Ryan Leak (14:22)

Hey, everybody. Ryan Leak here and I've got some exciting news for you. Data Grow is just a few weeks away and it's happening on March 19th in Orlando, Florida. And I cannot wait to see you there. I'll be talking about my new book, how to Work with Complicated People. And let me tell you, this message has the power to change the way.

Mark Cole (14:42)

You lead and live.

Ryan Leak (14:43)

And it's not just me. John C. Maxwell is going to be in the building. Tim Tebow, Stephanie Chong, Jesse Itzler, and an amazing lineup of speakers will all be there pouring into you. But here's the thing. Seats are filling up fast. So if you haven't registered yet, now is the time, don't wait. Make the decision today to invest in your personal growth. I'll see you, my friend, in Orlando, Florida on March 19th. Let's grow together.

Mark Cole (15:13)

Hey. Welcome back, everyone. I am sitting here with this lesson in front of me and just realizing how incredible it's been to learn leadership, to learn business with a leader like you. Just heard, John truly has taken. I can remember some people ask me often, or I get asked the same question often. What's your greatest failure? What's the biggest thing that you've done? And for me, it was a book launch that John had on the book Intentional Living. And we had built this technology platform. We were going to really drive a 30 day behavior challenge to people to intentionally live out positivity in their life. And by the time that that had failed, and it did, to the tune of $1.6 million. I realized that you could never let technology drive a vision. Technology exists to serve the vision, not drive the vision. And I had allowed technologists in our world to begin to tell us what the vision of the book would be if we would do what they said. And I lost it. I lost 1.6 million. You know what John's take was, hey, did you learn something? Yes, sir. What did you learn? I told him what I learned. He went, boy, I'd pay $1.6 million for you to have that lesson again. Let's go. Let's make it different.

Tracy Morrow (16:39)

Wow.

Mark Cole (16:39)

I live in an environment, Traci, that really has lived this out, and I've learned business by living in that environment. So I'm extremely grateful. Glad to be talking with you about this today.

Tracy Morrow (16:51)

I'm glad to be talking with you. What a gracious response. And I feel like there are a lot of parents who are listening today who. Who probably had. Well, I know there's leaders of all businesses, sizes and shapes and forms, but I know there are parents who heard that and kind of cringed a little inwardly because you had a teenager just that just had a fender bender last night or this morning and came to you and you flew off the handle and give yourself grace. If you flew off the handle, you could go back and have another response and say, hey, you know, I'm sorry. I learned something today and I'd pay that money for. What did you learn in that fender bender?

Mark Cole (17:29)

Well, here's what's funny. It's so funny. You use that as an analogy. Recently, a couple of months ago, Macy, my daughter, was home for a month and on her way back down, driving to the University of Florida, where she has chosen to break my University of Georgia heart, she got a speeding ticket. And so she called her mom first, and she said, mom, I'm so sorry, the police behind me, I don't know what I'm going to do, and all this kind of stuff. And so she said, well, you need to call your dad. And she said, is dad going to be mad at me? And so she called me and she was telling me the story. I said, I started laughing, and she said, why are you laughing? I said, because I remember the first ticket I got. And I said, by the way, it wasn't my last ticket. And I said, the question for you is, what did you learn here? And she says, well, Dad, I learned that I needed to pay attention. She said that she needed to watch Waze a little bit more because it lets you know where police are. And she was giving me all these things that was beating the system. And I was like, okay, hold up, hold up. What else did you learn here? Because she had learned quickly, I'm going to be smarter at how I speed next time, not how I'm going to deal with this. And she said, well, she says, you know what that police officer Told me about a young teenager's wreck that he worked not too long ago. And she learned that. She said, at first I was frustrated that it got me because I was only going X over the speed limit and I didn't think I deserved it and all this kind of stuff. And she said, then I learned that he really just wants to save my life. I said, that is a good perspective. Don't be mad at the police officers. I said, what else did you learn? She says, I'm sitting here trying to figure out how I'm going to pay for this ticket out of the limited budget I have as a college student. And I said, that's a good lesson, too. Figure that one out. So, yes, to your point, Let them learn the lesson. And even in the bad moments, right?

