On Leadership: My Biggest Failure

My biggest failure was also my biggest and best teacher.

When I was coming up in my business career, I made one too many business mistakes, based on my ego and not common sense and my brain, and ended up homeless. I lived in my black Montero jeep for 6 months, at 18 years of age. I remember it as if it was yesterday.

I was rolling in momentum as a young man in business — having started my first successful business at the tender age of 10 years old — and my first mistake was mistaking momentum for genuine prosperity.

That’s probably why I am totally unimpressed and unmoved today by this generation of rap and hip hop stars, and even professional athletes, who are convinced of both their own greatness, and their own invincibility. Until they go broke of course. Then they go from all mouth, to all ears. Life’s all about perspective.

I had no perspective at age 18 that was helpful.

I was all mouth, and it (my mouth) was running at 100 miles an hour when my feet weren’t. I didn’t realize that God had given me two ears and one mouth for a reason — so I would listen twice as much as I talked. I think almost every 18 year old thinks they know everything, but I was worse — because I had a dose of success, and a (temporary) wad of cash.

Lesson number two. I had mistaken knowledge for wisdom.

Knowledge comes from books and learning, but wisdom comes from experience, failures, and listening (to those who have had experience and failures).

Lesson number three. I had mistaken busyness for business.

I thought that because I was always going to meetings (or taking meetings as we called it in Los Angeles), always hanging with beautiful and successful people, always showing up where things were ‘happening,’ and driving a nice car I could not afford, that this all ‘meant’ something. It did not — other than I was going broke slowly.

Lesson number four. I had not learned a thing from my past.

Specifically, my father’s success and failures.

My dad — an amazing man that I am proud to be the son of today — made money and created a business, but could not keep a dime nor sustain an enterprise.

My dad would make a dollar and spend a dollar-fifty, which meant that the more money he made, the broker ‘we’ got. You want to know why I am so passionate about financial literacy and what I call the language of money today — here is a good part of the reason. The pain of living through it, seeing it, experiencing it (my mother and father divorced, essentially over money), and yet still finding a way to replicate it in my own life.

Lesson number five. Coming down with a case of ‘seriousness.’

I took myself way too seriously. I actually thought I was ‘somebody.’ Worse, because none of this was rooted in real confidence, real success or real self-esteem, I treated other people like crap.

When you are truly successful, you have no reason to be a jerk. You learn, with real success, to quote my best friend Rod McGrew, that when you have the power you don’t need to use it.

When you are truly successful you learn to decrease you and increase others. You can not only afford to be nice, it is your preference. My most successful friends, are the nicest. No walking around with sun glasses on at night, and making others 'patch around' their enormous ego and personality. They are heavy enough to be light, free and easy.

Lesson number six. Karma is real.

Whatever goes around, really does come around. When you treat people badly, just because you can, or when you are a jerk for a living, and when your life is about the transaction that gets you 'paid,' versus the relationship that builds wealth for you and others (and communities) around you -- it all catches up with you in time.

And when you fall, no one cares about you. Because you didn't show that you cared for them when you were 'rolling.' Or put another way, when you go far enough in the North Pole, you end up South. The universe has a perfect accounting system. Whatever goes around, comes around.

Lesson number seven. I could never, ever give up.

No one was going to save me. I didn't have a trust fund to fall back on, and I hadn't told my parents that the bottom had fallen out of my fabulous life.

I was the one who walked out of my mother and father's home with much fanfare and bravado as a teenager; proclaiming 'I had this.'

I was the one who said 'I knew everything now, so bud-out, thank you very much.'

So I was going to have to be the one that put the pieces back together in and for my life.

No one else had done this to me.

Racism had not done it.

The white man had not done it.

The universe was not to blame.

God was trying to help me and I said no thanks.

My parents had no hand in my drama. It was all me.

Why should I worry my parents now that everything had fallen apart. It was time to repair my life. And I did.

Rule number one of repairing your life, after forgiving yourself and creating a rational plan -- is to never, ever, ever give up. I cannot stress this enough. Never -- give up.

Success is often right up there, around the bend called Pain Boulevard and Disappointment Lane.

Lesson number eight was most important to the renewal of my spirit. I learned to overcome my fears, face my shortcomings, and become indifferent to my failures.

Today, to quote a friend of mine, "I take no for vitamins." No's don't bother me at all today. You need to press through nine no's to get to one yes, but the one yes is the only thing I really remember.

Lesson number nine. The untapped value of compounded hustle.

When I was homeless I didn't have money, and I didn't have friends (they left with the money). But what I did have was God's gifts, my talents, my skills, my energy and the power of my ideas and ideals. I could value and make invaluable those things, versus sitting around and complaining and wining about all I didn't have anymore. All I had lost.

I still had so much. Let me focus on that. On those things. Let me be grateful to God for those things. Let me lift those things up.

I didn't have money to invest so benefiting from the magic of compounded interest was out. But I could implement the power of intensely focused work in my life, and see the value of the compounding of hustle, on top of hustle. And in time I simply out run failure.

Lesson number ten was the most important lesson. I learned to redefine success in my life.

I learned that "success was going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." What a mark of freedom it was when I came to this grand conclusion.

That success was easy, but managing through failure was everything.

Quoting my bestselling book "Love Leadership: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World," it was Loss That Created Leaders. Anyone can spend money, purchase fancy things and seem important when things were going great. But the men were separated from the boys when the crap hit the fan.

Note to self -- be afraid of going into battle with someone who has never experienced pain and hard times.

To quote my friend Fred D. Smith, "the key to life is successfully managing pain. The pain we create for ourselves, and the pain visited upon us by others."

This is it. This was the sum total of the lesson of my biggest failure. I have learned to successfully manage pain, and to deal with my crap before it deals with me.

I have learned that while as an entrepreneur it is hard to be humble, you must have humility.

I learned the invaluable lesson of being authentic, and the gift of building and developing true relationships, over the value of a simple transaction, any day of the week.

Most of all, my biggest failure just helped to make me reasonably comfortable in my own skin. I am cool with me, which makes others cool with me too.

This is a gift that just keeps on giving in your life.

I hope my sharing my biggest failure, helps you to avoid the unnecessary potholes and pitfalls in your own life.

Let’s go.

John Hope Bryant is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE and Bryant Group Ventures, a Magazine/CEO READ bestselling business author of LOVE LEADERSHIP: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass). His newest bestselling book is How The Poor Can Save Capitalism: Rebuilding the Path to the Middle Class (Berrett Koehler Publishing).

Bryant is a Member of the U.S. President's Advisory Council on Financial Capability for Young Americans, co-founder of the Gallup-HOPE Index with the Gallup Organization,and co-chair for Project 5117, which is a plan for the rebirth of underserved America.

Bryant is the only bestselling author on economics in the world who is also of African-American descent.

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