Tell me about your vision. Well, my vision is
a world where people have a better relationship
with failure. And whether you're an entrepreneur,
whether you're a mom, whether you're a kid going
through college, I think that failure is a necessary
step towards impact, towards success, really
even to fulfillment. really have a negative view
of failure. And I can unpack that more, but that's
the gist of it. Tell me more. Okay. So even though
I own a financial company, we do long -term financial
planning. We help people make sure they don't
run out of money or purpose in retirement. I
was not always on this path. In fact, my degree
is actually in biochemistry. And that's very
important because what I learned going through
my experience as a chemist is the importance
of experiments. And with an experiment, we weren't
just willy -nilly. We weren't just trying things.
We would research. We would plan. We were very
intentional, but we weren't married to the outcome.
We were more concerned about what can we learn
from the process. So when things didn't go the
way that we wanted them to, when something came
up that was unexpected, rather than looking at
it as a setback, we're like, okay, what can we
learn? This is something that we didn't know.
We just learned something. we have an opportunity
to learn something. So if we looked at failure
as an experiment, again, not that we don't go
into a situation mindful and prepared. We do
have to be prepared. You want to research, you
want to study, but so often, especially for entrepreneurs,
but for anybody, Harry, perfect is often the
enemy of done. We don't want to do anything until
we have a perfect plan and perfection actually
becomes an excuse for procrastination. And then
when we do go start doing the thing, nothing
ever goes as planned. And when we hit failure
or we hit setbacks, I hate even calling it failure
because it's such a negative connotation. But
when we experience setbacks, we experience that
as failure. Oh, no, this is bad rather than hmm.
There's a lesson in here. So the only difference
between a setback or a failure and an experiment
is whether or not you're going into that willing
to learn from the process. Thank you for sharing
that. So how has that helped you and why is this
your why? Why do you care about all this? Because
I grew up wanting to only do things I knew that
I would succeed at. if people this is going to
sound weird harry but if people failed more often
they would actually experience more fulfillment
because the fear of failure is what stops people
from doing things. It's what stops people from
pursuing relationships and dreams and businesses
and educations. It's what stops us from pursuing
the best versions of ourselves. That's what failure,
the fear of failure does. So failure is not nearly
as destructive as the fear of it. And if we create
a better relationship with failure, we can step
into that better version of ourself i believe
that the best version of me probably is on the
other side of a door of setbacks and failure
but growing up i i found success early in life
in certain sports and some areas of academics
and i got to the point where i had a very fixed
mindset i didn't want to do anything that might
rattle that perception that oh i'm really good
at this so what happened was i stopped attempting
new things i started trying things even if they
were really enticing or really like tugging on
my heart area, I wouldn't do them because I'm
like, I don't know if I'm going to be good at
this or I don't know if I'm going to succeed.
I don't know if this idea is going to work. So
rather than potentially experience failure, I
wouldn't even try. And that to me is the most
extreme form of failure is never even attempting.
How did you get started on this path that you're
on today now? Well, there was a lot of steps
along the way, and I'll try to give you the quick
version. And let me just explain something to
you. The fear of failure never goes away. And
to be truly courageous, I believe fear is necessary.
If I step into a situation, whether it's charging
a battlefield or opening a business, If I don't
experience any fear or trepidation, number one,
there's a chance I'm probably somewhat reckless
or maybe not taking this as seriously as I should.
But number two, there's no bravery in that. There's
no bravery or courage in the absence of fear.
So something has to scare us a little bit in
order for us to step forward in courage. But
the other part of that too is there's always...
Failure stings. Rejection stings. I'm not pretending
that you ever quite get away from that. In my
business, I actually calculate this out. I have
been rejected personally by people about 75 ,000
times prospecting for clients and things like
that. That's a lot of failure if you look at
it that way. And it stings every time. Now, it
doesn't affect me as much as it used to. One
of the most pivotal moments of my life was recognizing
that I had this fear and I didn't want to try
new things. And there's so much of my life that
I was missing out on because I wouldn't step
into the unknown. And human beings have a penchant
or a proclivity to grasp onto uncertainty, or
sorry, onto certainty. We don't want to experience
ambiguity. And sometimes we stay in a rut of
our own life because we don't want to experience
the ambiguity of stepping out into the unknown.
Even if we know where we are, we don't like,
we don't want to step into the unknown. And that's
exactly where I was when I was in college. I
was recognizing this. And again, I had done well
in sports growing up. And the college I was at
didn't offer a couple of the sports that I had
particularly excelled in. And somebody encouraged
me, why don't you try track, track and field?
I'd never done track in and of itself. I trained
that way to increase my speed for football and
baseball and other sports. And I'll tell you,
man, I could feel like all these fears building
up inside me. And I was like, all right, I'm
going to do it. I'm not going to live in fear
anymore. And I went to the coach and I explained
my situation and I was asking him for an opportunity
to walk on. fully expecting him to say no. But
that was like, I'm going to be okay with that,
even if he tells me no. Well, what scared me
even more than him saying no was him saying,
yes, I will give you a chance, but here's what
it's going to look like. And then I thought,
wow, this is for real. Like I'm actually, I'm
going to have to put my money where my mouth
is, so to speak. And he gave me an opportunity
to make the team. And I ended up making the team.
