Failure Is the Best Teacher

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Automatic transcript, lightly corrected for names, with profanity masked. Some passages may contain transcription errors.

Welcome to the Inner Circle with Kevin Dahlstrom and I'm Mike Brown. The idea behind the show is that Kevin and I have a lot of deep discussions that we shape each other's thinking, the whole concept is that iron sharpens iron and so men especially don't have a place to go for deep emotionally vulnerable and high level philosophical discussions. Our idea was we would just start to share some of these Inner Circle discussions with you guys on Twitter and on the podcast and just dive into topics that we think are interesting and go from there. I'm excited about this. Mike

you and I have become very close friends over the past year or so. I consider you part of my Inner Circle. We have these conversations anyway. They always go deep and they always benefit me hugely. So we thought why not just take a topic and share it with the world. We'll keep these pretty short and see where it goes. I'm excited to test this out and the idea for our first topic. Send it. A while back you posted an ex post that I think about a lot and I'm the first couple lines for you as a prompt but your your post said I wish upon everyone a failure that brings you to your knees sounds harsh but I mean it from a place of love. So tell me a little bit about what

what you mean by that you wish upon everyone a failure that brings you to your knees. I mean this is really born of my own experience and I think especially with social media we have sort of shaped our culture to only show the shiny veneer, only show the success, the perfect life, the house and the cars and in many ways I have all of those things but the single most important lesson that I have learned in my adult life didn't come from any of my wins. It came from my most dramatic failure so I love to say from stage the day I saw my company I thought I would never be unhappy again. And two years later I was so full anxiety so stressed out that there was days I didn't

want to get out of bed in the morning and it's because I bought a failing company hopes of turning it around and I was losing a hundred thousand dollars a month it was an unmitigated disaster I was hemorrhaging money watching my bank account dwindled quickly towards zero and it was in this dramatic failure you know finally in my life I had gotten myself into a situation that I couldn't pull a rabbit out of a hat like this was a a total and complete disaster. And I sold that company three years ago and I lost about 1.5 million dollars inside of 18 months. The beauty the wisdom that I gained on the back side of that was so much more valuable I think than all of the wisdom combined that I gained from my

wins. So that that's what I say so many of us you know especially in entrepreneurship high performers were so used to winning that the psychological cost of failure increases with every win that we have so I'll stop there I want to hear how you respond to that. Yeah I think that I mean a lot of people who have been through a soul-crushing hardship would agree with you because I mean that tracks for me you know in my case it wasn't so much of like a huge financial loss but rather you know I built a life that on paper looked great but inside made me feel miserable and so I rebooted and that begs because I get this question a lot from younger guys is do you have to go

through the hardship or is there a way to get the same insights without going through the hardship or at least can you mitigate it a little bit. So how would you answer that question? I mean unfortunately pain is a great teacher and you know and on the flip side a question the view is empty but do I have to learn that for myself and I think in some ways you do have to right like we as someone who's found financial success telling other people like this isn't going to light you up they're like I don't man seems pretty great like yeah and so I think in some ways yeah like there's no way to shortcut the pain in life right like pain is a universal human experience but something is optional.

You introduced me to the concept of the second mountain which I guess you adapted from someone else. David Brooks. Just so people know the idea is like we work our whole lives to climb this mountain that we think represents success you get to the top only to realize that you climbed the wrong mountain and you look across the horizon and there's the second mountain the one you actually need to climb and I think the the question like do you have to go all the way to the top and kind of have a you know a dramatic event happen to to get that epiphany or I mean I do I guess I do believe a little bit that if you're super deliberate you can maybe lessen the pain a little bit

you and I both chose to create content right is like hopefully we can lessen that impact for other people in the midst when they're already going through it or maybe so they don't have to go through all of that pain right, but I mean how strong does the wake up call need to be if you're as stubborn as maybe you and I are yes then sometimes you need that big wake up call I think that's a great point in my case I have to be hit upside upside the head before I realize things I mean I think back to this came comes to mind like when I was you know dating in my twenties I was the most clueless single man you've ever met why I literally wouldn't know that a woman was interested the shoulder

you know I'm attracted to you so you know I don't pick up on subtlety maybe and so for you and I may be it has to be a dramatic reset, but also a second question then is like understanding that you have to go through hardship that's part of the process I'm guessing I think having there's a mindset shift that I think can at least make that hardship more productive yeah and so you know when I say I wish upon everyone a failure here's what I gained out of my particular me crushing or soul crushing moment and that is number one I lost the arrogance of someone who had never lost and what I mean is like in my life anything that I set out to do up until that point I found a way to do

