IAM1500 – Do You Give Yourself the Permission to Fail?
Special Episode by Gresham Harkless Jr.
Do you have a failing wall?
In this episode, Gresh shares with his CEO Nugget why it is important to fail. That is why he created his own fail wall in his new podcast room. To remind himself and others that,
“While things happen and things are imperfect, it’s completely okay, it’s actually the path towards success”.
Just like a baby who learns to walk, fall down, and crawl but has to get up and fall again many times.
You fail forward. You fall down, but definitely you get up.
Swing big, hit big but sometimes you miss big.
You always pass failure on your way to success.
Winners are not afraid of losing, but losers are.
Failure is part of the process of success.
The phoenix must burn to emerge, so you must go through the process in order to emerge to where you are today.
Mistakes are actually proof that you are trying.
When we give ourselves the permission to fail, we give ourselves the permission to excel.
If I have not failed, I have just found 10,000 ways that didn’t work.
Failure isn’t final, but quitting is.
Failures are the fingers pointing to success.
Sarah Blakely was encouraged by her dad to fail at a very young age. It was celebrated, It’s okay to go through the process.
“It changed my mindset at an early age that failure is not the outcome, failure is not trying” – Sarah
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Transcription
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00:17 – Intro
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.
00:45 – Gresham Harkless
Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and this is episode number 1500 of the I am CEO podcast It's hard to believe we've hit, you know, 1500 podcasts. I feel like we're just kind of, you know celebrating And you know talking about all the awesome, you know guests I've had on the show As I mentioned in some previous episodes, definitely looking forward to, you know, creating some hopefully valuable insights that I've received from this podcast. But if you can see, you know, to my right, I created something called a failing wall and I would love to take all the credit and say I actually created it but I actually did not.
It was created because I made a mistake and one of the things that I really wanted to touch on something that you know I'm reprogramming myself as we speak about, is that failure is not final. It's something that we often will feel embarrassed about, feel like we're less than because things don't go, the way that we want them to go. But I want you to know that failure is definitely not final. And this is, you know, my fail spot that I've ended up calling it. I have some of the quotes that I really wanted to share to remind myself that this is, you know, it's okay to have things that go, you know, 100% okay.
And if you want to know the backstory, I have this new place that I moved into, and I made it into more of a podcast room. So I have dry-erase paint everywhere because I am a whiteboard fanatic. And one of the things that I wanted to do was just, you know, put whiteboard paint in as many places as possible because I had some more left over. I just said, let me just keep going and we'll just make as many places of whiteboard paint as I can make them. Luckily or unluckily, this part showed up, you know, a lot more yellow than the white that is supposed to be. And it's because it was at the bottom of the paint can.
So what I did was make this into a failing wall. I tried to paint over it. And the big thing that, I was trying to do is let myself know, but also others know that while things happen and things are imperfect, it's completely okay. Not only that, it's actually the path that you take towards success. So some of the quotes that I have on the wall, no one tells a baby walking isn't for you. I said that on the show a lot of times when a baby starts to walk and they walk and they fall down and they walk and they fall down. No one says, Hey, you're not really set up for this walking thing. So maybe you need to try something else.
Maybe just crawl for the rest of your life. You never hear that. So again, failing is so important, making sure you're failing forward. If you fall down 15 times, you get up to 16 times. We fall down, but definitely we get up. Swing big, hit big, but sometimes you miss big as well. You always pass failure on your way to success. Winners are not afraid of losing, but losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who are afraid of failure also avoid success. The phoenix must burn to emerge. So again, you must go through that process in order to emerge into where you are today.
I have been kind of in a bubble asking how I failed today is something that I'll touch on and kind of end this with Sarah Blakely talking about how she and her father actually kind of positioned her perspective on failure and how he was asked that on a daily basis to really make sure that she understood that failure was okay. Move fast and make sure that you break things. Mistakes are actually proof that you're trying And when we give ourselves permission to fail, we at the same time give ourselves permission to excel. That's something that's very huge because when we don't, we aren't so wrapped up in we can't fail, We're not allowing ourselves to excel. We're not allowing ourselves to see success. Giving up is the only sure way to fail. Try again, fail again, fail better. If I have not failed, I have not failed.
