995. FAILURE Is The Fuel Most People Are Afraid To Use

People fear failure.

But what if failure isn’t something to avoid…
What if it’s the very thing you need?

In this episode, I riff on Eight Lessons on How to Fail Better by Tito Beveridge and break down what his journey really shows—success isn’t built in spite of failure… It’s built because of it.

If you’re trying to figure things out…
If you feel stuck or behind…
If you’re frustrated with where you are…

You don’t need a perfect plan, and you don’t need everything figured out.

You just need to keep going—and start seeing failure for what it really is:

Fuel.

There’s a raw energy that comes from failing. Most people waste it. The ones who win learn how to use it.

This episode will help you stop fearing failure—and start using it to move forward.

Transcript

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So I just finished running down a Dream by Bill Gurley, running down a dream how to thrive in a career that you actually, uh, love and. I'm a lily pad kind of guy. Meaning that, and I, and I think this is important for you. Like you, you come across something, something else comes up, you chase that, like chase your curiosity. And so just to kind of frame up how this came about, I was listening to David Senra's podcast and he. He did a story or narrative on Bill Gurley's book. Never heard of Bill Gurley. And so I, I, I listened to David's podcast sometimes to get some ideas on what my next book should read, order the book, and I read it for myself. And one of my favorite chapters, and I'll probably do an episode on this, is it's never too late success at any age, right up my alley, because kind of the, the drumbeat that I have is I wanna prove, what's possible on the other side of too late. I'm a guy who has been bankrupt, I've been homeless, I've been demoted,, I've been obese. I've had some, some tough runs, but I'm thankful for every bit of that. This was an important chapter for me, just the title of it alone. And in that chapter, Gurley is talking about Tito Beveridge Now his last name is Beveridge So that was the first thing I looked up. Like Tito's Vodka is Tito Beveridge. Is Beveridge like his last name. Tito is Spanish for Bert. His real name is actually Bert Bert Beveridge as a little kid, they called him Tito. And so I'm reading Bill Gurley's book and there, in the conclusion of the book, he references an article that Tito Beveridge wrote about the eight lessons on how to fail better. I'm fascinated with. Entrepreneurs because I really connect to those things. I was fascinated about Todd Graves and his story, and I did an episode sometime back about how even in the toughest of times, yeah, I mean, he's the wealthiest man in Louisiana, like worth. Multiple billions of dollars selling chicken fingers. And, you know, the, the story I did an episode like, like I said, I don't know which one it is, some sometime back and, and he chased this chicken finger dream. And so I'm, I'm really like magnetized to these, these stories because they're very inspiring because I get, you know, I, I'll be 53 this year and I get in those moments where it's like. Has life passed me by? Is it too late? And I read stuff like this and it's like, let's go. I wanna show you what's possible on the other side of too late. And that's just the mantra that I bang the drum on. And I bring these episodes. Hopefully they help you, but I, I do'em for me because they're inspiring. So I don't read to you and riff on. The eight lessons on how to fail better by Tito Beveridge and no matter where you are in life, I'm gonna share this with my daughter because I think this is something like if you're young or you're older and feel like life is kind of passed you by. I think this is, I think this is so important, and I'll put the link to the article in the show note so that way you can read it and synthesize it. For yourself. So here's what he wrote. He said, don't get me wrong, I hate to fail. I always say that. I'm not very competitive. I hate to lose. And that about sums it up. So why am I writing about failure? Because I believe that there's no other way to succeed, honestly. I believe that if you wanna succeed, you have to come up with a way to fail gracefully. Is it gonna make it any less painful? Hell no failure, your hurts, but it may keep you from being a quitter or blowing your brains out or just giving up. On this great opportunity called life with all of its ups and downs. Hopefully by sharing with you what I've learned about failing and how I've dealt with it, you will have a better understanding of it and maybe even conquer your momentary fear and take a chance to do something great, something that you love to do that you're good at, and that gets you excited about being alive, your passion. It is not for everyone. It's not easy, but I believe it's a great way to be aware and interact and experience life. Now, let's just stop right there. Look at how he looks at life. Life is a dance and he says, look. Failure is a necessary ingredient to success. And if you can look at and change your relationship with failure and learn to dance with this thing, is it gonna be painful? Absolutely. Absolutely. But if you will find something that you love to do, and you will do that. Or you will actually head in some sort of direction. Even if you don't know what you love to do, you start heading in a direction and he'll unfold this here in just a second. Then you begin to experience this thing called life and it, and it just may be give pause, like, are you experiencing life or are you just looking at everything like the next payday and the next bill that's coming up this is what I