I didn't know I didn't I didn't know what the first time but I but I sort of always nailed the goal stuck the landing and this taught me so much number one because I realized even if you put in all the right inputs right like I was working my a** off I was shoveling money into this company I had a world-class team I was an the experience I'm not a business entrepreneur and through a combination of things number one the fundamentals of the business were not great number two there was massive headwinds in the e-commerce space in general, like there was a lot of things outside of my control that I couldn't fix and we sort of have this idea that like I'm the captain of my own destiny and if I just put my mind to it I can do anything and I learned that like sometimes that's not the case and what a valuable lesson to force me to give up this illusion of control

this illusion that if I just put my mind to it I can make it right you know it might sound sort of victim but it's actually totally freeing to realize that I can just stack reps I can do all the right things and like sometimes it doesn't work out the way you think yeah it's a it's a humbling that happens and you know how do you get there I mean I I often say you know the older I get the less I know when I was young and in fact I I in some ways you know in V in a way like my my younger self who was so sure about everything often wrong never and down because that has a lot of advantages

right you question things and your bold you know back to your point about like the more success you accumulate the more risk averse you become and but at the same time I think that can that confidence can lead you way ast astray and that's exactly what happened to me I mean I put my head down and ground my way to the top of the corporate world only to realize that was the wrong mountain and rebooting was a very humbling experience and but it's it's the only way to find true contentment is temper you know I guess it's a tempering that happens yeah I mean failure forces you to get really clear on what's important you know and and for me it you know the big lesson was I thought I needed

more money money to be wealthy and it turns out I had plenty of money what I really needed was the freedom that that money could buy and I was focusing on the wrong things I was trading my time I was trading my peace I was trading my health trying to accumulate more instead I should have been focusing on what actually matters and getting clear on those things and they didn't cost more money how do you think about that when it comes to parenting this is something I was actually just thinking about the other day is this idea that you you know you have to watch your kids fail and they're the only thing more painful than failing personally is watching watching your that you have you have to right it's you know yeah I think I think this is a great question because number one right like you can't avoid failure or pain in life

like it's at some point your cards gonna get pulled right and so you're teaching kids that that resilience I think is really important but at the same time I think there are a lot of parents out there who generate or manufacture hardship, hardship for their kids, so like teach them a lesson and for me like life is painful enough like they're gonna get their lessons regardless and so I just try to find the balance between like I don lessons like life's coming anyway yeah I just try to teach them how to how to have resilience in order to to bounce back so so we have a family motto which is browns can do hard things yeah yeah yeah I mean we can't control what happens to us we have some control not complete control

bad things will still happen to people who do all the right things all we can control is how we react to it and an example that comes to mind this popped into my head from 20 plus years ago during the original.com boom I started a company with one of my best friends we raised 12 million dollars rode the wave all the way to the moment and then the bubble burst and we rode it all the way back down and what was really interesting is a case study is how the two of us reacted to the exact same situation I mean we were literally co-founders of the company having had the identical experience and mostly I say mostly this was in my case out out of naivety um I sort of I I literally referred to it as my MBA on steroids like I thought it was in

incredible learning experience it gave us the opportunity to do some amazing things it blew up in our face and I sort of moved on pretty immediately whereas my, my partner, to him it was just this deep sense of personal failure that stayed with him for me he didn't move on to his next kind of job career thing for a year and it So the only difference was and I think it goes back to that idea of resilience that you talked about is like, that's foundational to everything. You can't avoid heartache. You can become resilient to it. Yeah, I mean, I think what you're really touching on is even below mindset is identity, right?

If my identity is tied to my results, right? I am setting myself up for a really tough time. If my identity is tied to my effort, right? Now I can let failures roll off without becoming a threat to my ego. Like my threat to my very existence. If I've built my entire world view, how I view myself on what I can achieve. And when that failure comes calling a calling, it's gonna be a really painful awakening. Yeah, and the identity one is a tough one because the default state, especially for men, is that your identity is your career status and money. And as much as you try to get away from that, I mean, that's, something I think about quite a bit is like,

well, we just became, became empty nesters. I'm gonna get really raw and we just became empty nesters. And my wife and I don't need a huge house anymore. There are some reasons maybe we keep it, but we don't need it. And we've thought about like, do we downsize to a condo spew to get away from that. I mean, that's something I think about quite a bit is like and the thought has crossed my mind that like what are people going to think? My house now when people people visit, they're impressed, they see the things, and as much as you try, it's hard to let go of an identity that's tied to very specifically to the success. For me, when I hear someone say I don't give a f***, what other people think, what I hear is I'm lying to myself, right?