Tracy Morrow (19:20)

Yes, yes. Oh, that was a bonus right there. That was a bonus. John teaches us even outside of the lesson, even. Even beyond that. So let's dive right in. And before we even get to his. What is it, four or five points? I would love it if we could just define a little bit failure for our audience. So one of the things John says before we jump in on getting a return on failure, he talks about, what would you att if you knew? And that's something that a lot of people say. You know, if you go to any kind of conference or whatever, people will say, like, what would you attempt if you knew failure? You know, that you could get a pause. They'll say, what would you attempt if you knew failure wasn't an option? But John, as always, flips it a little bit and says, what would you attempt if you knew you would get a positive return on the failures you encounter? So I would like to ask you, Mark, first of all, if you could just set the tone for getting our mindset for our audience. Sometimes we get into the lesson, but we don't stop to personalize it. We what are some of the things to get our audience thinking of their own personal failures that they are kind of shying away from or that they've been kind of playing it a little too safe? What are some of the things that people have described for you that are the failures that they have been sort of playing it too safe or that they're a little bit afraid of or that they define as a failure that they just won't risk it or they just won't go for it? And I'll give you a couple examples, like maybe it's just starting a new business, or maybe they're in a career path that they don't like. And they are too afraid to try again because either they feel they're too old or they put too much money into their college degree and they don't want to have to backtrack and start again. But what would you say are some failures that people are afraid of?

Mark Cole (21:07)

So when you first started right there and you said, you know, maybe we need to start with a common description or a common definition of failure. I think we complicate failure. I think we emotionalize failure. I think failure just at its simplest is unmet expectation. I think failure is unmet expectation. I failed you. We have a big failure in areas that matter a lot to us. We have a small failure in areas that don't matter as much. We have a big failure in that we miss the mark by a long shot. We have a small failure in that we barely miss the mark. But I think that failure may be at its most simplistic definition is unmet expectation. So let's do go through and talk about what are some of the things. Because then you layered in, and I love that question, you layered in what are some of the things that stop people from trying? And what is it some things that create this fear of failure that stops people from even starting in the first place? One is, I really do think, much like Henry Ford says, failure for him was just a chance to begin again. I mean, you know what, failure to me is just to say, what was my threshold? What was my capacity? What was the opportunity? Failure for others is, hey, this is where my humanity steps up. And this is why I do need a faith in something bigger than me. I have often allowed failure of others in the area of character or in the area of morals. I've allowed that to just completely wreck me until I realized that that's the whole reason that my particular faith has a messiah, a savior to cover. That is because that is human. That is expected in fact again in my religion to over spiritualize this perhaps for one moment. Those of you that are not a people of faith, give me one second and I'll get off of this. But God was so moved with failure that he gave his only son in my particular religion to cover that. In other words, failure was expected by God. Failure caused the entire ecosystem of my faith to become applicable. And we often get so paralyzed with fear rather than trying things and realizing. John has a great statement, Traci. I love how he's been saying this lately. He says, I would rather try and fail than to never try at all. I would rather go down a Dead end street than to not try that street out. What John's really saying when he's really articulating this well lately is I'm okay with failure. I'm just not okay with not knowing. The lack of effort is more challenging to me than the certainty of failure. And John gets fearful that he's not trying something that he should be putting an effort in rather than fearful of, am I going to fail at it? I think if every one of us could realize that failure is such a friend to us because we have maybe eradicated one option, now we have less options to try. Maybe we can see failure as a friend because it tells us what not to do next time. In other words, it educates us. Or maybe we can see failure as a chance to learn a lesson. It awakens the student in us. And then others, like the example that I started with at the very beginning says, hey, I've got 50 more books inside of me after this book. Thank God we tried that on that one because the next one's going to be more important so we won't have to make that mistake again. We look at it as, okay, been there, done that, won't make it again. Somehow each of us needs to get a friend perspective of failure that allows us to try even though when we have a failure. I put this in my notes. It's for later down, but I don't know if we'll get to it. I think more of us should plan to fail. Put a plan together that you know you're going to fail. But the question is, is how much further will I go? Because I tried something so big there was no way I was going to win. Then how little did I set it so I could ensure success? And I think we need to invert that. That's what John's point is here.