wrote down in my tablet. Do life, don't let life do you. And it comes from, a book I read sometime back by Damon West. And he ended up going to prison and he, and some guy in there told him, do your time, don't let time do you. Meaning you control the cadence, you control yourself, you get better while you're in here. And you don't let the circumstances do. You do your time. Don't let time do you. And the way that you're gonna do that is you gotta experience life. You gotta embrace the failure. You gotta see failure for what it is. And he says it's raw energy that you can actually use to propel you forward. Continuing on. He said, lemme start with my favorite quote. Success is meeting each and every failure with equal enthusiasm. I think that's like a Winston Churchill quote. Life is dirty. Entrepreneurship. I love this. Entrepreneurship is like steer wrestling at a rodeo. Some people never enter. That's the people that sit in the stands. Some people never get off their horse and onto a steer. Some people jump off the horse, grab the steer by the horn, but then the steer rolls back on top of him. And then some of them jump off the horse, grab the steer by the horn, plant their feet and wrestle it to the ground. Those are the ones who win the prize money. Either way, once you leave your horse, you're gonna get dirty. When's the last time you left your horse? There's a lot of people, man, that just ride a horse. They never enter the competition of entrepreneurship and even intrapreneurship is, you work at another company, but you're, you're kind of like an entrepreneur within that intrapreneurship So some people, all they do is they sit on the horse. All they do is they tell you what's wrong with the world. They tell you what they would do if they were in this position, yet they ain't getting off the horse. And he says, for entrepreneurs. I think to some degree we all are. Once you get off that horse, bro, you're gonna get dirty. There's gonna be consequences. You may jump off and totally miss. You may jump off in the steer of whatever you just grabbed the horns by, rolls back on top of you and you're like, oh fuck. You never know. And you may, after multiple attempts, grab that steer, plant your feet in the ground and wrestle that thing to the ground and win the prize money. Continuing on, once you leave your horse, you're gonna get dirty, you're going to get up, look for your hat, be covered in dirt, and slap your hat against your jeans and wave to the crowd and like stagger to the gates all disoriented.'cause you got your brains knocked in. But man, you, you made the attempt. He said that to me is entrepreneurship. Whether you win or you lose, you're gonna get dirty. You're gonna get trampled, you're gonna get disoriented. It's a ride, an experience, a way of life. Anytime you try to do something out of the ordinary, meaning the extra to the ordinary, you're taking a chance and you will have failures. Ain't no doubt about it. I know these days a lot of kids are raised that everyone is a winner and everyone gets a trophy. Believe me, in business and in life, that ain't how it works. Most of the time, your competition is trying to cut you off at the knees, if not at the neck. It's a dog eat dog world. And if you're scared, someone's gonna say something mean about you on social media. Or lie about you in the marketplace, you better stay at home and don't bother to get outta bed because in the real world, if your competition isn't talking shit about you, you ain't even relevant. When you start taking a chunk out of their sales, you just wait after a while, just becomes a way of life. Every knock is a boost. Every time you hear something ugly said about you, you learn to smile and knowing it is only because you're succeeding. That is real life. See, you're kicking their ass in front of them and they don't like it. So he says, let's start with little failures. I was running a heliportable which is I guess helicopter or portable helicopter type thing. HEA portable, dynamite seismic cruise down in Venezuela, and my country manager gave me some sage advice. Delegate everything you can. So you have time to deal with the extraordinary problems that come through the door. Don't worry about making the wrong decision. Make the best decision you can with the information that you have, but make a decision nonetheless. Making. No decision is a decision in itself. So make a decision if later on you find out that you made a bad decision. Once you got all the information, you got more information, don't beat yourself up. Don't dwell on it. Just make another decision with the information and just keep moving. Just keep making decisions, bro. Stop right there. You gotta make the decision. This goes back to, did an episode on that. Make the decision, Dr. Ellen Langer, make the decision, then make the decision. Right? Bro, by and large people are terrified of making a decision. I mean, absolutely terrified because they want all the information, they want to know the outcome and look, delegate all you can, and deal with the heat, whatever the the big shit is that's coming at you, deal with that and you make the best decision with the information that you have. Okay, is all the, are you gonna get it right? No. Can you make it right? Yes. You just keep playing, because a lot of times, man, they're, they're not decisions that you can't recover from. There are very few. Will you look foolish at times? Could you possibly lose your job? Could you, could you, you know, get some sort of writeup? Could you, could it cost you a bunch of money? Maybe, but you just make another decision. Make the decision, and then make the decision, right? To