You know, it has been said that if you
were too afraid of failing to start, well
then you've already failed. I mean, I
think someone said that, I don't know who
though. If they haven't, I want you to
quote me on that and make memes and
stuff and you know, make me look smart to
other people. Seriously though, a fear of
failure is so devastating to your
potential and all the great
opportunities you have in this life. And
in this video, I want to go through some
areas of failure because surprise
surprise, I am no stranger to it myself,
and I think there are a few big fallacies,
big myths about failing that hold
people back, and by being afraid of
failing, it's just not cool. I don't know
what more I have to say. If you're afraid
of failing, you're not going to get
started. You're not going to take action.
I should clarify that. If you're afraid
of failing but you do it the same way
you know someone's afraid of a lion but
they still fight the lion, like in
Gladiator, then that's cool. But if you're
afraid of failing so much that you don't
take action, you don't do anything, that
is going to hold you back and lead to a
life of total regret to looking back 10
years from now and saying, "Well, wasted that
decade, what's next? Let's day dream some
more and never take action," and that is
not what I want for you here on this
channel. So, let's look at three big myths
about failing. Number one, if you fail at
working for yourself, you're going to
lose all your money. Actually, actually
that's not a myth, that one's true and I
did lose all my money completely and
that really sucked. But nonetheless, I'm
still arguing for failing here and why
it's not so bad. So, real myth number one,
that if you fail, you are going to lose
your friends or the respect of
colleagues, friends or family. This one
could not be further from the truth. I
went through a brutal, brutal business
failure that was fairly public in terms
of the nature of my business and the
networks I was in. And guess what, it only
did good things for me. In terms of
family and friends, as far as I know, and
i'm like Ari Gold, I got people
everywhere, I know everything going on. As
far as I know, there was this one guy
I heard about, who made kind of an off-the-cuff
remark about myths of failing and the guy
works in a bank. I mean, come on, that's his
own punishment there. And aside from that,
I heard nothing really negative. On the
positive side, I gained tons and tons of
friends by going after my business, so I
made all these different entrepreneurs,
entrepreneurial friends that to this day
are still great friends. And as I went
through the failure, none of them, to my
knowledge at least, really lost any
respect for me. I know this because when
I restarted as a copywriter, I got offers
to do partnerships, to work together, to
help each other out, all this stuff right
away, rather than be kind of the guy with
the plague, because it'll be like, "Oh, the leper,"
that's the saying. Rather than being the
leper that is you know, kicked out by
going through failure, I think people had
respect for it. They said, "Hey you went for
it, you went big, you failed. So what, we
all do it," and if anything, I think I earned
a lot of respect from, at least the
people that matter, right? Sure, if you go
after your dream which happens to be
working for yourself or your own
business, and you fail, you better believe
the guy working at the bank who hates
his life and he's too scared to actually
start his own business, of course he's
going to look at you and say, "Oh yeah,
like I failed, haha," because how else is
it gonna, he needs to protect his own ego
because he doesn't have the guts to go
after his own dream, because he's too
scared of failing, because probably he
hasn't watched this video, which he might
be very offended by at this point. So, the
people who matter will not lose respect
for you, if anything, you will gain more
and more of their respect because people
have a huge respect for people who take
control of their own life and go after
what they want. So, that is myth, totally
false. If you go after what you want, even
if you do fail, and stick with me and I'm
going to do my best to keep you from
failing, but even if you do fail, you will
gain friends, you will gain respect, and
your networks will be better for it.
The second myth about failing, I think, is
people often look at working for
themselves as like a one-time
opportunity. You know the fallacy with
like business, "You know, I've got it, I've
got the one business idea. It's going to
make it for me," right? The reality is,
there are dozens, if not hundreds of
businesses and opportunities you could
do throughout your life. And holding off
for that perfect opportunity because
you're scared of failing is not going to
serve you at all. You are much better
going for something and maybe, maybe
failing, and then taking that knowledge
taking everything you've learned from
that experience, and then going after
something new, because every year that
you work for yourself, you'll learn more
about yourself, you'll learn more about
business and you'll probably discover
more opportunities. So rather than being
left in a situation where you went for
the perfect opportunity and failed, and
then you're like, "Well, I used up that
perfect opportunity, I guess for the rest
of my life, I'll just hang out and play
xbox." Instead of that, you're going to
find out that there's way better
opportunities because think about it,
when you're just starting out, you don't
really know a lot. No offense if you're
just starting out, but you don't, okay?
It's like when the 14-year-old boy like
gives his dad grief like, "Dad, you don't
know anything about women, I know women
more," like my son ever tries that, he's
getting a 1950s style. Never mind. But
because you don't know what you don't
know, right? So when you are starting out,
you don't really know that much about
business. You might have book knowledge,
you might have video knowledge, but a lot
of that changes in reality. And this is a
good thing, because it means a year or
two into business, let's say you start
working for yourself for two years and
then you fail. And you got to start again,
you got to try something else. You are
going to be so much smarter two years,
and you're going to have so much more
people, like a much better network. Sound
like Donald Trump, so much more people,
more people. You're going to have such a
better network, and you're going to be in
a situation where you're going to also
have a lot of self-knowledge. One of the
things that I found is, going through a
big failure, I gained a lot of wisdom,
like I was much better at making
decisions. Before, when I started the
business, I had book knowledge. I thought
I knew it all, but I was kind of a
wise ass and I didn't know the real world.
