Conquering the Fear of Failure: Transform Setbacks into Success

Mike Hambright (00:01.112)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. I’m excited to have my buddy Pat Precourt with us today. We’re gonna be talking about failure and the fear of failure. And Pat is really an amazing kind of mind on breaking through all these kinds of mental blocks you have and being able to perform at your highest level, especially for entrepreneurs. And we speak the same language a lot. We talk a lot about failure and the fact that failure is really a stepping stone to success. Like I think if you’re outside of entrepreneurship and you’re very risk averse,

Patrick Precourt (00:22.043)
Thank

Mike Hambright (00:29.634)
Like a lot of folks are afraid to fail. And for entrepreneurs, like, well, I have to try it and I’m gonna fail. And so let me get past the failures so I can get onto the good stuff, right? And that’s what we’re gonna be talking about today, how to fail forward. Pat, what’s up, buddy?

Patrick Precourt (00:46.064)
What’s up? Everything’s up, Mike. Excited to be here. Actually honored to be here. Really am. I find it, I’m very grateful to have an opportunity to sit here and talk with you and share some of these things people don’t generally like to talk about because they’re not always all that comfortable, right?

Mike Hambright (01:01.166)
Yeah, for sure. think, but there’s great lessons here. I think people are going to learn today. If you’ve been beat up a little bit, you just have to dust yourself off and get up. so anyway, great to see you. Obviously I’ve got you on my podcast. Last week you were at Investor Fuel with us and we got to hang out a bit too. So kind of back to back treat for me to hang out with you, buddy.

Patrick Precourt (01:19.875)
Awesome. Same here and excited to rip into this.

Mike Hambright (01:23.886)
Yeah, so I know we’re gonna talk a little about, you I know there’s a couple different types, like all failure is not equal, right? So there’s a couple types of failure. Like, how do you describe that?

Patrick Precourt (01:34.905)
Yeah, that’s a great starting point because everybody I think has a little different relationship with the word.

failure and a lot of that goes back to our childhood days and what we were taught by our parents and by our teachers. And generally speaking, we’re brought up believing that all failure is bad, right? And the goal is not to fail. And if you do fail, you get punished. And therefore we’ve kind of established like an adversity to the idea of failing. So let me share a little different viewpoint on that, Mike.

failure into two different buckets. have failure by choice and we have failure by default. And the difference is this. When you fail by choice, it means you’ve actually attempted to go for it and you just simply didn’t make your mark, right? And we use an example of skiing. You and I are both skiers, right? You’re going down, you pick a really challenging bump run that’s a little beyond your expertise.

and takes you three times. You get knocked off your skis by the time you get to the bottom. Most would consider either you’re failing at skiing at that level, right? That’s a failure by choice. You’re pushing your limits to see how far you can go and learning in the process. Failure by default is, nah, I’m just not gonna go for it.

not even going to try it. So now bring this over to say New Year’s resolutions and goals. And this is where it really kind of hits home. Failure by choice is you went for it and it was just a little outside of your expertise or your scope at this moment in time, right? But that becomes one of the greatest learning opportunities. We’re kind of learning our boundaries. Failure by default is no, we just didn’t go for it. We quit before we started. One’s growth opportunity and

Patrick Precourt (03:33.213)
and one is an unacceptable type of failure. You say you’re going to do something and a year later, no progress on it, and the cause is that you didn’t try, that’s the unacceptable failure. The acceptable failure is we did everything we could do and it just didn’t meet the mark. However, that doesn’t mean we didn’t grow from all of that we just did. Does that make sense?

Mike Hambright (03:57.314)
Yeah, absolutely. think, yeah, we could come up with a bunch of analogies here, but yeah, I think, and unfortunately, let’s talk about kind of the general fear of failure that we’ve been, has been instilled in a lot of us, right? Is that it really prevents people from trying because they’re afraid they’re gonna fail, right? I mean, there’s some people that are like, like me, like you said, I’ve done a bunch of stuff and I failed at it. And, you know, for people that…

know me online or have been following me for any length of time. Like it’s sometimes easy to look at people like you and I and say, I even had a guy say this one time, somebody that I know pretty well. He’s like, man, everything you touch turns to gold. And I was like, dude, you have no idea. You have no idea how many shit sandwiches I’ve eaten. Like it’s not true, right? And there’s so many, I’ve had more failures than successes, but that doesn’t prevent me from trying. Like I’m constantly swinging for the fences. But there’s a ton of people that just like, always,

Patrick Precourt (04:39.863)
I did.