me, this is a distinction on here to me, there are two types of failures. There's critical failures and noncritical failures. Critical failures are the dumb shit that you do. Okay? These are the ones that you die or you're permanently incapacitated. Uh, for instance. You walk home drunk and a bad part of town gets stabbed, or you fall asleep on the highway and drive off a bridge, or you take Xanax and then someone shoots you up with heroin or you do a handstand, uh, in the balcony, on the balcony, uh, of a high rise apartment and you fall off. Okay? Those are critical decisions. Don't do those things, those type of failures because you live in the physical world. You gotta avoid those things at all costs. The failures I'm talking about are the non-critical failures. They might feel critical when you're experiencing 'em. Yes, they hurt. Yes, they're embarrassing, but you won't die and you will recover. You will, and you'll actually get better at it. You'll get stronger. In the moment you feel like you're dying. But in the long run, you're not. Things like being fired, not getting in the school of your choice or getting the job that you want, having a failed business. or a few. In his case, he had three failed businesses, having a failed business, failed relationships or marriages or careers, getting in trouble with the powers that be dealing with the death of loved ones, being publicly ridiculed. These are all things that I'm talking about general, all around where the rubber hits the road. Life is full of hard knocks. First of all, besides having a child, there's no other time this is important. So here's this raw energy he's talking about. First of all, besides having a child, there's no other time When you feel so much energy is when you experience failure. Think about that. Like the times I, and I, I laugh with this with my wife when, when there are times she has been snubbed or stepped on, bro, it's like this, this beast comes outta the furnace and she is just like, and I'm like, oh, here we go. And she just levels up. Every single time I've seen this happen, and I think about this in my own life, like when I've experienced some tough, tough failures, bro, it's, you come alive, don't you? Like, you're like, oh, fuck no. And like you have these temporary moments where you're just like, oh, what, what am I gonna, you feel sorry. And then you just, you just, it, it ignites you. That's that raw energy that he's, that he's talking about. He says, you get a lot more energy from failure than success. Truth. Truth. I've experienced a great deal of both. He said, you know, having these, this raw energy must be some sort of preservation that helps keeps us, it keeps us alive. I think we're wire, I mean, we're already wired for negativity anyway.'cause that's the thing that keeps us safe. And that's the thing that like all of a sudden just gets your adrenaline going. Get your wheels turning again, kind of shakes you out of this complacency that you've had in life. I've had so much energy going through me at times, albeit negative, I couldn't sleep for days. And he said, I've never felt so successful that I couldn't sleep for days. Meaning that he's had some tough, tough, tough times. And that, that energy that he felt from that failure, like he couldn't sleep 'cause he was just trying to work this out. But he is like, I, on the flip side, I've, I've been successful before. P. Slept like a baby. I would. I didn't have these sleep.'cause success can get you complacent. Success can make you soft. He said, I think this is why people are so scared of failure and why success is such a great doorman. Love that term a great doorman to the success party so he said, let me walk you through some of my personal. Best or worst failures? When I was four years old, I went to kindergarten and I had no idea my name was Bert. Everyone always called me Tito, so I thought that was my real name. I spent the whole day in the office and ultimately when my mom came to pick me up from school, I broke down and said, couldn't you have least told me what my real name was? And she responded, wipe those tears off your face, or I'm gonna give you something to cry about. All our parents said that. I just did you the biggest favor. From now on everything you do in that class is gonna be an improvement. No big deal. You say, I'm still talking about this 50 years later. So lesson number one, there's nothing like perspective. You're still alive and that's the greatest opportunity there is. Continuing on. I went on to be an entrepreneur in high school. All right, so here he is. He's an entrepreneur in high school. When he, uh, he and a buddy started a landscaping company, his buddy had a driver's license. So that way we could drive around. We s scalded yards with my grandfather's, the lawnmower, and we planted plants that subsequently died. We over fertilized grass and burnt it all up, but I learned from my mistakes and I learned how to do things right. Call it good old fashioned trial and error. Eventually I got my own driver's license and I ended up with 77 yards and 12 apartment complexes. I was a cash printing teenager and got into all sorts of great concerts and lived the good life, all because I didn't quit even when I got fired from ruining someone's yard and persevered in the end. Okay, so he starts this. This is why I say young people, man, you gotta start trying some things. But even if you're young at heart, like he started something, him and a buddy, they started it. Didn't know what the hell they were doing, but kudos for trying it burnt up people's yards 'cause they over fertilizer or probably fertilizer at the wrong time in the heat of the day, just burned up people's yards. Okay. Scalded people's yards. Had the blade set wrong. Planted plants didn't do that right. That crap died, but, and he didn't even mention his buddy anymore. I bet you his buddy just went on and did something else. But he learned from his mistakes. And he kept going and he learned how to do things right. Ended up 77 yards and 12 apartment complexes as a teenager. Imagine having 77 yards. I had like. I don't remember. 