threads just started taking off. I use that space to expand myself. Yeah. Just what do I have? How can I use these? How can I build a portfolio of pursuits which I talk a lot about, using Gene Simmons from Kiss as a primary example. Being honored because one tento go get severed. You have seven more to keep you going. Yeah. That mindset that I just used, and it was real life, real example in my own journey.

No, I love it. And it's funny, it's interesting to me that most people don't know how successful an entrepreneur Gene Simmons is and how, How. How many things he has his hands in unless they watch the MTV show.

But you just book me and you're just blown away. And also his personal story, the stuff he went from, like, you know, a failure kind of background with his family, you know, his parents, you know, going to Israel after it was reformed, you know, is. I can't remember who his parents. His grandparents died in the Holocaust, his dad leaving 7 years old. They had no toilet paper, no phone, no nothing. He had to become the man of the family very early on. Birthed his entrepreneurial spirit. I mean, he goes through that in detail in his book. It's. It's really amazing.

Yeah. I mean, I assume the creativity that he used to survive is the same creativity he used to build a business or businesses, I should say.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I dig it. That's cool. You know, I was just thinking too, you know, the. There's, you know, we're at the time of where you and I are doing this, this recording, whether the listening live or whether they're, you know, watching on YouTube or something later. It's interesting because there's. We're in. In the process of what we went from the great resignation to the great layoff. Right. You got all these folks that are getting laid off left and right. And my heart goes out to them, don't get me wrong, you know, But I think it's in those moments that you can truly redefine yourself. And one of the things that I find Interesting is a lot of folks when they lose a long standing source of income, a job, a business, something like that, a lot of times people take that on the chin like as an identity hit. How did you avoid hitting getting it to take the identity hit?

That's the biggest lesson. Failure rule number five is you are not your failures detach from the optics of failure. And it's really about decoupling your identity from your failure events and not over identifying with any one pursuit. Yeah, you softly identify with them because you want to put your all in it. You want to really become one with the pursuit. But a, you know, have a portfolio pursuit. So you have kind of many manifestations of your talent stack out in the world and just don't over identify with either any one pursuit, any one occupation, any set and certainly don't identify with your failure events. They're just events that happen along your journey. Sure they might have consequences or messiness. You have to clean up, you have to take ownership. Right. You still have to own them and learn from them. But it really is about decoupling that identity. I think that is the biggest mistake so many people make. Even like early on before they're laid off or before there's a change, you know, disruption in their life. They just, they get in this mindset like I am this, I'm a mailman. Yeah, I am a preacher, you know, I'm a lunch lady, whatever it is. And they peg themselves this identity because we're almost trained as young people and throughout the system that we have to go after this one thing. And I just think it's, it's a very limiting and doesn't really map well to reality as reality put itself out throughout life.

Yeah, no, that's so true. I am curious though in reading your work. I know there's, there's this one section I want to say it's in rule number three that basically says keep your attachment, keep your, your attachments internal. So how is that, how does that a little bit different or different than hey, don't get too attached to the external.

No, I mean that's exactly what it is. Right. So I mean, you know, I come from a, you know, a framework from a faith standpoint of Christianity but I also leverage from a subordinate standpoint, you know, the non attachment principles of Buddhism or some of the non attachment ideas of non faith expressions like stoicism. You know, I write about the Maharala Prague in the book who's the ancient, the Jewish mystic. Mystic. And he talks about we have to let the spiritually, the physical. And one of the things that I honestly feel like I mastered is, you know, gaining it all, losing it all, gaining it all, losing all that volatility. That kind of bipolar economic history has really made me so damn strong and it's made just fully detached from externals. Yeah, I, I, you know, I, I live really well right now, but I'm always cognizant that if anything slipped away, if anything shifted and crumbled, my attachment. Attachments are internal and eternal. Right. So, like, I can adapt. I can, you know, call on that spiritual identity to help me form, fit whatever circumstances come my way. And it goes back to the Apostle Paul with, you know, being content in all things, whether you're in jail or whether you're free, whether you're rich or whether you're poor. And I just embrace that entire ethos.