Mike Hambright (04:53.538)
You talk to them, they’ve got an idea, like, I’ve got an idea for something, but they just never even attempt to start it. It’s just an idea that just lives in their mind and they live with regret probably and they live with that fear of failure. I better not try because I might fail, right?

Patrick Precourt (05:08.441)
Yeah, and it gets a little complicated in this space. So let’s start with the idea that like we’re talking about, we have a belief system that says failure is bad, right? Failure is that if you fail, you’re a failure. We worry about loss. We worry about judgment. We worry about the opinions of others, all associated with failure. And fundamentally, failure in our mind is just a bad thing. In school, if you failed, you got an F and they have big red letters.

Circle like that right I got a lot of those I can familiar I can relate to those Bad right so it stops us from doing the things that we want to do out of our Concern about what everybody else is going to think of our failure the judgment We’re gonna get something I say this Mike out of any or all the failures that you’ve experienced Has anybody ever come back and judged you for them?

Mike Hambright (06:06.766)
I mean once in a while you get some critic, know, that’s like, you sucked at this. I was like, well, whatever, you know, but yeah, I mean there’s critics out there, but.

Patrick Precourt (06:14.587)
By and large, nobody really cares, right?

Mike Hambright (06:17.846)
No. Yeah, nobody cares.

Patrick Precourt (06:21.115)
Yeah, and that’s the truth of it. So we’re, you know, so it’s anchored in this belief that failure is bad, and it’s found in the idea that we have such a concern about what we think others think of us, which now means, you know, we’re being controlled by our imaginary expectations of what’s going on in their head. It’s a tough place to be because we can’t grow anywhere. If you are unwilling to accept failure, you are incapable of growth.

Because in growth, have to do something new and different. New and different means we don’t know how this is going to come out, which means there is always the risk of it not turning out the way we like or failing at it. To the degree that you’re willing to embrace the possibility of failure will be directly relative to how fast we grow and expand. Does that make sense?

Mike Hambright (07:14.862)
Yeah, and I think that’s why the general population is generally unfulfilled, right? Because they weren’t willing to take some of those risks or try those things or act on an idea they had. And they just, you start to beat yourself up as like, you know, internally you have the struggle of like, you want something, but you’re not willing to, you’re not willing to take the risk for maybe for fear of failure.

Patrick Precourt (07:36.421)
Well, and in comes the proverbial comfort zone. The comfort zone is kind of an oxymoron. It’s not really comfortable. It’s just certain. Meaning we could really…

not like our current existence, because of the certainty that it provides for us, we’ll protect it. In other words, no, we don’t like how little money we have or how we’ve let our body get out of shape or our relationships or whatever it is, the work environment we have. We don’t like it. However, it’s certain. We know what’s coming the next day. So therefore we’re unwilling to do something new and different. we do new and different, we lose that uncertainty and outcome. So instead of that, we’re going to stay

protected in this again, this comfort zone that’s not really that comfortable. The only thing that’s good about it is we know what’s coming, even though what’s coming is not what we want. It’s kind of weird how our psychology works that way.

Mike Hambright (08:30.604)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. That’s awesome. So let’s talk about some of the upsides of failure. mean, some of them are kind of obvious is that you eventually if you fail enough, you succeed. But let’s talk about some of the upsides of failure.

Patrick Precourt (08:47.343)
Yeah, so there’s what I so we.