Tracy Morrow (25:39)

Yeah, I love that. Okay, so that's a good baseline of description and understanding failure so that people are really getting inside. I'm certain that everybody is now thinking of something very personal and that's always good when you take a lesson and you personalize it rather than just keep it in a kind of a petri dish. So he talks about keeping success and failure together. I think he does a great job describing that and really bringing understanding that success and failure. You can even hear in the recording him clapping his hands together. I love how basketball great Michael Jordan talks about, I failed over and over and over and over again and that is why I succeeded. I love that quote from him. And then in number two, he jumps right into understanding the difference between good misses and bad misses And I would love for you to chat a little bit about this. Understanding the difference. Like maybe a good miss would be, you tried it and it didn't work and you're extracting Lesson number two. Maybe it was reckless, it was selfish, it was, you were bullheaded, you didn't listen to wise counsel. Can you talk about how you might help a person who, who this is a new concept for them, how you might help them understand on the front end, maybe a few questions to ask or what the process is on the front end to know the difference between a good miss and a bad mission.

Mark Cole (27:01)

Well, I want to underscore, I underscored in my notes and all of you that are using the bonus resource with our incredible application questions, I want to challenge you to print that out because I underscored, if I'm moving forward in my failure, it's a good miss. In other words, if I feel the failure, I sense the failure. I have unmet expectations. Am I moving forward or am I retracting back? People that look at failure and go, I'm never going to try that again. I get very concerned. I get very, very concerned because are you just shutting down something before it's time? Are you not recognizing that failure is a part of it? All the greats you talk about, Michael Jordan, Henry Ford, John Maxwell, they all talk about they had to fail a lot of times before they got good. Are you moving forward? Are you moving backward? The other thing that I underscored is on good misses, I make adjustments. In bad misses, I make excuses. So the question is when you are missing something, you have unmet expectations, Are you excusing it? Are you finding all the reasons? Are you making adjustments? I talked with a lot of leaders during COVID that started five years ago, I talked with a lot of leaders and I heard a lot of leaders say, hey, we're missing our numbers because of COVID And that was their sentence. I heard other leaders say, hey, we're missing our numbers because of COVID But let me tell you what we have adjusted with. We were certainly that way. John couldn't get on the road. John couldn't help people. We started doing free conferences on webinars. We had not done webinars before then. We had not done streaming that well before then because John was so magical on stage. And in six weeks time we impacted more people than we had the entire two years, the year before. Now that still didn't pay the bills because we didn't find A financial model at that, at the beginning. But what it did do is to make our core of impacting others still happen. So we didn't excuse it, we adjusted to it. My greatest question to you is, when you start something that there is a high probability that you fail, will you make a commitment to yourself that you're going to move forward after the failure and not retreat back if you're not, if it doesn't work this time or you're going to try it again. So go ahead and put a I'm going to shoot again, I'm going to go for it again, I'm going after it again mindset. Hey, when it doesn't work, guess what, I'll still be back here again. And then the other thing that I would really challenge you on the front end is to anticipate the failure and start making adjustments before you even try. Hey, if this doesn't work, this is what I'm going to try. If this doesn't work, this is what I'm going to do. If this person doesn't step up and meet me halfway, I'm going to go three quarters of a way to show them and then the next time I'm going to ask them to come halfway. I'm constantly, when I'm trying audacious big things, I'm constantly already anticipating what I might would do if it doesn't work out. And it's always moving forward on how I'm going to respond to failure. When you ask the question, how do I challenge people that are new to this concept? The biggest way I'm going to challenge is please try something so big. There's no way except a God factor that you're going to succeed. There's no way you're going to succeed if something unbelievable surprising doesn't happen because I'm trying something so big, I'm shooting for the stars.