Yeah, well, I think, you know, it's kind of Jesus even said that, you know, make sure you're, you're not storing all your wealth up and like, you know, where it can be rusted and moss can eat it and stuff like that. And I think that kind of goes, plays into that. You and I share a very similar story of having it all, losing it all a couple times and that kind of thing. And one of the things that I've realized is like, I have, I'm very blessed. I live, we live in a nice home. Like, we're able to do some fun things. And obviously I have some toys, right?

Sure.

And it's probably two years ago I thought, you know, what business is getting hit at the moment because the supply chain issues, because one of my business, bigger businesses is a construction company and supply chain issues, it's killing my margins, destroying my cash. So I need to sell my toys. And for the first time I was like, you know what? They're toys, they're nice, I enjoy them, they're fun, but I don't have to have them. Where earlier in my journey it was like, hey, if I sold that car or if I did this thing or if I didn't go do this thing, what is everybody going to think about me? Y and I feel like a lot of freaking entrepreneurs, a lot of business owners, a lot of aspiring achievers, they get nailed in the face because they tie too much about what other people think about what their outcome is going to be regardless, you know, in. We know that you're going to go through cycles. You're, there's some days you're going to win, some days you're going to Lose. Some days you're going to barely get by. Some days you're going to have abundance. Right. But how do you act in that? In that, in that transition is I think is the ultimate definer.

Right, agreed, agreed. I mean, so like, for an example, like, I love driving Cadillacs. I've been driving cadillacs for about 10 years. I Cadillac tattoo on me, you know.

Now you went the extra mile with a Cadillac tattoo?

Yeah, yeah, Cadillac tattoo. You know, and it's got the word hustle and scripted underneath and all that.

Or.

But if that got taken away tomorrow, I am not attached to it. Like, if. If I didn't have the hot tub to smoke my cigars at night tomorrow, I'm not attached to it. Like, yeah, I'm already. I'm prepared constantly thinking into that crumbling to potentially come my way. And it goes back to this idea of trying to marry money and meaning.

But money and meaning, I like that.

Marry money and meaning and go after them both in parallel. But love meaning, not money. Right. So if you're loving meaning and not money, if the money and everything that comes with the money goes away and you still have a meaning attachment, which is internal, then you're going to be okay. But if you're attaching your meaning to your money and everything it brings, you know, you're going to follow along with it.

Yeah.

You know, and it's having that mindset of detaching my money for meaning while still going after both.

Yeah, no, that's good. You know, I was just thinking too. You know what? I find that I found this. This was a major shift for me. This is probably 10 years ago. Okay. My business was going good, but I wouldn't call it great. Right. And that was one shift. I went from trying to make the business successful to simply this poll. It's just a shift, just a perspective shift to how can I position my business to serve the most people. The moment I did that, I started getting rewarded with more of the things that I was chasing.

That's right.

So I kind of surrendered to acting in accordance with service and that service ended up giving me the reap the reaping the, you know, so what you reap kind of principle, you know, have you seen that as well with. With your mentality and kind of how you built this failure rule mindset?

Yeah, you give what you get. I mean, if you bring to your love, you'll lose. If you lose your life, you will clinging. I mean, all these principles carry out in a variety of different mechanisms within the world. Right.

Yeah.

When you're, when you're focused on giving, honoring your paycheck or honoring those that bring in your revenue. When you're an entrepreneur, if you're, if you're doing that, oftentimes you're going to see the fruit of that incrementally over time.

Yeah.

More than just trying to protect, just trying to find a way to edge. Right. If you're actually, you know, thinking about what you're delivering and making sure it serves others, you know, I think that is, you know, that is to me the, the, the, the fuel that really.

Yeah.

Ethical capitalism going. Yeah.