10, 15 yards, bro. Like life was great. I was just making my own money. I was actually driving around at 14 years old. I didn't have a driver's license, but my parents got so tired of driving me around with my lawnmower. They were just like, bro, take it. I had a 74 Dodge Duster P Green with a three 18 V eight. I threw that lawnmower in the trunk, tied it down with some rope, and rode around from yard to yard knocking on people's door. That was the entrepreneurship for me, and I was making my own money. So that's lesson number two. Persevere. You're gonna make some mistakes. Roll with 'em and keep going. Continuing on, I applied to 14 universities, gets outta high school, applies to 14 universities. I applied to the best in the country. He didn't just apply to these community colleges. He's like, I'm gonna apply to the best in the in the country. I got into Vanderbilt. The rest of them turned me down. Okay. Sent applications to 14 universities. Only one Vanderbilt took me in. I made good grades and I wanted to be a doctor, and my classmates were like, what kind of doctor you want to be? He was like, hell, I thought you were either a doctor or not a doctor. I didn't know there was different kinds of doctors. So they said, I tell you what, why don't you go intern. At the hospital and see how you like it. He realized real quick that he didn't like it. After three days, he realized he was a germaphobe. He didn't like being around sick people, and this was not his forte. He realized that this is why I say you should go intern. I was talking to my daughter the other day and I'm like, you know this field that you think that you want to get into in college? Why don't you, before you get into college, why don't you go intern, see if you even like it, because what you think you like, you may not even like. I see so many. Young adults that are trapped in their education because they vouch through their parents. Why would some 17, 18-year-old know what the hell they wanna do in life? Like this is the, the, the, the end of the, like there are very few that actually know this, and I think the ones that do are like people that just their parents send them there and like, no, you're gonna be a doctor. You're gonna be a lawyer. Okay. I mean, that, they're just mandated, but they're miserable. And so why do we just think that a 17, hell, you didn't have it all together. You didn't know what the fuck you were gonna do at 17, 18 years old. Don't expect that from your kids too. So this is why you should intern. So he realizes, Hey, this ain't what I want to do. And I would love the fact that he, he just was like, Nope, this ain't for me. So he gets outta school, goes to be a roughneck, I guess in the summertime or whatever. Yeah, over the summer. And he ended up switching schools, which was the University of Texas to become a geologist and a geophysicist. Okay. So that's lesson number three. You gotta attempt things in the first place. Don't be scared of the mistakes. They're part of the learning process. How would you learn what you love if you don't attempt them in the first place, or at least learn what you don't want to do? Because it can guide you to what you do wanna do. See, this is important. How do you, if you don't try things, you're just, you're going by default. Okay? You're doing what everybody else is doing. But if you try things, how will you learn to love something or fall in love with something or stumbling to love of something and you're like, oh my God, I love this. You won't know until you try different things, and you may try 20 or 30 different things before you find something that you love. Ain't nothing wrong with that because you're gonna find here in just a second. Nothing is for nothing, okay? It all comes back. It all is beneficial for you. So, but you gotta try these things. And at the bare minimum, even if you try some things, you gotta go outta the way and it looks like a waste of time. You're like, bro, what I spent all this time doing, nothing's for nothing. So sometimes you're wrong on the way to being right. So you do things wrong, but, and it seems like it in the moment, but that's what you learn to love what you do want to do, and you realize I don't want to do that. So at least I would rather know than assume. So at least you know for sure firsthand because you experienced it. I don't, I don't wanna do this. Okay. Switch gears. Be flexible. Alright, so let's recap. This applies for all these universities. Only gets into one, gets to Vanderbilt, wants to be a doctor. Ends up interning as a doctor and realize he don't like it. Goes for the summertime to be a roughneck. Kind of likes it. Interested in, in geophysics, in a geologist switches schools. Go to University of Texas. Puts in the work, gets a degree. All right. Life is kicking in for him. Here we go. So he graduates University of Texas with degrees in geology and geophys. Just in time for the end of the oil boom. So just when he thought life was finally kicking in for him. He does everything right oil boom. Dies as soon as he gets his degree. I sent out 186 resumes and did not get a single interview, only rejection letters 186. Most of you man, quit at two You send out two resumes man, ain't nobody hiring nothing. 