Episode 400: How to Use Failure for Success

Summary

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Maxwell Leadership Podcast – Episode 400: How to Use Failure for Success

Release Date: February 25, 2026
Host: John Maxwell (with Mark Cole)
Theme: Transforming failure into a powerful lever for personal and leadership growth

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Episode Overview

This celebratory 400th episode of the Maxwell Leadership Podcast centers on a critical but often misunderstood component of leadership: failure. John Maxwell, joined by Mark Cole, marks the milestone by announcing his upcoming book, How to Get a Return on Failure, and sharing deep insights into how leaders can reframe, respond to, and ultimately benefit from their failures. Throughout, they acknowledge the podcast’s global impact and share listener stories that underscore transformational leadership in action.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Celebrating 400 Episodes and the Podcast Community

• Remarkable Impact:
  Mark notes the podcast’s journey:

  • 400 episodes, 45+ million downloads, over 300,000 YouTube subscribers, 400,000 followers on Apple and Spotify
  • Reiterate mission: “We exist to add value to leaders who multiply value to others.” (01:00)

• Listener Spotlights:

  • Personal accounts from Jenna (city administrator, Minnesota), Damian (leadership transformation), and Chris (Special Forces commander) highlight the real-world influence of Maxwell’s teachings.

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Why Write About Failure?

[07:29]

• Universal Experience:

  • “We all fail. It’s not the failure itself that makes me or breaks me. It’s how I respond to that failure. How we view things is how we do things.” – John Maxwell (07:30)

• Maxwell’s Ongoing Exploration:

  • This is his third book on failure, after Failing Forward and Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn—underscoring the subject’s constant relevance to leaders.

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Good Miss vs. Bad Miss

[08:53]

• Concept: Not all failures are equal; “misses” can be good or bad.
  • Good Miss (Failing Forward): You learn, self-reflect, make adjustments, and do not blame others.
  • Bad Miss (Failing Backward): You blame, make excuses, do not learn, and distance yourself from the failure.
  • “You can go from failure to success, but you can’t go from excuses to success.” – John Maxwell (10:08)

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The Cycle of Success

[12:51]

Six Stages:

1. Test: Constant experimentation—most avoid this stage and thus avoid growth.
2. Fail: A necessary byproduct of genuine testing.
3. Evaluate: The crucial step of assessing what went wrong.
4. Learn: True learning only comes from evaluated experience.
5. Improve: Implementing changes derived from lessons learned.
6. Re-Enter: Returning to the cycle at a higher level.

• “You have to test a lot to learn a lot. You have to test quickly to learn quickly. Your learning is just a response of your testing, failing, and evaluating.” – John Maxwell (15:44)

Where People Get Stuck:
Most don’t “get bogged down”—they never truly start because they fear testing and failing in the first place.

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Getting Over Failure – and Ourselves

[18:35]

• Self-Awareness:

  • Leaders allow failure to define them because they don’t embrace self-awareness or reflection.
  • “Almost everything we have learned that helps us doesn’t come out of our success, but it comes out of our failures.” – John Maxwell (19:10)

• Learning through Adversity:
  Reflecting on conversations with top performers like Jack Nicklaus—what matters is not the misstep, but what you learn from it.

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Keeping Success and Failure Together

[22:16]

• Balance:

  • “You need to keep success and failure together, because together, they make each other better.” (22:42)
  • During failure, recall past successes to cultivate resiliency; during success, recall past failures to maintain humility.
  • “Avoid creates a void. And all of a sudden we’re no longer in the game.” (25:40)

• Excellence vs. Embracing Failure:

  • Embracing failure doesn’t mean lowering standards; it means responding well to mistakes, not compounding them or avoiding growth.

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The Reality: Hard Never Ends

[27:47]

• Uphill Journey:

  • The expectation of an “easy plateau” after hard work is a fallacy; new levels of success bring new, harder challenges.
  • “The reward for doing something hard is…if you do it really well, you get to do something harder next time.” – John Maxwell (28:36)

• Respect is Earned:

  • “Respect is earned on difficult ground. If I have your respect as a leader, it’s because you’ve seen me do something that was very challenging, stayed the course.” (29:03)

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Repeated Lessons about Failure from the World’s Top Leaders

[31:02]

• Key Learning:
  • Failure “awakens” leaders and breaks complacency.
  • Asking “What went wrong?” leads to true growth; not reflecting means repeating mistakes.