I've always said that sometimes the most competitive edge you can have is sharpening somebody else's sword, you know?

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. I mean, because, you know, I don't know about you, but I ascribe to the 300, the Spartans and the, the, the Vikings. In fact, I am apparently courting my DNA, part Viking, so. Which is kind of funny because I'm five foot nothing, so I don't know any short Vikings, but I'm apparently the first of the first of them, you know, and they used to make a big deal about making sure not only your ax is sharp, but also kind of like making sure your buddy's ax was sharp.

Yeah.

Like making sure nobody is going into a, a battle with, with a weapon that wasn't prepared, which kind of, you know, I kind of also think about the next biggest thing that I also. One of the other things I picked up from the book, I want to say it's in Rule 4, it's one of the breakdowns and it's this concept of the most valuable thing you have, which is the mind. So make you call it. But you say it differently. Say mind the fire inside. So that's a choice. How do you mind the fire inside, especially in moments of adversity?

Yeah. So I mean, I go through a variety of examples on that, but I think the one that comes to mind most is, you know, I think that might have derived from a quote from Srinivas Rao, who wrote the Art of Being Unmistakable, who's now like become a friend actually and is kind of helping me coach me through kind of book launch and that kind of thing.

Yeah.

But you know, he talks about when he was, you know, job hopping in the tech world and I think he was in Silicon Valley and he just had this numbness inside, you know, and he worked on a project for nine months and then they pull the project from him before it's even done and scrap it, you know, just felt this lack of meaning. But he had all the accoutrements of what looked like a successful life. And he just talked about how like, you know, kind of taking that safe, practical way for him, the fire died inside. But when he started minding the fire, he did some radical things. You know, he moved back in with his parents. He's got really into surfing. And I had this vision for his life that was different. He became a writer and a podcaster and a consultant, all these other things. He runs the unmistakable creative podcast today. And it's like all of a sudden that fire came up. But. But it's also an active. An active thing. Right. Because fire just doesn't maintain itself. Right. It's not just this thing that just happens all the time. You still have to mind it. So that means, you know, if you have a day job, but you're building a dream on the side, you still got to put an hour or two.

Yeah. Throw a log on the fire.

Otherwise, regardless of how tired you are. Right. So it's still a minding process. It is, you know, passion oriented, fire oriented, maybe in contrast to a low meaning, you know, day job or something like that. You got to find a way to isolate some. Some time, even if it's nominal, and mind those fires to keep that going. And I think, for me, I found, and I think others have found that when you do that, you know, it then shades every other area of your life because you get so much joy out of even just a small amount of minding those fires, of those things you're passionate about. Potentially out of your day job, your day job becomes more meaningful, more enjoyable. It becomes what I call your enabler pursuit that either finances or feeds into, or maybe there's a transfer, goes from one to the other. And to me, I just think it's a very important thing to find something in your life that lights you up and mind that damn fire, dude, I love that.

In fact, I love the, I love the, the fire analogy because literally this entire time I'm like picturing a campfire. Like, you want to be warm by the fire, you want to cook marshmallows on it, you want to do all this kind of stuff, you know, but if you, if you just sit there and watch it for three or four hours, it's going to turn into basically ash. Every now and again, you're going to toss a log on it.

Yeah.

Or as you're kicking it off, you have to have enough accelerant. Right. To get it going. Right. So, man, that's. That's so good. I love that.

Yeah, Yeah, I love that.

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I actually struggle with that, to be honest with you. Like, when I think about, like writing the book, like the actual writing the book was just a pleasure for me. I don't have writer's block. That's not a problem. It just comes out harder.

Yeah, there's a lot of content in there. You're going to have to have a highlighter for this book, but it's a great book to have a highlighter with.

