Latest / The You Project / #1703 A Successful Failure - Harps

Transcript

#1703 A Successful Failure - Harps · The You Project

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Good our team, it's Harps. I hope you're terrific. Welcome
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: to another installment of life. As many of you know,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: I'm sure my main job. I do lots of different things,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: but I guess what I've done the most of consistently
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: over the last twenty years. But I've I've been speaking
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: for thirty years before that, a lot of exercise physiology
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: and training people. But in terms of my job, the
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: last twenty years, I've been speaking to teams and organizations
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: and companies here in Australia overseas in lots of different capacities,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: sporting clubs, not for profits, government, Victoria, police, big organizations,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: little organizations, mostly in the three dimensional face to face realm.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: More recently a lot of online stuff. And I'm in
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: the middle of doing some gigs right now at the moment,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: and so I've been doing that for a long time.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: But I did my first paid speaking gig when I
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: was twenty six, which was thirty three years ago. I
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: got paid one hundred dollars. It was for a bunch
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: of blokes at a timberyard. I spoke for about I
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: can't remember if it was thirty or forty minutes. Probably
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: forty odd minutes. I spoke to them in what was
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: their smoko room. They're kind of their lunch room. I
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: can't even remember how many guys, maybe twenty. And I
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: remember preparing for that talk for weeks because the guy
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: who owned the business was a personal training client of mine,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: and I used to talk to him about all the
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: stuff I talk about, you know, health and fitness and
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: get them in shape and a bitter nutrition bit of mindset,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: very fundament until back in the day, of course, pretty rudimentary,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: but nonetheless, he thought there was value in it. And
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: he said, you know, the stuff that you talk to
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: me about, could you come in and talk to my dudes,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: my guys about that. Could you talk to my team
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: about physical health and a bit about nutrition, bit about
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: looking after themselves. Like I said, pretty rudimentary, fundamental stuff
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: back then, but nonetheless, and I was excited because I'd
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: done a little bit of speaking in front of groups
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: not paid. I kind of enjoyed it, and you know,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: I thought, maybe, imagine if I could do this as
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: a living or part of my living. Imagine if part
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: of my income could be standing in front of people
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: talking about the shit that I love. The shit that
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: I'm passionate about. So I rocked up. I did my gig.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: I stumbled and started a few times, and I, after
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: two weeks of prep and copious amounts of planning and
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: note writing, I think I came We came up with
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: like a one page dot point with a million dot
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: points on it of what I was going to talk
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: to them about. Well, of course I started, and then
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: I forgot about my dot points. And then I looked
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: at my dot points and I couldn't fucking remember what
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: I'd spoken about and not spoken about. And I've forgot
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: the story that I was going to tell to highlight
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: that particular point. And I thought I would try and
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: be a bit amusing and funny. That didn't work. Bottom
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: line is I spoke for whatever it was thirty or
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: forty minutes, and I wasn't very good. I wasn't very
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: good at all. I would give me for where I
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: was at then in terms of skill and knowledge and competence,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: maybe I'd give me a three or four out of ten.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: But now with what I know and my skill level
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: now and competence and understanding now, I would give me
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: a one. I did not do a great job at all.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: There were no questions, there was no interaction. Nobody wanted
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: to know anything. Nobody spoke to me when I finished,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: as soon as I said, you know, I'll be here
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: if anyone's got a question, And everybody got up and
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: fucking run out of the room, run out of the room.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: And that happened. Not long later, doing a fitness industry thing,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: talking to some would be personal trainers, or perhaps it
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: was jim instructors in those days, but anyway, I did
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: a similar thing, but this time I spoke for two hours,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: talking about strength training and writing programs and all that
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Same thing happened. This was within a
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: few months of each other, and I finished, Everyone left
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: the room. No one asked a question. A young lady
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: came up to me, and I thought I was on
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: a winner because she had a question. So she must
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: have been a bit interested, and she did have a question,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: but unfortunately for me, the question was will you be
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: here teaching next week? The answer was yes, I will be.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: The look on her face was one of disappointment, and
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: she promptly left the room and she did not come
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: the following Why didn't she come? Of course, she didn't
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: want to fucking hear me, I was no good, so
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: failing embarrassment, not being good, not having a high level
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: of skill or competence, That's where I've always started. I've
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: done most of my learning through trial and error. Yes
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: I've done academic learning, and yes I've sat in classrooms