We all give a f*** what other people think. The trick is what people think. I actually care a whole lot about what you think about me. Because you are someone that I look up to that I want to emulate, that I think thinks about the world in a very similar way. If you call me up and be like, hey, Mike, I think you're f****** this up, that's advice that I want to take, but some random internet troll commenting on my Twitter post, if they don't have a life I want to emulate, that's an opinion I'm going to immediately discard. So who do I care about their opinion, I think is the real operative question. What's interesting is right after we met, I think I did challenge you on some of the material stuff.

Let's be clear, Mike Brown likes his toys. In a way, that's part of what I love about you is you like to live life to the fullest, but you made some changes. I doubt it was related directly to what I said, but there was something going on inside of you that my words clicked with you and you made some changes. I pride myself on being open-minded and constantly updating my worldview when I'm presented with better information. For me, what I think you're directly referring to is I sold off some of my superc, cars. The thing is, those super cars played a really important role in my life.

I grew up with the red Lamborghini on my wall, that represented ultimate success, and a part of me needed that. A 12-year-old kid who wanted to feel successful, needed to go through that chapter, but then at some point it fulfilled its role and it was no longer serving me in the same way. There's no regrets. I'm glad I bought the ticket. I'm glad I took the ride, and I'm glad I was able to update my opinion when that chapter had run its course. The thing that you've said in the past year that I say I repeat thes the most is this idea I can hold two opposing thoughts in my head at the same time. The supercars were absolutely played a role in my life, and I treasure that phase, and I you don't need as

many supercars anymore. It's related to this idea that I reserve the right to reinvent myself five minutes from now. I think maybe that's the core message here that we're talking about is failure and change are inevitable. Whether that change comes because you've made the decision to pull the plug on something like I did, or whether it's forced upon you, as was the case with you, and maybe the mindset to have is, or the way to be resilient, is that's an opportunity for reinvention. Totally. That's it. The way I put it is fixed versus fluid identity. If I have a fixed identity, if my identity is built on, always winning, external validation, material

things showing the world who I am versus this fluid identity of I'm under no obligation to be the same person I was five minutes ago. I was the guy who loved supercars, and now I'm the guy who has different priorities, and that's totally okay. It doesn't threaten who I am, because I'm not really attached to being seen as the supercar guy. Yeah. I think some of it comes back to what end and for whom. I would say minimalism is a which I'm a big believer in the practice of minimalism, but it's not what most people think. Most people think of minimalism as like this monk-like existence where you deny yourself of anything that brings you joy, and it's literally the opposite. Minimalism is about,

asking of everything in, in your life, does this bring me joy, and if it doesn't bring you joy, eliminate it to make room to gorge on the things that do bring you joy, and the things that do bring you joy can change over time. I call it the Marie Kondo budget. Does this spark joy, if not, thank you for your service. That's exactly what I do with my supercars. I used to be deeply involved in car culture and, and, you know, go to the track and go on weekend drives every weekend. And then, you know, another one of my favorite quotes is, show me your calendar, show me your bank account, and I'll show you what you value. Yeah. And my bank account was saying that I value these cars, but my calendar wasn't. I wasn't driving them. Now they were just collecting dust in the garage. What a cool opportunity to update and, and release and, kon and

go to the track and go to the track and go on weekend drives every weekend and then another one of my favorite things to things that do actually� do bring. That's awesome. Maybe that's the first quick episode is with the idea going back to the tweet that we started with, I wish upon everyone a failure that brings you to your your knees. The reason is because failure is an opportunity to be introspective about what is my identity? Has my identity changed? It has my identity changed. Really always evaluating what's important to me now. Not what's important to me yesterday and we can't predict what may be important in the future, but at this current point in my life, what's important and am I living in alignment values?

I think that's the question to constantly return to. It's awesome brother. Yeah, just smashing a hundred years of life philosophy, a combined hundred years of life philosophy into 18 minutes, but there you go. I look forward to more of my friend. Awesome. Thanks, Mike. This is inner circle two friends thinking out loud the things that matter. If you want to continue the conversation both Kevin and I right on next so follow along there and if this conversation sparks something in you please share it with a friend. We'll see you next time. Thanks.