I've just found 10, 000 ways that didn't work. I have, but did you die? A lot of times, you know, you hear that a lot is like, it was really bad. We messed up, but did you die? Was that really the biggest thing that happened? Everything isn't all sunshine and rainbows. A lot of times on the path to success, you hear of the mistakes, the failures, the things that don't go according to plan. So it's so important to kind of keep that in mind. Success is assembling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. You want to make sure that you understand that it's, you want to keep shooting, you know, regardless. One, I was a big, you know, basketball fan and used to play growing up. So keep shooting, keep shooting, keep shooting.
It's failure that gives you the proper perspective on success. Without failure, you can't really know success. It's like that, the duality that I often will talk about where in order to know how you got to experience cold or cold, you got to experience hot to know love. You sometimes have to experience and experience hate to really love something you sometimes have to experience that dislike and it's just understanding the totality of that duality and what that looks like and which way to go. It's okay to lose failure is in the final but quitting is There is no such thing as a failure only results and failures are fingers pointing on the way to success. So those are just some of the things that I have, you know, on the failing wall.
I'll probably have an image, you know, below so you can, you know, you could take a look at, you know, the fail wall and get an idea of some of those things that I try to kind of have, you know, top of mind. But what I wanted to leave with, one of the things that I try to remind myself of, was this phenomenal interview with Sarah Blakely where she talked a lot about how her dad used to encourage her to fail at a very young age. It changed the way that she looked at failure. Failure wasn't something that was catastrophic. It wasn't something that you wanted to avoid. It was something she was actually celebrated for. So her dad asked her how she failed on a daily basis. And when she would say something that she failed at, he would give her a high 5.
So it really encouraged her that it was okay to fail. It was okay to go through the process, not to necessarily stay at that, but understand that that is part of the success. So I think it's something that we always try to keep in mind is that, yes, you wanna be okay with failing, but how did you improve from that failing? What did you learn from that failure? And I think that's, once you start to kind of, you know, look at things in a different way, it doesn't, unless you know that failure is not final, mistakes are not final. A lot of times when we do things and they don't go according to plan, we think that it's in the world, but it's often very rarely not. So it very rarely is the catastrophic thing that we think it is.
So this is my CEO nugget episode number 1500. I'm failing through this podcast as well, too. If you listen to some of the episodes and you see the video, you'll see tiles falling down. You see all types of things happening. But just understand that that's part of the process. That's how we go forward. That's how we grow. And remember, you know, it's it's, you know, Did you die? Just ask yourself, did you die? Was it really as catastrophic as it possibly was? And even if it was, you feel like it was, more than likely you're able to kind of take those steps to kind of get back to where you want to be. So with that being said, this is Gresh signing out. I truly enjoy hitting episode number 1500, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
08:36 – Outro
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.
00:17 - Intro
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.
00:45 - Gresham Harkless
Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and this is episode number 1500 of the I am CEO podcast It's hard to believe we've hit, you know, 1500 podcasts. I feel like we're just kind of, you know celebrating And you know talking about all the awesome, you know guests I've had on the show As I mentioned in some previous episodes, definitely looking forward to, you know, creating some hopefully valuable insights that I've received from this podcast. But if you can see, you know, to my right, I created something called a failing wall and I would love to take all the credit and say I actually created it but I actually did not.
It was created because I made a mistake and one of the things that I really wanted to touch on something that you know I'm reprogramming myself as we speak about, is that failure is not final. It's something that we often will feel embarrassed about, feel like we're less than because things don't go, the way that we want them to go. But I want you to know that failure is definitely not final. And this is, you know, my fail spot that I've ended up calling it. I have some of the quotes that I really wanted to share to remind myself that this is, you know, it's okay to have things that go, you know, 100% okay.
And if you want to know the backstory, I have this new place that I moved into, and I made it into more of a podcast room. So I have dry-erase paint everywhere because I am a whiteboard fanatic. And one of the things that I wanted to do was just, you know, put whiteboard paint in as many places as possible because I had some more left over. I just said, let me just keep going and we'll just make as many places of whiteboard paint as I can make them. Luckily or unluckily, this part showed up, you know, a lot more yellow than the white that is supposed to be. And it's because it was at the bottom of the paint can.