I mean, it just poured out, I mean iterations over time, refined it and I think it really came out in a cohesive way. But you know, for me it's more like, you know, my, my kind of anchor quote for the year now that I'm in the post production phase of the book and just the marketing and trying to build an audience and build that goes around, it is more, you know, the devil is in the details and so is the salvation. So the hard thing for me is getting into the details, the details of mapping out this multi year plan to try to evangelize failure wisdom to the world in many ways. Right. So it's the details. And so yeah, that's where it's the hard thing. That's where the discipline comes in for me. That's not the natural outpour. So I mean I'm, I'm in that now for, for many years as I, as I try to build kind of an audience and a following around this message.

Yeah, I don't know if it'll help you at all. This is something that again was a shift for me when I started the same journey, right. This is 10 years ago that I started writing, speaking, doing events and all that kind of stuff. And I'm very different now than I was then, like as a, as a person, as a personal brand, as a, as an entrepreneur, all of that stuff. And I'm grateful for all of it because it led me to where I'm at. I had this massive shift when my heat, when my feet hit the floor every morning. It's less about the strategy of building the organization and more about the strategy about touching hearts. Like how many people can this resource thing touch? What is that? And I picture, I literally picture in my mind like a person that used to be me back in the day, like crying on a street corner or sitting on a curb crying because they lost this or their relationship just crumbled or their business is falling apart and they're in this case maybe their business fall apart because they don't know any better. They just did something stupid because they don't know any better. They've been an entrepreneur before, they never managed that kind of money before. Right. There's an innocence to it.

Right.

And that same kind of thing. And I'm like, okay, what happens when I feel lit up, when I feel excited, if I, if I, if I happen to come across that person and knew what they were facing, knowing that I have insights.

Yep.

That could radically. I got a, I got a good friend right now who's probably in the process of declaring bankruptcy with one of his businesses. Okay. I'm sure at some point in time he wanted, he's gonna, he's, he's probably dealt with the identity thing. How does, how does this make me look?

Yep, exactly.

When I told him, I said, if you had any idea how many times I came this close to my businesses failing in building, you know, eight, nine figure bit like, if you had any idea how many times that happened, it would blow your mind. Because we like to, you know, the Forbes, the Forbes and the, the Entrepreneur magazine and the social media and all like that, that's all this quote unquote, sexy stuff. But it's not the real stuff. The real stuff is the sacrifice.

Yeah. I mean, I went through a bankruptcy. Read about it in my book.

Yeah.

It was one of the most painful yet transformative events of my life.

Yeah.

And I learned to detach my identity from it. Right. That's a lesson. Yeah. And reinvent. Yeah.

I'm glad you're bringing that up because that's my next point. Is, is, is the importance and the process of reinvention, at least for me, anytime I've had to reinvent myself, it starts off with pain, then turns into purpose and then turns into potential.

Absolutely. 100%. I mean, it's, it's the, it's the idea that growth usually comes from recurring cycles of death and renewal. Yeah. That's, you know, that's part of life. That's part of growth. If you're not constantly dying in some way and going through some sort of pain. Yeah. Metaphorically here. And then constantly renewing, the chances are your growth is probably limited.

Yeah. Well, let's talk about that reinvention process. How, how would one person know? Hey, maybe I'm at the early stages or I'm in the middle or I'm at the ending stages of a reinvention. How would you see that cycle?

Yeah.

Again, I mean, for, for me, you know, it could be, you know, self directed, self induced. If you have this kind of vision of changing your life, of, you know, potentially awareness disrupting your life, and you might be afraid to take the steps to do that, but you have this kind of like, you know, this groaning inside to do that. It's mapping out that plan and finally taking, you know, the first, second, third affordable steps to go towards that. But that's fully something. And, you know, it's the idea of balancing the chaos and order. Right. If you have too much chaos, can't function too much order, you're not growing. Right. So, yeah, you're getting stale. You need to invite some sort of chaos, stretching yourself, reinventing yourself, and you got to take those steps toward that. And sometimes, like what I read about in the book, sometimes it's radically, you know, induced externally in your life by events out of your control that you see as harm, that you see as bad, but that might, in the end, if you metabolize them wisely, be something that in retrospect could be the very event that reshaped you in a way that brought you to a successful point where you're more aligned with your calling, journey and your authentic self later on. And the stories that I write about, you know, in the book.