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Advice for Leaders Tempted to Quit

[32:49]

• Universal Feeling:

  • “Everybody at times wants to quit… but here’s what I know: no one has ever quit their way to the top.” – John Maxwell (33:19)

• Returning to Purpose:

  • When tempted to quit, “go back to why you got started.” Purpose rekindles perseverance.

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Closing Reflections and Practical Application

[37:07]

• Empowering the Next Generation:

  • John advises parents and leaders to share these lessons and “put this book in their [children’s] hands” to help them handle failure early. (37:49)

• Team Growth:

  • Read and discuss the book as a team or community for collective advancement.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It’s not the failure itself that makes me or breaks me. It’s how I respond to that failure. How we view things is how we do things.” — John Maxwell (07:33)
• “You can go from failure to success, but you can’t go from excuses to success.” — John Maxwell (10:11)
• “You have to test a lot to learn a lot. You have to test quickly to learn quickly.” — John Maxwell (15:44)
• “Avoid creates a void. And all of a sudden we’re no longer in the game.” — John Maxwell (25:40)
• “The reward for doing something hard is if you do it really well, you get to do something harder next time.” — John Maxwell (28:36)
• “No one has ever quit their way to the top.” — John Maxwell (33:19)

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Key Timestamps

• 00:00–04:51: Podcast milestones, listener impact, announcement of John Maxwell’s 94th book
• 07:29–12:51: Why write about failure; good miss vs. bad miss; personal anecdotes
• 12:51–17:17: The cycle of success and where people get stuck
• 18:35–20:16: Getting over failure and the role of self-awareness
• 22:16–27:47: Keeping success and failure in balance; excellence and embracing failure
• 27:47–31:02: “Hard never ends”; embracing continual challenge in leadership
• 31:02–32:49: Lessons about failure from top leaders and learning lunches
• 32:49–34:31: What to do when you want to quit—returning to your original purpose
• 37:07–38:43: Final reflections, advice for parents and teams, call to action

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Takeaways for Leaders

• Failure is inevitable, but your response—choosing to evaluate, learn, and improve—is what defines your legacy.
• View failure as an asset, not a liability; the best leaders are those who reflect on their setbacks and build upon them.
• True growth (as a person, leader, or team) is cyclical—test, fail, learn, improve, and repeat.
• Success and failure are partners in your development—keep them close.
• Don’t quit; remember your why, and let it pull you through hard seasons.

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For ordering John’s upcoming book and exclusive podcast resources: maxwellpodcast.com/400

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“We can overcome—lead well, because everyone deserves to be led well.” – Mark Cole (38:38)

Transcript

[John Maxwell]

Foreign.

[Mark Cole]

Hey, welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. I've only said that 400 times in my life. That's because John Maxwell, the man, the myth, our mentor, our guide, John, our friend, caught a vision 400 episodes ago and says, what is a new way that we can impact the world around us and the world? The Maxwell Leadership Podcast was born. And, John, we have seen tremendous impact.

[John Maxwell]

It's amazing. I just. Well, first of all, I can't even fathom 400 episodes. You know, when you get older, time just seems to go faster. When you came up with 400 episodes, I said, really? I mean, I would have thought if you'd asked me, I would have said 200. And so, I mean, think about 400 already helping all the people that we're helping. And it's been a really good resource for people, hasn't it?

[Mark Cole]

Has. You know, John taught us. I say this on almost every episode. I say two things. I say, we are a podcast that adds value to you so that you will multiply value to others. And then the other thing we say is, everyone deserves to be led well. But that whole concept that I use in every intro is really a driving factor of your life, a driving factor of our organization, a driving factor of this podcast. We exist to add value to leaders who multiply value to others. Who would have thought that when you made that a decision that we would be impacting over 2 million people a year through our podcast? We, John, we've now had not only 400 episodes.

[John Maxwell]

Oh, my gosh.

[Mark Cole]

We've had 40 million. Over 45 million downloads. We've had four. We have 400,000 followers on Apple and Spotify. And you. It's all about you. Podcast family, podcast listeners. Because of you. If you're not watching the podcast today, you're missing it. Cause John is looking incredible in green. But if you're not watching, you need to click over. And I'll tell you how to do that in just a moment. But we surpassed 100,000 subscribers on YouTube because of this podcast. In fact, Andrew was just telling me right before that this is so old news. We're now at 300,000 subscribers. Subscribers and podcasts.

[John Maxwell]

How long ago was this that there were 100,000, Andrew?

[Mark Cole]

2022. And now we're at 300,000.

[John Maxwell]

Oh, my gosh, that's terrific.