186, got 186 rejection letters. Ultimately got a job as a geologist with a friend of my cousin's who recently he was in a bottom out situation. He was going through divorce, trying to make some money back. Alright, so he goes to work with a friend of his cousins. After a year, that whole thing shuts down. Dream job gone. There were no other jobs. So I started the Uno oil company. I was the UNO employee of Uno Oil. I put together a bunch of prospects and tried to sell 'em. Nobody bought it. So I started margining money that I had and traded stocks. I made some good money all. So now he's gonna be, what? A day Trader starts buying stocks, starts making a little money on that. Okay. Then Black Monday hit October 19th, 1987. I got sold outta my stocks. And ended up back to the bottom rung where he was in high school helping his stepfather, plant plants, bro, he just, I mean, got a degree, like had some stumbles and falls, but really he was pretty much trying to do his best, putting some things together, kind of doing what society tells you to do, got a degree, followed this peer career path. All oil bust. The oil field dried up. Wasn't his fault starts and then gets on and, and does this little side hustle job. Makes a little bit of money that crap shuts down in a year, starts his own oil company. God bless you for doing that. The UNO oil company, he's the UNO employee that don't work, ends up back working. Landscaping again. Had to start over all over again. He said, I went broke and I never forgot the 11 mile run I took that night having lost all my money. I had a lot of energy that night. All of it bad. That's lesson number four. You might do everything right and just have bad timing, but don't beat yourself up about it. Exercise helps. I find it interesting that, you know, he said, I mean, he could have gone to the bar or whatever, bought a. Suitcase full of beer and sat on the back of a pickup truck commiserating. He went on 11 mile run. Exercise does help and I do feel like, like, man, when you're having those bad days, man, go, go work out. Get some of that negative energy, burn some of that negative energy on that. Alright, continuing on. So he leaves town, goes to Houston, got a job as a seismic data processor. This is where it gets really good. I hated it. And after four months, I was having dreams of floating down a river in a body bag. I was so miserable. I resigned. I was offered a job as a field clerk on a seismic crew in Venezuela, all right off to Venezuela. He goes, after a year and a half, I worked my way up. To the Jefe del Grupo, running a 350 man, hella portable, dynamite seismic crew. I was trained in explosives, built dynamite magazines, did AFL CIO labor union negotiations in Spanish, and dealt with generals and judges. This is all in Venezuela. I got transferred to Columbia. So D does good. I mean, he's negotiating contracts in Spanish 350 man crew and they're like, bro, Tito, you're doing so good. We're sending you to Columbia. And ultimately there have been no gringos out there in three years. The ELN Freedom Fighters. Wanted money, pharmaceuticals, and dynamite. I couldn't give 'em any of it. And they told me they were looking at a dead man. My god. Here we go. Finally, catching some, some track does well in Venezuela doing so good. They ship 'em out to Columbia, ends up in front of the freedom fighters and they say, we want drugs. We want money and we want dynamite. He said, I can't give you any of 'em. They were like, we're looking at a dead man. Good God. So he calls his company, he says, Hey man, this is what's going on. Get me outta here. And they're like, we can't. It took 11 hours driving by Jeep at night through river beds and dirt roads to get you there. We, we can't come get you. And he was like, I don't even know how to get outta here. It was in the middle of the night, so I can't drive myself outta here. He said, even my cleaning lady's 3-year-old son came up to me crying one day and I said, buddy, what's wrong? And he said, I'm worried about you. And he said, son, I'm from San Antonio, Texas. I can take care of myself. And the boy then told me they were going to kill me. The freedom fighters were gonna kill me. He had heard them at lunch one day. Oh, through the mouths of babes. He said I couldn't sleep for five days. I retrace every decision that it got me to that place. All right, so. Here he is, man. It is like, this is where you start kicking the can down the road and he is like, man, this is where you start. Just like bottoming out in life. And he retrace all his steps. Like, how in the fuck did I get here? Okay. I decided, this is great. I decided in that time, couldn't sleep for five days. He had so much energy than any other time in his life. All of it was negative. And this is when I remember my physics background. I decided that the mind is a wonderful transducer. This is great. Alright, so he's, he's at the bottom. He's like all this negative energy and he, and he thinks about physics. He is like, I'm gonna turn my brain in true into a transducer. Energy cannot be destroyed, but maybe I could take and use all this energy and use my brain to change it into something positive and then throw a multiplier on it at the end. I love that. Throw a multiplier. So all this na like. When you're going through hell, or sometimes, dude, we just keep stoking the fires. Like we just keep making things worse because we're pouring all this negative energy on top of that energy. Instead, like he, like he said, he couldn't sleep for five days. They said you we're coming to kill you. Like, can you imagine like you're in Columbia, there ain't no way out. So I guess