[00:00] I’ve interviewed hundreds of world class performers and I’ve asked them about how they turn failure into success. I’ve learned their insights, I’ve learned their secrets that make them different. I’ve condensed them down into seven strategies that I’m giving to you. Welcome to another episode of Success with the Athletic Minded Man.

[00:22] Real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, consistency, and focus in business and life. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. Today, bringing you a solo episode. We’re talking about how to turn failure into success, how to turn, you know, your last setback, your latest setback, your greatest setback into your greatest success.

[00:42] Now, I boiled all of these concepts down into this seven step formula for turning setbacks into success from rebounding from any failure and You know, I’ve been blessed to be able to interview hundreds of world class performers. The time when my podcast was called Success Through Failure, which was prior to January 1st, 2024, that was the main topic of these episodes.

[01:05] And it still comes up in just about every episode even now. And so by the end of this episode, I’m going to give you a clear strategy on how to handle your most recent failure and how to turn setbacks into success. So in about the next 20 minutes or so, I’m going to give you seven Strategies that you can use starting today to turn your most recent failure or your next failure.

[01:27] Into a, just your greatest asset, into a catalyst for your success. So before we do, before I jump into those seven, I want you to think about one person who needs to hear this. One person who you can share this with, because you can inspire them by sharing this with them. You can give them the dose of medicine that they need.

[01:44] And this is for everybody, right? This isn’t for just the person who has experienced some recent failure. It’s for anybody who is trying to get to their next level, because we’ve all failed and we all have this. Unconscious sort of voice in our head that’s telling us that we’re not good enough, that, you know, that failure that we experienced, you know, last week, last year, you know, 30 years ago, maybe feels like a lifetime ago.

[02:09] That’s still in there. It’s still needling you. It’s still affecting you. And this is for anybody who wants to grow anybody who wants to get better. So think about who you can share this with. Make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast. Make sure you’re subscribed over on YouTube as well. And I always appreciate any comments, any likes on social media, because that just helps this thing grow, helps the algorithm know that this is something that you’re enjoying and it will show it to more people.

[02:35] So thank you in advance for that, for helping to grow this thing. But the concept of failure. It’s really misunderstood, right? It is, I think, understood at a logical level. A lot of people understand this concept of, of yes, failure is good. It’s okay. Especially if you’re an adult and you have kids or you’re a coach or you’re a teacher, you’re mentoring in some way, you like to tell others this, but, but it’s really hard for us to look in the mirror and do it for ourselves.

[03:01] We feel the sting of failure. We understand from a zoomed out 30, 000 foot perspective, or maybe from somebody, you know, looking from the outside in on someone else’s life, that that failure is not the end for them. It’s just the beginning. It’s a stepping stone for success. But the purpose of this episode is to help you look in the mirror and do this for yourself.

[03:20] It is so hard to do for yourself. Failure is an opportunity for you to learn. It’s an opportunity for you to grow. It’s an opportunity for you to improve. And you might be sitting there in some part of you and your brain is saying, yeah, well, BS, Jim, it doesn’t feel like that will never feels like that in the moment, like where you are right now.

[03:38] I don’t know if you’ve experienced a failure yesterday or last week or last month or last year or 10 years ago or a lifetime ago, it’s in there, right? And when you think about it, you feel what it’s done to you, feel that it forced you to throw it. Set your goals a little lower, take fewer risks, or think that I’m just not good enough at that thing.

[04:00] That could be very well the opposite of the truth. That might be just the actual reason that you are even more prepared now to attack that thing, that thing that you failed at before, right? I think about the high school state championships for myself. I went to, you know, qualified for the second time. My senior years, my second time qualifying for the state championships in Pennsylvania, made the trip to Hershey, PA, and with the goal of winning the state championship.

[04:24] And not only did I not stand on the top of the podium, I didn’t even get onto the podium. And I remember that long ride home from Hershey, sitting in the back of a 15 passenger, Van, school van with my coach, you know, the whole way up front driving and a couple of my teammates in the bus with me and laying on the back seat, laying down, pretending I was sleeping, but I was crying because I’d fallen so far short of my goal and, you know, I kind of picked myself, dusted myself off and attacked the summer wrestling season, the junior nationals to everything I had.

[05:02] And I failed to get on the podium there in freestyle, which is one of the two styles, Greco Roman and freestyle. As a matter of fact, I was an All American in Greco Roman the prior summer. That year I failed to get on the podium. In either style. I thought I would get on the podium at least in Greco Roman, if not both styles.