[Mark Cole]

Growth and team, really. That is Podcast family, podcast listeners, viewers. That really is because of you. In fact, if you would like to view us today or get access to some resources and tools, I'm going to give you throughout the program today, you can go to maxwellpodcast.com 400. Yes, 400 maxwellpodcast.com 400. And, John, again, thank you for finding another way to impact over 45 million people.

[John Maxwell]

What a joy. We love you. We love resourcing you and adding value to you, and we'll always try to stay in the game with you if

[Mark Cole]

you're a new podcast listener today. I love the podcast listeners, viewers that I meet across the world, and they go, mark, I just got turned onto the Maxwell Leadership Podcast, and, hey, I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna listen to every one of them. And I go, okay, good luck. That's 400 episodes. That's gonna take you a little bit of time. But if you're new, I can promise you this. Make this a part of your daily growth. Make it a part of your weekly growth. We release every Wednesday a new episode, and we want to grow with you so that the world around you. But when I told John it was 400 episodes, John said, man, you gotta get in the studio with me, Mark. And I've gotta talk to my podcast family. And so, number one, thank you for that, my joy. Thanks for coming on live.

[John Maxwell]

Thank you.

[Mark Cole]

But number two, there's a second reason that we're in the studio today because, John, book number. Is it 94?

[John Maxwell]

I think it is.

[Mark Cole]

I think it's 94. It's 93 or 94. Book number 93 or 94 is coming out in six weeks, April 14th. John's book, how to Get a Return on Failure is going to hit the bookstores. But guess what? We never make our podcast listeners and viewers wait. You're actually going to be able to order that today as John talks about it. And we'll put that link in the show notes and you'll be able to order that. Order one for somebody around you. But, John, thank you. Thanks for writing the book how to Get a Return on Failure.

[John Maxwell]

It was a real joy. I thoroughly enjoyed writing the book, but I know that as a reader, this is gonna help you an awful lot. I write books to add value to people. This is gonna be right at the top of my list as far as just adding value to you on how to handle failure the right way.

[Mark Cole]

Our team decided for a part of this 400th episode that not only will we have John live in the studio with us today, this is such. Not only were we gonna Talk about John's 94th book today on the podcast, but also that we were gonna highlight three of our listeners, three of Our viewers, this podcast. And so throughout today's show, I'm gonna make this about you. I wanna start with Jenna. Jenna is from Owatana. Boy, Jenny, Jenna, you gotta come up with a Southern town to be a part of because they did not teach me that in Georgia. But Owatana, Minnesota, is where Jenna is from. And this is what Jenna says. She said the podcast has helped me develop into a successful leader in local government, serving as a city administrator. Way to go, Jenna. Thanks for your service. She goes on and says, never did I think I would have an opportunity to lead a team of 145 full time and 150 seasonal employees and have fun all at the same time. Jenna said, the most significant part of my journey was finding a group of teammates who wanted to grow in their influence and in their leadership right alongside of me. We meet Every Thursday at 11am Again, the podcast comes out on Wednesday. On Thursday, Jenna's got her team meeting at 11am and we listened to your podcast for the last four years. It's been transformational for us as a team and as individuals. Jenna says thank you. Without the podcast, we would not be where we are as a team or as a leader. It's going to be a fun year in 2026 in Minnesota. Jenna, we agree. We believe that and thank you for listening.

[John Maxwell]

Yeah, we sure do.

[Mark Cole]

John, I do want to get right into the book because your books have impacted now over another. I've never announced this number on the podcast. We just got word. John just crossed over. Speaking of 400, John just crossed over 40 million people that have bought a John Maxwell book. Congratulations.

[John Maxwell]

Oh, my God.

[Mark Cole]

Congratulations. And here we are. That's not enough. We're doing it again. So why at this stage of your career, this stage of writing, what made you write on failure?

[John Maxwell]

Well, because we all fail. And we not only all fail, but I've never run into anybody Mark that just says, you know, I thrive on failure. I love failure. I look forward to, hopefully this year I'll have a lot of failures. We don't like it. And yet what I know is that it's a perspective, Mark, it's not the failure itself that makes me or breaks me. It's how I respond to that failure. It's my perspective. How we view things is how we do things. And so this is my third failure book I've written. As you know, I wrote Failing Forward, which became an immediate bestseller. And then sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. And now how to receive or how to get a return on failure. And the reason I've written three books on failure, honestly, is because it's a subject that people continually talk about. If you would walk into somebody's life and just say, let me just give you a few words, and give me either a positive response or a negative response. And if you put failure out in front of them, everybody would feel very negatively about it. So this book is all about how to look at it from a positive way, make it a asset instead of a liability.