Tracy Morrow (30:37)

I love that I'm taking a note. Sometimes I forget I'm with you, that I'm not just learning. Okay, so moving on to embracing hard. You know, you have said this is something that interestingly is, is something that runs parallel in your life and is running parallel in my life. Joseph, our son, got this from a sixth grade teacher. This is something that you and Stephanie have made a mantra in your own home. Joseph is now almost 21, which is crazy, my son, but embracing hard. And so in this last few weeks, there is a listener of our podcast and a good friend of mine is gentleman by the name of John Ward and he was speaking, giving a lesson in our church. And he was, he said this, he said, you know, perhaps you weren't meant to be saved from this storm. Perhaps God brought you to this storm to prepare you for the next storm. And that when he was doing a lesson on that. And I just thought, you know, how many times we are so made as creatures of comfort. What are we looking for? And every time we're uncomfortable, we're trying to, like, position things so that we get back to being comfortable. Whether we're hungry, we look for food. Whether we are cold, we're trying to get warm. If we're warm, we're trying to get cool. If we're out of sync with somebody at work, we're trying to get things back so we could be moving comfortable again. And so I this idea of embracing hard goes counter to everything that is inside of us as a human, but as a leader, we have to get comfortable in that hard because that is where we grow. That is where we find what we are made of. And so I would love when John talks about, like, it's uphill, uphill all the way. We joked about that in podcasts in the past. We hate that he added on all the way. He didn't used to say all the way. And recently he started saying all the way. Leadership is uphill all the way. And so if you could just talk about what you have learned from your hard that you now incorporate into your leadership as you're leading your team to help them understand that hard is not something to be pulled back from, but to embrace.

Mark Cole (32:54)

You know, I'm going to use a personal example. I get a lot of feedback that they love you. Are I, Tracy, talk personally and what you've done for your family with Joseph, well, your entire family is just real remarkable. It's hard. Most people wouldn't make that step. And so I think there are lessons from life. We talk about that in our opening monologue always that we're going to try to give you lessons that will apply to your life and your leadership. And so I have found that from a lot of life, we can learn leadership, and from a lot of leadership, we can improve life. And so I'll give you a quick example to answer your question, and then I'll tell you what I've learned about this. So it's on the personal side. My wife, Stephanie and I are privileged. And it's true privilege. It's hard, but it's a privilege to be right now. The full care, custody, and control of our four grandchildren, all under the age of 11. And I don't need to tell you my age. For those of you that are watching YouTube, the gray hair should tell you that I'm in my mid-50s or maybe that I'm in my mid-70s. It depends on how you look at it. And so it's just a stage of life that we truly thought life was going to be a little bit different. But we're trying to raise a young leader in Macy that is learning the difficulty of leadership in a very sheltered world. We've been very compared to what I had access to as a kid and Stephanie had access to even more than me. Compared to what we had access to. Macy has access to the universe and I might have had access to the corner store. I mean it's a big difference of the favor and the availability to Maci. And we're constantly looking for ways how do we teach our daughter heart. And so we're in the middle of as a family doing this. And so we had a recent family vacation that we gave as a Christmas present to all of our kids and grandkids. And Stephanie and I were already on location. We were going to take this vacation and our two daughters, the kids, mom, Tori and then Macy were going to fly the four kids down. All under 11, two of them. It was the first flight ever down to where Stephanie and I was the day of game day. They're getting ready to go on the plane with these four grandchildren. Our oldest daughter got crazy sick, went straight to the hospital from the airport. She dropped the four kids off at the curb of the airport for this 18 year old, one semester college kid and said, I can't go, I've got to go to the hospital. Here are the kids. Our youngest daughter calls us. This was exactly what happened. Our youngest daughter calls us and says, mom, dad, Tori can't come. I've got the four kids. So I'm headed through the airport with the four kids. I'll see y' all in a little bit. I went, whoa, Macy, you can't do this. She said, mom, dad, we were made for hard in our family. I got this, brought them down. She became the MVP of the family vacation. Might I say this brilliant young leader.

Tracy Morrow (35:54)

Seriously, Seriously. I'm so proud of her at this point.

Mark Cole (35:56)

Moment now.

Tracy Morrow (35:57)

Way to go.