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: and set exams, and yes I'm doing a PhD right now.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: But in terms of in terms of my ability to
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: do what I do, in terms of my ability to
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: run a business, to solve problems, to negotiate different things
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: that I need to, To be able to stand in front
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: of an audience and build rapport and connection and tell
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: a story and be funny and share thoughts and ideas
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: in a way that's broadly relevant and relatable. That is
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: something that has happened through trial and error. That is
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: something that's happened through falling down and getting up. That's
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: something that's happened through me being comfortable with not being good.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: The starting point for everything that I'm now, I guess
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: you would say good at or somewhat competent at, or
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: skilled at, or paid for. The starting point for me
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: was incompetence, ignorance, lack of knowledge, lack of skill, and
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: inability to be able to perform at a high level
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: at that thing. That is where I started. I started
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: as the white belt. I started as the white belt,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: and I metaphorically got strangled and kicked and choked and punched,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: and I did not do a good job. But I
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: came back and I kept training, and I kept showing up,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: and I kept doing the work, and I kept asking questions,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: and I kept learning through my failure. I kept learning
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: through my mediocrity. I kept learning through my poor results.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: And many of you know that this podcast Life is,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: in fact my fifth podcast. My fourth is the U Project.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: And you also know some of you that I did
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: three podcasts before the U Project that didn't work. They failed.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: I made no money in fast, In fact, I lost money,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: and that was over two years. And then when I
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: started the U Project, it took at least another two
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: years of almost daily shows daily now but almost daily
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: shows back then, so four years of podcasting in total
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: before I made a dollar. So I was losing money
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: for four years. I was losing money for what added
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: up to around eight hundred episodes of The U Project
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: and my other shows before I had something that was
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: commercially viable. Before I could say well, this is working now,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: it wasn't. It was working in that we were producing
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: shows and some people were listening. But depending on watch
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: a metric for successes, it's conceivable that we could say
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: I failed for eight hundred episodes. I don't think I
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: failed for eight hundred episodes because I learned and I
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: grew and I evolved and I developed inside understanding, awareness,
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: skill competence, and I got better and I learned how
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: to interview people better and listen better, and produce better
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: and know where to go and where not to go
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: in a podcast. It was all learning, It was all development,
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: It was all skill acquisition. But on a level I
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: was losing money, making no dough and failing. But that
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: is why the title of this episode is the successful failure,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: because while I was failing in a sense, I was
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: getting closer to success because I was simply doing what's
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: required to build the right muscles to become a successful podcast.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: I was building the right muscles when I was younger,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: although I was falling down and getting up and failing
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: and fucking up. When I opened my first personal training center,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: the first one Australia, at twenty six, I made a
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: million mistakes. I failed in inverted commas many times because
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: I didn't know what I was doing. But I couldn't
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: get good at the thing that I wouldn't do, So
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: I had to do the things I wasn't good at
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: in order to learn, in order to develop, in order
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: to understand, and in order to be able to get
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: good over the long term. This aversion that so many
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: of us have to not failing, to not looking silly,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: to not being embarrassed, to not being able to cope
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: with anything other than a positive outcome, is actually a
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: massive self limitation. I want to do the things that
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: make me better, and if that is periodically failing, falling,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: looking silly, I'm completely up for that. I want to
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: go where I grow. I want to be in the
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: room where I'm the dumbest. I want to be in
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: the room where I'm the least skilled. I want to
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: be in the room where I'm the least successful because
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: I want to surround myself with a culture, with a mindset,
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: and with people that are better than me, so that
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: I'll get dragged up. That's how I learn when I'm
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: constantly mixing with people that I have more skill, knowledge,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: and understanding in a particular area than all I'm doing
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: is making myself look good and stroking my ego. I
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: want to be I want to be the perpetual student,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: and of course there'll be times when I'm standing in
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: front of an audience to teach. I'm not talking about
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: that so much. I'm just talking about putting myself. I'm
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: talking to you about putting yourself in the middle of
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: a situation, an environment, a culture, a process that you
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: are going to grow in, and it will feel like failure,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: but really, over the long term, it's part of becoming successful.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: See you tomorrow.