INBOUND Bold Talks: Ekaterina Walter "Fail Your Way to Amazing Things"

Key Takeaways

so an executive is walking to his CO's office and there's lots of thoughts going through his mind how could this project fail what did the team do wron what could have done they done differently after all they were interested in with the $2 million and a hope that this project will solve a great problem for them and for their customers as he was standing in the CEO's office and he summarized sort of the result and what happened he extended his hand and in his hand was his letter of resignation first the CEO was surprised then a little bit irritated his response was I just invested $2 million in helping us learn something valuable now let's take that knowledge and go do better and find a solution that makes sense pretty positive response right I mean great leadership too if you really think about it but it is the fear of the opposite outcome and opposite response that really truly keep process from innovating from living up to our full potential it makes us hold back because failure is a very scary word isn't it now recently I had a change in the career so I was um running marketing for so Fortune 500 companies for uh most of my career and recently I started basically leading a startup now when I was making that decision um a lot of thoughts come from my mind now I'm very confident person I've done a lot of things I've learned a lot of things I know I'm going to make mistakes I'm not intimidated by that but there's this one defining moment in your life when you ask yourself what if I fail I must have said it out loud with one of my meetings with my friends because he immediately resp replied Define failure that makes you think now John Lennon tells this story when he was in school his teaching gave him an assignment the class assignment and um the assignment was to write down what you want to be when you grow up so naturally he wrote down happy teacher told me he told him he didn't understand the assignment and he told her that she didn't understand life so what is failure how do we Define it and why do we allow it to Define ourselves so I've talked to a lot of people because the topic of leadership and the topic of failure is very dear near to my heart I've talked to a lot of people throughout my life I've talked to people when I wrote the book and um asked them the same question when I interviewed them I've talked to people before I changed um radically changed my career and there is something that I found that is simply profound or should I rather say profoundly simple it seems like success in life depends on three big things passion purpose and attitude now now you know what does that mean so if you really look at passion this is what drives everything this is what fuels you this is what gives you energy this is what gives you motivation this defines who you are and what you want to do now I believe that every single one of us is an entrepreneur we've been taught differently we've been told differently we've been given a totally different definition of Entrepreneurship but I know that we are every single one of us looks at the world with this specific lens and that lens is defined by our passions and what we love so when we see the world through that lens we see potentially different opportunities from what other people see we see different um doors open or close um we interpret it differently so you take that passion and you define your purpose from there what are you passionate about that is your purpose your purpose is to execute on your passions to build your dreams when you get that purpose when you finalize it when you understand it ultimately there's no higher power than that you become absolutely Unstoppable you have clear definition in your mind you know where you want to go and honestly you don't know how you're going to get it potentially most of the time but you know you're going to get there that truly drives you you have no fear you have doubts everybody has you know you're going to make mistakes but you know where you're going and from that comes the attitude the attitude of maybe there isn't such a thing as failure and maybe you need to rethink some things that you were taught or some things that you currently know in order to get to where you want to go so when passion and purpose Collide it becomes sort of this ultimate afrodesiac um think about this number 5,126 that is the number of attempts failed attempts by Dyson to create a prototype for his bagless vacuum cleaner as a matter of fact from that he learned a lot of things things he created a culture Dyson of absolute Innovation a culture that actually encourages Navy te curiosity silliness foolish ideas they were working the team was working on one of the projects and they flipped what they known the conventional wisdom way on its head thinking you're going to find solution for one project instead they invaded a different product that day they invented airblade one of their most bestselling products right now Steve Jobs was investing in Pixar for nine straight years before he convinced people around him that computer animation is an amazing things as a matter of fact he credits the fact that he's been a great CEO to Apple later on in life to being fired earlier in life something he considered a horrible failure flicker we all know flicker did you know though that it was supposed to be a gaming sight it was supposed to be gaming that's what was the initial Focus they miserably failed at it because we're not in flick gaming right now right but what they noticed is that the photo sharing element of feature was really important on the site so they changed Focus they adjusted and adopted now what about individuals let's take a look betoven was told that he would never amount to anything as a composer because he was just strange and he lied to play music in totally different way Michael Jordan was kicked out of his high school baseball team he cried Henry Ford lost his business five times before he build a successful one Disney was actually hired by a newspaper editor for the lack of creativity he also failed at his business several times before he he built um Disneyland Marilyn Monroe was told that she's unattractive and will never be able to act we know how that turned out Einstein haven't spoken until he was four didn't read until he was seven was called by his teachers mentally slow the list goes on and on and on now you might be thinking look I'm not Marilyn Monroe I don't have I'm not pretty I'm not Michael Jordan I don't have a talent but see it doesn't matter because everybody everybody's life and everybody's purpose matters and it contributes to their Community whether in a large way or in a small way you matter to somebody you may be somebody else's hope somebody else's leader even if it's a small community of several people it doesn't matter if you think somebody small can't make an impact try going to bed with a mosquito now we were growing up believing that we cannot be an artist because look it's really not probably going to make you much money it's not going to provide the safety you're looking for we canot be a composer we cannot send music because not everybody's making in that world we were programmed and destined to look for safe choices and be responsible we are responsible is what we telling ourselves when we grow up but remember when we were kids we were Fearless we were creative nothing mattered nothing could stop us we were so darn confident and sure so as you're looking at at sort of your life you need to understand that doubts kill more dreams than failure ever does I mean it really does and and the reality is that you need to Define what failing means to you you know you you need to to to create your own definition of that word as a matter of fact you need to take the definition that was given to you by somebody else and rip it up and maybe you end up figuring out that your definition of failure that that word doesn't even exist at all and it's just small mistakes you make on the way to living your purpose so today I encourage you to rip up what somebody else set you up to be or to do or to think or to feel throw it out and don't fear live your life passionately lead with purpose and create movements ignite movements around yourself and Dare To Dream because if you don't dream if you don't have your own dreams I can guarantee you somebody else will hire you to build theirs so dare to fail because you might just fail your way to amazing things thank you [Applause]