Mark Cole (35:58)

She repeated back to me what Stephanie and I have said multiple times about we're signed up for hard. Here's the leadership lesson that you asked me for about leadership. When you face failure head on, when you try something so big that's so hard, so difficult and you embrace that hard with attitude that says we got this. It transfers. Belief transfers. Because John's now talking about getting a return on failure. People are embracing failure and embracing hard things more than they ever had because we give each other a permission to state something is hard rather than pretend it's not hard. Didn't you and I grow up say we don't talk about hard around here? Suck it up. Let's go buttercup. We got this thing. That's what we're taught. Don't talk about hard. Well, we're now letting our daughter say, no, this is hard. This sucks. I did not expect to do this for my vacation from college but hey, I was made for this. I got it. There's a belief that happens when you and I embrace hard. That becomes multi generational and that's what my big takeaway.

Tracy Morrow (37:10)

I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that. Way to go, Macy. I hope Tori is okay.

Mark Cole (37:16)

She's so much better. Was with her last night. She's doing so good.

Tracy Morrow (37:19)

Wonderful, wonderful. Well, we've took up so much time on that one. I just want to land on the last one. In developing a process I think we landed where we needed to land but I just want to just highlight that success cycle and the power of number three and number four, learning and improving when we are in a time in this world where people get so freaked out by number two failing that they feel like they need to be canceled or that they have lost their opportunity or their right to lead because they failed. This is a. This is a generation of canceling leaders who fail in whatever capacity. And I just want to highlight and let you end on it mark and toss it back to you but highlight the value. No one is discounted if you learn. If you choose to take a learning posture, a humble and learning posture to learn from your failure and make things right in that place before you re enter really and truly not cover it up, not pretend it didn't happen. Go to the people, learn and truly improve and don't re enter too soon. Talking about that, just talk about that importance of making things right that you can re enter and truly have the best season of your leadership ever as a result of learning from that failure.

Mark Cole (38:44)

You know, so there's a couple of things you said right there that really grabbed me that I could go another 25 minutes on.

Tracy Morrow (38:52)

Yeah, I know.

Mark Cole (38:54)

I think first I would speak to the people that feel like a failure and say change your perspective. I'm trying to get you to embrace failure and get a return on it. But I never see somebody as a failure. I see what you did as perhaps coming up short. I don't see you coming up short. You're still here. You're still in the game. Let's go. Turn your perspective of making failure personal to making failure just a stepping stone. And often we take a mistake, a challenge, especially in ethical or moral or character issues, and we write ourselves off. And I'm first talking to you that are out there listening to me, that are still allowing yesterday's mistakes, yesterday's missteps, stop you from becoming all that you are intended on being. And can you do me a favor in a very empathetic way, stop it. Don't do that to yourself. It's not true. Failure is not personal. Failure is an opportunity to dust yourself off and as Henry Ford says, try again more intelligently. I also want to talk to you that are labeling people fail. I know you've been disappointed. Some of you have been extraordinarily disappointed by a moral failure or an ethical failure by a significant other in your life. Can you too get over it? Can you too realize that, yes, there were mistakes happening in your life, perhaps irreparable mistakes, but don't live a fatalist failure mindset, not as a victim or as someone that has imposed that. Let's begin to look at ourselves authentically. We all have unmet expectations in our life. We all are responsible for not meeting the expectation of others in our life. Let's move beyond that and begin to have a mindset that this mis expectation can be great insight to reaching the expectation the next go round the next opportunity. I want that for you. You've got to have a growth mentality. What I would like to do today, because I'm always looking for what's the next step? What's the right next step for you? An application point. And today I feel like it's our 15 laws of growth content. John wrote a book, the 15 Laws of Growth. Pick that up. It will help you. We've created an online course. We've dropped that thing 80% off to give it to you for just this week, only for just those of you that's listening to the podcast out there, we'll put all that information in the show note because again, we're about adding value to you so you can make action to multiply value to others. And that's one of the actions you can take. Hey, Calista. Calista listens to our podcast. She listened to the episode. If John Maxwell could spend a day with you, what would that be like? And after listening to that, Calista wrote us a note and says thank you so much. This is really an educative podcast. Thank you Calista. Thank you for all of you that listen. We're grateful for you, grateful for this family. Always let us know how we can become better because everyone deserves to be led well.

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