We use the word failure in today’s conversation, right? I use the word discovery oftentimes. It’s an equal comparison. Um, the fastest way forward is to constantly engage in the discovery process. The discovery process is doing that thing that you don’t have all the answers to in order to reveal the answers that you’re currently lacking. Like we always want to be fully prepared to do everything, right? We want to know all the answers up front. We want to keep studying and keep learning and more podcasts and more

Zooms and everything like that, right? When in fact the most critical knowledge and insight that we need can only be gained through the actions of moving forward. So it’s almost, I’ll use a really weird analogy, a GPS analogy, like, and I’ve done this plenty of times, you ever go out, Mike, you go out at night, you to a restaurant you’ve never been to, you use your GPS, you’re in a strange town to get there, you go, you’re in the restaurant for a couple hours, now it’s time to go home. So you sit down in the car,

in a parking lot, you have no idea left or right out of the parking lot, so you put in the address to go home and you sit there and wait and the GPS doesn’t do anything.

But I need to know left or right but it doesn’t the GPS guys don’t even see you because you’re not Doing anything and this is how magical this is right the moment you exit that parking lot Whether you go left or right GPS guys go I got you and I’m now gonna give you the exact information and get you home the fastest way possible Which is all you wanted in the first place, but that information was unavailable to you until you took the actions of moving forward

Mike Hambright (10:00.75)
you

Mike Hambright (10:08.91)
Yeah.

Patrick Precourt (10:30.457)
That’s how failure works. Failure has got such a negative connotation. If we could just remove the word failure and replace it with discovery. Now I’m not failing, I’m discovering everything I need to know that I didn’t have a moment ago in order to get to that next level. Does that make sense?

Mike Hambright (10:45.752)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a test. mean, if you think of, I’m not a scientist, but if you think of everything in science is testing something, right? And the tests by design are set up that most will fail, kind of quote fail, right? We tried this and it didn’t work. We tried this and it didn’t work. And here’s the one thing that did work. I mean, if you think of like what it would take to create, you know, I’m not a big fan of the, I know you’re not either of the pharmaceutical industry, let’s say, but they’re testing a whole lot of shit to find one thing that

Patrick Precourt (10:53.86)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (11:15.756)
that they can at least market towards working, And so they probably failed a million times to find one thing, but they don’t call it a failure. They call it a, they probably call it a sample or a test, right? Yeah.

Patrick Precourt (11:25.295)
Yeah, test. Use another analogy for you. And this is something that…

Every one of us can relate to, right? You learn to ride a bike at some age. I learned to ride a bike at some age, right? Our learning curve for riding a bike goes like this. We start at ground zero and then it goes straight up like this and then it plateaus out. But the length of time, over our entire life, okay? Let’s say this graph was stretched out. That vertical line is all in the first hour of riding a bike. Your learning curve in the first hour is

through the roof and then it gets a little better, a little better and just plateaus the rest of your life. And the most failures you will ever experience on that bike are also in that first hour. It is not by chance that they’re exactly the same time frame there. Does that make sense?

Mike Hambright (12:19.916)
Yeah, I have a funny story about learning to ride a bike and a of aversion to risk, right? And so this is, so for Lindsay and I, you know my wife well, and my son Jake. So when he was trying to ride his bike and he was a little bit later, like he was probably like five, we probably should have started him earlier. And we just, we were busy and we just, every once in a while we would like, let’s go over to.

Patrick Precourt (12:44.004)
Yes.

Mike Hambright (12:45.836)
the elementary school parking lot that’s kind of wide open and learning. Our area’s a little bit, we live in Dallas, so wouldn’t say it’s hilly, but relatively speaking, there are some hills in our neighborhood. And we just kept trying to have him ride in the parking lot or in front of our house or whatever, and he just wasn’t picking it up. And then at one point, he quote, failed, right? He like, I remember he got going and then he just like.

flew off the back of his bike, landed on his back. His back was all scraped up. So then he’s like scared to death to do it. And then my mom was in town. My parents were in town and they’re like, you know, they raised three of us and they’ve been, you know, grandparents just have more wisdom than parents on parenting, right? And this is our only son. And so we only had one kind of quote test, right? And my mom’s like, look, we need to just take them over here and push them down this hill. And cause he needed momentum, you know? And we were just trying to.

coach him on flat surface. And he was scared to death, but they just took him over and they’re like, just literally just kind of pushed him down a hill where he had the momentum. And he learned like so fast, right? And so there’s something to be said that there’s a lesson there for us too. And probably the show is the wisdom of others that have kind of failed before you or have tested it way more than you have, right?

