[00:00] Samuel West: It’s easy to internalize your failed, whatever projects or anything you’ve attempted and say that that’s something that makes you who you are. I mean, you are some of your experiences, but to let failure define you is not productive.

[00:19] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Welcome to another episode of success through failure, the show for successful people.

[00:25] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And for those who want to become successful, the only show that reveals the true nature of success. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. and today I bring you Dr. Samuel West. Samuel is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in cognitive behavioral therapy. He became obsessed with psychology and the psychology of happiness.

[00:48] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: In particular, happiness related to work and middle of his career. He decided he’s going to take a break from consulting and go spend five years at Lund university teaching and doing research, and he taught courses on positive psychology and creativity and organizational science, but he did his PhD in organizational psychology focused on how workplace playfulness.

[01:09] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: That is like experimentation and exploration, how that boosts innovation. And this is where the idea for the museum of failure came from. Now you may remember I interviewed him. Well, if you’re a longtime listener, you would remember this. I interviewed him way back in episode one Oh one. Okay. So I think one Oh one failure.

[01:29] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: One Oh one success or failure. One Oh one. I interviewed him back in. July of 2017. So about six years ago, and so much has happened there. He’s opened a New York exhibition, which has had incredible success, but there’s so much more to the story here that Samuel adds as well as some super fun and funny and ridiculous innovations.

[01:52] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Actually, the first one that he shares here is, I think it’s a fantastic idea, but choose for yourself, but since the founding of the musehe’s become a global keynote speaker. And this is all really since he and I spoke back in 2017, cause he just opened his museum over in Sweden in 2016, but he’s now a global keynote speaker.

[02:15] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: He’s become a leading expert on helping teams and organizations understand the role of failure for innovation and the role of failure for progress, improving the acceptance of failure, and really appreciating the benefits of. Psychological safety, which is a workplace term you may be hearing more about.

[02:33] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: So here we go. My second interview with Dr. Samuel West, the founder and curator of the museum of failure. What inspired you to create? The Museum of Failure. How did

[02:46] Samuel West: this start? There’s actually two versions of this. One is, I started Museum of Failure because I was so tired of all the success stories that we were force fed by.

[02:56] Samuel West: Likewise.

[02:57] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Kindred Souls here. Can’t

[02:58] Samuel West: stand another story of some successful jerk. Saying like, Oh, just emulate my life and you can be successful too. I hate that. And that was all like sort of business, new business development, innovation focused stuff. And I was just too much of that. That was one reason.

[03:15] Samuel West: And the second reason was I was fascinated with the research on how difficult it is to deal with the discomfort of talking about failure, but also because we avoid talking about it, how difficult it is to learn from failure. So. And I wanted to find a new way of presenting the information. I didn’t want to write a book.

[03:31] Samuel West: I didn’t want to write some articles. I wanted to do something else and I couldn’t find what that else was. And I stumbled into a museum called Museum of Broken Relationships. back in 2016. And then I realized like, if they can make a museum out of abstract concept of broken relationships, I thought like, dang, I can do a museum of failure then.

[03:53] Samuel West: And then that’s where I started working on that.

[03:57] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Is it true that when you originally registered the domain name, you actually failed to spell museum correctly? Is that, is that a true story?

[04:04] Samuel West: Next question. No, it’s a true story. I got so excited and I was like, Oh man, I’m so smart. I got this great idea and I bought the domain and I was just so happy because, you know.

[04:20] Samuel West: Most good domains are already taken and I got museumoffailure. com and then I got the confirmation email that said, congratulations, you own museumoffailure. com. So I like to say I’m the only museum founder and curator that can’t spell the word museum.

[04:39] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: What are some of the top exhibits?

[04:41] Samuel West: Oh, wow. So there’s some that are silly and fun, and then there’s other ones that might have some more learning there.

[04:49] Samuel West: Let’s go with

[04:49] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: silly and fun first. Let’s hear some of the fun ones.

[04:51] Samuel West: All right. Let’s take the Euro club, Euro with a U. I will set the scene here. You’re a man and you’re. Out playing golf and you have to urinate, what do you do? You can’t just go urinate on the grass, right? And there aren’t trees everywhere.

[05:08] Samuel West: So you take the Euro club, which it looks like a golf club, but it’s a, it’s got a hollow sort of canister inside. Or in built in. So you unscrew the top of it and then you just urinate into the golf club.