in his mind he was like, I got nothing to lose. I might as well just. Turn this brain into a transducer, pull a multiplier on that thing. He said, I decided that I was in the worst place in the world and I asked myself, what's the best place? So what he did is he took all that negative energy. I'm in hell right now. Okay. What's the best place that I can think of? And he said for me, the best place. What's the top of the hill on Scenic Drive in Austin, Texas. And he said, I threw a four times multiplier on that thing. All that energy. Six days later, a small plane landed bringing us parts for our seismic line booster boxes, and I jumped on that plane before it left. I ended up living, I went on back to work in Venezuela, and then when the oil business got better, I moved back to Texas and started a drilling company. So he gets outta Columbia. Gets back to Venezuela, has his eyes back on Texas, keeping an eye on the economy, does his thing, making his money, stacking his money. Soon as Texas gets better, boom, he's off and he starts a drilling company. Keep in mind, he had the Uno oil company. It went under before the year was up. So finally, man, he gets back to Texas, starts his, starts his, uh, drilling company. Boom, we're off to the races. Then Desert storm hit and the oil prices plummeted. I had to shut my business down, bro. He was doing fine. He said I was really low. I moved to Austin where depression was going on, and I bought the house on the top of the hill. On Scenic Drive. See, he stacked his money. Desert Storm hit, comes back to Texas, starts his own drilling company. That crap folds, moves to Austin. It's a depression. But in those moments, see there, this is where the silver lining comes in. He had himself in a position where he could buy the house, what he had envisioned when he was in Columbia as a dead man. He's like, that's the best play. Isn't that funny how life shapes up? So even in the worst moments, and he's low, he lost his business. He ain't got no, no job right now. They were about to tear down the house at the top of the hill on Scenic Drive. He buys it for next to nothing. There's a blessing. Lesson number five, when the chips are down, use your brain to switch the frequency of the energy to positive. Then throw a multiplier on. It might take a few years for it to come into the physical plane, but half faith, something positive always comes from a failure. It may just take a few years to see what it is. You gotta keep playing the game. You gotta keep this thing fixated. You gotta do your part. When it happens is not up to you. What you do for when it happens is completely up to you. You just gotta keep going. Things always shake up. Things always work themselves out, but you gotta keep working for those things to work out. Continuing on, I then decided to make a career change to the environmental business. I researched and decided on a company that I really wanted to work at. I interviewed and a week later they told me I didn't get the job. All right. So he gets back to Texas. Starts a drilling company. Drilling company folds.'cause desert storm moves to Austin in a depression, buys the house on the top of the hill in scenic drive, interviews for a job that he feels like he this, I'm just perfect for it. Interviews for it. Probably nailed the interview. They tell him three weeks later, bro, you didn't get the job. He's devastated. He said, I told the owner, he calls the owner up and says, I can't believe this. Your company is perfect for me. I'm usually right about these things. Alright? He calls the owner himself. He's like, fuck it. Sometimes when you have nothing to lose is when you have everything to gain. He ain't have no job, he ain't have nothing going for him. He's like, man, I'm perfect for this business. No one's gonna work harder for you than I will. No one's gonna do a better job for you than I will. And if that guy don't work out, please gimme a call. See, he kept the doorway open. He didn't middle finger the dude. He didn't blast them. He just said, bro, I'm telling you I'm perfect, but I tell you what, trust the universe, things don't work out. Call me. Three weeks later, the guy called him got the job. That's lesson number six in the face of adversity. Stay positive. Tell the world what you are trying to achieve, and when people like you, they wanna help you. That's true. When people like you, they wanna help you stop being a dick to everybody. Remember success. Is meeting each and every failure with equal enthusiasm. Just go again, go again, go again. So continuing on now he gets the job. I worked there for a few years, coring soil sampling, setting and monitoring wells. Working with the EPA and state authorities, I did sales for'em when time was were slow. I got tired of living in municipal and industrial landfills, sulfur dioxide ponds mines, and power stations wearing these Tyvek suits. I guess that's like Nomex, Tyvek suits in the summer with rubber gloves and boots on. This is when I came up with my safety net philosophy. Love this. Safety net philosophy. You know, as life goes on, life is cyclical. That's so true. I, I didn't think about that. But life comes in cycles. So he says this, here's the safety net philosophy. Sometimes everything goes wrong. The car won't start, your shoes come untied. The refrigerator goes out. I mean, just, it's like a cha like, it's like, bro, how much worse can this thing get? I remember back I was bankrupt. They were foreclosing on my home that nobody was living in. I had a tag on the door talking about, you better settle up on these payments. I was demoted, I mean, it was like, it was almost comical. It was like, bro, how much