Patrick Precourt (14:04.667)
Yeah, 100%. That’s a great story, by the way. Yeah. Here’s the other funny thing about the whole riding a bike thing, right? When your son hopped on a bike, when I hopped on a bike, when you hopped on a bike for the first time, were you qualified to ride a bike? No. No, you were. When you first hopped on the bike, the very first time, you didn’t know anything about speed, momentum.

Mike Hambright (14:21.282)
Yeah. not when we started now.

No, right, right.

Patrick Precourt (14:30.299)
gravity, balance, steering, brake, you knew nothing right?

Mike Hambright (14:32.012)
Balance.

Mike Hambright (14:36.268)
Right.

Patrick Precourt (14:37.231)
But you learn pretty damn quick, kind of out of survival, kind of out of excitement, kind of out of fear. But we figure it out really quick, no different than parenting. You know, when you first had your son, when I had my first child, were we qualified to have kids? answer is no. We were just committed that we’re going to figure this out, right? And every day, I’m sure you would agree, every day as a parent, there’s a new lesson for us as parents, if we’re open to it, right? And there’s things

Mike Hambright (14:41.72)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (14:52.333)
Now.

Mike Hambright (14:57.251)
Yeah.

Patrick Precourt (15:07.165)
now on hindsight that we would do better than we did because we’ve learned from mistakes that we’ve made. And that’s all part of it. But we never get this knowledge, this insight, this wisdom if we didn’t do it first. if, you know, if we’re to take away any one lesson from today, that’s it. Information in and of itself really has very little value to us. Information applied converts it into a knowledge. So information that’s put into action now

Mike Hambright (15:20.493)
Yeah.

Patrick Precourt (15:37.085)
turns it into wisdom through the actions that we do it. I share this once in a while with people who get stuck on the, gotta learn more space, right? I said, let me give you an example in our jujitsu world, right? If I took one practitioner who has an entire year, Mike, to study the best in the world at jujitsu, the videos, the trainings, the step-by-step, the whole nine years,

entire year to study it. That’s this guy over here. Then there’s this guy who shows up at the gym and shows up three nights a week for two weeks in a row. So he’s only two weeks young, but he’s actually shown up now for six training sessions. If I put those two gentlemen, everything else equal, on the mat,

The brand new white belt who’s shown up for two weeks will destroy the year-long study practitioner every single time without exception. It’ll be a 100 % success ratio right there.

because the application of information gave them the knowledge which is really what we utilize in this world. Not information, it’s the knowledge that we get out of the application of the information that is usable. Does that kind of make sense?

Mike Hambright (17:00.514)
Yeah, yeah, that’s awesome. Pat, when you think about, you know, if you were…

We won’t talk about ages here, but if we had never learned how to ride a bike at our age right now, we would look like fools, right? And you know, another, I think that that’s interesting is I don’t ride a bike very often. I mean, it’s probably been a couple of years since I’ve ridden a bike, honestly, but I could jump on a bike and ride it just like as well as anybody. I mean, I’m not going to race it, but I could ride a bike just fine right now. Right. And so if you think about the wall that people like allow to get in their way,

to not move forward on something for fear, it closes off so many potential opportunities, right, that are out there that, and there’s skills that you learn that you just become second nature. Like, I could not ride a bike for 10 years now and I could get on a bike and ride it just fine. Like, what else in your life did you allow fear to stop you from doing that’s holding you back from a skill that you would.

think is second nature now,

Patrick Precourt (18:09.007)
Yeah, yeah. that’s, you know what, that’s a question that you probably will never know the full depth of the answer to, right? Because that could affect us in so many different ways. And as you know, we become more and more adverse, the older we get, to failure.