Yeah, and also makes me think about the biblical perspective of nothing is going to be misused or nothing's not going to be used. Right. It's that whole, like, there's no bad. It's a, it's a transformative thing that's going to end up in your good. But I find that it only does that if you don't resist it.

You have to resist it.

You have to wait and wait and wait. Wait.

I read about the book, you know, like, you know, when you hit that rock, you know, don't, don't, you know, don't resist it. You know, let it push you into a new stream. Embrace that new stream. Discover what that new stream is, you know, Or I think of like Jack Nicholson in the Departed when he's playing Frank Costello character who's, you know, the. Based off the Irish gangster Woody Bulger, when, you know, he's like, I'm an artist, you give me anything.

Yeah, that's right.

That's how I treat life. Whatever you give me, no matter how messy it looks, I'm gonna get something out of it, you know?

Yeah, no, that's good. You know, it's funny, I was just thinking too, you know, the book itself is like a, it's a, it's a straight up playbook for failure. Like it covers such a wide gambit of different type of situations and different type of learning lessons and, and, and a playbook to kind of help you utilize it. And as I was going through it you know, I broke out my high, my trusty highlighter and I'm kind of like doing my thing and like, ooh. And because I, I like, I like stuff like this. I, my, my family and my friends joke around, say, hey dude, you always talking fortune cookies. They don't realize how many books I have to consume. Right. You know, I get one all one liners all the time. And I was getting to the point in the book.

That I saw a tagline that like it kind of stuck out at me. I was like, oh, I can't wait to ask him about this. All right, so I'm gonna read it directly. It says the thing one and the thing two dependency. Like explain that to me because I want to make sure I understand that clearly from your perspective.

Yeah. So the thing one and think do dependency is failure rule number four. It sounds like some stupid cat, you know, cat in the hat type thing, but it's not. I thought more of like Tony Soprano waking up for cigar of the day and his disheveled white bathrobe and speaking Italian American slang. You got the thing one enable over here and your thing to North Star dream over here. So your thing one is like an enabler pursuit. Right. Thing two is your North Star aspirational dream pursuit that you envision will align you most succinctly with your authentic calling journey. Right. This idea that because nothing is safe, failure rule number two, going after your dreams is also not safe. And you still want to avoid failure as much as is possible. I mean, that's a self evident failure. Yeah, well, you want to build some sort of scaffolding, some sort of plan in your life, even if you're gonna have to iterate to help you more safely get to your North Star thing because it's not safe. Right. So I go through examples in the book. Most obvious one is bang down a nine to five and side hustle your dream slowly. Right. But there's all these creative ways to build a thing one enabler to get you to your thing to north star dreams. So, you know, one of the examples I go through in the book are there was these two brothers that came over here from Lebanon, she a Muslim, you know, background, they wanted to start new businesses, you know, in America. That was their thing to dream. But they didn't have any sink money, so they ended up getting a job with Disney on Ice working in the merch truck selling stuff to, you know, little girls. Princess stuff, right? Yeah. But Disney on Ice took care of their lodging, took care of the food. So they had no expenses and they had no home. They married to the road Wherever I may roam like the Metallica song. Just living on the road for several years and just saved up all the cash, receive money. That was a thing. One enabler, very creative, very sacrificial, came back and they started seeing their dreams. Now they own gas stations, nightclubs, cigar lounges, gyms, all in this one city, and they burn that dream. Right. It's this idea. You can't just quit your job all the time. Just go right after your dream, you know? Another example of the sky. Chris Wren had a record label. Has a record label. Bridge 9 Records. It's been around for, you know, almost three decades now. And he started his record label as a young kid in his 20s. He had no cash to put out these record releases, so he started a merchandise company called Yankee Suck and Stands.