[05:19] Both was my goal, and I failed in both. And then I get to college and I mean, this is a, a whole different level, right? And another level. And of course, you know, if you hadn’t achieved success in high school, you know, we’re taking this to the national level where only, you know, division one, we’re only the best of the best wrestle.

[05:37] And, um, certainly logically you’re not gonna find success there. But I did, I ended up on the podium as an All American at the National Championships. But there were ingredients to this, right? And these are the same ingredients. That you’re hearing from my guests. Whenever we talk about failure, we talk about their struggles and setbacks.

[05:56] So let’s jump into the seven. And as we do that, I want to highlight that all seven of these require one thing from you. They all require one thing. And if you don’t do this one thing, none of these work. And that is to hit the pause button and actually reflect. Think about, journal on these, work with somebody, work with a mentor, work with a coach to actually take action on these.

[06:20] Because if you don’t, this is just a podcast episode that is great to listen to, exciting, fun to listen to, and maybe motivating. Um, but I want you to turn this into action. And you turn this into action by doing, taking a productive pause. And for the long time listener, you know the definition. It’s a short period of focused reflection around specific questions that leads to clarity of action and peace of mind.

[06:41] All right, let’s get into it. Number one. You’ve got to realize after failure that you’re in great company. You know, wrestling is my world, my background. And there’s a guy named Jordan Burroughs. He’s the GOAT of, of wrestling in the United States. And earlier in his career, he won the 2012 Olympic gold medal, 2012.

[07:00] And in 2016, he lost, he lost in the Olympics. And you know, he’s well into his career at this point and won a couple of national world championships. And now he won the Olympic gold medal. And you think, boy, this is one of the greatest of all time. He’s probably just over the hill and, you know, his best years are behind him.

[07:18] He’s probably done well. No, he went on to win three more world championships after his failure. After his greatest failure, 2017, 21 and 22, he won the world championships to become the GOAT after, after his greatest failure, Thomas Edison. You know, obviously everybody knows of his failures sort of well documented, but you know, he didn’t fail.

[07:43] Uh, he found 10, 000 ways that didn’t work to create the light bulb. Like imagine the failure, like really imagine the failures, the amount of failures that he’s had. I mean, that is just a necessary part of success as an inventor and, and as whatever it is that you want to do in your life, you know, Michael Jordan was trusted 29 times with the game winning shot and failed Abe Lincoln failed seven times.

[08:07] At running his first seven times at running for office. Uh, I’ve interviewed Tim Ferriss, Jack Canfield, uh, Devin Harris. Who’s the, he was on the Jamaican bobsled team, the actual Jamaican bobsled team. I’ve interviewed Russell Brunson. Who’s one of the greatest marketers of all time. Maybe the greatest marketer in the world right now, Russell Brunson.

[08:25] He’s built multiple huge businesses. Michael Easter, who wrote The Comfort Crisis and Scarcity Brain. Uh, Gregory McEwen, who wrote Essentialism and other great books. Robert O’Neill, he was the Navy SEAL who shot and killed bin Laden. I’ve interviewed all of these guys and they talk about their failures.

[08:43] Like, number one, you are in good company. Get that into your mind. You’re in good company. This happens to the greatest. Let’s move on to number two. State your gratitudes out loud. You can’t feel both gratitude and anxiety at the same time. Start with gratitude. Have some kind of gratitude practice. For me, I write it down every three things in my journal every day.

[09:04] I write them down. When I was commuting to work, I would state them out loud. Three things that I was grateful for. And I know you’ve heard this before. But you’ve got to do it. Are you actually doing it? When you do this kind of thing, it changes your state. It changes your mindset. It puts you into a mindset of abundance of what you do have.

[09:22] Right? So start with gratitude. So number one, realize you’re in good company. Number two, state gratitudes, either out loud or write them down. Number three, this is crystallized from in particular two episodes that I, that really stand out in my mind where. There were these amazing guys who endured incredible failures and they both view failure as feedback.

[09:45] Failure is feedback. So Tim Ferriss, five time New York Times bestselling author. When I interviewed Tim Ferriss back in episodes 246 and 247, if you’re looking for those episodes, you can just go to jimharshawjr.com/246 or jimharshawjr.com/247. I broke that interview into two parts because it was such an incredible interview and so much to digest there.

[10:05] His first book was The 4 Hour Workweek. He failed in his first 27 pitches to publishers. 27 times. Think about that. What have you done that you failed 27 times out, but you kept going and you needed just that one win. 27 publishers. And think about that. You get rejected by the first one. All right. That sucks.