[05:22] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And there’s a towel that comes with

[05:23] Samuel West: it. The privacy towel, the privacy towel, you clip onto your belt and then you fumble under the belt to urinate into the golf club, the Euro club.

[05:32] Samuel West: It’s a funny thing. It’s funny because it’s so silly, but I mean, there was a real reason for it. I mean, if you need to urinate and older, we men get the more we have to urinate. So, I mean, it does make a lot of sense, but it’s also a strange, funny. Silly product.

[05:46] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Love that product. What else? What are some of the good

[05:48] Samuel West: ones?

[05:49] Samuel West: Another one that gets a lot of attention is, the Rejuvenique face mask. It’s also a silly one. It’s a mask that shocks your face. So it looks like something out of a horror movie. It’s a beauty treatment and you put conductive gel on about 50 electrodes and then you strap it onto your face. And turn it on and it shocks your face and supposedly it rejuvenizes your face and makes you look young.

[06:15] Samuel West: The interesting thing about it is that the spokesperson was Linda Evans. From the hit show dynasty. So basically it’s that if you use this for three months, you look as beautiful as a Hollywood movie star. It’s a funny thing because it looks horrible. It looks like something out of a horror film. I don’t know if it works.

[06:35] Samuel West: Can you see, does it, do I look beautiful?

[06:37] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Yeah, you look amazing. You look like you’ve gotten younger since I saw you six years ago.

[06:43] Samuel West: It’s only thanks to Rich Uvinique.

[06:45] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: That’s right. What about the handheld? Vinyl record player that never caught on, huh? It was like a handheld portable record player. It’s called the

[06:55] Samuel West: sound burger.

[06:56] Samuel West: So basically you had the Walkman to play tape, audio cassettes, and that’s super portable. And then they’re like, Hey, let’s make a portable vinyl player. So it looks like, the vinyl, when you play it, it sticks out of the device. Right.

[07:11] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Yeah. It’s like, you know what I can picture it as is if you ever did track and field and use these measuring tapes where someone holds the end and there’s like a handle and a big wheel that the measuring tape spools off of.

[07:27] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: So it’s kind of shaped like that. It’s like, there’s a handle and then there’s a big disc sticking out of this thing.

[07:33] Samuel West: Yeah, that’s exactly, that’s what it is. So, to get back to the why it’s a failure. The record itself is not protected, right? So it’s like hanging on the outside of the device. And then you need a clean, stable surface to play it on.

[07:47] Samuel West: And you can’t play it while it’s moving, it has to be stable. I mean, it just defies the whole purpose of having a portable music player. But, to it’s defense, to it’s defense, the SoundBurger Is a collector’s item because it’s a high quality turntable. It’s a really good quality one. They got everything right on the quality, but you know, the whole user experience wasn’t quite successful.

[08:09] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: So what are the more educational, informative exhibits that we can learn from?

[08:17] Samuel West: I mean, the ones that I think are maybe more interesting for learning are the ones that people are kind of bored with it, but I mean, I love the story of Kodak. You know, inventing the digital cameras in the seventies. And then becoming the biggest player and the most, you know, innovative, technologically competent and experienced company making digital cameras for consumers.

[08:37] Samuel West: And then they were technologically way advanced and innovative, but they didn’t change their business model. As the whole world was transitioning to digital, Kodak insisted on making money selling expensive photo paper. They got everything right except the business model, and that’s what killed them.

[08:58] Samuel West: Kind of like Blockbuster. Very similar story to Blockbuster. They got everything right, but still got, and saw the future, was part of the future of digital streaming, but then, you know, failed on the actual business model of the whole thing. If innovation is only about tech stuff, it’s not. It’s about your business model equally, maybe sometimes even more important.

[09:18] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Quick interruption. Hey, if you like what you’re hearing, be sure to get the notes, quotes, and links in the action plan from this episode, just go to JimHarshawJr.com/action. That’s JimHarshawJr.com/action to get your free copy of the action plan. Now, back to the show. You know, the museum of failure is not really about laughing at those who have taken the risk and failed.

[09:41] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: What’s the purpose of

[09:42] Samuel West: it? So the aim of the museum of failure is. To help people appreciate that failure is essential to progress. And there’s no way you can have any kind of progress or innovation without failure. There’s no such thing as playing it safe, completely safe when it comes to progress. And if we don’t appreciate that, you can’t have the good stuff.