the as a child, we just didn’t even think about it for all intents and purposes. As we get older, especially as we accumulate more stuff in our lives, we get more protective of the stuff. Even though when I say stuff, everything in our lives from relationships to our financial well-being to our physical houses and cars, right? We get more protective of that stuff and therefore we get more risk adverse. And we get to a point where where we find ourselves

doing nothing new and different in an attempt to protect what we have. So we’ve closed off our ability and willingness to continue to grow forward and grow forward, meaning to experience failures to expedite our growth going forward. To your point, we kind of hit a ceiling now with plateau out. And this is where

find individuals who now start to struggle with even waking up with purpose. You’re like, well, one day, a long time ago, I was passionate. I was fired up. I was intentional. And now I don’t even know why I get out of bed.

And the disconnect has to do with they no longer are fighting for that bigger thing in their life. They’ve lost that connectivity to the, you know, their drive or their purpose that are meaning. And they’re now in this closed off environment where they’re just protecting what they have. It’s a challenging way to experience life to say the least. And their unwillingness, and again, this increases with age, it doesn’t decrease. Unwillingness to experience failure.

Patrick Precourt (20:10.275)
because of our concern of what we think others think of us, it becomes crippling. And I know you know people who are in this state just like I do, And there’s a level of stuck to it.

Mike Hambright (20:28.27)
Yeah. Well, how do we help those people, Let’s talk about like, if you’re listening to this and you’re any age, right? If you feel like you have not achieved all you want to achieve or have tried things that you’ve thought about for years or decades doing, and you’re just, it’s not the right time, you come up with lots of excuses. It could be like, well, the market’s not right right now or.

I gotta wait till summertime or whatever it might be. You gotta wait till New Year’s next year. You know, all the excuses. But the real excuse there is fear of not being successful or fear of something, right? So how do we help those folks in the next eight or 10 minutes here?

Patrick Precourt (21:09.616)
Yeah, believe it or not, it’s simpler than some might think, right? If we can appreciate, you know, most humans can find happiness.

daily happiness outside of just normal self-satisfaction. We can find happiness if one, we have a connection to something bigger than ourselves. And two, we know we’re progressing from where we were the day before. Now, when we’re in this state of protection mode and we’re just, you know, protecting what we have, there’s no growth at all. So the quick way out of this is, what, what is it that does drive you? What is it that I want? What, what, what, what am I willing to commit to that’s, you know, important to me?

commit to daily steps toward it. There’s process. say, right, let me create a year-long goal. How I want to be at the end of the year in this one space. And then, of course, you can break down the quarterly goals and monthly goals and weekly goals, right? But it should come down to every day we have to see measurable progress towards a worthy outcome. If we can do that, we’re good to go. Our soul is fulfilled. We don’t have to be making massive amounts of growth each and every day. That’s not what we need to be excited.

Right? But we need to see progress and it’s not about arriving either. And this is where I’m sure you’ve met many people who have arrived. mean, they met their goals, are financially sound. They’re there and they’re as unsatisfied today as they’ve ever been in their life because they’ve achieved the goal. Now they don’t have that driving feature in their lives, pushing them, inspiring them, fueling them, giving them that fight every day. They’re like, huh, I’m just here. And we’ve heard this all our lives, right? It’s not about the destination.

It’s about the journey, that delta that we achieve every single day morning moving towards that bigger outcome. So for anyone listening, I’d say that if you’re, you know, by your definition in any way, or form, if you’re stuck a couple of things you got to do right now. Number one, it requires action. You can’t sit still, not study, not practice, but action, something you can measure the result of. Two, get clear on something that matters to you that’s bigger than you. It doesn’t really matter what it is as long as it matters.

Patrick Precourt (23:18.113)
to you. And then three, measure your progress day over day. Every single day, be able to sit down and say, you know what, I feel good today, I’m a step further than I was at this time yesterday. And you brought up an important word earlier in this conversation, momentum.

