Just ONE Thing
Failing the Right Way: How Smart Shop Owners Learn Fast and Bounce Back
Episode 228
with Rick White, 180BIZ
Good morning. My name is Rick White from 180 Biz. Uh, we are a coaching and training company for the independent auto and truck repair shops. And this is my Just ONE Thing.
What are we talking about today? Today we're talking about FAILING.
Why? Because I came across a quote that I thought was brilliant.
It said, “Failing successfully is a science. Failing poorly is an emotion.” So here's what I want you to understand — failure is either going to be an event or an emotion in your life. And here's the really scary part — or good part about it — depending on how you look at it.
One of these things you learn from, and the other you carry. Okay, I wanna say that again: Failure is either an event or an emotion. One you learn from, the other you carry.
So what happens? Let's talk about the core distinction here with these, right? When an event happens, it's something I can measure, I can study, I can learn from, I can adjust, and then I can move forward.
That's awesome. That is the one I learn from.
An emotion — it sticks. What happens? I internalize it. I make it part of my identity, and if I'm not careful, I'm gonna allow it to hold me hostage.
Okay, now you’re gonna hear some really good points here, so pay attention.
The reality is, the science of failure is when you realize that A) you did something and it didn't work. It's just a failed attempt. It is nothing more than a single data point on a path of growth.
Okay, this is part of what progress looks like — it's experimentation.
See, when you treat failure as an event, you ask better questions, you make smarter adjustments, and what it does is it builds resilience — your ability to, so to speak, fall down and get back up again, right?
Resilience is how fast — when you fall down, when you fail — how fast do you get back up? That's resilience.
Because when you fail successfully, you just see it as an event, as feedback. That's the important part.
Now let's look at the other side of this. When you fail — when failure is an emotion — this is what I like to call the pain of failure, okay?
This is what happens when you attach your identity to the outcome. “I failed, therefore I am a failure.” And that's really a hard thing to go through.
So here's what happens though. What happens when you accept it as part of you? You know what causes it? Your expectations.
When you have an expectation of, “Hey, I've never done this before. I'm gonna knock it out of the park.”
That's not an expectation — it's delusion. Write that sucker down. Can I get an amen on that one?
When you have an expectation for high performance in something you've never done before, that's delusion. Because what happens is, you're setting yourself up for failure before you ever start.
And what it does is you start calling, you know, these — what I call blame loops. It's where, “It's because of this, and because of this, and because of this.”
A lot of times it ends up being me, like, I am the reason. So I start to spiral. I call it a shame spiral.
We have a success spiral and a shame spiral — which way are you going?
And then you start to avoid things, don't you? Why? Because as human beings, our brains are hardwired to avoid pain.
But here's the cool thing — when you can separate it, that starts to make a difference.
But the issue is when you can't — when it becomes a part of your identity — it hijacks your mindset up here and it stops your movement forward.
Because you're afraid of failing again, right? And it's because you're treating that failure as a reflection of your self-worth.
And please don't do that. Don't judge yourself based on your successes. Judge yourself on how many times you get back up from a setback. That is what really matters.
Okay, so I want to give you kind of a shift here — a different way of thinking about it.
Number one, there's the event. This is where something happened unexpectedly — not the way I planned it. Okay, so it's an event.
Then there's the emotion. Please understand, even when you're using the failure scientifically, there's going to be a disappointment. There's going to be a letdown.
Don't run away from it. Don't avoid it. Don't suppress it. Just embrace it.
“Hey man, I really thought this was gonna work.”
Okay, now let's elevate. So it's event, emotion, elevate. Does that make sense?
Because that way there, you allow it to feel personal, but you don't let it get personal — where you recognize that this is nothing more than feedback.
Okay? And all it is, is a pivot point.
It's where, as Henry Ford once said, “Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.”
It doesn't mean you failed. Literally, like Thomas Edison said, he didn’t fail 10,000 times with the light bulb — he learned 10,000 ways it didn’t work.
That is a really healthy way to look at setbacks.
Well, this is what I really want you to get: Failing well means you feel it, but you don’t feed it. Write that sucker down.
Failing well means you feel it — because that's the part, right? We got the event, we got the emotion.
We feel it, we don’t feed it, we don’t stare at it, we don’t keep going with it. Because when you do, that’s when it becomes part of you.
Okay. That’s when it becomes part of you.
So what I'd like you to do — I want to challenge you, okay?
I want to challenge you, and you know, before I challenge you, I wanna make sure you share this video, please. I'll get on my hands and knees and beg you to share this video because I'm telling you there's somebody feeling so low they gotta look up to see the curb.
This video can help them. Can you help me help others? Man, I would appreciate it more than anything.
Brenda and I work so hard to get this content out to you. We want to get to as many people as we can, so thank you for that.
Second thing I wanna talk to you about — if you want more information like this, you can jump into our Pocket Business Genius webinar series or PBG.
It's got a library of over 80 webinars and a monthly webinar. We also have our Shop Owners Round Table. That’s the second Thursday of every month — it’s November 13th, 7:00 PM Eastern, with the webinars live.
So the other thing, if you wanna talk about coaching, tell you what — shoot me an email: [email protected]. I’ll set something up
.
Okay, so here's my practical challenge. Here's the challenge I got for you today:
I want you to think of a recent failure. Did you treat it as an event, or did you treat it as an emotion?
If you treated it as an event — high five, brother, that’s awesome. Let’s go.
But if it was emotional, how can you step back and how can you go back and extract the data? Because that way there, you don’t repeat it again.
Okay. That’s what I want. So what I want you to do is detach your identity from the failure.
In other words, if this was somebody else you were talking to, what would you say to them?
That is such a powerful perspective. It’s such a powerful perspective to take because it allows you to get rid of the emotion.
So detach your identity, grab the lesson, and then adjust and move forward.
Right? And you’re gonna have more clarity, and it’s gonna be awesome.
Everybody, thank you so much for being here. That was the timer. I'm all done.
I wanna say God bless, have a great week, and go make some money, everybody.
We’ll see ya. Bye-bye.