[10:05] Samuel West: I mean, we wouldn’t have these smartphones today as perfect and cheap as they are. If there hadn’t been thousands of failures before then. You have to accept the bad with the good. So that’s one thing that’s accepting failure is important. The second aim is to help us appreciate and understand that we have to learn from our failures.

[10:23] Samuel West: So in order to learn from our failures, we have to be able to discuss them, even if it’s uncomfortable. There’s a third aim that’s sort of grown organically from visitors, which is That many people feel liberated. So like when they see the, you know, the big boys, big companies, these massive companies with unlimited, seemingly unlimited resources and super intelligent people and knowledge of their markets, they still fail when they try new things.

[10:52] Samuel West: And when they experiment and explore and it kind of people do feel liberated, like, wow, these guys can fail. Then so can I, as an individual or a small business

[11:00] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: owner. Yeah, and feel validated that, hey, if these really smart people who have huge budgets can fail, it’s okay if I do as well.

[11:10] Samuel West: So this was several years ago at the museum and there was this couple there who spent way too much time at the muselike more than two hours.

[11:19] Samuel West: They came up to me afterwards. And they’re like, Oh, Dr. West is such a wonderful, wonderful museum. And I’d kind of gotten used to them like, Oh yeah, thank you. That’s good. Thanks. That’s, that’s awesome. They’re like, no, you don’t understand. This has changed our life. I’m like, okay, well, what’s going on? Turns out that they were so like inspired by seeing these super experienced, research, strong resource, strong companies fail.

[11:43] Samuel West: They said like, we own a small bed and breakfast in Barcelona, Spain. And after visiting your musewe’ve decided to take a meaningful risk. Finally, pause, dramatic pause. We’re going to update our breakfast menu. Isn’t it beautiful? Like, I mean, for them, that was a big risk. They hadn’t taken it. And then now they come to the Museum of Failure and they see, you know, the Googles and Netflix and whatever they’re failing, doing their thing.

[12:15] Samuel West: And they’re like, no, we can also take a meaningful risk. And I thought that was, that was beautiful. Yeah,

[12:20] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: I thought you were gonna say they were, you know, we’re going to take on private equity or venture capital. We’re going to expand. We’re going to create multiple locations. Fresh fruit on our menu. Yeah, we’re going to, we’re going to update the menu, but that’s it, right?

[12:31] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: This, like we can be so locked in, in so many little. Ways that are almost invisible in our lives that we don’t even see. We don’t even know. We don’t even notice they’re unconscious and we just go about our day. And we have the safe conversation. We do the thing the way that we’ve always done it, because that’s the way we’ve always done it.

[12:54] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And Hey, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. If people are showing up and eating breakfast and things are fine, we’re, you know, don’t fix it. But that’s not where innovation comes from. That’s not where growth

[13:06] Samuel West: comes from. Definitely, definitely not. You said

[13:10] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: that one of the purposes, one of the goals is to get people to discuss failure, right?

[13:15] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And why is that so hard? Why is it hard for us to have a conversation about failure? When what you’re telling us is that failure is where innovation happens, if. You discuss it. If you learn from that, I’m going to reflect back from my listeners. If you listened to episode two 46 and two 47, I interviewed Tim Ferriss and he said failure in and of itself does not mean you’re going to be successful.

[13:41] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Plenty of people go through their entire lives as failures, but it’s the learning that comes from failure. Talk about

[13:47] Samuel West: that. Absolutely. There’s a YouTube video by one of the founders of up nights. it does sort of events. Where they invite people up on stage to talk about their failures. Her main point is that what’s the point of failing and failing forward and being all acceptance of failure if you’re not actually learning from it.

[14:07] Samuel West: And she says that we should be failing more mindfully, which I think is another way of putting it. Like you fail, it hurts. It’s uncomfortable. It costs money. It costs, you know, prestige, reputation. There’s all kinds of costs to failure. And one of those is the stigmatization of failure. Like if people are not willing to talk about it and you know, whether it’s companies or us as individuals, then.

[14:28] Samuel West: That sort of keeps that stigmatization alive. if people were more open about talking about it, I don’t think it would be that stigmatized. There’s an interesting book

[14:38] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: for the listener. We’ll have that in the action plan, but go ahead.

