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How comfortable are you with failure?

Would you say it’s something that you embrace or intentionally pursue?

Have you failed much?

Or perhaps a way Jeff Bezos might ask is—

Are you failing ENOUGH to succeed?

Fail and fail again

You know the phrase, “If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again?”

It’s a powerful way of thinking about failure because it emphasizes persistence like this quote from Elon Musk—

The first launch I was picking up bits of rocket near the launch site, which was a bit sad, but we learned with each successive flight. And we were able to eventually with the fourth flight in 2008 reach orbit, and that was also with the last bit of money that we had.

This notion to “try and try again” is exemplified by the common example of Thomas Edison’s 10,000 experiments to invent the light bulb.

It’s a “resourceful” way of thinking about failure but what I saw from Jeff Bezos was FAR MORE valuable to me.

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Do you know this expression?

To pull a thread and get the whole ball of yarn?

Is it something that resonates with you?

I often use it in the context of continuing to drive forward, even if you DON’T know how.

This is especially valuable when you’re stuck, not knowing what to do.

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This is one of my favorite quotes of Jeff Bezos—

“I have realized about myself that I’m very motivated by people counting on me. I like to be counted on.”

Researching Jeff many of his ideas have stuck with me, yet there’s something of highest meaning here.

Leading and being counted on by others can be stressful and hard for many of us, yet delivering for others is our highest calling.

Certainly at Amazon Jeff’s counted on by millions of customers, shareholders, employees and many others.

And at Blue Origin he has the opportunity to be counted on by all of our species.

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In 1994 Jeff Bezos was watching the Internet explode.

As we watched him say last week in this clip he saw, “If it was growing at 2,300% a year pretty soon it was going to be huge.”

Still, most people had never heard of the Internet.

Nobody knew how it would evolve.

Let alone how any business would use it to make money.

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It’s ALWAYS obvious in hindsight.

With perfect 20/20 backward vision you could easily make your absolute best decisions.

And if you could turn back time, you might make plenty of different choices.

But foresight is entirely different, isn’t it?

Here you have less than perfect information.

You’re in the realm of uncertainty, risk, downside, fear, failure, loss, etc.

But also excitement, possibility, adventure, and potentially HUGE opportunity.

“It was going to be huge”

This is one of my favorite clips of Jeff Bezos:

It’s short yet it takes you back to where all this started for him.

Back to the mid-90s where he’s at MIT describing the exciting growth he was seeing online, Jeff says—

“If it was growing at 2,300% a year, pretty soon it was going to be huge.”

Of course in hindsight leaving his job to go after this opportunity seems a no-brainer, but keep in mind that the first question Jeff says he got from the 60 investors he first met was—

“What’s the Internet?”

Since he was a kid Jeff had imagined building things, he was drawn to the adventure and rewards of being an entrepreneur.

Yet it still could have been an extremely hard decision for him.

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Many of us are fascinated by BIG winners.

Often we want to celebrate them.

Be fans.

Put them on a pedestal.

Point to them for this or that reason.

I like to model them for one SELFISH reason.

Do what they do

The first leader I modeled publicly and wrote a book on got me in trouble.

Because that leader was Donald Trump!

I never intended to get caught up in the political dumpster fire.

My ONLY intent was to break down his winning influence.

So others like you (and me) can take over the world too 🙂

See, that’s what I care about in modeling other people’s winning.

I could care less talking about that person and what they’ve achieved.

My focus is on getting clear on how they win, so you can do it too.

It’s the same with Elon Musk.

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