[Mark Cole]

Boy, I've heard you speak on failure through the years. My first book was failing Forward, the first book of release when I joined your team 26 years ago. I've heard you talk a little bit lately about a good miss and a bad miss.

[John Maxwell]

Yes.

[Mark Cole]

Can you walk us through not only what that is, but what is one failure in your leadership that was a bad miss, or maybe one that was a good miss or.

[John Maxwell]

Well, the reason I talk in the book about a good miss and a bad miss. And by the way, I've never heard anybody talk about this. I've never read any material on this at all. But over the years of dealing in a positive way about failure, I began to realize that all misses are not created equal. That there are some misses that help you. They're still amiss, but they get you a little closer to your dream or whatever you're looking for. And there's some, you know, Mrs. Did her bad ones. They set you back. In fact, the book failing Forward, the title is about a good miss failing forward. I failed, but I got a little closer. Just like failing backward would be, obviously a bad miss. So let me kind of take maybe two minutes and kind of work you through this process. A good mission. A good miss is when you fail forward. A bad miss is when you fail backward. A bad miss is when you blame others. A good miss is when you look at yourself. A good miss is when you fail that you stay with that failure to learn from it. A bad miss is that you run away from it as fast as can be and you leave that. A good miss is where, like, you missed, but you made adjustments. You make adjustments. You say, oh, wait, that didn't work, so I got to make adjustments. That's a good miss. A bad miss is when you make excuses. You know, it's when you say, well, it wasn't my fault. You know, you can go from failure to success, but you can't go from excuses to success. And honestly, Mark, you know this. The worst excuse we have is the best excuse we have.

[Narrator]

Yes, exactly.

[John Maxwell]

Because we believe it how many times have I said something that made sense of why I couldn't, shouldn't, didn't and wouldn't? And so I bought it. So if it's a real good excuse, it's the worst mess we could have because we really believe in it. In the book I talk about when you fail, the failure itself doesn't declare whether it's a good miss or a bad miss. It's just a failure. It's my response to the failure that determines whether it's a good miss or bad miss. We cannot handle some of the failures in our life. Life is tough and difficult, throws us curve balls. So there are times when I'm just going to fail. What's beautiful is I have the choice to determine whether that's I'm going to have a good miss or a bad miss in my life. And it's the choice of the good miss or bad miss that determines whether I either go forward or I go back.

[Mark Cole]

It's that assessment. It's that checking in. I've heard you say we celebrate our podcast listeners. You've heard him say we celebrate for 24 hours. We reflect for 24 hours and then we move. And truly, you take that failure if it's a difficult time, and you determine, is it a good miss? Is it a bad miss? Did I pick something up? Is there something I could learn from here? Now it's time to get going again from what we learn. I've watched you and podcast listeners. This is not something John teaches. That sounds good. This is something he has driven as a discipline, an organization. Another thing that you've been driving in our organization that really goes along with this content is the cycle of success. Test fail, improve. Test fail, learn, improve and re enter. You take that and you make every failure, every misstep. You make it a good miss. You make it something that you do. So how do you why are leaders often getting stuck in this cycle and they just keep repeating, they keep repeating rather than improving before they re enter?

[John Maxwell]

