[00:00] Get ready for the final episode of success through failure. Now that doesn’t mean the podcast is over. We’re rebranding, upgrading, and narrowing the niche. I’m going to tell you more. Stay tuned for the final episode of success through failure. Welcome

[00:20] to the final episode of success through failure. The show for successful people. And for those who want to become successful, the only show that reveals the true nature of success. This is your host, Jim Harsha, Jr. And yes, I said the final episode, the last episode of success through failure. This is crazy.

[00:41] I’m releasing this on Christmas day. So you can think of this as kind of a, a final gift of success through failure. Now, listen, we’re not going anywhere. We’re rebranding narrowing the niche and you don’t have to subscribe to new. You can just continue to roll on because we’re going to continue with this same podcast feed, but under a new name and a new brand, really targeting a specific market.

[01:08] I’m pivoting this show to a new, more relevant title, more relevant brand that for many of you listening, most of you listening is going to speak more directly. To you and what you actually need and what you actually want in your life. But first, what I want to do in this episode is reveal some things about success through failure, how it started my biggest, my biggest failures and what I learned, my three biggest takeaways over the years.

[01:38] Of recording success through failure with all these incredible guests that we’ve had on like Tim Ferriss and Jack Canfield and, you know, Navy SEALs and Olympic gold medalists, you name it, these amazing, amazing individuals, many of whom we’re going to be bringing back on the show to talk more specifically about these, these topics that you most want that are going to serve you best.

[01:57] So I’m going to share with you how this started my failures, my three biggest takeaways. And then my final lesson is around why I’m changing and narrowing the niche of this show. All right. So like I said, how it started is where I want to start today. Well, this all started from a failure. Literally. I was standing in front of an audience and speaking, and I was so nervous.

[02:18] My heart was thumping out of my chest. And I stumbled over my words and I was just so awkward and uncomfortable speaking in front of an audience. It was about 200 people. It was when I was working at the university of Virginia in the athletics foundation, and I was addressing a group of donors in a room and man, was I nervous and just felt like I.

[02:39] Botched this thing. And so I realized, you know, if I want to be successful in my career, I know that I need to improve my communication skills. So what did I do? I signed up for Toastmasters. If you’re not familiar with Toastmasters, it’s a nonprofit you can sign up for. And your town probably has one, two or five or 10 chapters, depending on how big your city is.

[02:58] In your area, and you will be able to sign up. It’s very inexpensive and you will have a safe place to practice public speaking with a bunch of other people, just like you who want to practice public speaking. So I signed up for that and for about six or seven months, maybe it was closer to nine months, actually, I was doing this.

[03:15] And about once a month is all I would attend the meetings. They were every week, but I could only go about once a month and I was practicing my speaking and getting better. And I heard one day on the radio, I was driving to work and I heard there was an opportunity to give a TEDx talk at the local Charlottesville TEDx event.

[03:31] And Charlottesville’s TEDx event is one of the, is in the top 1 percent of TED events in the world in terms of size. It’s amazing. Big it’s over a thousand people, of course, broadcast worldwide, really high production value. They bring in people from all over the world, just amazing people. And then one community spot I applied and got chosen to be one person out of 25 who applied one of 25.

[03:56] I got to do an open mic night, four minute talk in front of about 500 people to present your idea of what your Ted talk would be about. And of those 25, the audience would select one person. And I got selected. I was the person. I got to give a TEDx talk on titled why I teach my children to fail. So that was the Genesis of this podcast.

[04:17] So I gave this TEDx talk. It had rave reviews, got a lot of great feedback from it. You can just Google it and you’ll find it. Matter of fact, we’ll have the link in the episode, or you can just go to my website, Jim Harsha, jr. com. And you’ll find a link to the TEDx talk about why I teach my children to fail, which is largely about my wrestling career at the university of Virginia.

[04:34] And through high school, which was mostly failure up until my senior year in college, when I finally became a division and CWA division one, all American. So largely failure throughout my career. And that failure led me to success. And that, like I said, that was the Genesis of this podcast. So that’s going back to how this started and to continue on the theme of how this started, I want to move into the second thing I said, I was going to talk about, which is.