And afterward, I was a lot wiser, a lot
calmer, I could think things through a
lot more, and I just became, I think a
better entrepreneur because of it. So,
rather than going forward and failing,
meaning you miss your opportunity, if you
go for it and fail, you're going to find twice as
many opportunities on the other side. By
going for it, you're going to meet new
people, you're going to learn new things,
and you're going to have way more
opportunities on the other end. And the
less myth that I think holds people back,
is that if they go for it and they fail,
they're going to be left high and dry,
just screwed and in a really bad spot.
And often, I think, because it's an
unknown spot, it's a lot scarier than the
reality. So, there's some truth to this. I
mean I mentioned before, when I went for
it and failed, I was broke. Broke, broke,
broke, broke, broke at the end. And when
I was that guy who went into Starbucks
with like his own Starbucks branded
tea from home, just made at home rather
than pay the three dollars for tea there
because I couldn't afford it, so I get
the brokenness. And yes, you may have a
rough patch if you fail, I'm not going to
deny that. But to think of it as the end
of the world, it's completely not. It's your
next step in the opportunity, and very,
very few successful entrepreneurs have
not been in a tough phase or a down phase,
and it's part of the journey. And so at
the end of it, you could look at it like
you're high and dry, if you want to take
that kind of negative attitude, but
really, wherever you are right now, okay,
you have a certain business network, you have a
certain amount of knowledge, you have
certain job opportunities, right, in terms
of whatever job you have or could have.
Let's say, for two years, you go work for
yourself. Now, I will make this argument
day and day and day again, that if you
work for yourself you learn a lot more, a
lot quicker than working for someone
else. The amount of skills you pick up
just in a few months and the breadth of
skills that, I think that's a word, that you
need to pick up on to just know all
sorts of different things, you are going
to be very in demand if you ever do need
to get a job, because a lot of the
entrepreneurial skills that are
important now, like internet marketing,
tax side, sales, very in demand in all
companies. So, if you have the
entrepreneurial side, you work for
yourself, you learn how to be
self-disciplined, self-motivated, learn
things on your own, guess what? There are
millions of people who would love to
hire you, including me, because that's a
great skill set and personality set to
have developed. Now, I would not encourage
you to quit and go back to a job, but I want to throw
that out there, where if you ever did,
you're going to be more in demand than
when you started your business. The other
thing, let's say you want to do, which I
would encourage you to do, is to start
another company, start something new. So,
for example, I started my business which
was like a newspaper type thing, let's not get
into the details now, and when it failed,
I became a copywriter, a freelance
copywriter. So I went into this with a
lot of knowledge. When I had the
newspaper, that's when I've read a few
books about copywriting, I developed more
sales skills, I had built a lot of the
assets which help me then be successful.
So again, wherever you are now, two years
from now, if you take two years to work
for yourself, at the end of that, you're
going to be in such a better position in
terms of who you are, and that's going to
open up so many more doors. So, whether
that means working for someone else or
continuing to work for yourself, this
myth of being high and dry, like, "I'm
screwed, now I went for it." It's total BS,
you're going to be so much more better
connected, you're going to be more
educated, more wise, you're going to have
more skills, and all that is going to
open more doors. So yes, you might have a
few months of being that guy in
Starbucks with the tea he made from home
that everyone kind of knows he made at
home, but you live with it you, move on
and you open way more doors and way more
opportunities. I can say right now, my
life now is so much better than it would
have been, if that business kind of
succeeded and kept going. And, I am so
grateful that I kept going, that you know
when it did fail, I took all that
knowledge and the skills, and then you
know, kept going and kept moving on with
it. And so, keep that in mind is, yeah, you
might have ups and downs, but as long as
you keep going, you're always developing
yourself, you're always becoming better
and you're always getting more
opportunities because you're learning
more and more about what's out there. So,
that's it. These are reasons that you
should not be scared to fail. If anything,
it sounds like you should fail, "Heck,
forget about succeeding, go out there,
start a business and fail the heck out
of it," all right? Fail miserably, come back
to me in two years and you'll be awesome.
Thanks for watching this, if you've
enjoyed this video, I make new ones
Monday, Wednesday and Friday so if I was you,
I would subscribe to the channel, mmm
here, there'll be a thing
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subscribe, catch my other videos and in
the comments below, is there something I
missed? Is there a fear of failure, is there a
reason that's holding you back that I
didn't address here, that you think, "Hey,
all right Dan, that was all great, thanks
a lot for your weird-ass video, but you
really miss this important point." If
there is, share it below and I'll get
back to you. Thanks for watching, catch you in
another one.