Well, this is a proven cycle of success and it's a cycle, which means in this case there are six different steps or stages in it, and you constantly return back to those stages. If you were taking a journey, you would pass things you perhaps never will see again. But when you're taking a journey, do it a cycle you repeat. So let's talk briefly about the six different stages in this cycle and let's talk about where people get stuck. And it begins with. And you know, Mark, where this comes from is our coaching company it grew so fast, we became the largest in the world. And people say, well, how did you become successful? Well, it's because this cycle of success that we have, and the first step or the first stage of the cycle of success is testing. We're all the time trying new things. Some things work, some things don't work. How can we make them better? So we do a lot of testing. Now when somebody says, well, how do I get bogged down in the cycle of success? I can tell you, most people don't get bogged down in the cycle of success. They never start because they don't want to test. They think, oh, that isn't the way to do it. I need to make sure that it's going to work. You test and then you fail. Because if you test, there's going to be a lot of failure because you've never done it before. And I mean, if you tested a hundred times, you'd fail probably 80 times. If you tested 10 times, you'd probably fail eight times. So when people talk about they don't fail very much, what I really know is they don't test a lot. And what's sad about that is all of the discovery that you'll have in your life is discovery of what you don't know. And the only way that you can find out what you don't know is to go and do things you've not done, try things you never. You've got to test, you've got to test. So testing is what? The cycle of success isn't interesting. It begins with testing. The second stage is failure, which is failure is the byproduct of testing. If you test a lot, you're going to fail a lot. You see, that's okay. And yet that isn't okay with most people. Because, Mark, as you know, people can't handle failure. And so it's kind of like in the cycle of success, you're going to test a lot, you're going to fail a lot. Well, most people have already exit. You talk about getting bogged down. They didn't go far enough to get bogged down. Hey, they just said test fail. Oops, I'm out of here. And as we know, it's in the testing that we fail, and it's in the failure that we now evaluate that failure. You've heard me say many, many times, success or experiences in the best teacher evaluate experience as the best teacher. So now we are. Now we're in that third stage where we're evaluating what we did. What happened, What Can I learn? So we test, we fail, we evaluate, and then we learn. It's the evaluation that causes us to learn. Now we're starting to get to the fruit of this cycle. But you don't get to the learning without the testing, failing, and evaluating. And so what you gotta do is you have to test a lot to learn a lot. You have to test quickly to learn quickly. Remember this, your learning is just a response of your testing, failing, and evaluating. So you learn a lot. And so what's the value of learning? Well, you wanna get better, so you learn a lot, so you improve a lot. Now, what's beautiful is now you're improving and things are going really well. And you're saying, this is really great. And somebody said, well, how did you improve? Well, I tested a lot, I failed a lot, I evaluated a lot, I learned a lot, and I proved a lot. And then, of course, you get into the re enter, which is number, step, number, or stage number six. And if you're watching me visually, that cycle, it goes, you know, test, fail, evaluate, learn, improvement, re enter, test, fail, learn, evaluate, improve, reenter. And the cycle keeps going upward. And that's what makes it really work. But you have to do all of the stages. A lot of people say, well, I'd like to learn, but I don't want to test. I'd sure like to improve, but I don't want to fail. Well, you can't separate them. They have to be together. And the book really talks about, how do you do that successfully.

[Narrator]

Most people don't fail because they lack talent. They fail because one setback takes them out of the game. John C. Maxwell's newest book, how to Get a Return on Failure, flips the script on how leaders think about mistakes. Instead of seeing failure as something to avoid, John shows how to treat it like an investment. One that builds resilience, sharpens judgment, and actually accelerates growth when you know how to use it. This isn't theory. It's a practical framework for failing smarter, recovering faster, and leading with confidence even when things don't go as planned. If you've ever stalled after a miss or hesitated to take your next step, this book is for you. Pre order [e-mail] rof that's maxwellpodcast.com rof and to celebrate our 400th episode, the first 400 people. To order, get free lifetime access to our digital audio resource, the Quick Start Guide to Getting a Return on Failure. Just use code ROFPOD at checkout to claim this bonus. Discover how to get a return on failure. Because progress doesn't come from avoiding failure, it comes from learning how to use it.

[Mark Cole]

So in chapter three of the book, you talk about to get over failure, you got to get over yourself. And you talk a lot about that. You have a lot of self awareness. Why is it that failure so often leaders allow failure to define them?

[John Maxwell]

You know, Cinderensky, you were with me yesterday in our masterclass in Sofi and we had Jack Nicklaus with us. He had dinner with us, one of course, the greatest golfer ever. And then we did a Q A and we talked about failure. And what did we hear Jack keep saying continually he said what he learned, what he learned from, you know, when you have a bad shot, well, what did, what, what did you, what did you really learn about that? And so when it comes to this area of learning, what I've discovered is that almost everything that we have learned that helps us doesn't come out of our success, but it comes out of our failures. I mean, that's why Bill Gates said success is a lousy teacher. It makes people think they can't lose. Well, if you think you can't lose, you're not going to be self aware and you certainly aren't going to be making adjustments and so you're going to be in trouble. So this whole process of having a return on failure, really the whole essence of it is, and when people talk about failure and they'll say, well, this is a problem in my life. This is, it's not going well. I'm waiting them to get through that because the question I want to ask them is, and what did you learn? Yeah, if they told me they learned something, I say, good failure, going to get a good return out of it. But if they can't tell me what they've learned, they're going to get no return out of it and they're going to be worse off than they started. Yeah.

