Failure: The Secret of Success

"Failure is the raw material from which success is forged." - Jeremiah Miller

"Are you having a breakdown or a breakthrough?" - Tim Ferriss




When was the last time in your life that you felt amazing?

When was the last time that you felt on top of the world because of a huge success?

Let's consider that success. Was it luck? Did it just happen to you? Or was is a result of your hard work, your perseverance, your overcoming challenges, your picking yourself up off the ground every time you got knocked down until you didn’t get knocked down anymore? If the success made you feel amazing, it was likely the latter.

This concept of success having more value if it was difficult to achieve has permeated the human consciousness for millennia, in fact the saying "No pain, no gain" has been with us since the mid 1600s.

People learn through repeated attempts; repeated failures. Picture a toddler taking his first steps, jerking forward unsteadily on shaky legs, then falling down, crawling to the nearest piece of furniture, pulling themselves up, and setting out across the room again.

When any of us make the decision to grow in our lives, we are that toddler. Whether it's physical growth, like running a marathon or putting on 10 lbs of muscle; intellectual growth, like learning a new language; or emotional growth, like becoming a leader, or being a better husband or father; growth and eventual success come from failure.

Think about how you learned the most important lessons in your life. Did you learn them from something that went well for you, or did you learn through failing? As a state champion wrestler, I always learned more from my losses that I did my wins. It’s been the same way in the rest of my life; I've learned to set proper expectations with business partners because of a brutal business failure; I’ve learned to keep toxic people out of my life because of failed friendships with people who added only negativity; I’ve learned to be a loving husband because of lessons i've learned in my marriage.

I owned a mortgage company from 2004-2007; my brother, David, came to work for me on a summer internship right out of college. Not only hadn’t he sold anything before, but he also didn’t know anything about the mortgage business, and to top it off he was battling anxiety disorder. His job was to make cold calls to homeowners and find someone who was interested in speaking with a loan officer for a refinance; he would then pass the call off to an experienced loan officer.

The first few weeks of his internship were extremely difficult for him. He struggled with something that plagues most salespeople, call avoidance. He had acquired an aversion to picking up the phone and making his calls each day because of getting hung up on and being told “No” all day. One night after work, he confided in me how really didn’t think he could stick with this job for the whole summer. He got told “No” at least 25 times each day and he was to the point that he was scared to pick up the phone.

I asked him what he thought his job was. He said “To call people who might want to refinance and find out if they do.” I told him that starting the next day, his job was to collect “NOs”. That each day, his goal was to come into the office, get on the phone and get told “NO” at least 50 times. By the end of the summer, he had to have collected 1000 rejections in order for his internship to be considered a success. And, I didn’t care if he found a single person to tell him “yes”. As soon as collecting rejections became the objective it stopped being scary. He also started having successes.

David got his 1000 “NOs” that summer.

Fast forward five years. David is now the number one salesperson, out of 800 in his division, in the entire Western U.S. at one of the most prestigious life insurance companies in the country. During his first year at this company, he made three times as many cold calls as the average salesperson in his office. David learned to embrace failure.

As long as you accept responsibility for your failures and you learn from them, your failures will pave your path to success.

Because failure is vital to success, failure is precious. Pay attention to your failures; learn the lessons they are there to teach you. If you don’t learn the lesson this time, the same failure will come back around again and again until you do.

Get out there and fail.

Jeremiah