[04:58] My failures before we get into my three biggest takeaways, quick interruption. If you like what you’re hearing here and you want to learn how you can implement this into your life, just go to Jim Harsha, jr. com slash apply to see how you can get a free one on one coaching session with me. That’s Jim Harsha, jr.

[05:17] com slash apply. Now back to the show. So my failures, when I started this thing. I failed a lot. I can remember I interviewed Mark Devine. If you know who Mark Devine is, he’s a Navy SEAL. And this interview, oh my goodness, people, I was recording this. First of all, in my car, sitting in a parking garage on my lunch break.

[05:41] When I was working at the university of Virginia, my laptop on my lap. Connected to crappy wifi because I was in a parking garage and this thing dropped probably five or six times. We dropped cause I was recording just audio on zoom. I said, Hey, Mark, kill your video. I’ll kill mine to save the bandwidth for audio.

[05:59] And it dropped like five or six times. And I remember one time we rejoined and Mark’s like, man, good luck editing this thing. And this is back when I was doing a lot of the editing. And, oh man, it was painful, but we piece this thing together. Zaynar and I, by the way, piece this together. So Zaynar has been with me from the very, very beginning back in 2015 when I started the podcast.

[06:19] And so that was one of my early failures. When I started a podcast, I still get it wrong. I get the audio wrong. Sometimes you’ve probably heard some of these interviews where you can tell that I don’t have the mic that I’m speaking through right now, which is a great professional microphone sometimes if it doesn’t get clicked on or, or if it doesn’t get picked up correctly and doesn’t connect to my computer, you know, then I get, I’m picking up the wrong audio for my crappy computer microphone.

[06:44] So I fail still doing that. Now, actually there were two times. In this podcast where I have rerecorded my side of an interview. So I’ve recorded an entire interview conversation back and forth realize at the end, or when I’m doing the editing, that my side of the audio is really bad and it got picked up through my computer microphone, as opposed to my professional microphone.

[07:09] And I literally went back. And restated all of sort of my side of the conversation. So I would like, listen to my side of the conversation and then I would hit record and rerecord me saying like the exact same stuff you would never know as a listener, but this is the kind of stuff that you do when you make mistakes like that, when you fail.

[07:28] And, uh, I’ve gotten better at that over the years, but I still fail at that sometimes. And Pauline and Poncho, Michael, he goes by Poncho who edit my podcast. Now they still kick me sometimes and they go, Jim, your audio didn’t pick up again. I have to rerecord. So it’s usually on a solo episode, but anyway, so I still fail on that.

[07:45] I’m hundreds and hundreds of episodes in 400 plus episodes. And I still get that wrong. And here’s another failure. I fail at getting most of the guests that I want. Yes. I’ve had these amazing. Awesome, incredible guests that I bring to you high profile individuals with great stories, but man, I fail more often than I succeed because there’s so many great guests out there who I want to bring on.

[08:08] And some of those folks I’m going to be able to get on moving into this new niche. So before I reveal to you what that is and what this new podcast is about, I want to share with you my three biggest takeaways from success through failure. All right. Take away number one, failure is more common with high performers than I ever realized.

[08:30] I just thought that high performers didn’t fail as much. It is the opposite. And I’m not just saying this because it’s like inspirational and motivational and heck, yeah, that sounds great, Jim. I’ll go out there and get up and try one more time every time. No, no, no. This is the truth. They actually fail so often.

[08:50] And, you know, despite the cute memes, you know, failure memes that you see on social media. This is actually a real thing. It’s not just something that you put on a cool social media graphic. They fail, they fail a lot. And in my Navy SEAL episodes, actually episode 412, which wasn’t all that long ago, I took all the seven different Navy SEALs who I’ve interviewed over the years.

[09:14] And we shared their specific lessons on failure. So go back and listen to episode four 12. I highly recommend that. And, you know, these, these world class performers, they fail a lot, but they have a different approach to it. And Michael Chandler in the two episodes that I interviewed when I interviewed Michael in the very first one, he said, I pursue my goals with total disregard for past failure.