[Mark Cole]

So we're talking about John's latest book, how to get a return on Failure. You can find in the show notes, you can find the link. I'm going to challenge you. You might be saying, hey, I don't have failure right now. Life is good. It's really good. In fact, in fact, as you're listening to this, it's mid February, it's the end of February. I've nailed it. I'm still got my New Year's resolutions. Trust me, if you're trying anything big, failure's on its way. And how you respond to that and how you get A return on that is exactly what we're sharing with you today. Go pick up the book, order the book for one of your college. Go get an Appetite for failure so that you'll have the right attitude for failure. Hey, I'm gonna take us to Damian. Damien is another one of our podcast listeners that has been with us for quite some time. And Damian, text in for the celebration of 400 episodes. Damian said the Maxwell Leadership Podcast has impacted my leadership skills and personal growth tenfold, meaning I have never grown more quickly or more effectively than ever before by listening to the podcast. It's like John says, when you work on your personal growth, you will always reach your goals. The podcast has done that exact thing for me, my family, and those I lead. Through the podcast, I have been able to impact others from leadership skills. I continue to learn, relearn, and unlearn. Speaking of failure, my influence with others has increased tremendously in 2025. One of the best gifts that I've given my wife is my personal growth and the leadership style that has become a part of me. Damion says she gets to experience the best me daily. This is just a small fraction of the priceless value I've received from the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. I may never get the opportunity to personally meet everyone from the Maxwell Leadership Podcast community and thank them for the value they've added to me, but trust me, I'm forever grateful and I'm forever thankful.

[John Maxwell]

Thank you, Damion.

[Mark Cole]

Yep. Thank you, Damien.

[John Maxwell]

We've heard from you now, friend.

[Mark Cole]

That's exactly right. John, you teach in the book. You teach how to keep success and failure together. And so talk to us a little bit about that. And why do you think so? Talk to us a little bit about keeping them together. But then do you think by embracing failure that we let down the bar of excellence?

[John Maxwell]

Oh, not at all. No. No. If we let down the bar of excellence, it isn't because of failure. It's because of choices that we make. But I'll get to that in a moment. But let's talk about putting success and failure together. Culturally, we're taught that success is good and failure is bad. And we separate. We go over here, we say, succeed, don't fail, and we separate them as far as we possibly can. We see no reason why they should ever be together. And we want you to get over on the success side. And people say, well, we don't want you to fail. Well, you're going to fail. You need to keep success and failure together, because together, Mark, they make each other better. They balance each other out. You separate them and they begin to exaggerate each side, either in a positive or negative way. So let's say that I'm failing. For example, if I'm failing, I need to keep success right beside that, because while I'm not doing good, I'm in the ditch. If I keep success close to my failure, it will give me resiliency. It'll encourage me to get back up because I'll remember that I have gotten back up before and I can be like the guy I was a roommate with in college. I'm never down. I'm either up or getting up. So you keep success with your failure for resiliency. If I'm over here and I'm succeeding, I need to keep failure right beside my success. Because if I keep them together while I'm succeeding, I'll have humility. And think about it. Humility makes us teachable. So if I'm succeeding, I won't get arrogant. If I keep my failure close to me, if I'm failing, I won't get totally dejected and just discouraged and quit if I keep my success right with it. And by the way, Mark, that's the way it is in life. Success and failure is not separated. I don't have, like, boys on Mondays. I succeed and everything goes well. Tuesday, oh, my, that last half day on Tuesday, I just have all kind of failure. No, no, no. They mix together all the time. And I know that because when I do learning lunches, I'll ask them, I'll say, you know, what's the most important lesson you ever learned? And every time I ask them that question, I've asked that hundreds of times, they'll talk about failure somewhere. You know, good Lord, I lost my marriage. I started losing money in my business. But what I learned was that when people talk about the most important lessons they learned, that always includes some loss, some miss or some failure. And so what happens is if we try to avoid those losses, those misses, those failures, what we do is we void out success. And I just sit there, I say, avoid. Creates a void. And all of a sudden we're no longer in the game. And so it's kind of like the other day I was talking to a person and I said. And they said, well, I don't want to fail. And so they're kind of intimidated by failure. And I said, let me ask you a question. Do you want to. Do you want to fail on the field, playing the game, or do you want to fail in the bleachers? Watching the game? Oh, yeah. Because I'm here to tell you, if you're watching the game, you have no shot at winning. That's by way a bad miss. If you're playing in the game, you have a shot at winning. That's. That could be a good miss.

[Mark Cole]

So what about this idea? If you embrace failure, you're lowering your standards. Do you lower your standards just because you embrace failure?

