Learn From Failure - How and When to Trust your Gut
May 5, 2021
By Matt Miner, MBA, CFP®
Just a podcast today, friends, with a model for how to learn from failure, and the flipside of the (generally good) advice to trust your gut.
Happy Listening!
Photo credit: Charity Miner. You can trust your gut: We had some good food at her birthday party!
TRANSCRIPT
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[00:00:01] Matt Miner: Sometimes people ask if I'm worried I'll ever run out of ideas. The answer to this question is absolutely not. Ideas are never the problem. It's always execution. A few weeks ago, I promised in the Estate Planning show as a follow-up to the Paul Yokabitus interview, but it's just not fully baked yet. You'll know when it's ready. Another question friends sometimes ask is where I get my ideas.
A lot of times, ideas come when two thoughts collide and their combination yield something I think is worth sharing. Here's an example. Episode 13, First Own Your Failures, Then Own Your Success, has been wildly popular. I don't know whether it's because you want to learn or just gawk at my flailing. Either way, people keep downloading this episode. Then as I was trail running this past Monday, I listened to my new favorite podcast Business Made Simple with Donald Miller. The episode is called Tom Eisenmann—Is Your Start-up Destined to Fail? The interview is good. I may get Tom's book, but my favorite part of the show came at the end when Don shared his closing thought. Don's quote is shortened here. I encourage you to go back and listen to the entire Tom Eisenmann episode.
Donald Miller said, "Failure is a gift. We all fail from time to time. If we look back over our lives, the times we failed were the times of what biologists call punctuated evolution. That is, we evolve very, very quickly over a short period of time because of a negative circumstance. There is actually a blessing that is associated with failure. You can turn failure around. It's a gift. I say that to you if you're driving down the street, and you're beating your head against the steering wheel, and I'm not just talking about business, I'm talking about relationships, I'm talking about parenting, I'm talking about marriage, I'm talking about friendship, I'm talking about things that are much more important in life than business. Failure is a gift.
How do you turn it into a gift? You need to formalize the process. All you need to do is sit down and write down the mistake you made. I was short-tempered with my kid, then ask and answer the question, what did I learned? I learned I need to be fully present. I learned I need to walk in the door and turn off work mode and turn on family mode. I learned I need to have a vision for our family. You will learn these things in a season of punctuated evolution. You will suddenly get good at that thing. I think if you don't sit down and write out, here's the flaw that I have, and here's what I've learned because I had to face the consequences of that flaw. I think that you don't experience the punctuated evolution. There's got to be a formal process saying, here's the mistake I made, and here's what I learned.
A lot of us will ignore our mistakes because they're just uncomfortable to think about, and those people continue to make those mistakes for years to come. Failure is a gift. Failure is a gift. Just formalize the process of transforming yourself and all that you learned during that failure, and you will redeem that failure. I promise you that you will look back and you'll be grateful that it happened."
Hey, and welcome to the Work Pants Finance Podcast. I'm Matt Miner, your money guide, and Work Pants Finance is the show for MBAs, entrepreneurs, and other professionals who want their financial plan to work as hard as they do.
Now, here's your money guide quick tip. When you experience a failure of whatever kind, write it down, then write what you learned from it, then write what you're going to do differently next time, then describe the process to actually do the thing differently next time.
For example, here's a current failure of mine. I'm struggling to ship completed shows on time to my heroic editor. From that, I've learned that I need to build up an inventory of several weeks of shows ready to release. If a client or family opportunity comes up, I'm not scrambling to meet my commitments to you, constant listener. To actually achieve this, I need to better use time blocking on my calendar. I need to minimize distractions during creative times. Cultivate discipline habits, and develop forcing mechanisms like not quitting work for the day until I've finished what I set out to create.
This is Learn From Failure and How and When to Trust your Gut, an introduction to a four-episode series. In each short episode, I apply the process Don Miller described to the failures identified in the Own Your Failures show. Then although I described the primary failure and learning in one way, I also take a look at the flip side of each failure to make sure that when you take corrective action, the cure is not worse than the disease. You can read more at workpantsfinance.com/21.
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My first piece of wisdom in the Failure show was trust your gut. I described my failure as ignoring my gut-level certainty that I was not a cultural fit, going into a new job, and that remains true. In Don Miller's model for learning from my failure, my learning is to not go against my gut for big decisions. When it comes time to commit, if my heart's not in it, I need to pass. However, having your gut or your heart support the decision is necessary but insufficient for making a wise decision. There are two caveats to the trust your gut advice. While it's important to avoid analysis paralysis and to cultivate a bias for action, relying exclusively on your gut to the exclusion of analysis is also asking for trouble.
In life and in business, you need to do the diligence. Your gut may tell you a business idea is a good idea, but if you put a pencil to paper, or fire up Excel or Tableau, and learn that the numbers just don't work, you also need to have confidence in data and let your analysis inform your gut. The idea that knowledge can inform your gut is a perfect transition to the second part of the show, but first, I have a word from today's sponsor.
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Today's show is brought to you by Tiffany Ruiz, founder and chef at Raleigh Tamales. Raleigh Tamales are fresh, delicious, and naturally gluten-free and lard-free. As a customer, I can tell you, they're delicious. Learn more and order at raleightamales.com. That's R-A-L-E-I-G-H T-A-M-A-L-E-S.com.
Here's the second caveat to the trust your gut advice. Sometimes your gut is just ignorant and needs to learn something. Once your gut gets educated, you can go back to trusting it. For example, sometimes people have a gut-level fear of investing in the stock market. What if they lose all their money? Losing all your money would be terrible. If the stock market was expected to deliver that kind of outcome, even some of the time it might be wise to avoid it altogether, but for diversified, low-cost, long-term investing, unless the stock market of the future is wildly different than the stock market in the past, it is not expected to go to zero.
As an investor, you may need to learn what it means to own shares in productive companies. You may need to learn about the benefits of broad diversification in your holdings. You may need to learn about the importance of managing investment expenses. After you learn those things, your gut may tell you that for money, you need more than 10 years from now, the stock market is a very reasonable place to invest. Again, unless the future is totally discontinuous for the past, you'll not only preserve your initial principal, you'll protect against inflation risk and grow your money faster than inflation too.
Big thanks to Don Miller, and the Business Made Simple Podcast for his model to redeem our failures. When it comes to making decisions, you've got to have your brain and your gut on the same page. Sometimes you need to gather a little bit of additional knowledge to get right with your gut. Just don't get stuck gathering information forever.
Next time, we'll talk about the point I made that hope is not a plan. Like go with your gut, there's a flip side to the idea that hope is not a plan. I hope you'll join me next time right here on the Work Pants Finance Podcast.
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[00:07:43] Lucy: Matt Miner is a fee-only, fiduciary financial advisor, and founder and CEO of Miner Wealth Management, a North Carolina Registered Investment Advisor where Matt provides personalized, unconflicted advice to clients for a fee. He's also my dad, so please be nice when you talk to him. Matt is a Certified Financial Planner Professional and holds a Series 65 securities license. He earned his bachelor's degree in Finance from Arizona State University, and his MBA from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business.
Work Pants Finance is Matt's financial media business where he talks about work, entrepreneurship, kids and money, taxes, investing, and other personal finance topics. WorkPantsFinance.com exists to share wisdom and provide general financial information. It is not financial, tax, or legal advice. You are an individual and probably need personal advice for your specific situation. You should consider building relationships with helpful, caring, and competent professionals who understand your unique context and can provide advice that is tailored to your needs.
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