[09:39] Total disregard for past failure. Like let that sink in for a second. Think about your past failures at whatever that thing is you want to accomplish, starting that side hustle, getting that promotion, getting the new job, running the marathon, you know, healing your relationship, whatever it might be, can you pursue your goal with not just kind of brushing that off or pushing it off a little bit, like total disregard.

[10:07] For that past failure, can you, that’s what Michael Chandler does, which leads me to my next biggest takeaway. My second biggest takeaway is this it takes work to overcome your failures. It takes work. You can’t just listen to a podcast and go, okay, that’s good enough. No, you have to do something about it.

[10:29] Michael Chandler. Does something about it. He uses language. He uses words. He uses mantras, uses affirmations. He says the right things. He does the weird mindset work that nobody else is willing to do, or I should say very few people are willing to do. If you want to hear my episodes with Michael Chandler, go back to episode three 23, 323 and episode 99.

[10:54] So way back in the archives, if this will be in the same feed, as you’re listening to this episode right now, this podcast, and even the new podcast. So three 23 and 99 mind blowing episodes with Michael Chandler. Now, Dana wild, I brought her on and she had this. Great program called train your brain. And that is a really popular episode.

[11:15] If you go back and listen to my episode with Dana wild, it’s episode 227. And she really talks about the specifics of mindset of actually doing something. Like I said, takeaway number two is that these folks actually do something about their mindset around failure. They don’t just listen to a podcast and move on.

[11:33] They’re taking action on it. Michael Chandler does Dana wild does. And also Russell Brunson, uh, who I had on the podcast way, way back in episode 50, that’s five zero. You probably can’t even access that on your phone or on your app mobile app. So we’re going to have a link to that in the action plan. If you just go to jim harshaw, jr.

[11:53] com slash action, you’ll get that. But also if you go to jim harshaw, jr. com slash five, zero 50, you’ll be able to listen to that episode. And we’ll actually have the direct download link to that as well. So you can listen to that episode. But Russell Brunson is this incredible entrepreneur. Uh, he’s a Kyle, a former college wrestling background, just like myself has that athletic mindset, uh, as does really Michael Chandler and, um, and really my Navy SEAL guests as well.

[12:21] This sort of athletic mindset approach to life and. Russell Brunson is a huge fan of Napoleon Hill. Napoleon Hill wrote, think and grow rich, think and grow rich. If you’ve never read that book, it’s a must must read. It’s very much about mindset. It’s about doing something about the mindset work that you need to do in order to overcome your limiting beliefs about failure and about yourself and about your past in order to get to where you want to get to.

[12:48] Now, Napoleon Hill in his book, think and grow rich talks about something called the Chief aim, definite chief aim. That is this sort of very specific aim that you have for your life, and I just recently learned that Bruce Lee, the Bruce Lee actually had a specific definite chief aim written out in this specific format that Napoleon Hill talks about in his book.

[13:14] So Bruce Lee, again, also this sort of athletic mindset used. Tactics like this and he used Napoleon Hill’s definite chief aim. So I’m going to read you Bruce Lee’s definite chief aim. It’s only a few sentences. It’s one paragraph and it’s very simple. It is this I Bruce Lee will be the first highest paid Oriental superstar in the United States.

[13:39] In return, I will give the most exciting performances and render the best of quality in the capacity of an actor starting in 1970, I will achieve world fame and from then onward. Until the end of 1980, I will have in my possession 10 million. I will live the way I please and achieve inner harmony and happiness.

[14:01] Bruce Lee, January, 1969. Bruce Lee did this kind of work to, are you doing it takeaway number two, do the work, the mindset work. So takeaway number one, failure is more common with high performers. Takeaway number two, they do something about it. They do some kind of mindset work. Failure number three. Start, pull the trigger, just do it, just get started, just move.

[14:32] I started before I was ready. If you go back and listen to episode number one, I will actually go ahead and ask Pauline to put that in the action plan as well. Okay. So there’s going to be episode number one, Jim Harsher, junior. com slash one. If you go there, you’ll find it, or we’ll have actually the direct link to it as well.