worse can things get? And it was like every time they just got a little bit worse. It, it was just a cycle I had to work through. And he said, but then there's other times where everything seems effortless. We don't remember those. Everything, all the lights are green. You find 20 bucks on the ground. Everything's going your way when you're going through a positive cycle. This is key. This is your safety net philosophy. When everything's going your way, make one change in life. A change that affects the most hours of your day. I love this. So whatever, like whatever you spend the most time on during the day, make a change during that. It could be your job, it could be who you live with, where you live, getting a dog, the car you drive, maybe even a new bed. But look at your life and pick just one thing to change each positive cycle. Don't do it when you're in a negative cycle. Do it in a positive cycle. Change one thing. After a while, you're gonna find yourself with a safety net, so that way when you're beating yourself up in a down cycle, you got a safety net. He said, I remember driving up the winding road on Scenic Drive and my Alpha Romero spider with my favorite dog in the whole world, in the passenger seat, beating myself up, feeling sorry for myself as I was driving to my favorite house in the world to see my favorite girlfriend at the time, and I suddenly went from feeling sorry for myself to laughing. Thinking how funny it was that I was beating myself up. See, he made these little changes in these positive cycles. He made these changes. Sometimes this, this makes me think sometimes in a positive cycle, we actually are setting ourselves up because we think the cycle's gonna go on forever, and we set ourselves up. Really for maybe a premature negative cycle, meaning, 'cause we thought we were gonna live on this fat hog, sometimes we out leverage ourselves. We think the money's just gonna continue to flow. So we make these decisions based on our best times in life. And then when. Gets outta that cycle. When things dry up, things get even worse because you didn't make a positive change in that cycle. You actually made yourself your situation worse. But if you can make something that will, it affects the most hours of your day and it's something that actually improves your life. He had a better car. He had a dog, he had a nice house, and so he built this safety net. And so when he was having one of those negative cycles, it gave him perspective to be able to look at it and say, come on man. I've had it way worse than this. And sometimes that's what we gotta have. So that's lesson number seven. Be flexible. Life is an adventure. That's true. Make a safety net. Next time you won't fall down so far. So that safety net, kind of think about a wire when you know, when you go to these. Circuses and stuff like that. They still have circuses, but circuses. And if one of the people fall from the high wire, that net catches 'em or trapeze that net catches 'em. That's what it is for you. So like in a positive cycle, build in a safety net. One change that affects the most hours of your day. Make that one change only in a positive cycle. All right, continuing on. We're about to wrap this up. A friend of mine was killing it in the residential mortgage business and offered me a job. I switched careers. I bought a couple of suits, became a mortgage broker, and eventually a mortgage banker. I loved it. A couple years later, rates went up a couple points and it killed my business, and I needed a new career again. My God. I mean, here he was. Gets outta high School. Applies for all these colleges. Gets into Vanderbilt. Wants to be a doctor. Doesn't know what kind of doctor interns decides. Uh. I don't like that. Don't wanna be a doctor. Goes to be a rough neck over the summer. Ends up liking the oil field. Moves to Texas, gets into the University of Texas. Becomes a geologist. Starts doing that. Oil field dries up. He's got a dead degree. Goes to work with a cousin's friend. Who has a little business. That business folds after a year, starts his own oil company that folds starts day trading, gets squeezed out because of black Monday. Broke again, starting to plant trees again with his grandfather. What he did in high school had to start completely over again. Then moved to Houston. Went to Venezuela, did a great job, 350 man crew, doing all these negotiations in Spanish, doing such a good job. They ship you to Columbia. End up face to face with the freedom fighters. Freedom fighters. Started trying to squeeze him out. He was the only gringo that had been there in three years. He said, we want dynamite, we want money, we want drugs. He said, man, I can't do any of that. And they said, you're a dead man. Calls the company that he works for and says, Hey, get me outta here. They're about to kill me. they said, Hey, you're on your own, bro. We can't come get you. You were delivered there 11 hours in the dark. You're on your own. Ends up turning all of his mental energy from negative and envisions. The best possible scenario in life. I wanna live in Austin, top of the hill on Scenic drive, and decides to turn his mind into a transducer and puts a multiplier on it amazingly outta thin air. Six days later, a plane comes in to deliver supplies. Bullshits his way onto the plane, gets back to Venezuela. His life is spared. Starts working in Venezuela, Texas economy starts doing better leaves. Venezuela goes back to Texas, starts his own drilling platform. Desert Storm hits, loses his business again, has to shut it down in a depression drives to Austin. There's the house that is for sale that's dilapidated. He buys it for next to nothing