Yeah.

Made a bunch of money off that. Pretty much threw good money after bad, in some people's view, and underwrote his first, like, six, seven, eight record releases. And that kind of his dream. So he had an enabler pursuit, and then he had his dream pursuit.

Yeah.

And they worked hand in hand in tandem. And so the idea of being creative about having these portfolio pursuits, having some enablers or a enabler, and maybe even having more than one kind of dream pursuit that work hand in hand. It's. That's the idea.

No, I love it. In fact, it kind of reminds me, I had a conversation my son, he was fresh out of. So I've got. I've got three kids. One was already working for one of my businesses, the other one. The other two boys had graduated basically the same year, in the middle of COVID of course. So they're, you know, all over the place. One goes to college. One goes to college for about three months and says, this is not for me. And I knew that going into it, I'm like, dude, you're. You're an entrepreneur at heart. You don't know it yet. I can see it. Cause I am one.

Yeah.

Kind of thinking you just wait for it to shake out. I remember we had this conversation one afternoon. He's like, well, I just don't know what I'm supposed to do. And I said, dude, just go knock something over. Like, just go do something.

Yeah.

He's like, well, what. I don't. But. But what if it's not the right thing? I said, no matter what you do, it's going to be the right thing that leads you to the thing you're supposed to do. So just like go knock over. And so I like the fact that you like that you call it an enabler pursuit. Because, you know, hindsight being 20 20, he went out and he went into sales for a little while. Did, did really well. Had. Had met a, A, his current employer based on him selling a vehicle. Right. To. To said employer. Now he's doing sales. But now he also has got an opinion of. Okay, hey, I'm actually pretty good at this sales stuff. Like, I'm like, that's a skill for me.

I like people.

That's a skill for me. Right. I like this. I like. He, he wants to kind of get into the SEO stuff and kind of you that. And I was like, hey, that's a good, that's a good space. Just study your butt off. Right. Because the difference good, good SEO and bad SEO is how, how intelligent the person is really. Because, you know, things change so fast. But it reminds me that you know, where you are today, if you leverage it properly, will ultimately lead you where you want to go. So I like to also like the dichotomy of having the aspirational identity or the aspirational pursuit because I don't think people. I think people think that because I'm not doing what I want to do or what my calling is in this moment.

Yep.

That it's never going to happen. And I think you and I both know that. No, you just need to keep going.

That's right. That's right. And you got to find a way to organize your life, that you leave some margin for time and energy again, even if nominally, but consistently always returning it to mine. That fire for that aspirational thing to pursue. Yeah. On time for that. You know, you have to layer it in, you know, and that's difficult to do because it means you'll be working in off hours or at night, maybe on your lunch hour, you're making three or four calls. So you're. You're sending emails. That's always been part of my life. I've always had, you know, at least two to three pursuits running at one time. If not.

Yeah, right.

So natural to me. I can't imagine just having one thing. I like being in disparate spaces that don't even make any sense to be hit.

I'm not a horizontal integration kind of guy.

That's okay too. You know, at one point my life would I work for record labels by day and ran my record labels at night. I mean, that was a great education in that space. But. But yeah. So, you know, 100. I think, I think if you are listening to what I call your eternal spirit voice at all times, you're going to find ways to align with the next best steps in your calling journey, no matter where you're at. And I think, you know, to me that's, that's a very, it's a spiritual thing, it's a self awareness thing. It takes a lot of, you know, intentional solitude to mind that. It'll get you there.

No, it's good. I was actually thinking too, as we were kind of talking through that, that, you know, when it comes to kind of setting all up in your favor and moving things around and shifting things, most Americans don't realize that the average American right now spends between three and five hours a day on media of some kind.

Of Netflix, any of it. And I'm thinking, I was thinking to myself, I'm like, dude, that's five times five is 25 hours a week. And that's if you're just doing Monday through Friday. I'm like, what could I do with 25 hours a week? And I made a conscious decision, like I'm gonna eliminate all distractions except for this hour to this hour.