[14:48] It’s terrible. I literally, I was sitting in my walk in closet, recording this like sitting Indian style on the floor. Because that was sort of the best audio I had in terms of, you know, not being in an echoey room, didn’t have this microphone that I have now. And I was embarrassed. And there’s a great quote by the founder of LinkedIn.

[15:08] His name is Reed Hoffman. He said, if you’re not embarrassed by your first iteration, you’ve launched too late. Just launch, just pull the trigger, just go. You are going to fail, get it over with. And you know what? When I failed in those early episodes. I didn’t have very many listeners, fantastic. I didn’t have to embarrass myself in front of too many people.

[15:29] Just go, just launch. Get your failures over with so you can move on to bigger and better failures that are gonna move, move you even further down the line. You have to suck at first, and you’re going to keep failing as long as you keep setting your goals higher and higher. That is just part of the process.

[15:48] I’m from the wrestling world and there’s a guy by the name of Jordan Burroughs and he’s a great wrestler. He won an Olympic gold medal in 2012 and went on a streak of winning world and world gold medals after that and before that and after that. And then in 2016, he lost in the Olympics, didn’t even get a medal, didn’t even finish in the top three.

[16:05] And everybody thought, Oh boy, he’s on his way down. And after that, he, he made some world teams again, but he didn’t win a gold medal for a couple of years. Won a couple of bronzes. Yeah. Jordan Burroughs is over the hill. Well, guess what? Went on to win eventually two more world gold medals, best in the world.

[16:23] Two more times after that failure is just part of the process. And he didn’t make the Olympic team last go around, but he’s back on it and he’s aiming for the top again. So what about you? Failure is part of the process. And it’s not just part of the process at the beginning. It’s part of the process when you’re at the top as well.

[16:40] He’s he’s gone on Jordan Burroughs is now the goat. He’s won more world or Olympic gold medals than any American wrestler ever. But he failed along the way failed big time. All right. So those are my three biggest takeaways. Failure is more common with high performers. It takes work to do something to move through those failures.

[16:59] And number three, just get started, get started failing now. All right. Here’s my final lesson for you. This is about why I’m changing and narrowing the niche of my podcast. You’ve got to know who you are, know who you are and what you are uniquely qualified at in the world. And for many years, I didn’t really understand this concept.

[17:21] Talk to a lot of coaches, a lot of business gurus about that and really, you know, painted with a broad brush, broad strokes. Who is the success through failure podcast for? It could be for, uh, middle school girls who are cheerleaders. It could be for, uh, retirees. Who, you know, retired educators and everybody in between.

[17:44] But if you’re for everyone, then you’re for no one. That’s why I’m narrowing my niche. You think about other brands that are out there. They’re very, very niche. There’s grocery stores and then there’s whole foods. A very successful niche grocery store. There’s gyms, there’s local gyms and, and, you know, national brand name gyms that are for everyone.

[18:05] And then there’s CrossFit. You know, you think about music concerts and festivals, there’s, you know, music festivals there for have broad range of, of music at those. And then there’s burning man, a totally different kind of festival, right? All of these are very successful brands. Because they’ve narrowed down.

[18:26] For example, you know, if you are a retired military personnel and you’re looking for a financial advisor and you stumble across one who specializes. And being a financial advisor for retired military, who are you going to go with? You’re going to go with that financial advisor. At least you’re going to give them a second.

[18:42] Look, this rebrand, which I’m going to reveal to you here in a second, this is about making a greater impact in reaching more people, not fewer people, because I will be speaking directly to an audience. That I have something even more in common with, and they have something in common with me, shared language, et cetera.

[19:03] Now, what am I the best in the world at? Why am I the best in the world for this new brand, this new name of this podcast that I’m about to share with you? Well, four reasons. Number one, my athletic background. I was a division one, all American and Olympic hopeful. I trained at the Olympic training center, competed overseas.