because it's in a depression. Buys the house, goes into the environmental business, works out for a while, doing well, but realizes this ain't what he wants. He's in a negative cycle, but he's got this safety net of little things that he's accumulated that have kind of caught him along the way. Gets into the residential business, becomes a mortgage broker. Rates go up, can't make any money outta work again. Here's where it all turns for him. A guy on tv. Says that if you're trying to make a career change, you need to discover your passion. The way that you do this is draw a line down the center of the page on the left hand side list what you love to do on the right hand side list what you're good at, and he said, I did this experiment and decided I was getting into the liquor business because I've been making vodka infusions for friends as Christmas presents and people started coming up to me, calling me the vodka guy. See, this is where you gotta start paying attention to stuff. He said, I thought that spending my days in a distillery didn't really seem like work to me. I enjoyed sales. Remember he was doing sales when it was slow. I enjoyed sales. I was good in science and engineering and project management. See all those things, see all the dots, all connect, and I like meeting people, traveling. Did that bars, restaurants, liquor stores. It was like a match made in heaven. Everyone thought I was crazy. That's lesson number eight. After a while, you start to view your failures as learning experiences and opportunities suck all the information and wisdom out of each failure. And realize that these are all learning and growing experiences, and that will make you much wiser and stronger in the future. Suck all the information and wisdom out of each failure. I love that. So I started a one man distillery, and I became the first legal distiller in the history of Texas. I blazed the trail through the distribution channels for the American craft distilling movement. See, at that time, none of that was going on and created a national, now international vodka brand with no investors and very little money. Was it easy? Hell no. Did I have failures and setbacks? Hell yes. Did I give up or give in? No way. How'd I do it? I did it with the wealth of knowledge that I'd learned. Okay, this is where it all comes in. This is where I say nothing's for nothing. I did all this from everything that he had experienced, had gone through, had learned along the way. He sucked all of the information and wisdom out of each failure. Okay? This is where it all comes together for 'em. So I had a wealth of knowledge. I learned from studying geology and geophysics along with the can-do oil field spirit. Some tough ass dudes, man. I had developed as a roughneck and run running seismic crews. I learned from my failed businesses. About cashflow management and employee expense. I learned how to deal with the bureaucratic red tape and regulators in the environmental business, and I learned from the mortgage business about finance and credit. See how all this comes together? All these stories he, he just told you, the dots, all connect. Had I not had all of those failures under my belt, I would not be successful today, period. He could not be who he is today had he not. Experience all these things. Nothing's for nothing. In summary, let's bring this home. No one wants to fail, but life is an ever-changing experiment. If you're scared to fail, you are paralyzed. And if you're willing to wrap your arms around failures and accept all the responsibility, that's key, except all of the responsibility. Don't blame it on everybody else. Don't blame it on the economy. Gotta keep going. Accept all the of responsibility. It becomes your foundation. If you look at life as a scientific experiment, you come up with a theory, a procedure, and you do the experiment. You analyze it, and you come up with your results, then it becomes learning. You may start a business to do one thing, and once you're out there doing it, your customers will be telling you what they want. And you may end up doing something else. I know a guy who started selling soup and ended up being the largest hot sauce maker in the world. Even Bill Gates had a bankruptcy before Microsoft. I didn't know that. If you ever feel like you can't shake failure, read about Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, Henry Ford, Albert Einstein, or Thomas Edison So key like over here in the side, man, I have. I have all those guys right there. Like these are my homies, man. I gotta read about 'em. I gotta study 'em. Google failure your way to success are successful failures, and you will soon realize that anyone who is considered a great success has built that success on failure. By deciding you're a participant in life, that life is a celebration, bro, that's so key You're a participant in life. I'm not a bystander. Okay. You're a participant in life. Life is a celebration. Abso fucking lly. Life is a celebration and that you are not just gonna let the winds of life blow you around, but rather you forge your own path based on what you love to do, what you're good at, you will hit adversity, you will be challenged, you will be confronted. You will be tested. Just lean into it. Keep moving forward. Sooner or later, you will know what you love, but you will have the experience to perform and your timing will be right. Why? Because you had time in time in develops the timing. Have faith, grow some tough skin and be thankful for all of your failures. It just means that you are still trying and haven't given up yet. Good luck. Tito Beveridge founder and master distiller of Tito's homemade vodka.