[14:41] Samuel West: A historian has written a book where he actually describes that failure as a concept is relatively new before the American capitalism sort of grew and everything was measured in terms of financial success.

[14:55] Samuel West: The word failure was something that could only happen to physical objects or like projects. So you could build a bridge and then it, it, it crumbled. So that was a failed project, or you could build something and it fails. Some kind of endeavor would failure, but a person was never a failure. And it wasn’t until the whole sort of industrial explosion in the United States where people started to call.

[15:20] Samuel West: Other people failures because of their financial situation or because they made bad decisions money wise. And I think that’s quite interesting where we take it for granted. Oh, that you’re a failure or, you know, you’re a loser or you’re, you’re something negative there because of something you’ve done.

[15:36] Samuel West: And then that can stay with you for a long time.

[15:39] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Yeah, that’s the personal side of it. We can feel like a failure when actually if we can simply look at the event or the occurrence, whatever it was. As a failure and actually something that we can learn from, but it’s so personal. It’s emotional. It’s okay.

[15:54] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Like, I think there’s this conversation out there or this sort of feeling in the culture and society that, you know, people buy into this concept of success through failure and, you know, the failure museum and sort of the purpose of it. Yeah, that’s, that’s great. You know, the Googles of the world, even they fail, but that’s how they innovate and that’s great.

[16:14] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: But wait a second, wait a second. I just applied for that job. That promotion. I didn’t get it. You know, it’s nice for you to fail in Google and these other, like, in for my kids, you know, I could talk to my kids about it. Hey, you know, you failed in the soccer game, but gosh, you know, yet you played a better team and you learn from it.

[16:31] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: But wait a second. When this happens to me, it’s like, okay, there’s proof. I’m not good enough. I’m not smart enough. I’m not capable. This success isn’t for me.

[16:40] Samuel West: Yeah, exactly. It’s easy to internalize your failed, whatever projects or anything. You’ve attempted and say that that’s something that makes you who you are.

[16:52] Samuel West: I mean, you are some of your experiences, but to let failure define you is not productive. On the one hand, I wish we could go back to the fact that failure was something that humans couldn’t be. It was only projects. That would be nice. But I also think about sort of the paradox. On the one hand, society tells us that, you know, we should look up to and admire risk takers, you know, whether it’s entrepreneurs, innovators.

[17:17] Samuel West: Celebrities and people who take social risk and financial risk. So they’re rewarded, right? But at the same time, society says, Oh, you know, but if you fail, we’re going to punish you for that. You know, we’re going to judge you negatively. It is a paradox. So, Elon Musk, when he’s winning, everybody’s like, Oh, he’s so awesome.

[17:37] Samuel West: And then when he, you know, he starts screwing up, then I’ll say, Oh no, so he’s a failure. It’s kind of strange. You know, society wants you to be that risk taking visionary and you re glorify them. But then when things go wrong, we’re like, Oh, you know, you shouldn’t have done that.

[17:56] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Yeah. We, we want it to be a movie script.

[17:58] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Yeah, exactly. You’ve said it’s to the point even where people would rather do nothing than to risk doing something meaningful and failing.

[18:07] Samuel West: Yeah. There’s considerable research on like what people are the most fearful of, sort of like it’s public speaking always comes at number one. But if you look at, look at it a little bit more in depth, the fear of failure is right up there on the top three, across many, you know, many different studies.

[18:25] Samuel West: And it’s a fear of failure. And whether it be. You know, a professional failure or a personal failure, it’s something we’re afraid of. And what I’ve seen in the past, you know, being immersed in this for at least seven years, is that we overestimate discomfort of failure. So like, I don’t know if you’re familiar with anxieties in general, but And anxiety is we’re afraid of an imagined future situation that’s so bad.

[18:52] Samuel West: We can’t handle it. You know, so we’re afraid of this terrifying fantasy image of the future.

[18:59] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: It’s like Mark Twain said, he said, I’m an old man. Who’s known a great many troubles. Most of which never actually happened.

[19:05] Samuel West: Favorite quote of mine. I think failures in many ways like that as well, that we, we overestimate how horrible it’s going to be.