[10:27] No big deal. Let’s go. Second one. All right. Rejected. Third. Right. This is starting to get old, you know, fourth, fifth, six. Are you going to keep going after six? How about a 10? How about a 15? 20, surely you’re going to stop. 25, 27, 27 times he failed. But here’s the key. He got feedback on every one. Each rejection after every time we got rejected, he would ask for feedback.

[10:55] He wouldn’t throw the whole thing away. He would say, what was good here? What worked about this? What can I improve? Right. That was Tim Ferriss. This guy’s, you know, five times New York bestselling author. He failed 27 times. Are you willing to do that? Like, are you willing to fail 27 times? Jack Canfield. He actually had two divorces in his life.

[11:17] This guy’s a success expert, right? One of the biggest influencers of all time started, you know, before influencers were a thing, you know, he’s the founder of the chicken soup for the soul bucks. And, you know, he’s a, you know, one of the top speakers in the world and one of the most well known personal development experts in the world.

[11:37] He had two divorces, like find a new career. No, failure is feedback. He realized, and he said this in our interview, he said, I, Jim, I realized that I was, you know, I’d worked too hard, I was working too hard. I traveled too much. I didn’t understand the value of quality time, you know, per the love languages.

[11:56] Actually, I interviewed the creator of the five love languages, Gary Chapman. That was back in episode 376. For any of these episodes, if I rattle off a number, you can just go to the website, jimharshawjr.com/376 and you can, you can listen to it or download, get access to the action plan as well. But these were pieces of feedback.

[12:14] This was feedback for him. He went on to create one of the greatest careers. Of anyone in the field as a success expert. All right. So failure is feedback. And by the way, the episode with Jack Canfield is episode number 307. So episode 307, by the way, we’ll have all these links in the action plan. If you want to kind of follow the, the breadcrumbs I’m leaving here for you.

[12:37] So episode 307 was, uh, Jack Canfield. That was just an incredible, incredible interview about it. You gotta, I mean, if you, if you haven’t listened to that one, that one is really, really a game changer. All right. So that was number three, failures, feedback. Number four. This is a version of a productive pause, but you’ve got to get outside of your own head.

[12:55] You know, the military, they call this an after action review. This is a version of a productive pause where you’re simply asking this. What went well? What did not go well? What can I do differently next time? Three simple questions, right? Going back to the Tim Ferriss example, imagine if he threw out his whole presentation after his first two, three, five pitches.

[13:19] You have to identify what went well, what went right. This is absolutely critical to figure out like, what is working? Cause if you just assume you’re a failure and then everything is broken, you’re going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There’s so much opportunity in keeping. What is working, but we don’t often see that in failure.

[13:39] We just think everything’s screwed up. I blew it. I’m not good enough. I got to start over. I got to pick a different course. No, start with what went well. All right. That’s number four, journaling around what went well. Number five, joining a group of people who have been there. Done that in my program. We call this the environment of excellence, you know, in 12 step programs, like Alcoholics Anonymous, like you’re around others who are going through the fire.

[14:08] You have a sponsor who’s been through the fire. They’re proof that you can make it like my clients in our program. They’re not going it alone. They’re sharing their wins, but they’re also, they’re sharing their losses. They have a sounding board for their losses and their struggles and their failures and how to.

[14:24] Learn from those and how to, how to improve. Don’t go it alone. Join a group, get around other people who are working towards the same thing. And you’re going to learn about their failures and go, ah, okay. Mine aren’t such a big deal. It normalizes your failures so you can keep moving and grow from them.

[14:42] And when I say normalizing failure, we’re not saying making it okay to just fail. We’re saying making it okay to fail and keep going. To fail and learn from it. To fail and try again. Join a group. Find your people. Find your people. They’re out there. Get part of that group. Get around other people who have been through the fire and are going through the fire.

[15:03] So that’s number five. Number six, this is my favorite one. This is my favorite one. If you actually do it, this is a game changer. I love this one so much fun. Ask yourself, what does this make possible? What does this failure actually make possible? And most people are going to roll right past us when I’m not doing it.

[15:26] Most people are not. I hope you do. I mean, your earbud right now, or you’re driving down the road, whoever, I’m talking to you, right? There’s thousands of people listening to this. This one’s for you specifically. What does this failure make possible? What does your last failure make possible? Like for me, I think about my failures in wrestling, my failures in college, like three times, my freshman, sophomore and junior year qualifying for the national championships, but failing to get onto the podium.