Right?

The only. So my audience knows that, you know, I, I am in my DMs from social media from time to time, but they're not gonna see me answering. Every five minutes I'm gonna pop in there at 1 o', clock, I'm gonna talk to a handful of people and pop back out and then I'll do it again, you know, you know what I'm saying? Like it, there's a time and a place for each one of those things because I wanted to get three of those hours back a day, produce more content. We got a brand new program we're launching and stoppable startup in the near future and I want to make sure the content's on point so I have to commit. But if I was on my social media doing this all day long, like distracted all day long, you're going to lose that focus.

So how focus. There's also like, you know, the idea of just delineating between active and passive media consumption. Right? Like, yeah, you know, when I have my media consumption, whatever it might be, I'm actively trying to consume it to generate ideas for my own output. But yeah, not just consuming it just for entertainment and pleasure that might be a part of it. Whether it's listening to music or watching something, you know, on Netflix or scrolling through Instagram. Like, I'm actively trying to generate Ideas and make connections.

Yeah.

My own content and my map back to my book or whatever it might be so that I can put that on my. My own Instagram or have a part of, you know, whatever else I'm working on.

Yeah. The other one, I want to. The last thing I want to be hit for while we have the time together. And of course, again, everybody go grab the book. Check it out. It's definitely a highlighter book. You're going to love it for, for, for real. It's like a. You're good. If you're going to be a peak performer, you are going to deal with failure, so may as well get a roadmap for it. So that's how I look at it, right?

That's right. Yep.

This the one of the ones I want to hit really fast is something that I think we all deal with and we. We've been dealing with it since grade school, if not like preschool. And that is a spirit of rejection and dealing with rejection and how we use rejection or let it consume us. Like break down how we should be using rejection as far as. As far as. When it comes to a failure rule.

Yeah. So, I mean, I. I use a quote from Sylvester Stallone in the book. You know, the erudite Sylvester Stallone talks about how he just sees rejection like blowing a bugle in his ear just to wake them up and get going.

Yeah.

And for it harder. Right. And I think, I think that's how I view it. Right. And also goes back to failure rule number five. You are not your failure. So if you reject it, be interpreted as a failure event depending on the rejection. Like detach your identity from it. Right. Yeah. Even like demonize. You know, those who might have rejected you, they have their own reasons. Maybe the wrong reasons, but it's just an event. Like, just think of it objectively. Think about what you can learn from it, between what is true and what is not true about that rejection of you or your talent. And if there's something that actually points out a gap in you, go work on that gap and get better. If that rejection is really based on a false perception, reject that rejection. Go find another avenue for your skills and talents. Move on. But don't let it bog down your identity or slow you down.

No, I love it. In fact, I actually think that knowing who you are in your inside and your core is huge. And I actually use Sylvester Stallone because most people don't know his. His story. Right. The dude. Yes. He wrote Rocky. Yes. He starred in Rocky. Yes. It blew up and became a whole franchise. And that, that led him becoming an action star and all this kind of stuff. But what people, most people don't understand is prior to that, he was a failed actor. They didn't like the way he talked or we. Adrian, or the way his lip went up or whatever. Couldn't. Couldn't get something going. Got so bad he had to sell his dog. Yeah, he had to sell his dog, Butkus, right? And he goes out and from that standpoint, like, goes and creates one of the best works on the planet. One of the most inspirational things on the planet because he was. He knew who he was. And they offered him, I think it was like $350,000 to buy the script from him, provided he wasn't the actor. And he refused to sell it. He said, if I'm not the lead guy, you're not getting the script. Lo and behold, they gave him a small budget. He ends up becoming the leading actor in that and changes the game when it comes to inspiration.

Movie 100, 100.

Like, it just goes to show that, like, knowing where you are in the journey and knowing who you are and whose you are. Dude. Oh, imagine if he had just given up. He's like, no, my dog is too important. My, my. This is too important that we would.