[19:14] Samuel West: And what I like to remind myself and others is that if a risk is worth taking, if it’s meaningful. then the eventual discomfort of the failure is also going to be something you can handle and worthwhile. So I mean, I think, I think we have to reframe that as well and say like, yeah, failure is highly likely even sometimes, but that discomfort, it will be, it’s worth it because that goal is worthwhile and meaningful.

[19:43] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Before we hit record today in our conversation, I asked you, I said, Hey, how’s the New York exhibit going? And you said, amazing. You said exponentially better than I could have imagined. And that is in contrast to. Some of your journey that happened after you and I spoke last, can you share a little bit about your own?

[20:10] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: success through failure journey since we last spoke in 2017

[20:15] Samuel West: so the media attention for me as I’m a failure was insane there 2017 18 and right Well at the peak there my ex business partner sued me as claiming that he owned half of Museum of Failure. So this was a, you know, ginormous clusterf k for lack of a better word.

[20:43] Samuel West: And that legal process, he had really good lawyers. And that legal process took about a year of paperwork and pain in the ass. And it led to my personal bankruptcy, ultimately. And then at the end of it, everything, it was settled and nothing happened out of it. So at the end of the day, it could have been undone, or it should never have happened.

[21:08] Samuel West: But it was painful at the time. And. Yeah, it was really uncomfortable, but to my point, what I said earlier about we under overestimating the discomfort of failure at the time, the whole bankruptcy thing, and it was a very public affair as well. The pain was there, but I, you know, all my life as an entrepreneur and small business owner, the worst thing that can possibly happen to you is bankruptcy, right?

[21:35] Samuel West: It’s was.

[21:40] Samuel West: bankrupt publicly. It was bad, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had ever imagined it to be, not financially or reputation wise or, you know, anything else. So I’m not saying, Oh, just, you know, don’t worry about it. Everything’s okay. It’s just like we do truly overestimate how horrible it is.

[22:01] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Samuel, I appreciate you sharing that because it’s easy for me to sit over here behind my microphone, you to sit over there as the founder of the Museum of Failure, and talk about this stuff.

[22:15] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: But this happens to us too, and when it does happen to us… It’s no less painful. It’s simply, we have to, you know, take our own medicine and you walk through this experience. And what I want to point out to the listener is that this was not the demise of Samuel West. This was not the demise of the Museum of Failure.

[22:36] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: As a matter of fact. Like you said, exponentially better, more success with this New York, it’s gotten extended. It’s so popular. This is so, it’s so cool to hear that, you know, whether it’s despite failure or sometimes even in our lives, it’s because of failure, we can find success on the other side. So sometimes it’s Despite failure, sometimes it’s because of failure.

[22:58] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: and here we are on the other side. And it was, I was so excited when you said how great it’s going. I’m like, ah, like what a, what a great story. Now, listen for the listener. Sometimes you will find success, you know, a day, a week or a month later. Sometimes it’s years later. Well, Steve Jobs said, we can’t connect the dots in our lives.

[23:16] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Looking forward, we can only connect the dots in our lives, looking backwards. And now we look backwards and we go, you know, it wasn’t as painful. And here I am and you, you’ve created incredible success. So love, love that story. So thank you for sharing that. So Sammy, your PhD focused on workplace sort of exploration and experimentation or playfulness and how that facilitates progress and how it facilitates innovation.

[23:43] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Can you talk about that in the workplace? We’ve kind of generally talked about this as sort of a personal failure as a personal thing, but How is it important in the workplace to innovate? I’m sorry. Well, really to explore and experiment and be okay with failure, obviously at a cautious, sort of measured level of course, but how failure plays a role in success.

[24:03] Samuel West: I’d like to answer that with an example. So I spoke to this many years ago when I was doing research on playfulness at work and a playful approach and how playfulness. which includes experimentation and exploration, is something that’s, conductive and benefits creativity and innovation. Anyway, so the flight, so pilots are not supposed to f k up, right?

[24:28] Samuel West: That’s like, basically that’s what they’re there for, to make sure things are done correctly, and any kind of risks can be avoided. Pilots don’t train when they’re flying. Passing, I mean, they have to do everything right. There’s no exploration or experimentation going on and there’s no room for failure at that point.

[24:46] Samuel West: But when their training is done in a simulator and in the simulator, they can do all kinds of crazy s t because it’s okay. It’s a simulator. And one of the findings is that pilots that are playful in the simulator. Playful, meaning that they’re willing to test new things and explore new ways of doing things.