[15:51] At nationals. I talked about my failures in high school, but those failures. in college led to, you know, this, this great TEDx talk that I gave titled why I teach my children to fail, which has been really popular and, and led me to a lot of other speaking opportunities. It was the genesis for this podcast.

[16:11] It was the genesis for my business. Without those failures. I don’t, I don’t know if I’m talking to you right now. It made so many things possible. Uh, it helps me relate to people when talking about failure and struggle and setback and having your face buried in a towel in tears, wondering, why did I fail again?

[16:32] I’m working so hard. I feel like I’m doing everything right, but yet I keep failing. Like I can relate. I’ve been there. I’ve been there. You know, I think back to when I failed at my technology company called Riot Sports Marketing. But I wish somebody would ask me this question. What does this make possible?

[16:50] Because what I thought at the time was, well, I guess I’m just not good at being an entrepreneur, especially in the technology field. Little did I know I had an MBA and how to start a tech company, how to raise money, how to raise capital, how to build a software. I had no clue going in. I’d never done any of this before.

[17:09] Now I had experience. And when you have experience the next time around, it’s so much easier. You’re so much better at it. Going from zero to one is the hardest thing. And I got to one. And so now I had gotten over the hardest hurdles, but I, I didn’t think that way. I just thought this is not for me. You know, I guess I need to change course, pivot.

[17:32] I’m not good at this line of work. No, I could have been so much better. I was so much better because of these experiences. I think about my sort of string of successes and then leading into that failed company. Like I, you know, I was an all American in college and I got into coaching. I was the youngest division one head wrestling coach in the country and started my first business and sold that.

[17:52] And then I failed like these ups and downs led to this failure in business, which. You know, it was a new experience for me, and now it positions me much better to talk about both success and failure in business. And I have a tech business on my resume. That failure led to me pursuing a new career. In that new career, I was fundraising and doing major gifts in the athletic department for raising millions of dollars for Virginia Athletics.

[18:20] That led to new connections, it led to new skills. Positioned me for this new business that I have right now. I met people from all kinds of different industries and got to work with them and know them and become friends with them and got inside an inside view of all these different professions. And all these connections made what I’m doing right now possible.

[18:40] All these experiences made what I’m doing right now possible. So what does this make possible for you? You know, Steve Jobs said you can’t connect the dots in your life looking forward, only looking backwards. So you don’t know, it’s hard to see where these dots are going to lead for you, where the next dot is.

[18:56] But I want you to ask yourself, what does this make possible? Because there’s all kinds of things that are now possible for you because of your failures. I had a client reach out, prospective client a while back. His name’s Michael and his company had downsized. This guy’s, you know, hard worker, high performer, and he thought to himself, what does this make possible?

[19:16] He was already in this mindset when he called and hired us to work with him and help us build his next thing. He revived a lifelong dream and a long ago abandoned dream. And now he’s finished his book and he’s developing a program and he’s on track. Because of this thinking, what does this make possible?

[19:34] That’s number six. All right, I’m going to wrap up with number seven. Let’s review real quickly. The first six, number one, realize you’re in good company. Number two, state what you’re grateful for. Number three. View failure as feedback. Number four, identify, journal what went well, what’s going well, what went right.

[19:52] Number five, join a group who’s been there, done that, or working on that. Number six, ask, what does this make possible? Lastly, number seven is this. Before I share it with you, you know, with you, number seven, I want you to think about this. You know, when, when I was wrestling, maybe when you were an athlete.

[20:08] You had a coach who helped you get better from losses. And when I was speaking, learning how to be a public speaker, I had a group. I joined Toastmasters. They helped me get better from my mistakes in business. I had, and still have a business, multiple business coaches and another group. It’s a mastermind group of all these amazing entrepreneurs who helped me learn from my setbacks.

[20:32] I’m on the inside of the jar trying to read the label. I can’t see my blind spots. I need someone outside of me. You do too. Get a coach, join a group. I have average performers who I talk to all the time who think that they don’t need a coach. Then I have these high performers who hire us. There’s a difference there.

[20:53] Success leaves clues. Take action on this and listen, whether it’s us or anybody else, I don’t care. Like I want you to get better. That’s my passion. That’s why I’m doing this. Take action on this. Find someone, find a group of people who can help you grow from your failures, learn from your failures and create everything you want to create in this world.

[21:17] Take action. Good luck.

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