Have no Rocky movies.

No Creed, no Rocky, no Rambo. Like, you know what I'm saying?

I know, I know. It goes back to like, you know, it's, it's. It's the juggling between money and meaning, right? He got offered more money to not be in it, but he chose meaning it to him. He had this vision. He had to be in it. He just was convicted. That, that was part of the plan, you know, whatever, whatever we perceive the plan to be right and like, that ended up manifesting and being the right path for him to pursue, even amidst you know, temporary, you know, rejection of the higher payday.

Yeah, dude, I love it. Well, before we head out, I'm curious, where can everybody else find out more about you and about the book and kind of getting their own copy.

Yeah. So they go to andrewthorpe king.com no e on the end of Thorpe there. You can find me on Instagram, link to that, my YouTube channel. I got some great produced videos that echo the themes in the book in a different way. Also, my merchant merchandise company, solo empire supply company. Some kick ass designs from somebody, you know, ethos of the book. It's also a soundtrack to the book because I love, I love heavy music on Spotify and Apple. Music failural soundtrack and you get the book anywhere books are consumed online obviously Amazon. There's an audiobook too read by jsang who was an actor on Twin Peaks, the show. Oh cool. He does a kick ass job. Like a really great cadence, good urgency. He was definitely did justice to the text. But yet. Andrew Thorpe king.com no, in the end you can. It's a gateway to everything.

Dude, I dig it. I dig it. Well look, final thing here. We've been tiptoeing all over top of this this entire conversation which I'm pretty excited about because I believe redemption is reinvention. You had talked a lot about the book about continually reinventing yourself. Like you can sketch your life or reschedulet your life almost like almost as, as quickly as possible. Let's, let's bring it home with that because I, I want to make sure people understand that wherever they are today does not have to where they have, does not have to be where they stay.

Yeah. So yeah, there's a chapter in the book called you know, we know that you can reschedule your life every day or something to that effect. I think the example I'd go through there is, you know, the political pundit Glenn Beck. How you know, he was, you know, a really bad alcoholic. He was really, you know, abusive to the people around him, suicidal and dabbling in cocaine and all this other stuff. Lost his family, found himself living in his dingy apartment. But you know, really kind of in the end kind of found his spirituality, found a good life, you know, pivoted away from the optics of his, of his reputation and found a way to re sketch his life and become who he is today regardless of what you think of him from political standpoint? Yeah, yeah for sure of him as a person. You know, is that kind of idea that whatever your old reputation is that can be renewed if you take responsibility for your actions in your past but then travel away from them and reinvent yourself. Another example I'd go through is Elgin James in the book who happens to be Jocko Willing's half brother. He was the leader of a violent straight edge hardcore punk rock street gang in the Boston area that went national. They were even featured on the gangland episode on the History Channel. He ended up turning away from violence and pursuing what his calling journey in screenwriting. He ended up being successful in that was a mentee of Robert Redford. He was the one who wrote Mayans MC on fx, the spin off the sun to Anarchy. And on the day of his sentencing for an extortion charge was the day he got offered a deal with Universal Pictures. Kind of a new life in that day. Right. But he was able to kind of shed that reputational garbage of the past and reset his life and chase after his calling journey. So even if you have an ethical failure, we talk about these four failures and these other failures, but even if it's an ethical failure, you can be redeemed to redeem, renew. And I go through examples of that in the book as well.

Dude, it's been fire, man. Appreciate you coming on today, man.

Have a good time. Yeah, it was great. It's good to talk to you, man. Love it.

Rock on. All right, well, you take care. See you.

All right, see you.

I hope you liked that video. And if you did, make sure you check out this next video right here. Phelps said it really well when he got all those medals. If I compared myself to the guy left and right of me when I was about to dive into the water, I lost my gold. My focus is my mission of going and swimming. I don't notice this.