[John Maxwell]

You lower your standards because you have the wrong response to failure. Let's just be honest for a moment. We're always going to fail. The question not, am I always going to fail? The question is, am I always going to respond to failure in a wrong way, which causes the failure now to compound in my life? And now it's a bad miss. Why is it a bad miss? Because I'm not making the changes I need to make in order for me to improve my life. And so, therefore, Mark, what I've discovered was that if we avoid failure, which people try to do, what we do is we also avoid learning, growing, making a big difference in our life and people's lives. So the very fact that, you know, I say, well, I never want to fail again, that's going to keep me from ever being great again. You know what Mark Twain said? If a cat sits on a hot stove, the cat will never sit on a hot stove again. But he said, the cat won't sit on cold stove. The cat just don't like stove. Well, what's he saying? He's just basically saying, once we equate something to failure and we say, I never want to do that again, what we really are saying to ourselves is, I'll never reach my potential because I'm unwilling to try new things and embrace the possibility of failure.

[Mark Cole]

In the book, you talk about hard never ends, hard never ends. So to our podcast listener or viewer out there that feels exhausted by the relentless nature of hard things, what would you say to them?

[John Maxwell]

Well, I'd tell them what you say, Mark. You're the guy that says, embrace hard. I mean, that's one of your expressions, and I agree 100% with it. When I started off in my leadership journey, I just was really naive and totally misunderstanding a lot about failure and success. So when I started off as a very young leader and began to think about this journey, I thought, I'm going to work hard, pay the price, pay now, play later, and there's going to be a time where I've arrived and I don't have to work anymore and I don't have to worry about anything anymore. Everything's just going to be wonderful. And so I entered kind of this world by saying, I'll pay now and I'll play later. I entered the world kind of saying, I'll do the hard today, and, boy, there's a day I'll live on easy street. And I found out that that's not true at all. Because what I discovered was this very simple that the payment, the reward for doing something hard is not doing something easy. The reward for doing something hard is if you do it really well, you get to do something harder next time. In other words, you're graduating into hard, harder, hardest. And I used to think, well, you'll stop and everything will get better now. And that's not true. So, as you say, I embrace hard. And the reason I embrace hard is because if I do it well, I'll get to do harder. And if I do harder well, I get to do hardest. And what I've discovered and you've discovered, Mark, is the fact that respect is earned on difficult ground. If I have your respect as a leader, it's because you've seen me do something that was very challenging, very difficult, stayed the course I did it. Respect isn't earned on easy ground. You've heard me talk many times, everything worthwhile is uphill. Well, uphill is where respect is downhill. There's no respect there. No one ever drifted to a desired location. You and I both know that. So in my book on how to receive a return on failure, here's what makes it work. It gives you. It won't take your failures away. It just gives you a better perspective of failure. So when it comes, you are able to overcome it and climb right on up the mountain.

[Mark Cole]

You've done years and years and years. In fact, you've invited me to be in many of these. You do these learning lunches and you ask these questions from some of the world's most recognized leaders. Again, I've been in part of them. And always when you say, what's the thing you've learned the most? It comes back to a point of failure, a point of missing it. What is the. If you had to distill it down to one or two of the reoccurring lessons about failure that came from that question of hundreds of learning lunches, what would that distill down to?

[John Maxwell]

I think one would be the fact that when they said it was the most important lesson I've ever learned in the hand of failure is that it awakened them. It kind of brought them out of perhaps A little bit of a slumbering. It helped them become aware all of a sudden. I mean, in our successes, we can just basically say, I got this and just kind of coast. And, you know, what's our friend Jamie Kern Lima said? Some people, they mistake a tailwind for success. And so what happens is very simple. When I realize that I have failed, it awakens me and I say, okay, what went wrong? The very question of what went wrong is the question that makes things go right. What went wrong leads to, now I know what to do right. If we never ask the question, we never get the answer. And so therefore, we repeat it. When people leave their failure and get rid of. Leave the scene of the accident, they're going to repeat it because they didn't stay there long enough to learn from it. People that repeat the same mistake repeat the same mistake because they didn't learn from it the last time, and they'll keep repeating it till one day they begin to have an awareness that I've got to go do something about it.

[Mark Cole]

So, boy, I love that.

[John Maxwell]

I love that.

[Mark Cole]

So 400 episodes. This is our 400th episode, and you've poured decades into helping leaders overcome, achieve more than they ever thought. If there's a leader out there that's really struggling with this failure and wondering if they should quit, what would you say to a leader that perhaps is saying, the failure is too much, the failure is too great. I shouldn't keep going.