And about 10 days before our first meet, I tear
my quad. And it was a very, it felt like such
a public failure. I literally did this in the
middle of practice. And we were working on our
start. So I was coming out of the blocks and
something didn't quite feel right. I was trying
to push through it. And then it just went. My
quadricep just went. And it felt. in the moment
like such an utter failure a huge setback and
literally like my team's watching and i'm gonna
miss i'm gonna miss our our very first meet but
you know what i survived and and all those things
like that was the worst that could happen in
my mind and the worst happened i didn't die yeah
it stung it literally hurt but It wasn't the
end. It wasn't as devastating as I thought it
could be. So I think experiencing a very visceral
failure and locking horns with that allowed me
to face some of the insecurities, even within
my own soul and spirit, and to move on and to
not let that be the end of the story. Thank you
for sharing that. It gives me a lot of insights.
where you come from so what's the journey been
like from that day you tore your quad to the
lessons you learned and what you are today with
with your company like so what's how did that
all come about well so i didn't realize this
at the time because again in college i was pursuing
a career in medicine i was getting my degree
in biochemistry um but several years into this
business and again or those early years a lot
of that was calling relative strangers inviting
them into hey do you have a plan for your retire
do you have your plan for your future most people
don't have a plan to run out of money in retirement
but harry do you have a plan not to you know
those are types of questions i was posing and
a lot of times you're catching people off guard
so again a lot of rejection and that was starting
to really wear me down all those because again
that the pain of a setback never goes away um
Or sorry, the pain of an individual setback never
goes away, but they still sting in the moment.
So I was letting that pain kind of build up again
and realizing that I was no longer viewing these
setbacks as experiments. So what I had to do
is flip how I viewed those rejections. And I
started gamifying it. And here's what I've learned.
And this has application. So if you're not in
sales, you're not doing prospecting calls. You're
not trying to raise money. It doesn't matter.
But I focused on the input rather than on the
outcome because that's what an experiment does.
We want to make our input, our preparation, our
planning, and how we execute the process with
excellence. But the outcome is not up to us.
The outcome, there's too many other variables
outside of our control. And that's how I brought
prospecting and sales. into more of a gamified
version where I wasn't focused on the outcome.
I wanted a certain outcome. I wanted this person
to say, yes, I'll meet with you. Yes, I would
love to invest with you. Yes, let's partner together.
That's what I wanted. But that wasn't going to
be how I counted my wins, Harry. My win was showing
up, showing up. and asking the question, putting
myself in front of a referral or a complete stranger
and offering my uniqueness to benefit the life
of somebody else and doing it in such a way that
I could feel excellence coming out of me. And
if they said no, fine. That was still a win because
I put myself in the pathway of success. I couldn't
guarantee my success. But I stepped out of my
comfort zone. I put myself in that pathway and
I focused on the inputs and learned not to be
tied so much to the outcomes. Thank you for sharing
that with me today. I have one more question
for you before we enter this segment. What is
your goal for being on the show today, Chad?
I want people to see another side of failure.
I want people to see setbacks as a way of growing.
And I'll just give you a metaphor. Growing up
in sports, growing up in athletics, physical
training was a very important thing. And the
idea of pushing yourself to failure, whether
it was with lifting weights or running sprints,
like you're pushing yourself to a limit to the
point where, man, your body's just not really
responding anymore. Like you've hit your limit.
And in athletics, it was understood like pushing
yourself to failure is a good, like, that's how
you grow. That's how you get faster. That's how
you get stronger. But we don't use that in other
areas of our life. And what, what setbacks and
failure teach people is where their limitations
are. And a lot of us, I don't think realize what
our limitations are because we haven't pushed
ourselves that limit. We are here. We are so
much more capable. We are so much stronger. We're
so much more talented and gifted than we give
ourselves credit for. But until we push the envelope
of what our limits truly are, we're never going
to reach those, number one. And number two, we're
never going to push those limits out. Because
those are two things. Number one, you have a
limit today, but you probably don't know where
it is. And number two, that limit is not fixed.
You can come back a week from now, a month from
now, a year from now, be a better version of
yourself. And those limits are even more expansive
or even further out than they were before. So
we don't know what our true limitations are until
we press them. And until we press them, those
limits can't be pushed back. Thank you for sharing
that. When you're pushing those limits, Chad,
and when you're experiencing failure in the moments,
like. How has that, the feeling changed for you?
You mean experiencing fear in the moment and
realizing, oh, this is something different than
what I used to do. What does that change like
for you? Again, the sting is often still there,
but there's a curiosity now. There's an inquisitive
piece of me. It's like, okay, what is this teaching
me? What is the lesson that I can pull out of
this? Can I do something different? Or was this
just, you know, this thing I was trying, it would
never have worked regardless of what I tried.
So I don't beat myself up. Even if I made a mistake,
okay, I'm going to get another at -bat in life.
This isn't my only chance. So even if the...
the outcome or the the lack of a positive outcome
was on my shoulders okay i can learn from this
and sometimes i might learn i'm not going to
approach this situation or this type of person
anymore because that's not really what what aligns
with my goal or the future that i'm trying to
build so i think it's allowing that inquisitive
nature again that that that that chemist part
of me back into saying okay what is this situation
teaching me and what it does is a couple things
number one it creates more of a growth mindset
but number two it allows the rational part of
my brain to catch up to the emotional part because
when we experience a setback when we experience
ambiguity when something happens to us that is
unexpected unforeseen or unwanted it's really
easy to get emotional we can get worked up we
get frustrated our gut starts to get tight we
start our breathing changes our heart rate increases
a lot of physiological things that happens and
all those things are signs of the emotional part
of our brain taking over And when you ask that
question, what can I learn? What are the lessons?
It gives your emotions pause for just a second
and allows the thinking rational part of your
brain a chance to catch up with your emotions.
So we don't react emotionally and we can rationally
step through the process. Thank you for being
here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in
to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing
your reactions as these episodes continue to
move forward. This is going to get more and more
fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a vision pro yourself.