[19:21] I was an NCAA division one head coach, the youngest division one head coach in the country. My athletic background is pretty significant. Number two, business, my business background, the unique crossroads between my athletic background and my business background is unique. I’ve owned three businesses. Two of them were local home service companies.

[19:42] One of those window cleaning, pressure washing kind of business. Another one years before that was a painting company. And the other kind of company I owned was a technology company. I actually raised angel capital, built a software, built a technology company, very unique sort of business aspect to my experience.

[19:58] Number three, my nonprofit experience. I was an executive director of a nonprofit and I worked for another nonprofit raising millions upon millions, tens of millions of dollars. So I have that experience and my work history, my work history beyond owning multiple businesses and working in nonprofits, as well as three businesses.

[20:17] I’ve also poured concrete. I’ve split firewood. I’ve worked on a framing crew. I worked in sales, cold calling up to 50 cold calls per day. I worked in sales. So my business background, my work and professional experience is broad and I can relate to most anybody. In their role in business and in their profession, but more specifically, men in athletics have an athletic background or a athletic mindset who want to succeed in business.

[20:47] And they also want to succeed in life. I’m married and I have four kids. So there’s a unique subset of you, the listener who most relate to me. And those are the folks who tend to become my client the most. So. If you’re a man, if you have an athletic mindset, if you want to succeed in business, make a lot of money, if you want to keep what’s most important to you, your family and your health, and if you’re a believer, God, if you want to keep those things, the focus of your life, then this is the new podcast for you.

[21:21] It’s titled success for the athletic minded man. Success for the athletic minded man, real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, focus, and consistency in business and life. Now next week, the first episode is going to be an example of what these future episodes are going to be like with shorter clips.

[21:44] Some of these highlights from some of these athletic minded men, and there’s even going to be some women in there because. There’s a lot that I want to bring from, you know, women’s perspective and the mindset that we need to learn from women. So this is specifically for men. There are plenty of podcasts for women, plenty of coaches for women.

[22:02] We’re going to move forward to focusing specifically on what I’m most uniquely qualified to do and who I serve, but we’re going to bring men and women. But this first episode is going to be clips and highlights. From past episodes that are direct examples of what you’re going to learn moving forward in future episodes.

[22:19] So these are going to be the best of the best clips are on finding success for athletic minded men. Now episode number two, the second episode I am friends with. Ruben Gonzalez. I’ve had him on the podcast before. He’s a four time Olympian turned businessman, and he’s now seeking to become a five time Olympian.

[22:39] He retired from the Olympics, I think two cycles ago, two Olympic cycles ago. I’m getting an inside look at what. And Olympian does to go from retired to becoming one of the best in the world at what he does again, how he deals with failure, how he deals with setback. And he’s had a huge setback. And really this setback when I heard, I thought, boy, his dream is over.

[23:03] His Olympic mindset doesn’t allow him to think that way. That’s the Olympic mindset that he brings to his business as well. He’s an amazing businessman speaker. And I’m going to bring him to you and we’re going to get inside of his mind and how he uses his Olympic mindset to create success in his life and how that Olympic mindset is propelling him back to the world stage to become an Olympian yet again.

[23:27] Thank you for listening to success through failure. I hope you’ll continue listening as we roll forward with this new brand. I’m so excited to roll this out to you. I’m so excited to really speak most clearly. To you, the athletic minded man, thanks for listening. If you want to apply these principles into your life, let’s talk, you can see the limited spaces that are open on my calendar at Jim Harshaw, jr.

[23:53] com slash apply, where you can sign up for a free one time coaching call directly with me. And don’t forget to grab your action plan. Just go to Jim Harshaw, jr. com slash action. And lastly, iTunes tends to suggest podcasts with more ratings and reviews more often. You would totally make my day. If you give me a rating and review, those go a long way in helping me grow the podcast audience.

[24:18] Just open up your podcast app. If you have an iPhone, do a search for success through failure, select it, and then scroll the whole way to the bottom where you can leave the podcast, a rating and a review. Now, I hope this isn’t just another podcast episode for you. I hope you take action on what you learned here today.

[24:35] Good luck. And thanks for listening.

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