Once we start this, do not stop. Momentum is one of those magnificent gifts from the universe that helps us through tough times. But when tough times show up and we have no momentum, we’re down and out. We’ll get our asses kicked in that moment. We need that extra energy to push through those extra hurdles. And the only way we get that is through the consistency of daily actions every single day. If they’re starting out because they want to recover their body, Mike,

know they’re or 50 years old and they want their body they had in the 20s which is very possible right that requires every day committing to two steps in in that direction and not giving up no matter what and it’s the smallest stuff that matters in this we don’t need giant massive leaps and bounds just steady consistent steps every single day towards that outcome

Mike Hambright (24:32.322)
That’s awesome. Yeah. So stop being afraid of failure. And I think there’s also, you know, sometimes people are like, have unrealistic expectations about progress too, right? They’re like, well, I’ve never done it. I’ve been afraid of it. But if I can’t get to the end tomorrow, then, and I think some of it is that’s probably part of the fear of failure is they just put unrealistic expectations in place, right?

Patrick Precourt (24:32.709)
it.

Patrick Precourt (24:57.595)
a huge part of it and you’ve heard, know, we overestimate what we can do in a year, underestimate what we can do in 10 years, all that kind of stuff. Well, let me share a little different viewpoint on this, right? And then the people we work with, I make this really clear. Once we have our goals, I don’t want you to focus on your goals. I want you to focus on who you need to become to deserve those goals. Mainly your daily behaviors, the habits that you have to create to deserve those outcomes in your life. Every single human being, you and I and everyone we know,

are nothing more than a reflection of our habits. So if we want something different in our lives, it simply means we’ve got to identify the habits that are improper in producing the results we don’t want and the necessary ones to produce the results that we do want. But daily we should be measuring, did we execute the behaviors necessary to deserve these outcomes? Don’t worry about the goal achievement. It will come if you’re consistent in establishing the right habits to produce those results. So it’s a little different for

I know that goes contrary to like our whole guru world like focus on your goals No, if your goals at the top of the ladder above the clouds You got to focus on your very next rung on the ladder. That’s it. Don’t worry about that yet. You will get there in time

Mike Hambright (26:10.382)
Yep.

Mike Hambright (26:15.074)
Yeah, that’s awesome. So Pat, I know your book is about to come out. The time we’re recording this, your book is about to come out. By the time this show launches, your book will be out. tell us about the book and how can folks find it and how can we support you, my friend?

Patrick Precourt (26:25.339)
you

Yeah, so the book will be out. think this is going to come out, this recording will come out at the end of the month and about when the book will launch. It’s called Fail Forward and it’s a very functional, action-oriented book. Mike goes through everything we talked about today, but a lot more. It goes a lot into the psychology of peak performance and understanding what it takes to get us as human beings to change behavior, to produce the results that we desire in our lives. And it’s very, very functional. It’s like you take this book as a

as a blueprint as to how to operate each and every day. And I would love, so what we’ll do Mike, I think we’ll include a link with the call note here maybe where people can sign up depending on the timing, but it’s either you’ll be part of the pre-launch or you sign up and you go right to a link for the book itself. And any support, any feedback that you give me on the book, any thumbs up would be amazing.

Mike Hambright (27:23.808)
Yeah, we’ll definitely have a link down below in the show notes for you guys that are Well, if you’re listening or watching this just check the show notes down below and we’ll have a link for you to Feel forward Pat’s book that’s coming out. So Pat great to see you today,

Patrick Precourt (27:36.975)
Yeah, honored to be here, love to share and yeah, pleasure being with you brother.

Mike Hambright (27:41.184)
I always love hanging out with you. So everybody, hope you got some great value from today. I think the lesson here is stop waiting to try that thing. Like go do it at the end of the day. I mean, you’ve heard this story many times. If you’re laying on your death bed, are you gonna be, you’re never gonna sit there and say, I tried too many things. And you you’re gonna have regrets about the things you didn’t do that you wish you had. And so I think the time to go do that is right now.

Patrick Precourt (28:06.501)
You know, Mike, and I’ll end it on this. You will never be critiqued for your failure by someone who’s already achieved what you’re trying to achieve. You’ll only be critiqued by the ones that are way behind you who would love to be in your shoes and those are the ones you just can’t care about at all.

Mike Hambright (28:28.798)
We’ll see you on the next show.