So what I did was make this into a failing wall. I tried to paint over it. And the big thing that, I was trying to do is let myself know, but also others know that while things happen and things are imperfect, it's completely okay. Not only that, it's actually the path that you take towards success. So some of the quotes that I have on the wall, no one tells a baby walking isn't for you. I said that on the show a lot of times when a baby starts to walk and they walk and they fall down and they walk and they fall down. No one says, Hey, you're not really set up for this walking thing. So maybe you need to try something else.
Maybe just crawl for the rest of your life. You never hear that. So again, failing is so important, making sure you're failing forward. If you fall down 15 times, you get up to 16 times. We fall down, but definitely we get up. Swing big, hit big, but sometimes you miss big as well. You always pass failure on your way to success. Winners are not afraid of losing, but losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who are afraid of failure also avoid success. The phoenix must burn to emerge. So again, you must go through that process in order to emerge into where you are today.
I have been kind of in a bubble asking how I failed today is something that I'll touch on and kind of end this with Sarah Blakely talking about how she and her father actually kind of positioned her perspective on failure and how he was asked that on a daily basis to really make sure that she understood that failure was okay. Move fast and make sure that you break things. Mistakes are actually proof that you're trying And when we give ourselves permission to fail, we at the same time give ourselves permission to excel. That's something that's very huge because when we don't, we aren't so wrapped up in we can't fail, We're not allowing ourselves to excel. We're not allowing ourselves to see success. Giving up is the only sure way to fail. Try again, fail again, fail better. If I have not failed, I have not failed.
I've just found 10, 000 ways that didn't work. I have, but did you die? A lot of times, you know, you hear that a lot is like, it was really bad. We messed up, but did you die? Was that really the biggest thing that happened? Everything isn't all sunshine and rainbows. A lot of times on the path to success, you hear of the mistakes, the failures, the things that don't go according to plan. So it's so important to kind of keep that in mind. Success is assembling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. You want to make sure that you understand that it's, you want to keep shooting, you know, regardless. One, I was a big, you know, basketball fan and used to play growing up. So keep shooting, keep shooting, keep shooting.
It's failure that gives you the proper perspective on success. Without failure, you can't really know success. It's like that, the duality that I often will talk about where in order to know how you got to experience cold or cold, you got to experience hot to know love. You sometimes have to experience and experience hate to really love something you sometimes have to experience that dislike and it's just understanding the totality of that duality and what that looks like and which way to go. It's okay to lose failure is in the final but quitting is There is no such thing as a failure only results and failures are fingers pointing on the way to success. So those are just some of the things that I have, you know, on the failing wall.
I'll probably have an image, you know, below so you can, you know, you could take a look at, you know, the fail wall and get an idea of some of those things that I try to kind of have, you know, top of mind. But what I wanted to leave with, one of the things that I try to remind myself of, was this phenomenal interview with Sarah Blakely where she talked a lot about how her dad used to encourage her to fail at a very young age. It changed the way that she looked at failure. Failure wasn't something that was catastrophic. It wasn't something that you wanted to avoid. It was something she was actually celebrated for. So her dad asked her how she failed on a daily basis. And when she would say something that she failed at, he would give her a high 5.
So it really encouraged her that it was okay to fail. It was okay to go through the process, not to necessarily stay at that, but understand that that is part of the success. So I think it's something that we always try to keep in mind is that, yes, you wanna be okay with failing, but how did you improve from that failing? What did you learn from that failure? And I think that's, once you start to kind of, you know, look at things in a different way, it doesn't, unless you know that failure is not final, mistakes are not final. A lot of times when we do things and they don't go according to plan, we think that it's in the world, but it's often very rarely not. So it very rarely is the catastrophic thing that we think it is.
So this is my CEO nugget episode number 1500. I'm failing through this podcast as well, too. If you listen to some of the episodes and you see the video, you'll see tiles falling down. You see all types of things happening. But just understand that that's part of the process. That's how we go forward. That's how we grow. And remember, you know, it's it's, you know, Did you die? Just ask yourself, did you die? Was it really as catastrophic as it possibly was? And even if it was, you feel like it was, more than likely you're able to kind of take those steps to kind of get back to where you want to be. So with that being said, this is Gresh signing out. I truly enjoy hitting episode number 1500, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
08:36 - Outro
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.
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