[25:09] Samuel West: They are also much better at handling those emergency situations that are not supposed to happen, right? So, by having that mindset, they are preparing themselves and training the handling of an unforeseeable future. Which is the whole point of having a pilot in the front. And then I’ve talked about that quite a bit.

[25:34] Samuel West: And then I was at a conference for, doctors a few years ago. and I was approached by an eye surgeon, a teacher. He was a professor of eye surgery. And he said that they, the exact same thing is true for eye surgeons. They can’t practice an experiment when they’re operating on your eye, but so they practice in a simulator.

[25:57] Samuel West: And his experience was that. Doctors in training that are, that only follow the book and never explore or experiment. They don’t have a playful attitude towards it. They cannot handle the situations that fall outside of the norm, like the outliers. But the doctors who have a playful approach, they can handle the situations that regularly occur that aren’t supposed to happen.

[26:25] Samuel West: Without a word to explain having a playful approach. does make us more skilled and it practices creative problem solving, but also, you know, taking risks and learning from them.

[26:41] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And for myself and my listeners, we’re all sitting here nodding our heads saying, yeah, that, that makes sense. I get that. Like logically, I can put that together and that makes sense.

[26:52] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Can you share any concrete? Examples or suggestions on how we might do this, especially for the leaders who are listening, but for anybody who’s listening, how do we actually do this? Have you heard of any companies who do this actively? How do we take this and actually implement this in our workplace?

[27:10] Samuel West: Yeah, that’s the million dollar question when it comes to, separated a bit when it comes to a culture that’s accepting of failure. There’s some great research on psychological safety. It’s a concept that is probably one of the hottest concepts in organizational psychology right now, where it means to create a culture within a team or a work group where being vulnerable is not something that’s punished by the team.

[27:36] Samuel West: So you can be vulnerable, you can bring your full self to the, to the workplace, which also includes. Owning up to your failures, asking the stupid questions, et cetera. Not knowing things you probably should. That’s probably how, I would say how focusing on psychological safety is how the corporate side of things is leaning in the right direction for us as privately or as individuals, I’m a big believer in playfulness and a playful approach to what we do to our relationships, to being a parent, to being a partner.

[28:10] Samuel West: Whatever, any aspect of our lives, if we can experiment in non critical situations and experiment with new behaviors and new ways of doing things and learn from that feedback loop, then I can’t think of a better way of conducting or doing personal development than testing things and seeing what happens.

[28:31] Samuel West: Yeah.

[28:31] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Yeah. I mean, you can role model it and, you know, I’m thinking about myself now for, as a, as a father of four children and in my business, like how can I role model failure and, you know, that playfulness and that growth that can come from failure and for you leaders out there, like, how can you step up and point out your own failures and even what you learned from it?

[28:54] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Maybe even find somebody on your team who has tried something recently. And they failed from it and ask them, maybe pull them aside. And before the meeting, don’t just throw them under the bus, but ask them, you know, can I share this and can you talk about some of the learnings from it and how, you know, we need to use this type of experience to learn and to grow and innovate, I mean, have, like Samuel said, discussions on this, don’t brush it under the rug, don’t whisper about it in corners, bring it out into the open.

[29:23] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And. Create a psychologically safe environment where growth and innovation can happen. People will be happier and guess what? You’re going to make more money and your business is going to be more successful. Win win definitely

[29:36] Samuel West: win win all the way around. And it’s a more fun place to work.

[29:39] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Samuel, for those who want to check out the museum of failure or find you, follow you, otherwise engage with you, where do they go?

[29:50] Samuel West: Bestismuseumoffailure. com right now the show is in Brooklyn and then it continues the tour to the major cities in the United States and I’m horrible at LinkedIn and social media. So don’t bother just send me an email.

[30:04] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Excellent. Samuel, thank you so much for coming back on the show. Keep up doing the amazing work that you’re doing through the Museum of Failure.

[30:10] Samuel West: Thank you so much. Likewise.

[30:14] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: 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 JimHarshawJr.com/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.

[30:30] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Just go to JimHarshawJr.com/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. 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.

[30:59] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Now, I hope this isn’t just another podcast episode for you. I hope you take action on what you learned here today. Good luck and thanks for listening.

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