[John Maxwell]

I would tell you that you're just experiencing what I've experienced. You're experiencing what everybody's. Everybody at times wants to quit. I mean, I've had times where I thought, man, I'm not even sure this is worth it. I could probably hit the exit and be better off. So the first thing I want you to just understand is you're wanting to quit or give it up or let it go. That's as natural as can be. I've wanted to do the very same thing as you. But here's what I know, and I want to make sure you know, if you know this, if they know this mark's going to make a difference. No one has ever quit their way to the top. No one has ever done that. The moment you quit talking, that's a bad mess, by the way. The moment you quit, you take yourself out of the game, and you can't score points. You can't win if you're out of the game. So that happens, I think, to all of us. So a person says, well, I'm just kind of discouraged. I want to quit. I just want you to know there have been a hundred times that I've wanted to quit. I've probably written 50 resignation letters. Okay, it's over. When you feel like you want to quit, you got to go back to asking yourself, why did I get started? What was the purpose when I got in the game? You see if you can go back and find the reason you got started, the odds are you can find the reason to keep in the game. So you just got to go back and say, okay, I didn't feel that way when I started out, and it was hard when I started out. Why did I keep in the game then? I'm not keeping the game now. Because back then, the purpose of why you were doing something was very fresh. Today, it's old hat. It's been lost. It certainly is not the center of our life and our attention.

[Mark Cole]

John, since you're in the studio live, I'm going to let you sign off. I sign off most every podcast, but I'm going to let you sign off before you do. Podcast listeners, viewers, I know it's end of February, 1st of March when you're listening to this live, but on April 14, John is releasing the book how to Get a Return on Failure. We felt like, for our podcast family, for you, we wanted to give you a first opportunity at getting the book. So go to maxwellpodcast.com 400 and you'll find a link there. We'll make sure that we let you know, podcast family, we appreciate it. You let John know you appreciate him writing the book. I wanna, before I give it back to John to say whatever you'd like to say is a closing today about failure. I want to talk about Chris. Chris is one of our podcast listeners as well. Chris is an active duty special force commander. Number one, Chris, for you and all of our military professionals out there, thank you, thank you, thank you. And by the way, we're an international community. All of the service women and men that serve their countries thank you across the globe. But Chris is a special force commander. He says my career has been laser focused on mission success, operational excellence, and outpacing the competition. You're doing quite well, Chris. In that world, it's easy to overlook that true purpose of leadership. In other words, adding value to others. Everything changed when a senior leader urged me to listen to how to Develop Leaders episode of the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. John was teaching that a leader's primary responsibility and the foundation of lasting success is developing other leaders. That statement transformed me overnight. That and practical Insights from myself. Thank you, Chris. And the team made it immediately actionable both at home and at work. I'm now a daily listener. I'm catching up fast. You got 400, Chris. You better hurry up. I've read now several of John's books, and I've joined many online events that you guys do. Thank you, John. Thank you, podcast family, from the bottom of my heart for your extraordinary wisdom and generosity. You are all making the world and elite leaders like me far better. With deepest respect and greatest gratitude, Chris.

[John Maxwell]

Thank you, Chris.

[Mark Cole]

Yeah, thank you, Chris.

[John Maxwell]

Thank you. He's the reason we do it, 100%.

[Mark Cole]

And, John, again, we closed today, but I want you to close whether you want to talk to them about whatever or you want to just kind of say one last thing on Returnal Failure.

[John Maxwell]

First of all, I'm so proud of you, Mark. And I mean, he has, for now, 400 episodes, been the core, the center of our podcast. And he is truly the link between you and myself. And so, Mark, thank you for all that. Grateful for that, my dear friend. I just want to say about this book, one last thing. One of the best things you could do, if you have children, especially, you know, getting that seventh, eighth grade time, one of the best things you could do is put this book in their hand and let them at an early age begin to understand how to handle failure correctly. My parents did that for us when we were growing up, and I can promise you, by the time I graduated from high school, the books they put in my hand were the biggest difference between my success today and the success of the people that were around me in school. So I just wanted you to know, if you've got a team, get several of the Return on Failure books and go through it together chapter by chapter. If you're a parent, why don't you put that book in their hand? And then as a parent, even, why don't you kind of go through the book with them? Here's what I know the book will help you, but you could help a lot of people receive the help they need by getting the book. So I hope that you get one for yourself, get one for someone else, and pass the good news around that we don't have to be a victim of the failures in our life.

[Mark Cole]

We can overcome lead well, because everyone deserves to be led well.

[John Maxwell]

That's right.